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Outer Ridge V1.0 Shareware -------------------------- CONTENTS: 0.0 LANGUAGE / SPRACHE 0.1 REQUIREMENTS 0.2 THE STORY SO FAR 0.3 THE STATUS BAR 0.4 RADAR PANELS 0.5 REALLY COOL WEAPONS - Schnot gun. - Dual Cannons. - Rockets. - The All-Illusive Super-Schnot. - Dual Super-Schnots. 0.6 NME's (Enemy's) - Schnotoids - Cannonoids - Mine layers 0.7 BONUSES - Powerup - Double Power - Cannons + Ammunition - Rockets + Ammunition - Super-Schnots - Hyperspace - WHAMO - Extra Ship - Superfast Weapons 1.0 SOUND CARDS SUPPORTED - Gravis UltraSound - Sound Blaster 1.1 CONTROLLERS SUPPORTED - Mouse Support - Joystick Control - Keyboard Control 1.2 SCREEN CAPTURE 2.0 GAME STRATEGIES 3.0 CONFIGURING YOUR PREFERANCES 4.0 TROUBLESHOOTING 5.0 CREDITS 0.0 SPRACHE: OUTER RIDGE koennen Sie in Deutsch oder Englisch spielen. Druecken Sie waehrend des Spieles F1 um die Sprache zu wechseln. Sie koennen die Sprache auch mit dem Programm SETUP.EXE aendern. Waehlen Sie dazu LANGUAE / SPRACHE aus dem Hauptmenue des SETUP Programmes. 0.0 LANGUAGE: OUTER RIDGE can be played in either English or German. Press F1 during game play to switch the current language. The language can also be selected from within SETUP.EXE by selecting LANGUAGE / SPRACHE from the setup main menu. 0.1 REQUIREMENTS: - 80386+ - VGA video card - 4MB ram - Human 0.2 THE STORY SO FAR: You've been assigned to clear the asteroid belts between Mars and Saturn. The Corporation Regulating Advanced Propulsion (CRAP) is in need of additional testing grounds and have hired you, yes you, to clear the way. You must achieve your quota for each sector before you can move on to the next. Follow up crews will use Capped Rocket Utilizing Detonators (CRUDs) to destroy any remaining asteroids after you have hyperspaced into the next sector. Your ship has been equipped to turn raw materials from asteroids into useful propellants and armor. Your on-board factory will generate all kinds of weapons for you to clear the belt with when you collect the raw materials. 0.3 THE STATUS BAR: From the interior of your cockpit, you will see the status bar at the bottom of the screen: SCORE: Your current score. Score is obtained every time you hit an asteroid, destroy an asteroid or pick up a bonus. You will lose score when you destroy a bonus. MISSION: Your mission percentage will tell you how many more asteroids you must destroy before you can go to the next level. In the first level you will only need to destroy 10 asteroids. SHIELDS: This is your ships shield status. When you get hit without any shields, you're dead. You can replenish your shields by collecting PowerUP's (blue bonuses) or Double Power's (green bonuses). CANNON : Number of Cannons you have left in your ammunition arsenal. ROCKET : Number of Rockets you have left in your ammunition arsenal. SUPER-S: Number of Super-Schnots you have left in your ammunition arsenal. 0.4 RADAR PANELS: In the top left and right of your cockpit you have 2 radar screens. The left radar shows depth vs width while the right radar screen shows height vs width. The distance an asteroid is from your ship determines the intensity of the radar blip. Dark brown radar blips are far asteroids while light brown denote near asteroids. All bonus spheres on the radar appear at full intensity. 0.5 REALLY COOL WEAPONS: * = registered version only - Schnot gun. Yes it is actually called a "schnot" gun. Listen, it's green and looks just like the real thing. Hence the name. The green schnot gun is the least powerful weapon, but you can never run out of schnots. The schnot gun is great for busting lone asteroids saving your heavy duty ammunition for heavy duty applications. - Dual Cannons. The cannons are great for blasting smaller asteroids into pulp. One shot gets 'em. Your ship is equipped with two of these fantastic weapons - one on each side. The cannons are slower than the schnot gun, but have far more power. * Rockets. Oh yes, the infamous "rocket" weapon - all games should have rockets. The rockets are computer controlled and "seek" out the closest asteroid for destruction. The rocket will self destruct when it is nearest to the asteroid. Once detonated, the rocket will apply the force of destruction to all neighboring asteroids. Shooting into the middle of many asteroids will destroy all of the asteroids! (or at least wear them down - depending on distance) You do not even have to hit the asteroid for the rocket to detonate. It will detonate when it is at its "optimum" destruction distance. Fortunately, rockets are "smart", and will not destroy bonus spheres. (Whew). You will only get 5 rockets per rocket-bonus, so use them sparingly. * The All-Illusive Super-Schnot. Simply the possibility that such a weapon could exist caused the entire 4th regiment of NME's to dive into a wormhole. Who would want to be covered with schnot, let alone super-schnot? Preliminary reports suggest that the super-schnot is fast, ultra powerful, and very accurate (unlike our friend the green schnot gun). * Dual Super-Schnots. Nothing stands in your way. 0.6 NME's (Enemy's) * = registered version only - Schnotoids The Schnotoids are spherical camouflage Space-Tanks. Why camouflage in space? I don't know, it just looked good in 3D Studio. Schnotoids fire bursts of green schnots and can be easily toasted with a few cannon blasts. Once you hit a Schnotoid though, it will track you down until you kill it (or it kills you). * Cannonoids Guess what Cannonoids are? Yes, they are those hexagonal thingys that fire cannons. Getting splatted with a few of its cannons can really ruin your day. * Mine layers A special battalion of NME's have been dispatched to lay mines. Both schnot mines and cannon mines will be dropped. Mines self-destruct about 5 seconds after being dropped. Collision with a mine almost always results in instant death. When a mine layer is near, you will recognize it's distinctive beep. Note: Schnotoids, Cannonoids and Mines only collide with the player. Yes, it is actually possible for these devices to travel through asteroids! (Programmers note: When we had the mines colliding with the asteroids, they were blowing up all over the place, and were rarely a cause for concern to the player) 0.7 BONUSES There are 9 different bonuses in OUTER RIDGE: * = registered version only Name What it Does How to recognize it - Powerup 10% shields Blue Sphere - Double Power 20% shields Green Sphere - Cannons + Ammunition Extra Cannon Ammunition Red Sphere * Rockets + Ammunition Extra Rocket Ammunition Yellow Rocket * Super-Schnots Extra Super-Schnot Ammunition Yellow/Grey - Hyperspace Completion of level Purple "EXIT" Sign * WHAMO Contents Unknown Colour Unknown * Extra Ship Bonus Ship Red * Superfast Weapons All weapons fire at double speed Lighting Rod 1.0 SOUND CARDS SUPPORTED: - Gravis UltraSound - Sound Blaster The initialization checks the environment settings to determine which type of soundcard you have installed. Only Gravis Ultrasound and Sound Blaster are supported at present. Make sure your environment settings are set to something like these: ULTRASND=220,1,1,7,5 - if you have a Gravis Ultrasound BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1 - if you have a Sound Blaster Note: Obviously you will not use these exact settings as your sound card may not be located at these addresses. These are just examples. With the Gravis UltraSound: With 512K or more of GUS memory, all music and sound effects can be played. With only 256K of GUS memory, the music will not be available. Only sound effects are available with 256k of GUS memory. 1.1 CONTROLLERS SUPPORTED: - Mouse Support Press "M" once in the game to select mouse control or select MOUSE control in the options screen. Mouse control will only be available if your mouse was detected at startup. - Joystick Control Pressing "J" during the game will select and configure your joystick. You can also select "JOYSTICK" from the options screen or from SETUP.EXE. At any time during game play, you can press "J" again to re-calibrate and center you joystick. - Keyboard Control The keyboard is active at all times. The keys can be re-mapped from within SETUP.EXE 1.2 SCREEN CAPTURE: At any time during game play you can press F2 to capture the action to a 256 colour 640x400 .PCX file. Once dumped, the message "PCX Screen Dump as OUTER00.PCX" will appear. If you don't want the PCX message to clutter the picture for the next PCX capture, you can prevent the message by using the command line parameter -pcx to suppress the message. 2.0 GAME STRATEGIES: - Stay moving. Most of the time you can't see what hit you or what is about to hit you. When you stay still, you're a sitting duck. Avoidance of death is directly related to how fast you can get away. - You can't run out of schnots (gun type "1"). So use it against the asteroids whenever you can. Save the rockets and super-schnots for the NME's. - Don't favor one type of gun. You can run out of ammunition quickly if you favor one specific type of weapon, so switch between the different types as you get low. This way, when you're confronted with an NME, you won't be stuck with your little green schnots. - Shoot asteroids in bursts. Do this to avoid destroying any bonuses that may come out of exploding asteroids. When an asteroid does explode, wait to see if there are any bonus spheres in it before you resume shooting. - Destroy all sizes of asteroids. All sizes of asteroids may surrender a bonus sphere, so don't just hit the big "easy" targets. Not only will you save ammunition by going after the small ones, but you will avoid having a billion little tiny asteroids zooming about space at high velocity. Remember, bouncing off the small asteroids won't hurt your shields as much as the larger ones, but if they explode when they hit, they can really cause some damage. - Use rockets on big asteroids. The rockets will affect all asteroids which are near to it when it explodes. So try this: Shoot a rocket at a big asteroid, when it explodes, fire another at the middle of the 3 or so medium sized asteroids. When they explode, destroy all of the smaller asteroids with one last rocket. The rockets are "smart" and will not destroy any bonus spheres. So shoot first, then collect bonuses when all is clear. - Use the mine layers and NME's to your advantage. If you can avoid their fire, follow the mine layers or NME's around, let them blow things up and simply collect the bonuses they extract. Although any asteroids that they destroy will not count for your score, and will not advance your standing in the level. You must still destroy your percentage of asteroids to complete the level. 3.0 CONFIGURING YOUR PREFERANCES: The following keys are supported: m - change control to mouse (and keyboard) j - change control to joystick (and keyboard) 1 - schnot gun 2 - dual cannons 3 - rockets 4 - the all illusive super-schnot! (toggle dual super- schnot) enter - rotate through guns ctrl - thrust space - fire crsr up - rotate up crsr down - rotate down crsr left - rotate left crsr right - rotate right F1 - toggle English/German language F2 - dump screen to PCX file F3 - controller speed adjust down F4 - controller speed adjust up F6 - toggle cockpit graphics F7 - toggle between inverted and normal flight controls F8 - change thrust type between sliding or gripping (default is gripping) F9 - sound effect volume down F10 - sound effect volume up F11 - music volume down F12 - music volume up pause/break - pause toggle ctrl-q - instant exit to DOS Mouse control: Left Button - fire Right Button - thrust Middle Button - change gun Joystick control: Button 1 - fire Button 2 - thrust Button 3 - change gun (4 button joystick) Command Line Parameters: -memory - display actual memory used during initialization -devparm - set Developers Mode ON (cheat keys available) -pcx - pcx status suppression (won't clutter status line with PCX filename during screen capture) 4.0 TROUBLESHOOTING: If you have problems, first remove all TSR's and re-boot with a clean system. OUTER RIDGE does not need any memory managers to run correctly. Remove any memory managers such as EMM386 or QEMM. If you still have problems running OUTER RIDGE, delete the OUTRIDGE.CFG file and re-run OUTER RIDGE. This will reset OUTER RIDGE to the default configuration and write a new configuration file to the disk. OUTER RIDGE will run correctly on stacked drives. OUTER RIDGE should not be run under Windows or OS/2. OUTER RIDGE can be run from a floppy. Q: My sound card is not detected at startup. Why? A: The initialization checks the environment settings to determine which type of soundcard you have installed. Only Gravis Ultrasound and Sound Blaster are supported. Make sure your environment settings are set to something like these: ULTRASND=220,1,1,7,5 - if you have a Gravis Ultrasound BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T1 - if you have a Sound Blaster Note: Obviously you will not use these exact settings as your sound card may not be located at these addresses. These are just examples. Q: The startup screen says my SoundBlaster is detected, but I have no sound. A: You may have an original Version 1.0 Soundblaster. These original cards do not support the Auto-Initialize command 1Ch. If you have this type of card, you will not be able to have music or sound effects. Remove the BLASTER environment setting to turn off sound. 5.0 CREDITS: Code & Graphics By: John McCarthy MOD Music By: Karsten Koch SETUP.EXE By: Robin Ward That's All ---------- We hope you enjoy playing OUTER RIDGE -------------------------------------