Crawly Crypt Collection 1/crawlyvol1.bin/games/alienate/alienate.doc

Text File | 1994-04-29 | 6KB | 123 lines

Andrei Ellman
Willem Pijperstraat 63
1077XL
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
                                              Wednesday 22 August 1990

The following disk contains my entry for the STOS competition
(organised by Page 6). The reason why most people (or at least I)
did not enter the previous competition because they were waiting
for their STOS 2.5 upgrade to arrive for their STE's. If you had not
changed the rules, I would have written a game similar to Alleycat
on the Atari 8 bit. Instead, I have sent you the following game.

GAME                       : Alienation (sorry, but I could not
                             think of a better title)
ORIGINAL ATARI 8 BIT TITLE : Mr. Robot (Datamost)
REQUIREMENTS               : Joystick, Mouse, Colour monitor/TV (This
                             was tested on a 1 MEG STE. It should work on
                             all other STs

Loading instructions:
Simple really, just shove the disk in and turn on your computer
and double click on the ALIENATE.PRG. However, it may be a good idea
to remove any disks already inside your drive.

Once it has loaded, you will be presented with the following icons
Top bar, left to right: Load level, Save level, test level, play game,
set timelimit and give name, unused, unused, erase screen.
Bottom bar, top left to bottom right (horizontal), ground with pill,
right moving treadmill, bomb, escalator, ladder, magnet to go to
right, Position of robot, position of A type, pos. of B type, Pos. of
E type.     Ground without pill, left moving treadmill, teleport,
pole, fire, extra life, ice, magnet to go to left.

To play the game, just click on the play game icon (joystick).
You control the robot that is usually found in the bottom left corner
of the screen with the joystick. The idea is to get all the pills that
are in the ground. Unfortunatley, there may be up to nine aliens
chasing you at once. these can be of three types, alienfires (as found
in original mr. Robot), Beta types who can jump and egomaniac robots
who can also jump and insist on staring at the god of the robot
(Hey, that's you!) instead of looking where their going.
There are also some more obstacles to look out for.
Treadmills : Make it easier for the Robot to move in one direction but
             more difficult for the other.
Bombs      : Are ignited on contact of the Robot and Beta types.
             Anyone caught when it is exploding are blown into the air
             (E types die of shock and their ghost is seen departing).
Escalators : Jumping on one of those brings you to it's top (it may be
             nescesary to jump on the right of it's centre.)
Energisers : Gives the Robot for a short time the power to kill As and
             Bs but not Es (he can however kill the creatures by
             luring them under a bomb.)
Ladder     : Just move the joystick up or down to climb/descend
Magnets    : Make you attracted to the direction they are pointing.
             Can also make you jump further.
Teleport   : transports you to another teleport.
Pole       : Walking above one of these sends you down safley.
Fire       : Instantly fatal upon contact, even when energised.
Extra life : Bloody obvious, isn't it?
Ice        : Makes it impossible to change directions.

   The level is ended when all pills have been collected. If you
die, the level is reset and you lose a life. You can die in any of
the following ways:
Contact with aliens without energiser, Contact with Es with energiser,
being blown up by a bomb, falling more than 1.5 times your height and
touching a fire
Press P to pause, O to resume and Q to quit (it may be nescesary to
hold the key down for some time). I think there's a cheat mode but I
may have removed it.
   You may also choose to design your own levels. You are in the
construction set when your game has loaded or when the game has
finished. you can pick the items from the lower icons and place them
anywhere. Control of the cursor is done with the mouse or the
Joystick, however, only the mouse can be used for the fileselectors.
If you cannot get the cursor to go to the bottom or right parts of the
screen, use the mouse. The level can be tested using the test tube
icon, and saved with the save icon (All levels must have the extender
.LVU). Have Fun!

These are the following differences between this and the original
Trampolines and music icons are not included.
Fire and Ice are included.
There are two more types of alien (max=4*A 3*B 2*E)
The platforms and ladders are only one colour. the XL/XE version had
DLIs to create a rainbow effect making platforms of each height
different colours. If I could find out how to emulate the Amiga's
copper chip (or the Atari 8 bit's DLIs) in STOS, I could prehaps
include this.



AMENDMENT : Sunday 28-04-91

   This game seemd to take for ever to judge in the competition.
I had to wait until February before I found out that it had won
absolutley nothing! I still cannot think of a better title for
this game, however, this game is now in the public domain. As for
the multicoloured platforms, I have now found out how to get them
to work. Prehaps I will use them, add a few more enhancements and
release it as licenseware.

   And in case your'e wondering, the Egomaniac robot is the same
type that featured in 3D Ski.


AMENDMENT : Sunday 09-01-94

   Alienation (no, I have not found a better name for it) has been
re-compiled to run on TOS versions higher than 1.62 with a public
domain utility by M.J. Horwell. I am currently doing a complete re-
write of the game making it faster, more colourful, and having more
features. With luck, it should be out in Late-april 1994, and I
will immediately make it available on the internet by FTP from
atari.archive.umich.edu . I have also re-compiled some other Wacko
Software programs to make them run on the newer TOSses. These have
also been uploaded to atari.archive.umich.edu .
If you want to contact me by e-mail, my e-mail adress is:
[e-mail]