Amiga Games 1996 July/Amiga Games 1996 #7.iso/spiele/publicdomain/amosgames/mazemania.doc

Text File | 1993-03-08 | 6KB | 112 lines

Tuesday 16. February 1993
------Joona Palaste------

                        M A Z E   M A N I A
                        -------------------
                        Playing instructions


- 1: The Idea -
  Maze Mania is, by a simple means, an arcade game. More like a puzzle game
than a platform game, though.
  The idea of the game is to guide your little character around 16 screens
collecting diamonds and reaching the exit. There are other features too, the
main one of which is a construction kit.

- 2: The Front End -
  After loading Maze Mania and getting rid of the blue loading "picture",
it's onto the front end. This cycles between the game logo and the options
on offer. Simply press the correct function key (the gray keys at the top of
your Amiga) to access the features.
  Now, before you try anything else, a little note about alerts. They are
the little gray-and-black text messages you seem to be getting all the time.
To get rid of them, press either mouse button or "y"/"n". The button you
press does matter, because some of the alerts are in fact requesters. The
press of the left mouse button or "y" is thought of as YES, while the right
mouse button or "n" means NO.

- 3: Playing the Game -
  After a press of either F1, the left mouse button or the firebutton you
will gain access to the game proper. You're supposed to be the little flesh
pink dot (a "face"), which you steer either with the joystick or the numeric
keypad.
  There are six different kinds of terrain. The two most basic of them are
empty space, which is completely unaccessible, and "road" which is just
about your basic terrain.
  Dangers/fires are the orange dots, and they are lethal to touch. One press
too far equals buying the farm. Crumbly areas (shown in shaded) are just
that; leave them and you can't come back.
  Diamonds are shown as cyan dots, and you can collect them by touching
them. Then, all that is left, are the generators. To see what these look
like, access the game and look at the "GADGet" picture. Touching these will
result in a diamond appearing somewhere on the map.
  After collecting a set number of diamonds, you can reach the exit, which
will take you to a new level.
  I will now show you a scoring table:
   Diamonds...........25 points each
   Crumbly areas......3 points each
   Generators.........10 points each
   Completing levels..200 points.
  To pause the game, press either "p" or the spacebar. To exit, press
ESCape.

- 4: Level Codes and Custom Levels -
  There are 16 codes (work for yourself how many per level), which consist
of four letters of normal English. Just press F2 and type one. If it's
invalid, you will be abandoned to level A.
  You will be shown a code for the next level every time you complete a
level, regardless of how well you fared.
  You can play on two different kinds of levels: the default levels, and
custom ones. You will only see the end sequence if you play the default
levels. To access a custom set of levels, either load them from the game, or
perform "clear all!" from the construction kit. To select default levels,
just press the right function key, and after a confirmation, they will be
yours to play.
  Selecting "delete levels" will display a requester of level files to
delete. Click on one and confirm to delete the set from disk.

- 5: The Construction Kit -
  Pressing F4 or the right mouse button at the front end takes you to the
construction kit. Obviously, there are lots of features here.
  Firstly, let's explain the instruments. There are three drawing
instruments: dot, line and filled box. Select one by clicking on it. Any
type of terrain can also be selected from the blue set of boxes.
  To draw on the level, click the mouse on the level area. For lines and
boxes, you will need to hold the mouse button down.
  Clicking on the level name or the code will - providing you have custom
levels to edit - allow you to type a new name or code for that level.
  Then, a more important feature will be discussed: the action buttons. The
most basic of them are "you?" and "ext?" which will inform you of your/the
exit's position in the current level. The two other most basic buttons are
"l+" and "l-" which will allow you to edit different levels from the set.
  Then there are the "clear!" and the "clear all!" buttons. A click on the
first one will clear the selected level, while the second one will clear all
levels. To begin creating your own levels, click on "clear all!". Otherwise,
all drawing will be disabled.
  Now only the ">you"/">ext" and the file operation buttons remain. The
">you/ext" buttons are used to set your/the exit's position on the level.
Just click on them and then on the level area.
  The file operation buttons are "save" (save the levels to disk), "load"
(load levels from disk) and "quit" (well... quit, actually). My apologies
for the slightly crude interface in the load/saving operations.

- 6: The High Scores -
  Pressing F3 will show you the high scores table. There are 10 positions
for you to appear in, and a built-in ranking system, which will show the
previous game score's rank from "MegaDrive owner" to "Miracle"...
  To exit the table, press any key. Mouse buttons are inoperable.

- 7: Other Information -
  The game includes speech. To toggle it on/off, press ctrl-s.
  The end sequence is worth watching. It includes pretty (8-colour)
pictures, sound (beeps), and a message.
  When typing a code, you can use either UPPER CASE or lower case.
  If you cannot get past some messages, click the mouse or press any key
(preferably "n"). That usually helps.
  Anybody with AMOS knowledge, would you please tell me why the spacebar
pauses the game much more frequently than the "p" key? They are both tested
in exactly the same way.
  ENJOY THIS GAME!! If you like it, carry out the money-sending instructions
on the Readme_First! file. See you...