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PHAGEFIGHT Written By Tom Lentz. Copyright 1993, Tom Lentz. Phage (faj) n. Short for Bacteriophage, a viral organism that destroys bacteria. (Rhymes with rage) Welcome to Phagefight, this is the second version of a wonderfully successful game. This is a strategy board game which is best compared to Othello, but yet different enough to be in a class all it's own. You may be wondering about the name. Phagefight (or Phage for short) may not seem like the best name for a game, but in keeping with the bacterial/viral warfare type setting, it's about the best name available. Nobody would want to download a game with the word "Virus" in the name, including myself! The game appears to be a success, I have had lots of fun playing it, and so have the playtesters. I hope you enjoy it as much. First, some legal technicalities. This program is shareware. It may be distributed freely via electronic, magnetic, or any other computer media, so long as the following conditions are met: 1) Nothing is charged or required in exchange for obtaining this program, except a fee of no more than $5.00 to cover the cost of the computer media and handling. When distributed with other programs on the same media, no more than an average of $3.00 per program may be charged. For example, on a shareware CD containing 20 programs (including this one), up to $60 may be charged for media and handling. 2) The program is distributed in its entirety. The program, documents, order form, and data files must all be included. 3) Nothing is added to this program, and the program is not changed in any way. The program may be distributed with other programs (such as on shareware disks or shareware CD-ROMs), provided that the program and all of it's files are kept separate: archived in a separate file, placed in their own directory, or some similar storage method. This program has been copyrighted through the Library of Congress. All rights reserved by the author. Program modification of any kind is expressly prohibited. No warranty is expressed or implied with regard to program function, or suitability to any purpose. The author will not be responsible for any damages caused by use, misuse, or inability to use this program. If this program was ordered via mail from the author, the program disk will be replaced if the media is found to be defective upon first use. And now. . . we return you to your regularly scheduled game. . . SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Phagefight was designed for high-end systems, since I wished to take advantage of all the features we paid so much for, yet seldom get to use. This is a small market, best reachable by shareware. This program requires VGA video and will use a Microsoft (tm) compatible mouse if you have it. The keyboard may still be used whether or not a mouse is attached. If you have a Sound Blaster (tm) or 100% compatible card, you will get background music and digitized sound effects. Although Phagefight will run on lower-end XT computers if they have VGA, you might be waiting a bit for the computer to make a move on the higher difficulty levels. This program will function from a floppy drive (in fact, it will fit entirely on a 360K floppy). A hard drive is recommended for best performance, as most of the program's graphics and sound effects are loaded directly from disk. Phagefight requires 512K of RAM and will run under any version of DOS that is 3.1 or higher. Phagefight will run in a DOS full screen window under Windows 3.1, and it works even better under OS/2. Phagefight was developed under OS/2 and will run in a full screen or windowed DOS session. Included is an OS/2 2.0 Icon, PHAGE.ICO. The recommended OS/2 DOS session would have 640K ram, no EMS or XMS, Video Retrace Emulation OFF, Hardware Timer ON, Idle Seconds at at least 5 or 10, and Idle sensitivity at least 75. FEATURES CARRIED OVER FROM VERSION 1.0 ■ One or Two player modes ■ Split keyboard for two players ■ Uses mouse or keyboard ■ 5 computer difficulty levels ■ 21 different playing fields ■ 5 different computer player strategies (stances) ■ A total of 525 different computer game possibilities! ■ All computer player settings are adjustable in the middle of a game ■ Digitized sound effects through your PC speaker! ■ Sound effects can be disabled or enabled at the push of a button ■ Customizable playing board background color ■ Can change playing board background color rotation speed ■ Player names and statistics can be saved for future use ■ Highly optimized recursive computer player algorithm ■ Small size. The entire games takes about 1/4 of a megabyte NEW FEATURES FOR VERSION 2.0 Phagefight version 1.0 was an excellent game by itself. The features most requested by users, and some others not requested that I thought might be nice were added to version 2.0. These features include: ■ Sound Blaster support with background music and digitized sound effects! ■ 7 selectable background music themes (Sound Blaster only) ■ Graphics and sound data file compression (takes much less space on your drive) ■ A new faster, smaller, and more compatible graphics engine (no more BGI!) ■ A more elegant and better looking user interface, making it even easier to use ■ Moving buttons that visually depress when activated ■ Faster graphics loading, especially when operating from floppy disks THE SETTING You are in control of an army of bacteriophage, small viral organisms engaged in an epic battle over an area a few microns wide. The object of the game is to have the most phages on the battle ground when the battle ends. A battle ends when the board is filled, when one player is deadlocked and can no longer move, or when one player is totally wiped out and has no more phages on the board. Each phage is capable of doing two things, dividing or jumping. If a phage chooses to divide, another identical phage may be placed in an adjacent empty square. When a phage makes a jump, it vacates it's original location and moves to a vacant square that is two squares distant. Simply put, a phage may move one or two squares. When it moves one square, another phage is created. When it moves two squares, the phage will leave it's original location. When a phage lands, whether it be from a jump or from division, all enemy phages adjacent to the new location become virally infected by the new phage, and become converted to friendly units. This is the heart of the game, it is how you capture the other player's phages. Whenever you move a phage, all the pieces next to where it lands turn to your color. THE PLAYING BOARD When the game loads, the title screen shows red, green, and blue buttons down in the lower left corner. Press the plus or minus buttons of any color to increase or decrease the amount of that color contained in the playing board. A sample bar to the right of the buttons shows what the current color of the playing field is. When you are satisfied, press the START button. The game board will then load. F1 may be pressed at any time for help! The game board contains several buttons on the right hand side. Under players, 1 or 2 may be pressed for one or two players. Default is 1. Under DIFFICULTY, there is a bar graph showing the difficulty level of the computer opponent. Press the minus button to decrease the difficulty, or the plus button to increase the difficulty. This switch is inoperative in 2 player mode. Under STANCE, a small dot shows the computer opponent's stance. On the left side is a 'D' button for defensive, and on the right side is an 'O' button for offensive. Press the Offensive button to make the computer opponent more offensive, or press the Defensive button to make the computer opponent more defensive. When the computer opponent is more defensive, it will value it's phages more than yours. When the computer opponent is offensive, it will value your phages more than it's own. This controls the way the computer will play it's game, more on the offensive or more on the defensive. The default value is neutral, halfway in-between. This setting is recommended for the best (most challenging and balanced) game. Press the NEW GAME button to load a new playing field and start a new game. A group of playing boards will be shown. Click the mouse (or use the keyboard) on a playing board to load and begin play on that board. Click the CANCEL button to return to game play without loading a new board. Press the QUIT/DOS button to exit the game altogether and return to DOS (or OS/2, or Windows, or whatever OS you are using). You will be given the opportunity to confirm this action by choosing QUIT, or by choosing CANCEL if you change your mind. Press the ROTATION button to toggle playing board color (palette) rotation on or off. Use the + (plus) and - (minus) keys to speed up or slow down the speed at which the playing board color (palette) rotates. If you have a Sound Blaster or 100% compatible sound card, you may press the F2 through F8 keys to load one of the seven different musical scores available. Position the pointer over either player's name (if in single player mode, 'Computer' cannot be selected) and press the mouse button to bring up the player menu. The player menu is used to save and load player statistics, and to change player names. You can use the player menu to keep a record of your game performance. Among those stats kept are wins, losses, win to loss ratio, and the average difficulty level played against (only applicable to one player games). If in two player mode, some of the buttons are disabled when it is the second player's turn, computer player controls in particular. MOVEMENT To move a phage, click the left mouse button when the mouse pointer is on it's square. A white box will appear around that phage to indicate that it has been selected. Then move the pointer to it's destination square and press the left button again. The phage will then move to that square. If you change your mind, you may deselect a selected phage (one with a square around it) by clicking on it again. You are then free to select another phage for movement. You may use the keyboard for movement in addition to the mouse. The pointer may be moved by the arrow keys, the Q-W-E-A-D-Z-X-C key group, or by the numbers on the numeric keypad. The keys S, ENTER, 5, and the SPACE BAR are all equivalent to the left mouse button. Note that the two different key areas (the key group on the left end of the keyboard, and the keypad) make it easy for two players to simultaneously play Phagefight. HINTS On the easiest difficulty level, you can "set up" the computer. Give him what looks like a good move and force him to jump a key phage. Then move in and take his spot. Try to use the blocked squares (grey) to your advantage. Use them as fronts, hide behind them, and jump out when you see an opportunity. Unless you see a golden opportunity, it's usually best to wait for your opponent to come to you at the start of a game. While waiting, build up a nice front, and don't leave any holes for him/her. If you move a phage out to attack his/her front, he/she usually takes it back the next move, along with a bit more. For that reason, stay on the defensive until things start to get ugly. Don't jump unless you have to. If you jump a phage and don't take any enemy phages, you haven't scored a point for that turn. If you jump a phage only to take one enemy phage, you'll only get 1 point. By just dividing, you can also get one point, and not leave a "hole". Stance is intended to make for a more "interesting" game, and not to increase the effectiveness of the computer opponent. The computer plays best when stance is left in the center in a neutral posture. The function of stance, as previously explained, is to control how valuable the computer finds each phage. When the computer is more defensive it will consider saving or creating one of it's phages more valuable than taking one of yours. When more offensive, the opposite will happen. In the neutral posture all phages are valued equally, as they should be, since as far as scoring is concerned a "phage is a phage" and each is worth one point whether it be a created, saved, or captured one. Adjusting the stance one way or another can create some interesting and exciting game play. Try it out after you've gotten used to how the computer plays normally. Difficulty basically controls how far into the "future" the computer will look. On the lowest level, the computer simply takes whatever move it feels like, it can make mistakes on this level. On level two it makes the move that will get it the most phages right away. On level three, the computer looks two moves into the future, once to see it's best move, and a second time to find the best move you could possibly make to counter. It then takes the move which will leave itself with the most pieces at the end of two moves. Higher difficulties work similarly, but look three or four moves into the future, respectively. Time for the computer to compute it's move increases geometrically with the level. Each higher difficulty level requires 49 times more computing time than the previous one. Unless you don't mind waiting a while between moves (this can take over an hour on slow computers and a full playing board), don't try the highest difficulty setting unless you are running a 486 or a very fast 386, or if you are running in a multi-tasking environment and can leave it running in the background. An interesting variation that you can try is what I call "Flash Phage". Limit yourself to 5 seconds or so for each move. This can make play against a low level computer opponent challenging, and can make two player mode very competitive. Remember to use the player menu (by clicking on a player name) to rename your player and keep game statistics so you can compare your progress against a friend's. Remember to save your player before exiting the program. SHAREWARE Thank you for trying this game! This game is distributed under the shareware policy. In the true spirit of "try before you buy" shareware, this program is distributed in it's complete and finished form. No features have been disabled or crippled in this game. The idea behind shareware is to "try before you buy". You are free to try out this program for up to 30 days, and are free to share it with as many people as you wish. It is truly capitalism at work. After the 30 days if you don't think it's at least worth the minimal registration fee, then pass the game along to a friend! A program in a retail store, for example, has a flashy box and advertising to entice you into buying it. How many times have you bought a game only to take it home and find out that it really stinks, and wish you had your money back? Shareware, on the other hand, has nothing but the program to show to the user. Therefore, only the best programs get anywhere. This results in increasing the quality of programs for the end user, and decreasing costs through reduced advertising and distribution. But shareware will only work if YOU, the end user, help it to. If you do not help to support shareware by sending a registration fee or donation for your favorite programs, then the market will die out, and the concept of shareware as we know it will die out as program authors discover that there isn't any profit in it. So please, support the shareware policy and the authors who have worked so hard to make it work. Whether it be this program, or any other that you register, I'm sure the author will be grateful. If you wish to register this game, please send a registration fee of $12 (see the ORDER.FRM file for details), or any amount you feel the program is worth to: Tom Lentz E. 1028 Newark Spokane, WA 99202 In addition to registering a fine program, easing your conscience, and obtaining my eternal gratitude, you will be notified, free of charge via postcard, of any new program updates and will have the opportunity to have them shipped to you for a very minimal postage and handling fee. Even if you don't like this game, I would still appreciate your comments, questions, or ideas. I can be reached by e-mail on WWIVnet, user number 53@5912 (Alien). I've had a lot of fun writing this program (as well as playing it!), and wish to continue to provide such services in the future. And if you can beat the computer on level 4, or even come close on level 5 (the highest level), with stance in a neutral posture, please let me know! I feel like I've created a monster. I can't beat my own game! TROUBLESHOOTING There are no known bugs in this program, it has been extensively playtested. But should you find something that you would consider a problem, please contact me. With some mouse drivers (my Mouse Systems one in particular), the mouse pointer will change color with the playing field background. This is harmless and will not affect program function. You may wish to turn the rotation off, or try another mouse driver to circumvent this. This is a problem with the mouse driver, and not the program. The mouse driver is using color 16 for the mouse pointer when it should be using color 15. If you have a Sound Blaster, you must have the BLASTER and SOUND environment variables set properly in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Consult your Sound Blaster documentation for details. For an original Sound Blaster on the default port and IRQ, with the software in the default C:\SB directory, the settings would be: SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T1 SET SOUND=C:\SB To hear the background music, you must have the SBFMDRV.COM file loaded first. If you don't have a real Sound Blaster (this file is included on the disks that come with your Sound Blaster), you can download this file from the Creative Labs BBS at 408-428-6660. If you are concerned about this TSR taking memory or conflicting with other TSRs or programs, you can make a batch file to run phage containing something like this: C:\SB\DRV\SBFMDRV.COM PHAGE.EXE C:\SB\DRV\SBFMDRV.COM /U REM THE /U SWITCH WILL UNLOAD THE SBFMDRV.COM FROM MEMORY. The program also requires the CT-VOICE.DRV file for digitized voice output. The program first looks in the \DRV directory under the directory specified by the environment variable SOUND. If it cannot be found there, then the CT-VOICE.DRV file provided with Phagefight is loaded. This driver file is for the Sound Blaster 1.5 and 2.0. If you're getting an incorrect CT-VOICE.DRV version error, check to make sure that the environment variable SOUND is set up correctly, that CT-VOICE.DRV is in the correct directory (default is C:\SB\DRV), or simply copy your CT-VOICE.DRV file into the directory containing Phagefight. CREDITS This program was created by Tom Lentz, in association with The Genesis Engineering Group of Spokane, Washington. Design and Coding Tom Lentz Graphics Tom Lentz Sound Effects Tom Lentz Music Various public domain CMF files Ideas and inspiration Ronn Doty Testing (Alpha) Pat Donahue Ronn Doty Bob Felton Jay P. Hailey Debra Hill Tom Lentz Playtesters (Beta) Pat Donahue Ronn Doty Bob Felton Jay P. Hailey Debra Hill Tom Lentz T. J. Reno Marc Schroeder Dennis Washburn Marc Weddle If you liked this game look for STARDUEL, a VGA arcade style space game by the same author. Also look for high-quality adventure games coming soon from Genesis Engineering!