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Text File | 1999-09-06 | 27KB | 770 lines

Spheres Of Chaos for Windows95, v1.11 ------------------------------------- System Requirements ------------------- A PC running windows 95 / 98 / 2000 (alias 1900) About 3 Megs of free memory. That's just a guess though. DirectX. I have version 5, but any version should work. I don't ask it to do anything difficult. You can get DirectX from almost any game CD, magazine cover disk, or from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com A mouse. Keyboard & joystick optional. A graphics card capable of 640x480 or 320x240, 256 colour video modes. A processor. I don't know the minimum speed to recommend. Use the low resolution version (chaos320.exe) if the high resolution one (chaos640.exe) is too slow. I'm told it worked on a P60 though. A sound card. (optional) All of the above must work properly :-) How to install Spheres of Chaos ------------------------------- If you can read this, you already know how to open zip files :-) You may either unzip all the files in chaosw.zip into a folder, and then double click on 'install.exe'. (To use pkunzip.exe from DOS, change directory to where the zip file is, and type "pkunzip chaos.zip"). or If you are using WinZip, double-click on 'install.exe' in the winzip display. This will unzip all the files into a temporary folder, run install.exe, and then remove the temporary folder again. (You can get winzip from www.winzip.com). You will get a message asking if you want to install Spheres of Chaos. 'No' would be a silly answer, but it's polite to ask in case install.exe ever gets accidentally run. Then you are asked if you want to add a 'start menu' entry, and desktop shortcuts. The game installs by default to 'c:\Program Files\Spheres of Chaos'. You may safely move and rename this folder after it's been installed. You may also move and rename the start menu entry if you like. If you move the game folder, the start menu entries, and desktop shortcuts will no longer work, because they will still point to the original folder location. You can make some more though, just right-button-drag a game exe to the desktop, or to the start menu folder of your choice. (The start menu is really just a set of folders containing ordinary shortcuts. It can be explored, starting from c:\windows\start menu\ Uninstalling ------------- Run 'unwise.exe' in the folder where the game is installed. or Run 'uninstall' from the start menu. This will delete everything except the game folder and unwise.exe itself, (because a running program connot delete itself), and the scores file. You will have to delete these yourself. If you moved or renamed the game folder or the start menu entry, they won't get deleted, so you'll have to do it yourself. How to run the game ------------------- Use the start menu - click on one of the 'chaos' entries in 'programs \ Spheres of Chaos' or Run one of the the 'chaos' shortcuts placed on your desktop or Find the folder where you put the game and open it. Double click on chaos.exe for the 640*480 screen version, or chaos320.exe for the other 320*240 screen one. If It Doesn't Work ------------------ You may see an error message: "Chaos ran out of memory" Not enough memory. Unlikely to actually happen. "Binary file 'name' missing" a file is missing. Check there is a folder called bits. All the files except the exe's should be in here, 7 (or so) in all. Or unzip the zip file again, or download & unzip again. Or the current directory is wrong. If you have made a shortcut, it must 'start in' the same place as the exe is. "Failed to open display", and "DirectDraw initialisation failed for x= y= bpp=. This program requires DirectX" No directX or DirectDraw, or your graphics card doesn't support the required screen resolution. Install DirectX, or try running the other game exe to use the other available screen size. "Failed to re-init DirectDraw" You Alt-tabbed out of the game, and it can't get the screen back again. Don't Alt-tab. "Registration error" Registering the game went wrong. "DInput_Init failed" "DI_Init_Mouse failed" "DI_Init_Keyboard failed" "DI_Read_Mouse failed" "DI_Read_Keyboard failed" "dinput.dll (or similar name) required file missing" Direct Input is broken. Try rebooting your machine first, try re-installing DirectX. There are other error messages. Some are internal and my fault, but should not happen. Others may happen if your PC goes funny. Try rebooting. If you see no error message, the game may have tried to display a message, or it may have just crashed. Try pressing return, or Ctrl-Alt-Del, or anything else you find works. The display always gets messed up if DirectDraw was in use during a crash (with any game). You may have to reset. The game leaves no files open, so you shouldn't have to use scandisk. If there was an attempt to show an error, the message will be in a file 'debugdmp.txt' which you may find in the same folder as the exe, or on the root of drive 'C'. Black on black error messages! (In 'hitch hikers guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams, there was a black space ship, with black control buttons, labled in black, which lit up in black when you pressed them. It was a joke... ) Technical Support ----------------- If you can't get the game to work properly, visit my web page at http://www.chaotica.u-net.com to see if there is a newer version, or any help for common problems. I have changed the zip file naming system. All versions will now have the same name, so that it can be permanently linked from places such as www.download.com without having to update the link with every new version. You will have to look at the date of the file to identify it. Win95 versions are now called chaosw.zip If that doesn't help, email me at iain@chaotica.u-net.com. I will try to assist, but PC's can be very peculiar. They all behave differently and very stupidly sometimes, and as a programmer I can be completely baffled. I may need you to run alternative problem detecting versions of the game on your machine, that writes lots of 'I got this far' messages to a file to mark how far it gets before it falls over. Don't register it if it doesn't work!. That would be silly. To Start A Game --------------- Click on 'Start Game', or press the spacebar whilst on the main manu screen. The Menus --------- The items on the main screen lead to submenus. Click on one to go there. The left button jumps to submenus or increases values, the right button decreases values. The Controls Menu ---------------- Change the amount of players by clicking on the number. Only one player games are available in the unregistered version. For each player you can change: The colour of the ship by clicking on it. The control method by clicking on the word Mouse/Joystick/Keyboard The rotation speed of the ship by clicking on Speed. The keyboard controls. To change a key, point at one of the keys for a ship. When it has a box around it, press the key you want to use on the keyboard. From left to right they represent: Turn anti-clockwise, Turn clockwise, Fire, Thrust, Hyperspace, Brakes. The mouse is the best control method. Moving the mouse left and right rotates the ship. Move the mouse up quickly to Hyperspace. Backwards has no effect. The buttons from the left represent Fire and Thrust. Only two buttons are currently supported. Joystick. Left and right rotates the ship. The Fire button fires. The other button is thrust. Only 2 buttons currently supported. Up is Brakes, Down is Hyperspace. You can change which joystick movement does which action. Point at one of the keys so it has a box around it, the same way keys are set. Then press a joystick button or move it up, down, left, or right. Variations Menu --------------- Only available in registered version. This menu allows you to customise the game. Objects, ships and bullets can be set to bounce off the sides of the screen. You can also have gravity, and adjust ship and bullet interactions. Ships can either not interact, bounce off each other, or blow up when they collide. Bullets hitting ships can do nothing, give the ship a push, or destroy it. The game type can also be varied: Normal means no ship or shot interactions. The game is over when all players are dead. Team means there is only one score and spare ships pool for all of the players. The game is over when all the ships are destroyed and there are none spare. If there are no spare ships then the player has to wait until the others earn another spare before reappearing. Enemies means try to destroy each other. The game ends when there is only one player left, who is the winner. Duel means ships only with no objects to shoot. The game ends in the same way as in 'Enemies'. When two remaining players with no spare ships crash into each other they are both replaced and the game continues. Race players race against each other to a predefined target score. The overall game speed is normally 5. 1 is half the normal speed and 9 is double the normal speed. Amounts ------- Only available in registered version. Each type of object has an initial amount for each level. This can be varied by selecting: None none of this type ever. Less half the normal amount. Normal the normal amount. Extra double the normal amount. Hordes three times the normal amount plus always some extra. For Bugs and Black Holes the value controls the frequency of occurrence rather than the initial amount. Sound ----- Turn souns on/off, change the maximum number of sounds playing at once, and adjust the volume. The max volume is 100. This distorts quite nicely when things hyperspace in, but you need to set your desktop volume control to the right level (about 25% on my machine). If it's too loud, everything distorts. The volume can also be controled by keys: F5 for volume up, F6 for volume down. If sound fails to start, this menu will say so and sound will be turned off. This may happen if another sound-using program is running at the same time. Sound will be turned off in the games configuration file, so it will be off the next time the game is run, & you will need to turn it on again. Clicking on 'waveform' will open a menu from which you can play the sounds and view their waveforms. The samples are all 8 bit, and I've just found a machine that fails to play 8 bit samples. (without displaying an error) So I may do a hacked 16 bit version. Same samples, but shifted up 8 bits. Screen ------ From here you may control: Background type. None - screen is not cleared, everything leaves permanent trails. Plain - flat, all the same colour. Fast decay - things leave short lived trails Slow decay - same, but longer 4 times slower decaying Very slow decay - 4 times slower again If you use a coloured background with the decay effects, you get a nice psychadelic effect, although with fast decay it can pulsate sometimes. Draw to: Buffer screen - draws to a 'virtual' screen, and then copies it to the actual display screen. Hardware screen - draws directly to display. The game chooses the probable fastest 'draw to' mode when you change background type, but it depends on your graphics card (& so on). You may find the other 'draw to' mode works better for a particular background type. Background colour. The colour the game starts with. Sequence. How the background colour changes with each level. Single flashes. Background colour will pulse when power-up's are collected and ship explodes, and will cycle when an extra ship is earned. Strobe flashes. Background will strobe when black holes get shot. This option is off by default, and comes with an -EPPILEPSY WARNING- because it causes extreme screen flashing. Flashes can cause the sceen to pulsate sometimes when used with a decaying background. System ------ Shows some system info. Scores ------ The scores for each type of thing. This menu crashes if used with anything other than a plain background. Highscores ---------- The top 99. My highscore is 3500000 ish. The highscore file is saved when a name is entered. Delete the file 'scores' to reset them. Games of type normal, team & enemies go in table, for single & multiplayer. Next to the position is a letter indicating game type: n = normal multiplayer, each player has a score. t = team, score achivewd by the team. e = enemies, each player has a score. + = single player game, with something (e.g. speed) adjusted from it's default No symbol = single player, all settings at default. Extra Keys ---------- F1 - Pause / UnPause. F2 - Single step when paused. Esc - Escape. If playing, it ends the current game. If not playing, it quits the program. It needs to be double-pressed (hammered!) to quit. This avoids extreme swearing when accidentaly escaping form a 1,000,000 point game. Space - Start game from main menu. Alt-Tab - (Alt held down and Tab pressed whilst alt still down) Minimise. Pauses the game and switches the display back to your desktop. To restart, click 'Spheres of Chaos' on the taskbar, or do Alt-Tab again. F12 - Hide scores during game, for taking screenshots. Print - Save screenshot. Screens will be saved as .bmp's, named screen00.bmp, screen01.bmp, etc. They are saved in subfolder called 'screens'. Each time you run Spheres of Chaos the counter starts at 00 again, so move or rename any screens you want to keep, else they may get overwritten. How to Play Spheres of Chaos ---------------------------- Fly around the screen, shoot things, and try not to crash into them. To move your ship, point somewhere and press the 'thrust' key/button. To stop, press the 'brakes' key, or turn around and use thrust again. Or do both at the same time, to stop rapidly. The mouse is the best control. The sideways position controls the ship angle directly, so you have fine control when aiming at stuff, but can also flip around instantly. Every 10,000 points earns you an extra ship, at first. At a score of 100,000 this changes to every 15,000. And at 500,000 it changes to every 20,000. This is a change from the previous, which was a constant 10,000, but changes to the game had made it silly-easy, with very long games and astronomic highscores. Bump into the triangles to pick them up. Depending on the colour you will get a special power-up, which is named at the top of the screen All the timed power-ups last the same time. Collecting a power-up that you already have adds extra time. Some types come in pairs, and collecting it's 'dual' switches to that type, and also adds the time you already had. Some types will combine together, such as fast shots and spread fire, giving fast spread fire. My favourite is score multiplier followed by smartbomb. Shooting a power-up changes its colour randomly up or down two colours. Shooting and destroying a power up 'collects' it, but it will only last half as long. And USE THE MOUSE TO PLAY !!!! It's far better than keys. Some Misc Technical Stuff ------------------------- Written in C using Visual C++. Uses a code library from the book 'Windows game programming for dummies' by Andre LaMothe to do most windows-specific and DirectX stuff. Sprites are generated using a BBC Basic program. Some sounds are synthesized using C functions. Some of the behaviour of the game is 'emergent' and not actually programmed. Such as the way some things stick the black holes together, but speed up other things like the spheres. And the way the black holes dance and swirl. Trippy :-) The game can draw up to 96,000 individually moving pixels for explosions and effects. The amount varies to try and keep the game speed at 50 frames per second. Cheat mode ---------- Oh yes!, this is what you all want isn't it. It's on the 'system' screen, somewhere..... Disclaimer ---------- You use these programs entirely at your own risk. If something bad happens whilst you are using them, such as damage to other data or software, or damage to hardware, or anything else bad at all, I cannot be held responsible. You are freely chosing to run the software, I'm not making you run it. or more formally: This software is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the product is with you. Should the product prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction. In no event will Iain McLeod, or any other party who may have distributed the product as permitted, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the product (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the product to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages. Distribution ------------ I wrote this game :-) This version is copyright by Iain McLeod, 1999. It is being distributed as Shareware. You may make copies of, and redistribute, the original unmodified zip file ONLY. You MAY NOT 'rar' it, or otherwise convert the zip file into other formats. You may not re-pack the zip file into other formats. It's only 500k long (approx) anyway, so there's no need to alter the format it's stored in. You may not alter or otherwise meddle with the zip file or any of the files contained within in any way whatsoever. If you redistribute this game in large numbers, such as by web site, ftp, bbs, CD, or any other means of mass distribution, tell me please. This allows me to keep track of where the game is, and who to send updates to. You may not distribute registration keys in any way whatsoever. Registering ----------- I wrote this game to entertain, and to earn money. I need to charge something. My overheads and distribution costs are very low compared to conventional means, so I don't need to charge much. So this game will work as a playable demo when you first install it. You will be able to play single player games up to level 20. If you like it (and can get past level 20), you can 'register' it. This allows multiple players, game variations, and playing past level 10. My highscore is 2382000 on level 50+, so it does play for ages if you're good. To register the game you need to buy a registration key. When this is entered into the game from the register menu, the game is the registered on that particular machine and the register menu disappears. You may use each registration key as a single user licence and a non-commercial use site licence, at the same time. This means: The key purchaser may register the game on any machine they use, such as all those at home and their machine(s) at work. The key purchaser may also register the game on all the machines on one non-commercial-use site that they are associated with, such as at work. This is what would probably happen anyway :-) No point in having lots of different methods of purchasing registration. What isn't allowed is for all the other people at the site to use your key to register the game at their homes, even if they have a registered copy on their machine at work. That would be naughty. A non-commercial-use site is one where the game is contributing no value to customers of the site, i.e. it's just being played at lunchtime by employees. A Commercial-use site would be something such as a hotel, where the game is available for use by guests on the hotels machines. Not a vary good description, but you probably get the idea. For commercial site use, ask me for a quote. It's only fair for me to charge a reasonable bit more, and you're probably richer than me anyway :) Unregistering ------------- Deleting the folder 'chaos' (or whatever you called it) removes all the game files. There are no other files scattered about your hard disk. The game will actually stay registered. If you put the 'chaos' directory back (anywhere on the machine) it will be registered. To actually un-register the game on a particular machine, you need to delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/chaotica/spheres from the registry If you do something drastic to your system, such as upgrade/reinstall windows, you may have to re-enter your registration key. This is because of a security loophole I found. To get a registration key ------------------------- There are two payment methods available: Payment by Credit Card / Cheques in US dollars. Price 15 US dollars. -------------------------------------------------------------------- You may order online via the web, or by fax, using your credit card. Or by cheque via snail mail, for cheques in US dollars only. All these ordering methods start out via the web, although you don't have to give your credit card info over the web if you use fax. Goto my web page: http://www.chaotica.u-net.com/register This service goes through DigiBuy, and replaces my previous seller PsL. Your registration code will be emailed back to you. Email ordering is no longer available, sorry. The price for credit card orders is Fifteen US dollars. (dollars because DigiBuy is US based). Non-US customers can pay by credit card, but the price depends on the exchange rate so I can't tell you the what it is in your currency. Payment by Cash (any currency) / Cheque in UK pounds. Price 10 UK pounds. -------------------------------------------------------------- You may order your registration code from me by mail using cash, (or cheque in UK). From UK only - Send me a cheque, postal order, or anything else payable into a normal UK bank account, for Ten Pounds, payable to Iain McLeod. You may also send tenners. From Anywhere - Send me either ten pounds in UK currency, or the approximate equivalent of ten UK pounds in your currency, converted at current exchange rates. Send only NOTES, and ignore the left over bit from the conversion that won't fit in notes because it's too small. Wrap the notes in paper so they can't be seen through the envelope. Don't send coins, they escape from envelopes. Only send a few notes please, else the contents of the envelope might be obvious. I will send you a key, by post or email. (your choice) If you need a postal reply, a self addressed envelope would be appreciated. If your key fails to arrive by post, tell me and I will re-post it. If you want your key by email, I will keep sending it every other day until you confirm you received it. My postal address is at the bottom of the file. Keep a backup ! --------------- Backing up the zip file is up to you, it can always be downloaded again if you loose it. Backing up the registry key you have paid for is very sensible. Keep the e-mail with the key, and also write the key down ON PAPER !. Paper cannot be accidentally formatted, virused, or otherwise electronically zapped. If you do completely lose the key, I will re-supply it, but I will need the info you supplied when you bought the key, but not your credit card number, I don't get to see that. DON'T ask PSL, who handle the on-line ordering, ask me, iain@chaotica.u-net.com. Future Versions --------------- There may be improved versions of this game available in the future. Check the web site. Especially if I find any more embarassing bugs. Other Platforms --------------- Amiga, Mac, Linux, Console versions. Who wants to port this game then. Should be easy, it's written in C. Volunteers please :-) Piracy and Hacking ------------------ If you hack into my game to convert it into the full version, and then give the cracked game away, or give away your registration key, or otherwise warez this game, then people won't pay me to register. If I get no income, I will have to go and work for a suit. That would be crap. Please don't do it. Should you be considering using a naughty illegal cracked copy, or a registration key you downloaded from some serialz site, then don't be suprised if the game behaves oddly. Also do not be suprised if I find out. The possibilities of piracy detection using the internet are quite interesting. Unless you are a good programmer yourself, be unsure. See 'email' below. Beware of registration key generation programs you may find on some dodgy web sites, I might actually have written some of these myself. So instead of just getting to play my game without paying me, what you actually get is a free registration key that dosen't quite work properly, whilst I get sent an email containing incriminating evidence, such as your name & address, email address, IP & service provider, and your Unique Processor Id. (all pentiums have a different electronic serial number inside) That would be amusing, wouldn't it. If you give away your registration key to somebody, you cannot control who else it also gets given away to or how far it spreads. And I can match registration keys to users names & addresses. Addresses --------- Web: http://www.chaotica.u-net.com Email: iain@chaotica.u-net.com ICQ: 32952155 Postal: (for sending cheques to) Iain McLeod 50 Teal Grove Oakwood Warrington Cheshire WA3 6PA United Kingdom Don't use this postal address after September 1999. Check my website for current address. ⌐ 1992/1999 Iain Mcleod