Definition: A Cumulonimbus cloud is an dark, ominous cloud often associated with tornadoes and thunderstorms.
Premise: Cumulonimbus clouds are unleashing their fury on your city, dropping rain by the bucketfull, which is quickly turning to ice due to a temperature inversion in the atmosphere (don't be impressed by all this goofy vocabulary I learned in Geography 150). The ice is falling and accumulating in your well outside, which is bad, because the ice somehow clogs up the well and cuts off your water supply. But you happen to be a rich physicist specializing in aerodynamics and thermodynamics, and you rigged up a little gadget that heats the sides of the well. Anyway, you can melt a layer of ice if a layer of ice is completely solidified across and touches both sides of the well. With your incredible skill in aerodynamics you also rigged up a series of fans so you can move chunks of ice left and right, and even rotate them. The crystals will bond permanently the instant the bottom surface touches the bottom of the well or the top of another crystal, so the only way to get rid of them is to complete layers so you can melt them. You get to park your butt on the couch inside your home and control all your goodies with a remote control and a video monitor.
Object: To prevent your well from overflowing with ice; the game's over when a shard of ice protrudes above the well.
Menus:
File: New Game: Starts a new game of Cumulonimbus.
End Game: Ends a game in progress.
Quit: If you don't know what this is, as Dirty Harry would say, "You're sh*t out of luck."
Crystals: You can beg God (or Allah, or Buddha, etc.) to just drop crystals of ice in certain shapes only. You won't make the hiscore list if you use less than 4 crystals, though.
Blocksize: You can tell your video camera to zoom in or out to make the ice crystals larger or smaller. If you have good eye sight, you may want to select a lower level of magnification; if your eye glass prescription comes from Coca-Cola bottles, you may want to crank it up to a higher level. Be careful, though, you don't want to turn up to much or you may not be able to see the entire well.
X, Y: You also somehow magically change the dimensions of the well. Be careful not to make the well to large as to make it too big for your monitor's screen.
Etcetera: Show Next Crystal: If you want to use your handy crystal ball, you can peer into the future and see what the next ice crystal is going to look like.
Show HiScores: Selecting this item will show how past physicists who happen to specialize in the same stuff you do fared against mother nature.
Edit Keys: This will bring up a window so you can customize the controls of your fan rig. I have already configured two sets of controls, and you can check them out by pressing the "Set 1" and "Set 2" buttons. If you don't like either set, just type in which keys you want to use.
Use True Rotation: If you don't like the way the default method rotates the "Elle" crystal, you can turn this on, and you will actually get two "Elle" crystals, each with a more predictable rotation.
Clearscreen After Each Level: You've also got several crates full of hand grenades that you smuggled back from ╒Nam, and you can throw one in the well to nuke the remaining ice after each wave lets up. If you're a real gung-ho mo-fo, you can just let the leftover ice sit there after each wave.
Obstacles: If you are really good player, you may think the game is too easy. So, I threw some obstacles in their to rip ya to crystals. There are several different types of obstacles to choose from, but the default is no obstacles for a good reason: the game will get incredibly difficult if you use them. On the other hand, you do get more points if you do.
Sound: This is the how loud you want the speaker set at. Don't worry, the game will restore the speaker volume to the original volume when you're done. You may also notice that there is a file called "C╒Nimbus Snds". If you want to use the digitized sound, make sure you have that file in the same directory as Cumulonimbus. If you don't like the sound, or don't want to waste an extra 70k of disk space, nuke it. If you decide not to use the digitized sound, the game will just beep every time a sound is supposed to be played; if you don't have a digitized sound as the SysBeep, this could get on your nerves, and you may want to just turn the sound off.
Color: If you're a rich guy, and have a color Mac, you can see the game window in color. Let me warn ya though, I don't have a color mac, and this is the first color anything that I've written, so... the color may be a little scrappy. Anyway, selecting the menu items will bring up the color picker window that you guys should be familiar with.
Tips:
1. Don't use the buttons in the Remote Control window; the game works better and is easier for the player to use the keys. In case you haven't been reading, just look at the buttons, and it's corresponding key is in [brackets].
2. Try to eliminate more than one row at a time. You get much more points if you do.
3. In the earlier rounds, you can still move the ice crystals when they appear to be already "stuck." You can maneuver a crystal into some weird positions using this trick.
4. Likewise, in the later rounds, try moving the crystal around before it officially appears. That way you can avoid overflowing before you've had a chance to move the crystal.
5. I put in secret features for you to discover. There are ways to nuke the top half of the ice, blow the crystals upward, selecting which crystal that will appear next, etc. I'll give ya a hint: Try fumbling around with the command key. Note that some of the tricks will cost ya in points.
6. The game saves your settings in the HiScore file, so you don't have to manually reset the desired settings each time you start up Cumulonimbus.
How to Pay: Of course, nothing's free these days, especially tuition (actually it's the room and board that kills ya), and with my financial situation I may not be able to continue my college education without your help. So I am asking (actually, begging) you to send me 50ó, that's right one half of one American dollar for this crystal of software. That's an immense savings on your side, considering that some games run 50 dollars, and besides, you'll feel better knowing that you've helped a poor computer science student out in his time of need. So, find some loose change and a stamp and mail your donation of fifty cents or more to:
