You know how it happens: A few wrong turns, unfamiliar city, you take the wrong ramp onto the highway...
...and end up going against the rest of the traffic.
Well here you are, with your only hope of escaping being your exceptional sideways dodging skills. Since you are driving a fuel-guzzling V12 convertible, you'll have to top up at the conveniently located filling stations along the side of the road. And since you're always ready to help your fellow man, you'll jump at the chance to take wayward hitch hikers down the road a bit to the nearest bus stop, won't you?
But be careful, since you're also in quite a hurry, you'll be accelerating constantly until you reach your vehicle's considerable top speed.
The Game
One Way is a game in which you try to dodge oncoming traffic for as long as possible to gain points. You must keep your fuel supply topped up, or you will stop and make an easy target for the oncoming cars. You can gain bonus points by ferrying hitch hikers down the road to bus stops. You can gain extra cars by earning enough points.
System Requirements
To play One Way you need the following:
A Mac capable of 256 colours running System 7 or later
Sound Manager 3.0 or later, version 3.3 or later recommended
That's all!
Menus
The Apple menu contains only one item specific to One Way, the About One Way… command. This brings up a dialog box with information about the program.
The File menu contains two items: New Game and Quit. New Game will start a new game of One Way, and if a game is already in progress, you will be asked to confirm that you wish to end the current game. If a high score has been achieved in the current game, you will be asked to enter your name and then you will be shown the high score list, before the new game starts. The New Game command has the keyboard shortcut command-N.
The Quit command will quit the One Way application. The same things will happen as when you select New Game if a game is in progress, and also if you have achieved a high score in the current game, before quitting.
The Game menu contains game-related commands. Pause, which has the keyboard shortcut command-P, will pause the current game. If no game is in progress, Pause will be greyed out. If a game in progress has been paused, Pause will have a check mark next to it. Selecting Pause when it is checked will unpause the game in progress, and Pause will become unchecked.
The Sound command controls whether sound effects will be played by One Way. If Sound is checked, sound effects will be played. Selecting it will cause it to become unchecked, and sound effects will not be played. Selecting Sound when it is unchecked will cause it to become checked, and sound effects will start being played again during gameplay.
The Set Keys... command, which has the keyboard shortcut command-K, brings up the Set Keys dialog box. See "The Controls" below for a description of this dialog box.
The High Scores... menu item, shortcut command-H, will display a box showing the ten highest scores ever attained in One Way on the computer you are playing it on. To dismiss the High Scores list, click OK. The "Clear" button will ask for confirmation when pressed. If you click OK in the confirmation dialog box, the High Scores list will be reset to ten scores of 100 by "Joshi". If you click Cancel, the High Scores list will remain untouched.
The Controls
You can set the controls to almost any keys you want with the Set Keys... menu command in the Game menu. This command brings up the Set Keys dialog box. Here you can set the game controls to your preference of keys. The two text boxes show the keys which must be pressed to move the car left or right. By default they are '4' to move left and '6' to move right. This configuration should be comfortable for most right-handed people with an extended keyboard which has a numeric keypad. When you press a key in this dialog box, the highlighted box will change to the key you press. For convenience, the highlighting changes from one box to the other after a key is pressed.
The Gameplay
Your view is centered on your car, which is red and has the number plate "RAX". You will move forward (or maybe the other cars move towards you…) and must dodge left and right to avoid oncoming cars. As you move fuel will be used up. The amount of fuel you have in your car's tank is shown by the number of fuel bowsers in the area at the bottom of One Way's window. Seven bowsers means you have a full tank, none means you are running on fumes. When you run out of fuel, you will be unable to move and will in all probability be hit by a car in no time. You can gain extra fuel by moving into the right lane directly next to a fuel bowser. Each bowser you move next to will increase your fuel display by two bowser icons unless there is not enough room in your tank, in which case your tank will be topped up.
Your score is shown in the bottom right corner of the window. You gain points by passing cars and delivering hitch hikers to bus stops. Getting past a car is worth 3 points, and safely delivering a hitch hiker is worth 25 points. To pick up a hitch hiker, simply move into the lane next to him. To drop him off, move directly next to a bus stop. In the bottom left corner of the window is your cars remaining display. It shows a number of car icons corresponding to how many cars you have left. You initially gain an extra car at 150 points, after which the number of points needed to gain an extra car doubles each time you gain one. If your number of extra cars exceeds four, three car icons will be shown with the total number of extra cars shown to the right of them. You can have a maximum of nine extra cars.
When you collide with another car, you lose your current car. When you have no extra cars left, the game is over. When the game ends, if you have attained one of the ten highest scores ever on the computer you're playing on, a dialog will be presented asking you to enter your name. When you click OK, the High Scores list will be displayed with your new entry. The game will also end when you quit or start a new game.
Secret Move!
Did you know that you can move diagonally between cars? Well almost… Here how: If you are next to a car, and there is a car in front of you, but there is an empty space behind the car you are next to; then you can get to that empty space. If you move towards the car next to you within a tenth of a second of when all the other cars move, you will make it to the space, having in effect gone diagonally between those two cars. Cool huh?
So What's a Game Like This Worth?
One Way is PostcardWare. That means that if you play it often, you are obliged to send me (the Author) a postcard (eMail doesn't count). If you send your postcard, you will get as much free eMail support as I can manage, and you will also receive eMail notification of any new versions of One Way which come out. (Are you getting the feeling you should include an eMail address on the postcard?)
Send postcards to:
Joshua Root
P.O. Box 1151
Dubbo
NSW 2830
Australia
Questions?
Comments?
Suggestions?
Bug Reports (gasp!)?
Send them to <joshi@lisp.com.au> by eMail or to the above address by Snail-Mail. If you use Snail-Mail and don't include an eMail address, I cannot guarantee a reply.
One Way is a JJJ Software product. Visit the JJJ Software Web Site at:
<http://www.lisp.com.au/~joshi/> and check out our other products.
