Readme:Assault Wing v1.2
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/-ú-ú-ú-[Assault Wing 1.2]-ú-ú-ú-\ The Ultimate Freeware Shoot Your Friends Up Cave Flight Game After one year of bugfixing A great game for many players Supports mouse, joystick, GUS SB, silence. Requires VESA 2.0, fast video card and a 486 too. Pentium recommended. Lots of Weapons, Bonuses & Stuff contains subdirs; unzip with -d \-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-ú-/
README
ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÜÜÜ ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ ÜÜ ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ ÛÛß ² ßÛÛ Ûß ±°ßÛ Ûß °²ßÛ ÛÛß °²ßÛÛ Ûß ÜÛ Û Ûß ßÛß Þ Ü ° Ü Ü °ú Þ Ü ° Þ Ü ú° ÜÜ ÜÜ ú Ü Ü ² Ü ÛÛÜÛÜÜÜÜÛ ßÛÜÜÜÜ ßÛÜÜÜÜ ÛÛÜÜÜÜÜÜÛ Û ÞÛ Û ± ÛÝ ÛÝ ú ßÛ Ý ° ßÛ Ý° ßÛ ÛÝ °ß ßÛ ÛÜ ÜÛ ÛÜ ú ° Û Û ú ÞÛ ÛÜÜÜÜÛß ÛÜÜÜÜÛß Û ú ÞÛ ßÛÛÛÛÛÛß ßÛÛÛÛÛß ÛÛÜ ² ² ú ß² ²±ß ú ± ß² ú Û ° ± ú ° ± Û ú ° ² ú ° Ûß ° ÜÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÜÛßßßßßÜ ± ú ß ú ß ß ßßß ß ß ° ÛÝ ÞÛ Û Û ÛÛ Û ÛÝ ÜÜÜÛÝ ú ÛÛÜÛßÛÜÛÛ ÛÝ ÛÝ ÛÛÜÛ ÛÛ ° ÞÛÛ ÛÛß ßÛÛ ÛÛÜ ÛÛ ßÛÛ ÛÛÜÜÜÛß Û ° ²ú ú ° ² ú ° ú ° ú ú Assault Wing 1.2 1st Nov 1998 INDEX ----- 1.0 - Story 2.0 - Requirements * 2.1 - Recommended * 2.2 - Supported 3.0 - Questions, Problems & Smart Answers 4.0 - Menus * 4.1 - Keys in Menus * 4.2 - Specific about Menus * 4.2.1 - Connect Menu * 4.2.2 - Factory Menu * 4.2.3 - Arena Menu * 4.2.4 - Options Menu * 4.2.5 - Help Menu 5.0 - The Game Itself * 5.1 - Keys in the Game * 5.2 - General about the Game * 5.3 - Weapons * 5.4 - Ships * 5.5 - Bonuses * 5.6 - Hints 6.0 - External Utilities * 6.1 - Assault Wing Value Editor * 6.2 - Level Creator * 6.3 - Readme 7.0 - Miscellaneous * 7.1 - Lead Artist's Comment * 7.2 - Ville's Ideas * 7.3 - Pekka about Sounds * 7.4 - Speed Considerations * 7.5 - A Few Words about Assault Wing * 7.6 - The Rules of Assault Wing 8.0 - Terms of Distribution 9.0 - Credits 1.0 - Story: ------------ It's 202020 AD and the world has gone through at least ten nuclear holocausts. The solution to worldwide pollution has been found several times, but in a few centuries people forgot all the talk about it and began polluting again. Many cool things have been invented and at least as many have been dumped. In the year 202020 the latest fashion in the computer scene is to play _old_ games. So, two to four friends have gathered for an intensive game of Assault Wing, the hit game of the late second millenium. You are these guys and gals. Your mission is to have fun and SHOOT THEM UP! 2.0 - Requirements: ------------------- - 486DX 50MHz - SVGA - roundly 8MB RAM - VBE 2.0 compatible video card or driver - two enthusiastic players 2.1 - Recommended: ------------------ - Pentium 75MHz - SVGA 17" - very fast video card with VRAM or WRAM - four enthusiastic players and one or two joysticks or a mouse - Sound Blaster, Gravis Ultrasound or compatible for sound effects 2.2 - Supported: ---------------- - sound card..: Sound Blaster 2.0 Sound Blaster 16 Gravis Ultrasound - mouse.......: Microsoft Mouse Systems Logitech PS/2 - joystick....: all standard ones - display.....: any display capable of 640x480 with 256 colors - display card: all cards supporting VBE 2.0 standard 3.0 - Questions, Problems & Smart Answers: ------------------------------------------ Q:The game says I don't have enough memory. A:Buy more, it's cheap nowadays. You could also try removing SMARTDrive. Q:The game says no video modes or VBE2 support was found. A:You must have a VBE 2.0 compatible video card or driver. If you don't have one try Scitech's Display Doctor (also known as UniVBE). You can find the latest version from the Internet by going straight to the WWW-site at http://www.scitechsoft.com/. One of the versions that work with Assault Wing can be found on names SDD53A-D.ZIP for DOS only install and SDD53A.ZIP for DOS and Win95 install. You must also have linear frame buffer enabled which Display Doctor does by default. Q:Why do all the other shoot-your-friend-ups look jerky after I've played Assault Wing? A:Assault Wing runs by default at 50 frames per second (fps) compared to the 20-40 fps the other games have. Q:Why does the game slow down? A:You have set too large a screen mode and window size. Decrease them in the Options menu or add the following line to AWING.INI under the title [Options] FrameSkip=yes Q:Why don't all graphic modes work on my computer? A:It's probably up to your monitor or display card. All modes just do not work on all monitors or display cards. Q:The game says 'Font not found'. A:You probably forgot to unzip the package with -d option. Try this: PKUNZIP.EXE -d AWING12.ZIP C:\GAMES\AWING 4.0 - Menus: ------------ 4.1 - Keys in Menus: -------------------- In most (all?) menus you can move with vertical cursor keys. You can also use mouse or joystick if they are connected. Switches can be switched with enter or horizontal cursor keys. To go one menulevel back, press ESC. But there are some exceptions to these general keys. Screen shots can be taken almost anytime by pressing F9. The pictures are saved as AWCAP###.PCX. Keys in Factory menu: + and - : change the number of players extra key : show info on an item other game keys : move around and select weaponry and ship F1,F2,F3,F4 : select/create pilots Keys in Arena menu: enter : add an arena to the playlist delete : remove an arena from the playlist ctrl-arrow left : empty the playlist ctrl-arrow right : add all arenas to the playlist F1 : random arenas F2 : allow/decline randomizer to select an arena many times F3 : lock/unlock selected arenas + and - : change the number of arenas to be randomized 4.2 - Specific about Menus: --------------------------- 4.2.1 - Connect Menu: --------------------- In Connect menu you can establish a modem connection between two computers and play Assault Wing together. However, this feature is not finished and is more like an unpleasant monsterbug than a fun-filled experience. Nevertheless, here is some advice on the Connect menu. To play Assault Wing by modem you must do the following things: 1. Choose a name for all the players. This is done in the Factory menu by pressing F1-F4 depending on the number of the player whose name is to be changed. The rest of the numbered steps are to be done in the Connect menu. 2. Choose the COM port your modem is connected to. 3. Choose a connection rate (in bits per second). Rationally speaking, the bigger the better. I actually don't know why there are two choices here :). 4. Choose whether your computer or the remote computer is the host computer. You may want to make the decision before you reach this step by talking (on the phone, in the street, whatever). Remember that one computer must be the host and the other must not be the host. 5. Press Init Modem. This will make Assault Wing direct modem commands to the COM port you chose earlier. 6. Press Command Modem. Now you can write commands to your modem. Use your skills to dial your friend or to answer an incoming call. Once you have established a connection (no data packing preferred) press ESC so that you can move the cursor again. 7. Press Connect. Follow the instructions you see on the screen and wait for a few seconds for some data to be transferred. Then press a key to exit the Connect menu. Before actually playing the game you should choose the same arenas to be played. Also remember to set EXACTLY the same settings in the Options menu. All this fuzz would not be necessary if we had had more time to finish this (yes, it is unfinished. please note that). After you have made everything right you are allowed to actually play the game. You are lucky if you are able to play four arenas without the game going out of synchronization. When this happens, you will not be informed. You will probably just wonder why the guys at the other computer are flying like blind fish and shooting at everything else but your ship. Also keep in mind that an arena may be safely finished only by waiting the play time to elapse or by genociding all enemies and landing. If you press ESC and F10, the other computer will most likely crash :). Good luck! 4.2.2 - Factory Menu: --------------------- In Factory menu players are able to move their selectors simultaneously with thrust and rotation keys and select their main and special weapons and ship by pressing fire. Each player's selections are shown in the upper part of the screen. A short info on a weapon or a ship can be shown by pressing the extra key. To change the amount of players press +/- in this menu. You can select your own player information by pressing F1-F4 (players 1-4) and selecting your name from the roster with arrow keys. If your name cannot be found, you can create it by typing it in the roster window. Every player's controls, ship, weapons and battle statistics are saved in the file AWING.INI. You can use a text editor to have a look at this data :). 4.2.3 - Arena Menu: ------------------- Arena menu is divided into three parts. In the topmost part you see all the selectable arenas in a scrollable list. In the middle part there are all the arenas you have selected and in the last part is described the arena your cursor in the first list points to. You can select arenas with space/enter and remove them with delete. Pressing ctrl-left clears the list while ctrl-right adds all arenas to the list. You are not able to select more than 11 arenas at a time. + and - change the number of arenas to randomize, which is done with F1. Arenas can be randomized so that duplicate arenas are not allowed. Press F2 to switch that feature on and off. If you have selected arenas that you would like to play over and over again press F3 to lock the arenas. Now they will stay in the arena list instead of being removed after a game session. 4.2.4 - Options Menu: --------------------- In Options menu you can toggle switches with enter and change numeric values by using left and right arrow keys. You can also choose whether a match ends when playtime is up or when all but one player run out of lives. Just press enter on lives/playtime to do this. In the submenu called Setup you can redefine each player's keys and calibrate your joystick and do other setup things. 4.2.5 - Help Menu: ------------------ This menu provides you with some help. You can scroll the text with up and down arrows (sorry, but we didn't have time to remove the flickering). 5.0 - The Game Itself: ---------------------- This section tells about the thing behind the Play Game button in the main menu. 5.1 - Keys in the Game: ----------------------- Each player's game key defaults are: Player1 Player2 Player3 Player4 Thrust: W Num Up I Joystick1 Up Left: A Num Left J Joystick1 Left Right: D Num Right L Joystick1 Right Fire: Left Shift Right Ctrl B Joystick1 Button1 Special: S Num Down K Joystick1 Button2 Extra: Z Num Ins M Joystick1 Down These defaults can be changed in Options -> Setup. Mouse can also be used in controlling a ship (actually it may be better than analog joystick). During the game session each player controls his ship with his own thrust, left and right keys. Weapons can be used by pressing the fire or special key. The extra key has several functions. First, when you get knocked out (you can't move or shoot), suicide can be committed by pressing your extra key. Also weapons can be changed. After landing on a docking place, press extra to reveal a simple menu where you are able to move the little yellow outline box with your ship control keys. When you press fire, an operation correspondent to the position of your little yellow outline box is performed. You will understand when you try it out. Pressing the extra key again (or getting violently pushed away from the docking place) you are instantly equipped with the main and secondary weapon you have chosen. Please remember that you will not be able to change a degraded weapon. Other keys in the game: pause : pause game ESC : quit game, confirmed by pressing F10 F9 : screen capture 5.2 - General about the Game: ----------------------------- The object of the game is, as you already may know, that every player tries to shoot his friends up. The easiest way to achieve this goal is to use the weapons your ship is equipped with. Nevertheless, a true guru is able to kill without shooting. Weapons are described in section 5.3. An arena is the place all the ships fly in. There are different kinds of walls. Most walls can be destroyed by shooting at them. The most common type is harmful to crash into. Colliding into soft wall, rubber wall or icy wall will not cause your ship any damage. Rubber wall just bounces your ship to the opposite direction. Icy wall is slippery and it can be slid on. Flammable wall can be set afire with a flamethrower, for example. Docking places are important platforms. After landing on it you can repair your ship and change weapons (extra key). You should also land on it when you are the last player alive. Every time you kill somebody (excluding yourself) you get a frag. When you crash on a wall or get killed by your own bullets, you lose one frag. The player with most frags in the end of a game session consisting of one or more arenas is the winner. At least we planned it that way. That doesn't mean you can't declare the player with least frags a winner... (weird :) There are bonuses teleporting anywhere (if you haven't switched them off) that mostly aid you in achieving your goal, yet you should keep in mind that there is a 20 per cent possibility that something bad will happen when you get a bonus. Bonuses are described in section 5.5. 5.3 - Weapons: -------------- Normal Gun This one acts like a slingshot; firing velocity isn't too high, which can also be your advantage. Firing slow shots over a mountain is something you can't do with a pulse laser! Upgrades: Duogun -> Multishot -> Supershot Trifire You can't actually miss anything with this weapon; bullets fly all over the place. Trifire does damage nicely when you hit your enemy with all the three bullets! There is also no need to bash your hand on the fire button, fire rate is low. Upgrade: Triscat Spreadfire This is good for people with low accuracy and low damage inflict rates and low.. Well, other people may use it too. :) Real fun starts when you get the weapon upgrade. (How does a machine shotgun sound to you ?-) Upgrades: Spreadfire Quadlet -> Hail Storm Shotgun Fires eight bullets per shot. Shotgun has a very long reload time compared to other main weapons, but it is very powerful in hands of an experienced sniper (flying an Obliterator (with a weapon power boost)). Upgrade: Shotgun Prima Bounce Cannon Bouncy bounce... Elastic balls of armor piercing substance are quite nice when left bouncing on a docking place. Besides of just damaging the victim these balls push him hard! Just be extra careful when shooting near a wall ;-) Upgrade: Bouncegun Dart Blaster Dart blaster fires titanium darts. They can even be shot through a thick wall, an ability that should be wisely used. For example, you could try to stay behind a corner or a narrow wall in head-to-head-fights. Upgrade: Destructor Darts Pulse Laser Pulse laser is a weapon that emits short bursts of coherent light. Green light. And light travels very fast. In case you never miss, you might want to use pulse laser. However, in close range dogfights pulse laser is less efficient than any other main weapon, so keep your distance! Upgrades: Autolaser -> Ion Gun Dumbfire The good old high explosive projectile slinging cannon is ready for your use. Inaccurate people: don't bother! Upgrades: Comet Cannon -> Hellraiser Bombs These high explosive, collision triggered bombs may not be the best weapon in accuracy, but it doesn't make them useless. Maybe the best way to use bombs is to use them as airbombs; fly in your enemy's course and drop 'em away! Boom! Oh, and use A-Wing :)=. Upgrade: Megabombs Flamethrower This blowtorch burrrns! It fires a short burst of fire that can also be used in getting rid of unwanted walls. Flamethrower is very dangerous in skilled hands. However, if you can't get close enough this just might not be your choice. Upgrade: Dragon Breath Acid Shower Lands on any type of ground and starts to burst highly corrosive acid blobs. No upgrades. Sonar Wave Shoots a wave that travels through walls and everything. Does a lot of direct damage so don't try to surf on this wave or you'll soon surf with the Grim Reaper! No upgrades. Gunpod A small pod with a gun. With the aid of its Nanotech Anti-Grav System (NAGS) it stays airborne. When an enemy is sighted, it starts shooting at him. Equipped with brains of a fish, gunpod's cyborg-controlled aiming system is not too smart. This is why the real threat comes only from a swarm of gunpods. You are only allowed to have ten active gunpods at a time. If there were more, they would revolt. Upgrade: Rocket Pod Rockets Rockets are fired in groups of four. Each rocket continues its voyage recklessly straight forward until it hits something and blows up or until it runs out of fuel. Relatively short reload time makes this weapon popular. :-P Upgrades: Berserkers -> Gigamissiles Soil Sampler This is how it works: First, you dig some ground off (by pressing special when you are on ground). Second, you wait for the device to compress all the dirt into bullets. Third, you have some fun spilling all the stuff over your opponents (by pressing the special again). No upgrades. Minigun Shoots a burst of lightning-fast, invisible bullets. Extremely useful in strong gravity fields. Upgrades: Super Minigun -> Vulcan Autocannon Hydra Looks like a grenade, flies like a grenade, explodes like a grenade, but produces seven grenades more. A good instrument of destruction and chaos. Hint: press your special weapon button again when your hydra is airborne. Another hint: press it twice with megablast and let the fat lady sing. Upgrade: Megablast! Toxic Cloud, aka. The Fart Toxic cloud is truly lethal. A well placed cloud is able to melt even a Behemoth. But the gas can also be turned against you, so be sure not to fly into a dead end when emitting the gas. Upgrades: Toxic Grenade -> Toxic Shuriken Shuriken This enlarged ninja weapon has the potential to tear a ship to shreds. Very good against ships with low robustness. Upgrade: Jigsaw Hydrogen Bomb A bomb that explodes with great magnitude. When dropped, it is left behind just like the regular bomb. Hydrogen bomb is not so useful in games of two players since it is relatively easy to dodge. Upgrades: Hydrogen Dump -> Hydrogen Hydra Multicannon Shoots a ring of bullets around you. Does the most damage when you shoot while passing the enemy. Upgrades: Multilaser -> Fire Field Mine Burst Leaves a couple of high explosive collision triggered mines behind you. A very nasty weapon if used while someone is chasing you. Get it? Upgrade: Magnetic Mine Burst Homing Missile A missile that locks itself to the nearest enemy. It can change its target airborne. Upgrade: Quite Smart Missile Waypoint Mine A very high explosive mine that moves between two waypoints. The worst thing in using waypoint mine is the fact that you'll have to remember where you left your mines. If you don't, you will be as dead as your opponents! Usage: Pressing your special weapon button the first time places waypoint A. When you press it again, waypoint B will be placed (along with the mine). No upgrades. Hyperspace This goes for a very handy escape pod. The fact is that you don't have to eject your ship in a dangerous situation, just press the button and let your hyperspace device create a wormhole that teleports you and your ship to a random place. And guess what? You can use this even when you are knocked out! But remember that you are not able to teleport twice in a short time (this is due to the hypercomplicated megastructure of the universe). Upgrade: Stable Wormhole (which is used in the same way as Waypoint Mine) Flash Bomb Rock the Discotheque.. =) Hold on your eyes, coz this starts flashing the victim's screen. And with every flash it takes nicely energy from the ship it has diseased. (Seriously, flash bomb makes your eyes burn, so USE THIS ONLY ON YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY.) No upgrades. Repulsor Repulsor is actually a gigantic magnet that is VERY dangerous when used well. Everything is pushed from its way .. I mean EVERYTHING! Upgrade: Suck-o-Matic System Jammer Jams its victim's flight controls for a while or until the jammed ship hits a wall. If you have good accuracy, you should try this out. Upgrade: Control Mixer Sparrow Sparrow looks like a rocket, but it is launched from behind and it is more powerful. If you are accurate and tend to make runaways, this weapon is really made for you. Upgrades: Doublesparrow -> Gigasparrow Quake No no, this is not ID's Quake. This is a weapon that can shake a ship like the wind shakes leaves. Ground can also be shaken. No upgrades. Sword A very powerful melee weapon. You should be a flyer guru and fast too. A-Wing is something with this one. Upgrade: Two Swords Proton Torpedo Proton torpedos are formed in a temperature of several million degrees centigrade. As a consequence, the torpedo, when shot, flies not regarding the gravity! It is possible, though somewhat infrequent, that the proton mass slows down and starts floating in the air. However, after a few seconds the lethal proton porridge gets unstable due to the unimaginable differences in temperature and explodes. No upgrades. Shaker Missile This Bonzo class missile flies rather slowly, but when it explodes, the consequences are horrible. The shockwave the explosion generates, is comparable with hurricanes and nuclear bombs. This is a very, very, very dangerous weapon when opposing a light ship. No upgrades. 5.4 - Ships: ------------ V-Wing V-Wing is an average ship, so it is Speed þþþþþþþþþþþþþþ recommended for new players. No Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþ surprises, no disadvantages. Armor þþþþþþþþ Upgrades Weapon Power, Flight Stabilizers Behemoth Behemoth was designed to survive a Speed þþþþþþþþþþ direct hit of almost anything so an Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþ extra thick armor plating was used. Armor þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ Unfortunately, that inflicted a Upgrades Aerodynamics, noticable speed degrade. Weapon Power A-Wing A-Wing is made of very light composite Speed þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ material. That's why only one thruster Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ is needed for the high maneuverability Armor þþþþ and speed it has. A good way to make Upgrades Armor, your friends angry is to use the hit- Fast Recoverability and-run-technique. A-Wing is no good with close range weapons. Obliterator With its built-in weapon power Speed þþþþþþþþþþþ amplifier Obliterator demolishes almost Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ everything. Luckily, all berserks who Armor þþþþþþþþþ fly with this ship tend to be slow. Upgrades Weapon Power, Lucky Amulet Crab Crab is a cleverly degined ship. Rumors Speed þþþþþþþþþþþþþþ tell about a grenade that was in a Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþ certain collision course with a Crab. Armor þþþþþþþþ Still the Crab was not hit, the Upgrades Aerodynamics & grenade just flew straight through Weapon Power, it! Crab is also quite fast a ship. A Four-Leaf Clover Avatar What flies through a fiery field of Speed þþþþþþþþ exploding hydras getting only minor Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ scratches and deals death and major Armor þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ damage all over the place? Of course, Upgrade Bonus Magnet it's Avatar, the heaviest ship around. Excalibur Ever heard of Excalibur the legendary Speed þþþþþþþþþþþ sword? Well, Excalibur the ship is Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ quite much like it. Lethal to mess Armor þþþþþþþþþþ with and able to cut stone. Too bad Upgrades none it's quite slow a ship. Amazon Amazons are made in the most secret Speed þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ tropical forest. There lives an ancient Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ tribe practising black magic. As a Armor þþþ result of a weekly voodoo session a Upgrade Repair System 2.0 leaf-covered Amazon bursts into the air like a lightning with its deadly weapons glittering against the sun. Spear Spear is excellent in maneuverability Speed þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ and speed. Moreover, its cylinder- Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ shaped hull is the best there is for Armor þþþþþ flying through dense mine fields. All Upgrades none these advantages revenge themselves in thin armor plating that makes Spear a good ship only in experienced hands. Cludge Cludge is a do-it-yourself kind of Speed þþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþþ ship. It's cheap and easy to upgrade. Weapon Power þþþþþþþþþþ The worst thing about it is that as Armor þþþþ default Cludge has only an extra Upgrades Spare Parts booster; it's armor and weapon power are not very good. But wait until you find the spare parts bonus. 5.5 - Bonuses: -------------- Quick Repair Increases your armor a little. Surprise Bomb Decreases your armor a bit. Wormhole Your ship's matter travels through another dimension to a place about to be defined. Drone You gain an additional barrel to your main gun. It aids you in your holy mission. (And don't ask us why is it called Drone. That's rather a long story.) Energy Shield Energy shield is the more often used name of the "small object to antimatter converter". After being installed to your ship, it dematerializes most of the crap that was about to hit you into small but bright flashes (one per particle). But because this device takes a little while to load, it won't save you from sure death. Repair System This one repairs your ship's armors continuously if they happen to be damaged. As an extra, you get to recover more quickly when you are knocked out. Engine Trouble Something goes wrong in your engines and you suffer the consequences. Thanks to the engine repair droid every ship is fitted with, your engines should be fixed in twenty seconds. Booster Your ship gains a hi-tech boosting device that almost doubles your maximum velocity and maneuverability. As an extra nice thing this device makes flames come out of your thrusters. Fire Ring After collecting this bonus, two flaming comets start to circle clockwise around your ship causing major damage to anybody who dares to be too near to you. Main Gun Jammer Halves your main gun's fire rate. This will hang on for a while and no weapon upgrade will help you. Special Weapon Accelerator Your secondary weapon's loadtime is halved. This won't last long, but doubled firepower sure is an ability to make you a true killer. Try to get two in row :). Special Weapon Quickloader Your secondary weapon is instantly loaded and ready to rock'n'roll. Be sure to notice this so that you can have all the advantage of it. Jailball The nightmare of every pilot. The force that rips your wings off. The lawnmower that cuts the last violet in your garden. Practically speaking, jailball clings to your ship and never lets go! Only after one minute of desperate fly-trying you are unshackled, unless you have found another one. Gravity Well Gravity well is a well of gravity. You get sucked in, you know? No direct damage is done. However, if there happens to be the remains of someone's megablast, YOU may be in trouble... Sidearmor Sidearmor consists of two separate shields that are magnetically connected close to your ship. Because the shields are at your sides, they provide no help to shots closing from ahead or behind. Megaboost You instantly get loads of addons to your ship. Be quick because in a short time you will lose all your nice-looking thingamagigs. In addition to the bonuses listed above there are ship-specific bonuses that are listed in chapter Ships (5.4). Also many main and special weapons have upgrades that are listen in chapter Weapons (5.3). 5.6 - Hints: ------------ Two players playing Assault Wing may find the game a bit slow and boring. In such situations both players should equip themselves with a fast ship (A-Wing or Amazon) and have a very effective don't-come-in-my-way-weapon (Shuriken or Dumbfire should do the job). With these equipment the game should be full of adrenaline because you may get killed if you don't watch out! When you seem to be losing all the time, try changing your weapons. If this doesn't help, change your ship. There are some combinations of ships that are unfair. Imagine two Obliterators and a A-Wing. This doesn't concern gurus. If the game pauses for a long time (without you pressing the pause key!) you should wait a few seconds for Assault Wing Crash Guard (TM) to activate. As this happens, messages start to pop on the screen. Following these instruction-wanna-bes you are able to continue the game almost as if nothing had happened. 6.0 - External Utilities: ------------------------- 6.1 - Assault Wing Value Editor: -------------------------------- Filename: UTIL\AW-EDIT.EXE Use this proggy to change some constants in AWING.EXE. Make weapons load faster, change all the ships into pervertic mutants, finetune the damage done by fire ring. You are advised to use the Value Editor with fun in mind. Warning: brainlessity may completely destroy playability, therefore always keep a backup of AWING.EXE before changing its constants! Keys: tab : select between weapons and ships +/- : select weapon/ship a-z : quickselect weapon/ship cursor keys : select the value to be changed enter : edit value esc : quit (and save if you wish) 6.2 - Level Creator: -------------------- Filename: UTIL\LEVCREAT.EXE You can create your own arenas with this one. Store the arenas as PCX and use this to convert them to Assault Wing arenas. The program doesn't need a resident mouse driver. You can configure Level Creator the first time you run it or by giving the executable any parameter. Example: LEVCREAT.EXE asdf All commands are listed in the right side block. Select them with left mouse button. Right mouse button brings you one level backwards in the menu tree. There are no keyboard shortcuts yet. Sorry :I. 6.3 - Readme: ------------- Filename: README.EXE With this program you are able to read the documentation files AWING.DOC, AWINGFIN.DOC and the revision file AWING.REV. All keyboard commands can be seen by pressing F1 in the program. 7.0 - Miscellaneous: -------------------- 7.1 - Lead Artist's Comment: ---------------------------- All the graphics was designed for 640x480 mode so you should not blame me if the gfx looks stupid on your jerky-slow machine. Pentium-machines are very cheap nowadays so if you have a 486 you should think about buying a new machine. When you play Assault Wing please try to keep the resolution of 400x300 or better because 320x240 just doesn't look good enough! 7.2 - Ville's Ideas: -------------------- Never switch off bonuses. They create fun and surprising moments. All the other switches are worth switching. (and it is possible to mess with the INI-file :). You may find something to be considered fun. 7.3 - Pekka about Sounds: ------------------------- We're sorry but we don't have 10000mk synths to create samples, so we just had to (or I just had to) rip them from various places. A couple of samples were sampled from Ville's cheap synth and the rest I've made with various programs. 7.4 - Speed Considerations: --------------------------- The speed of this game depends highly on the system RAM to video RAM transfer speed. Reason to this is that the game updates your viewport 50 times per second to give you some smooth action. Here's a little table that helps you choose the correct video settings for your computer. +---------+------------+--------+--------------------------+ | players | resolution | window | minimum video card speed | +---------+------------+--------+--------------------------+ | 4 | 640x480 | 100% | 13.1 MB/s | | 3 | 640x480 | 90% | 8.2 MB/s | | 3 | 512x384 | 100% | 4.3 MB/s | | 2 | 400x300 | 100% | 2.7 MB/s | | 2 | 320x240 | 100% | 1.7 MB/s | +---------+------------+--------+--------------------------+ Parallax scroll doesn't increase the video speed requirements, but instead your system RAM speed must be at least 3 times faster than the required video speed thus with 640x480, 100%, 4 players your system memory transfer speed ought to be near 40 MB/s. Don't forget that also the calculations take some time so all values above are valid only if nothing is moving on the screen. 7.5 - Few Words about Assault Wing: ----------------------------------- Mikko and I got the idea of making this kind of game when we were playing the famous mother of all PC shoot-your-friends-ups, Auts. Although Auts was the best (and probably the only one) of its kind at the time, we thought we could make a better game. You can read about the creation history of Assault Wing in the AWING.REV file. Mikko began working on the low-level code, parallax scroll, gfx functions, sound system, etc. When some kind of base code had been created, I began coding things like weapons, menus and such. I also worked on all kinds of details and tried to carry out ideas. And so did Mikko. During the coding of Ouch (as we called it) some of our friends got interested in it and helped us by giving ideas and bug reports. Pekka should be mentioned especially for doing all the fancy graphics. Without him this game would probably be filled with crappy-looking hand-drawn graphics. But meanwhile this game gets released at Assembly '97, Mikko is in the army. That makes it much harder to code this game, because I'll have to do it all alone! But that doesn't mean that there will be no updates or things like that. I will carry out all kinds of ideas when I get some time for them. - Ville, just before 1.0 beta got released I would really like to thank all the people who sent mail concerning Assault Wing. It's really nice to know that there is something out there after all :). Thanks go also to all the registered people, who help us buy PMODE (still some money is needed, so don't hesitate to write to Pekka and ask about the ways to send money to us)! - Ville, after the release of 1.1 beta When I started to make this game I knew that if I was going to do money with graphics it would come from game business. I have always been interested in game graphics, so when I found out that Ville and Mikko were doing this kind of a game I got interested. I didn't expect Assault Wing (at the time it was called Ouch) to make any money or anything at all. It has been some kind of a "test" to me and it has given me respect to other people in this project. Especially I was happy about Mikko's and Ville's activity in making this game. I thought that they were kinda' lazy but what actually happened was just the opposite 'cause when Assault Wing grew and came better their speed was so fast that I was the one who was in trouble. Now when Assault Wing is (almost) finished I'm very happy about it. I can only say that AW is good! One thing that tells about it is all those nights we have spent at Tuukka's place playing AW until 2am. I'm hoping to move on to bigger fields of game business and hoping to get company from my friends on that voyage. This doesn't mean that I will not do graphics for Assault Wing anymore. I will always do new graphics to AW when needed. Also thanks to all those people for the huge amount of e-mail... It has been more than 10000mk. There are even rumors of Assault Wing 2 .. but that's a different story... - Pekka 7.6 - The Rules of Assault Wing: -------------------------------- #1 : "Greedy boys shall die" #2 : "Men with big guns make mistakes" #3 : "If you play three sessions good, the fourth will be horrible" 8.0 - Terms of Distribution: ---------------------------- You may spread Assault Wing only in the original package (unmodified that means). No payment can be charged without our permission. You can also play Assault Wing freely as long as you wish. But if you like this game, you should tell us. That will make us very happy. Sponsoring our work is also an option. Write us for more info. We can be contacted by e-mail in the following addresses: Mikko.Tiihonen@***.fi ppalmu@*****.fi ville.nurmi@cyber.******.fi We will probably share our mail concerning Assault Wing, so it doesn't matter who you send your mail to. 9.0 - Credits: -------------- Programming: Mikko Tiihonen (Engine & utilities) Ville Nurmi (Weapons & other stuff) Jukka Jalkanen (GUS & AWE32 & IPX & serial support (where?)) Graphics: Pekka Palmu (Lead Artist) Ville Nurmi (Couple of smaller sprites & palette horrors) Sounds: Pekka Palmu Ville Nurmi All those who we ripped our sounds from (don't be angry). Arenas: Pekka Palmu Viet Nguyen Documents: Ville Nurmi Ideas, abc: Mikko Miettinen Matti Mustonen Viet Nguyen Ville Nurmi Pekka Palmu Markus Salomäki Mikko Tiihonen Tuukka Välimaa ("Uuh this idea credit list IS long" - Pekka) Betatesters: Tuukka Välimaa (The official betatest team) Matti Mustonen Markus Salomäki Markus Kujala (The unofficial betatester from America) Thanks to: Markus Kujala Juha Kerätär Janne Sinivirta Made in: Suomi/Finland