PC Gamer 2000 January

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ PC Gamer 2000 January / CD-Gamer_2000-01_04_cd.bin / games / tyrian2k.exe / data1.cab / Program_Executable_Files / Shipedit.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1999-10-07 | 17.4 KB | 452 lines

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ SHIPEDIT release version SHIPEDIT ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Problems? │ └─────────────────────────┘ While we have encountered few problems with this program, we suggest you keep in mind that it is possible the program would prevent Tyrian from running correctly. Actually, it is possible if you select weapons which are not normally available in the full game. You are, after all, able to do things which are impossible to do with the game normally. This is a cheat program. If you are having problems running Tyrian and you think Shipedit is the cause, you should be able to solve it by deleting NEWSH$ from the Tyrian directory. ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Introduction │ └─────────────────────────┘ ShipEdit is a fairly straightforward program [aside from the graphical editor] and can be used to add your own customized ships to the game. It is specially designed so it is difficult to cheat, but you can make sure you use any weapon you want while playing the game. ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Warnings │ <-- READ This FIRST └─────────────────────────┘ Different Tyrian Versions: ShipEdit will automatically detect which version of Tyrian you are using. I would suggest using the latest version, but this program does have automatic backward compatibility when compiling. It will show in the editor screen what version you are using. [0-1 is version 1.0 or 1.1 - ShipEdit cannot discern between them. 2 is version 1.2 or higher.] USER.SHP This is the user data file. This file contains the current editor data used by ShipEdit, including all the ship graphics you have drawn, the ship weapon data, etc. USER2.SHP & USER3.SHP Two additional data files included with ShipEdit. Each contains 8 different sets of graphics from Tyrian that can be used as ships. To use one of these files, simply rename it to be USER.SHP. NEWSH$.SHP This is the compiled data file which is used by Tyrian. ShipEdit automatically saves your data and compiles it when you exit the program. This file is version-specific! Giving Custom Ships to Other People: There are two ways to give data you have edited to other people. (1) Give them your editor data - USER.SHP. If they have ShipEdit, they can edit this file and compile it for use with their version of Tyrian. (To compile it, just run ShipEdit and then exit the program.) Note that if they enter the ship data editor, ShipEdit will change the data presented if they do not have access to those weapons. (See Below under the section SHIP DATA for more information.) (2) Give them your compiled data file NEWSH$.SHP. This is version-specific but they do not need ShipEdit to use it. I would suggest limiting uploads of this file to those compiled under version 1.2 to avoid future problems - or at least to clearly mark what version you intend this for. Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are interchangeable but 1.2 uses a different format. ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Using a NEWSH$.SHP file │ └─────────────────────────┘ Tyrian will automatically find a NEWSH$.SHP file, check for how much memory it requires, and load it into your game. To activate one of the ten available ships while playing: Player 1: Hold down TAB and press a number from 1 through 0 [0=Ship #10] Player 2: Hold down CAPS and press a number from 1 through 0 NEWSH$.SHP contains the graphics for your custom ships. If you change the graphics in this file, your saved games will use the new graphics. Just make sure you don't delete this file after you've started using them. For example, if I pressed TAB+5, I would activate my custom ship #5. This might be using graphic set #3, which is a snowball. If I changed the ship graphic to a bubble in the editor and then ran Tyrian again, this ship would no longer be a snowball, but would use the bubble graphics. ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Ship Data │ └─────────────────────────┘ There are 10 fields for each ship. There are 10 sets of ship data you can use at one time. [NOTE: The Street-Fighter-Like commands (or "twiddles", as one person so oddly put it) will not work for custom ships that you design. It's the price you pay, though I may alter it someday if I find an easy workaround.] SHIP #: This is the ship slot you are currently editing. At the bottom of the screen you are shown how to activate this ship while playing the game. Ship Graphic: This is the graphic your ship will use. You may select from just about any of the graphics available in the game, and can choose from any of the eight custom sets of graphics. Choose the items this ship configuration will use: Front Weapon: [*] Rear Weapon: [*] Special Weapon: [*] Left Sidekick: [*] Right Sidekick: [*] [**] Power: [***] Armor: [***] Shield: [***] [*] - The game will keep track of every weapon you have found. Aside from a basic available selection, you can only choose those weapons that you have found. [**] - There are cetain sidekicks available in Version 1.2 which should only be used as RIGHT sidekicks. They probably won't crash the game, but if selected as a left sidekick will not look very nice. These are labeled in the editor as [RIGHT ONLY]. [***]- The more you play the game, the better the class of items you can select. Also, this will improve faster if you get good destruction percentage scores. Good luck! ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Graphical Editor │ └─────────────────────────┘ As you can see by the example files, User1 and User2, there are 8 banks of ships which are labeled within the editor. There are five turning frames for each ship, from left to right: #1 - Hard left turn #2 - Beginning left turn #3 - Center #4 - Beginning right turn #5 - Hard right turn You CAN use the available graphical tools, but they are keyboard-based and are cumbersome to use except for slight touch-ups or applying certain specific alterations. The commands are shown onscreen in the help boxes if you need to use them. I would suggest using an independent program to create your own PCX screens and to load in ships from there. Keep in mind that you can use SHIPEDIT.PCX to get the palette you need to use, or you can simply capture the editor screen. To capture a shape from a PCX screen, move to the ship frame you want to edit and press 'E'. This will activate the editor for this shape. Now, press 'E' again to bring up a list of PCX files in the current directory. Select the PCX file to capture from by pressing the first letter of the image name and/or using the arrow keys. Then, press ENTER. [ESC will exit this screen.] Now, the image will be displayed onscreen and a flashing rectangle will also appear. Use your mouse to position the rectangle around the shape you want to capture and press button 1. [ESC will also exit this screen.] To capture another frame from the same file, all you need to do is move to the next frame you want to capture and press 'L'. Keep in mind that Color #0 is transparent! We don't want to have you flying around in a black rectangle, now, do we? ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Music │ └─────────────────────────┘ Yes, ShipEdit will load the Tyrian music data and attempt to play it. It may or may not work with MIDI very well, but does use the same driver as Tyrian, so there should be no problems. There is another Jukebox in this version, an earlier one we didn't release, which is quite insane and should definitely confound you. The Jukebox manual follows: ╒═════════════════════════╕ ┌┐ │ Basic-User's Commands ├┬─┘└┐ └─────────────────────────┴┴───┘ The left and right arrow keys change the song selection on the jukebox front. V - Toggles between Tempo and Volume control. Tempo is blue. Volume is yellow. The up and down arrow keys, in addition to the PGDN and PGUP keys, control the tempo bars on the bottom left and right of the screen. The higher it gets, the faster the song plays. F - Fades the tempo down to slow. L - If you have individual DAT files you want to play, this will load them from the disk directly. R - Starts the song over from the beginning again. T - Resets the tempo to normal. ESC or Q - Quit the Jukebox ╒═════════════════════════╕ ┌┐ │ Disclaimer ├─┬─┘└┐ └─────────────────────────┴─┴───┘ WARNING: Users with heart trouble, epilepsy, regular seizures, and no artistic taste should use caution when viewing these weird "screen-saver-like" effects. We are not responsible for the effects of our work. :-) ╒═════════════════════════╕ ┌┐ │ Advanced POWER JUKEBOX! ├┬─┬─┘└┐ └─────────────────────────┴┴─┴───┘ COMMAND │ FUNCTION ─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── B Blanks the screen to color 0 (often referred to as black) C Clears the palette to black D Draws the palette in two horizontal bars at the top-left of the screen I Loads a PCX image from disk M Turns off all filters, turns the song name and bars off, and sets the program to Ultra-Speed P Creates a dual-color palette This palette will fade all 256 colors from one color to another, making it look ugly most of the time. Keep pressing P until you find two colors you like. S Toggles the song name and tempo bars on and off (You won't notice you have turned them off because they'll still be on the screen from the last time they were drawn there!) U Reverts to the main palette after you're tired of the palette you generated using P Z Toggle Ultra-Speed (This deactivates the delay and the stars) F1 Randomizes the RED values in the palette F2 Randomizes the GREEN values in the palette F3 Randomizes the BLUE values in the palette (Generally, you'll use these commands after pressing C) [ and ] Certain commands below use a variable in the program to modify their effect. The left bracket decreases this effect and the right bracket increases it. { and } For a faster way to modify the variable above, use these instead ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1-4 Different fade effects 1- Vertical+Horizontal fade 2- Horizontal fade 3- Vertical fade 4- Diagonal fade 5 Ugly fuzzy-plasm grower Causes a field of fuzz to grow out of whatever shapes are on the screen Looks like tree bark under a microscope changing at an impossible speed 6 Fuzz 7 Random Fuzz 8 Generic No-frills fuzz (Creates absolutely no interesting patterns, guaranteed!) 9 Wild slow fade towards the bottom-right with a neat lava effect growing out of the background after a while. This works best with a palette generated by P. 0 Weird circle thing. A large circle creates more and more ripples of itself while shrinking. If it shrinks enough, you get to see duplicates of the circle coming onto the screen. Of course, it doesn't work quite the way it originally did, but hey, it's neat. SHIFT-0 Diamond generator Creates odd cross-hatching diamond patterns. Not as good as my Quiltmaster, but oh well. SHIFT-9 Cross-hatching color cycler This works best with P. It causes a box in the center of the screen to cycle along a palette very slowly while introducing a growing amount of noise. It's weird seeing the image in the box fading away and then coming back again in another color. It reminds me of a stained-glass window. SHIFT-8 Water rippler P produces a nice palette to look at this with. The image has a water (or lava) effect placed in the background while any shapes on the screen waver in a wild pattern much like a real pool of water changes the image reflecting in it when you cause the water to run in a river over little rocks. SHIFT-7 Medium water waves SHIFT-6 Water waves in almost symmetry SHIFT-5 Large water waves SHIFT-4 This one causes shapes on the screen to expand. Once the shape expands enough, water waves appear inside it while the shape still grows. (The water wave effects work best with P or another nice palette with few color transitions) SHIFT-3 Super 9. This one fades the screen constantly in a diagonal pattern, and like 9, little dots appear in sections that have faded completely. However, the dots cause circular ripples to appear overlapping each other. With a little user fiddling, the effect is fantastic. SHIFT-2 This one causes a normal fade to work on the screen. Like 9 and Shift-3, though, little dots can appear on the screen as well. But, you can control the dots using the left and right brackets ( [ and ] ). The left bracket decreases the rate of dot appearance while the right bracket increases the rate. The jukebox starts out with the bracket value at 0, meaning there are NO dots that appear. SUPER-PARALLAXING EFFECTS: - Moderately fast parallax to the right _ Moderately fast parallax to the left = Slightly faster parallax to the right + Slightly faster parallax to the left , Fast, symmetric parallax to the left . Fast, symmetric parallax to the right < Fast, symmetric parallax to the left *with distortion* > Fast, symmetric parallax to the right *with distortion* ; Very Fast, symmetric parallax to the left ' Very Fast, symmetric parallax to the right The Super-Parallaxing effects all function like SHIFT-2 except for [<] and [>] which function like SHIFT-3. The [-] and [_] commands cannot be combined with other commands, while all the other parallax commands can. SHIFT-1 This function uses the brackets the same way as SHIFT-2. However, it parallaxes both left and right at the same time with the center standing still! This is centered perfectly on the center of the ECLIPSE logo in ECLIPSE2.PCX. F5 Auto-Detailer. This effect creates weird details in pictures and generally works best on a pre-made image with a well-gradiated palette. F6-F8 More Auto-Detailer modes! SHIFT-F5 Even MORE Auto-Detailer modes! through (SHIFT-F8 is my favorite) SHIFT-F8 BACKSPACE Screen-Streaker Causes any image on the screen to fade (or slide) downwards. This often leaves large amounts of residue at the top. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ╒═════════════════════════╕ ┌┐ │ Suggested User Tests ├┬─┬─┘└┐ └─────────────────────────┴┴─┴───┘ The Blurry Amoeboid: [P] Keep pressing P until you find a nice palette with a lot of contrast. [9] This will start the Wild Neon Lava Fade [6] This will create a semi-interesting pattern [5] This completes the Amoeboid pattern ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The Diagonal Pattern-Maker: [P] Keep pressing P until you find a nice palette with a lot of contrast [0] Start the Circle thing [5] This completes the Diagonal Pattern-Maker ?[7or9] Adding 7 or 9 causes the Pattern-Maker to behave differently Note: By adding SHIFT-5, SHIFT-6, and/or SHIFT-7 to the Pattern-Maker you turn it into a really interesting effect. You have to see it to understand it. ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ Disclaimer │ └─────────────────────────┘ ShipEdit is written by the same person who wrote Tyrian [and this manual], but it is not supported by XSIV Games and is regarded as an independent creation. It is not specifically supported in any way by anyone, though nice letters to me on the Internet might get you an answer. :) I forsee no problems as long as you keep in mind the version limitations. For instance, additional items available in version 1.2 will probably crash someone's copy of version 1.1, so try to indicate what version you intend any uploads to be used under! As always, with something as complex as this, there are probably bugs and other problems. I've never seen one, but who knows? -Zinglon- -Master of All- ...and... -Jason Emery- - The Author-