You are now a proud possessor of a copy of Chuck-A-Duck.
Legal Stuff:
Sorry about this, but everyone else seems to include it so there must be a reason.
If your system crashes, the stock market declines, or you dream of steroid infused ducks in the wee hours....we didn't do it. We are not responsible.
We also intend Chuck-A-Duck to be distributed as freeware.
What You Need:
To play Chuck-A-Duck you need a Mac with a minimum of 4 megabytes of memory, System 7, and a 256 color capable display. Having a fairly fast Mac doesn't hurt either. Be sure to set your monitor to 256 colors before you play.
Playing Chuck-A-Duck:
The first thing you see when you double click on Chuck-A-Duck are the credits. Once we have introduced ourselves we whisk you off to the marsh and show you a little bit of introductory type text. As the intro says, click the mouse on anything but one of those buttons on the bottom of the screen and you will be playing the game. (P.S. If you get tired of waiting for the credits, just click the mouse and you will go directly to the marsh.)
What do those buttons do? Well, press the "Exit" button to exit Chuck-A-Duck and return to the desktop. Press the button with the duck on it to activate or silence amazingly realistic duck sounds. Press the button with a shotgun on it to silence or activate the shotgun sound effect.
How do you play Chuck-A-Duck? Shoot-em! That's all you have to do. Move the cursor over anything that moves and click the mouse button. If the marsh dwellers are moving too quickly for a snap shot, hold the mouse button down. When you hold down the mouse button, the shotgun just goes crazy and keeps firing.
During the first few rounds you only have to contend with 2 ducks at a time. After the second round, there can be 3 ducks over the marsh. After the fifth round, 4 ducks and so on, up to a maximum of 8 ducks in range at once. The ducks will also start flying a little faster as you progress through the rounds.
There are more than ducks on the marsh. Every once in a while a frog might poke his head up. Go ahead, make his day!
Unless you press the "Exit" button, there are 10 rounds in a session of Chuck-A-Duck. After each round you get to take a breather and peruse the game stats. The round number, your score, the number of ducks that have flown into range, the number of ducks you hit, the number of frogs that popped their heads up, the frogs you hit, and the number of shots fired are are all displayed in "The Stats". When you are ready, press the "Continue" button to begin the next round.
Almost forgot! The number of ducks in a round also increases as you progress. There are only 20 ducks in the first round. 20 more ducks are added for each new round. That means that by round 10 you'll be taking aim on 200 ducks.
If things get too hectic and you can't wait for the end of the round for a break, press the "P" key on the keyboard. This will pause the game. To continue the game click the mouse or press any key.
If it's not hectic enough, and you have a fast Mac, then you can use the keyboard keys "1" through "9" to speed things up. Press "0" and the game returns to normal speed. Playing at a higher speed doesn't give you any bonus points. It just gives you bragging rights.
To help uneven the score we have added a doomsday capability to your shotgun. Hold down the Command key when you click and everything on screen goes! Be frugal though. You can only do this 5 times in a game.
Scoring:
Scoring in Chuck-A-Duck is simple. You get 100 points for every duck that you hit and 1000 points for every frog. When you hit more than one duck you get a 200 point bonus for each duck hit with that shot. Simple. Oh, there is a slight penalty. Each normal shot costs you 5 points. If you use the doomsday capability you still get all relevant bonus points, and the shot costs a measly 100 penalty points.
Top Guns:
After round 10, if you score is worthy it will be added to the fabled list of "Top Guns". Enter your initials and press the return key to add your acronym to this list. You might find a few names already in the list when you get there. Excuse us, but sometimes we can't help showing off. If you wish to clear out the top gun list and start a new one, exit Chuck-A-Duck, and drag the "Top Guns" file to the trash. A new "Top Guns" file will be created the next time you play.
Alternate Connections:
If you have any comments that you wish to share, we can also me reached at;
America Online - "MindPortal@aol.com" via America Online or the Internet
Compuserve - "74140.2600@compuserve.com" via Compuserve or the Internet
