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Text File | 1994-01-24 | 18.5 KB | 507 lines

Pickle Wars by Karen Crowther A Redwood Games and MVP Software Production Pickle Wars is shareware. You are free to evaluate this software for 30 days, after which you must either register with MVP Software or delete the software from your system. Thanks for playing Pickle Wars and for supporting shareware. Your honesty pays. This is volume one of the Pickle Wars trilogy. To order the Pickle Wars trilogy, call 800-968-9684 toll-free 24 hours a day. Please have your Master Card or Visa ready when you call. Or fill out the order form at the end of this manual and fax it to: 616-245-3204. Make sure your credit card number and expiration date are legible. Or if you prefer mail the order form and your check to: MVP Software, 1035 Dallas SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49507-1407. For overseas orders or technical support call 616-245-8376. Now you can get all MVP shareware FREE of download charges from MVP's home BBS, Ryan's Bar. Call (616) 456-1845 or (616) 456-5342 with your modem and check out the free MVP file section. _______ ____|__ | (R) --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER MVP Software is a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at 545 Grover Road, Muskegon, MI 49442-9427 or send a CompuServe message via CompuServe Mail to ASP Ombudsman at 70007,3536. INSTALLATION ------------ If you downloaded this file from a BBS, you don't need to run Install. If you purchased an evaluation disk from a shareware vendor or the story, follow these directions. To install Pickle Wars, place the diskette into the A drive and type A:, or into the B drive and type B:. When the A> or B> prompt appears on the screen, type INSTALL. Follow the directions to install the software. To begin the game type PW1. Note to Windows Users --------------------- Pickle Wars will run as a DOS application, spawned under Windows, but you may encounter sound card conflicts. The best solution if you run into conflicts is to completely exit from Windows before starting Pickle Wars. Clicking on the DOS prompt is NOT exiting Windows. You must actually close your Windows session. Note to OS/2 Users ------------------ Pickle Wars will run under OS/2, but you'll have to do a little tweaking to make it run correctly, and at the right speed. Here's how to do it. Run Pickle Wars in a full-screen DOS session rather than a windowed DOS session. In addition, use the following DOS session settings: DOS_BACKGROUND_EXECUTION OFF DOS_UMB ON HW_TIMER ON IDLE_SECONDS 0 IDLE_SENSITIVITY 75 VIDEO_8514A_XGA_IOTRAP OFF VIDEO_ONDEMAND_MEMORY ON VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION OFF The HW-TIMER and VIDEO_xxx settings are critical to running the game under OS/2. Anything else makes the game look hyperactive, with things running way too fast. Depending on the speed of your system you may have to experiment with these settings. Pickle Wars and Sound Blaster 16 -------------------------------- The Sound Blaster 16 sound card causes special problems, especially in 486 DX2 systems. If the game locks up, try running it without digitized sound effects. Another option is to include the following command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT: SET SB-SET FM:9,9 This command may also make the music louder if it is too soft on your SB 16. Making a clean boot disk ------------------------ If you encounter problems running Pickle Wars there may be a conflict between it and a program resident in memory. Here's a way to avoid the conflict. Place a blank, unformatted diskette into drive A of your computer. Then type FORMAT A:/S/U and press enter. When the computer is finished formatting the disk and copying the system files to it, press the RESET button on your computer or the ALT-CTRL-DEL keys at the same time. After your computer has rebooted, go to the Pickle Wars directory and play the game. If it runs, there is a conflict between a resident program loaded by your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file. Whenever you want to play Pickle Wars, simply reboot your computer with the boot disk you have created. The Story so far ---------------- Warlike aliens resembling giant dill pickles have invaded the peaceful human colony of Arcadia. After 500 years of peace, the people of Arcadia have put away their weapons. Their only military organization is the Coast Guard. They appear to be helpless against the alien onslaught. Fortunately, an enterprising teenager discovers that the Aliens are deathly afraid of vegetables (no one knows why --- well, actually WE know why but we aren't telling you, until all becomes clear in Underneath the Planet of the Pickles). So the inhabitants of Arcadia arm themselves with SaladShooters(R) and do battle with the dread Pickles. You alternately play our hero, Dave, a history student at the University, and Linda, a Coast Guard officer. You must accomplish many tasks including finding Lord Geric's Depository of Ancient Weapons, finding the Ancient Weapons themselves, finding more SaladShooters(R) and ultimately finding the Doomsday Machine itself. The following keys allow you to run, climb, jump and use the SaladShooter(R) to toss sliced cucumbers at the Alien Pickles, which causes them to faint. Keyboard -------- Alt or Space ....SaladShooter Ctrl or Up...............Jump Right arrow........Move right Left arrow..........Move left PgUp..................Look up PgDn................Look down Enter..............Open door, Flip switch, Activate warp S................Sound toggle Esc.........Brings up menu or backs out of menu You can redefine the keyboard from the "Options" "Keyboard" menu. Joystick -------- Button 1...........Jump Button 2...SaladShooter To use the Joystick you must first go to the menu and choose "Options" "Joystick" "J" If you do NOT have a Joystick and you tell the program to use one, the program will slow to a crawl. If this happens go back into the Joystick menu and answer "No". Collect SaladShooters to help you toss vegetables at the Aliens. Aliens faint at the touch of vegetables! Your job is to collect all the Salad-Shooters so that you and your fellow Arcadians can fight off the alien invasion. Use your SaladShooters to break the spheres blocking your way. Ok, Ok... we know that cucumbers don't explode but we like explosions. So Arcadian cucumbers have been genetically altered to explode on nonliving objects. Press the SPACE BAR, ALT key or Joystick button to activate your SaladShooter. When you see a red button, press the <ENTER> key to activate the moving platform. Switches are on when they blink red. Collect carrots for health. Remember to eat lots of vegetables to resist the Pickle Invaders! Don't let the Pickles near you! They will take away your health points! Warps ----- Press the Enter key to activate the red switches or the Warps. Warps look like doorways. Switches are rectangular and blink when activated. If you have trouble getting a warp or a switch to activate when you press the <ENTER> key, try holding the <ENTER> key down as you walk back and forth in front of the door or switch. Save/Restore ------------ Press Esc to bring up the main menu. Then choose "Game Options" to see Save and Restore. The program automatically saves the games when you quit and you can restore "last game played". Mail ---- You will see pieces of paper fluttering in the breeze. This is your mail and you can read it by touching the paper. Do not accidentally shoot your mail! Mail machines deliver your mail. Do not accidentally shoot them or you will lose points and miss your messages. There is only a limited amount of mail that you get on each level. Beware, though, the Aliens have flying machines about the same size as the mail machines. Don't let the Alien machines touch you! Difficulty Levels ----------------- On Easy level the aliens are not very good at chasing you and when they faint, they stay out cold until the end of the level. On Medium level the aliens are a little smarter at chasing you and wake up after the faint. On Hard level the aliens are very smart and wake up quickly after they faint. You can change difficulties at any time by pressing ESC to bring up the menu and then choosing "Game Options", "Difficulty". Sound and Music --------------- Press 'S' to activate the sound menu. Your soundcard information, joystick setting, and special keyboard definition are all saved in a file called CONFIG.PW1. If you have a soundcard installed and tell the program to turn off music, the music will play next time you restart the program. The configuration file only saves information on the type of card you have. You can delete CONFIG.PW1 if you want Pickle Wars to allow you to change your soundcard settings or you can choose "Reconfigure Soundcard" off the 'S' menu or you can answer 'Y' when the program asks you whether you want to change soundcards at startup. If you choose a soundcard that you do not have installed, the program will hang your computer! If you have chosen an incorrect soundcard you can run PWSETUP to change it or delete CONFIG.PW1. Hints ----- You can skip the opening cinematic sequence (or any other cinematic sequence) by pressing <ESC> a couple of times. Hold the ENTER key down as you walk back and forth in front of switches or doorways to make it easier to activate switches and warps. TROUBLE SHOOTING ---------------- > Game hangs or acts weird. Delete CONFIG.PW*. Next time you start the game tell it you do NOT have any type of soundcard at all. If it runs OK, you have a soundcard conflict. The most likely explanation is that you have told the program that you have a soundcard that doesn't match the one in your computer. If you are sure you have told the program the correct soundcard then you may be having a conflict with some TSR. See the instructions for booting from a special bare-bones boot disk. > Game runs slowly. You may have Joystick set to "Yes" without a joystick connected. Go into the Game Options and choose Joystick and answer "No". Since this is a true 256 color dual-parallaxing game, it just runs slowly on a 286. Try answering Y to the question about soundcards during startup and tell the program you don't have any soundcards. The music and digitized sound effects do slow the game down. Try pressing the grey '+' key. it speeds up the frame rate. The '-' key slows it down. > Music is messed up or too soft. You may be running from Windows which sometimes messes up soundcards. Read your Soundcard documentation to find out how to fix this since there are usually settings that will fix it. You may have one of the SoundBlaster cards that plays music too softly with our drivers. Unfortunately, that is something that is intrinsic to Midpak and one of the SoundBlaster cards. Check the volume adjustment on your card. > Joystick only goes in one direction or pegs over. Try choosing Game Options, Joystick and be sure to center the joystick before pressing 'J'. Some joysticks need to be calibrated. Read your joystick manual to find out how to do this. If all else fails, turn the Joystick option to NO and use the keyboard. > Insufficient Memory message. This message means what it says. You may have limited memory because you are running from Windows or have a large shell program loaded. Try making a "bare-bones" boot disk and running the program. > Missing File. You are missing one of the PW*.* files. Either it was accidentally deleted or never installed. The most common cause of this is if you have run out of room on your hard disk. Type DIR and look at how many bytes free there are. If there are fewer than about 1,000,000 bytes, lack of disk space is the problem. NOTES ON YOUR PROGRAM FILES --------------------------- (Do not read this unless you are a sophisticated user) All files that start with PW*.* are necessary. Don't ever delete any of them. Files that end in *.PW? can be deleted if you want. They are: high.pw?.....high scores config.pw?...music/sound/joystick information save*.pw?....save files Those zillions of *.com, *.adv and *.ad files are part of Midpak which runs your soundcard. If you don't have a soundcard you can delete them if you want. f you do have a soundcard, you can delete the ones that don't apply to you. Do NOT delete: PMIDPAK.COM MIDPAK.* SOUNDRV.COM Your specific *.AD, *.ADV and *.COM files. The above files are necessary for any soundcard. If your card is not listed, ask your card manufacturer if they have a Midpak file for it. If so, just copy it to the Pickle Wars directory and it SHOULD work if it is for the correct Midpak version which is NOT the protected mode one. Remember: Arcadia is counting on YOU! Pickle Wars was created by Redwood Games, Inc. and is published by MVP Software, Inc. Design: Karen Crowther Story: Ellen Guon Music: Robert Prince Programming: Karen Crowther Artists: William Penn Cygnus Multimedia Les Pardew Randy Wakefield Mike Tidwell Electric Paintbrush Jimmie Homburg Dale Homburg Assistant Programmer Sage Statham Quality Assurance Ron Taylor Robbie Sholars SaladShooter (R) electric slicer/ shredder is a registered trademark of National Presto Industries, Inc. and is used here by permission. Pickle Wars is Copyright 1993 Karen Crowther. All rights reserved. Please don't copy the registered versions except for backup purposes. Ordering Information The Pickle Wars Trilogy is available from the following authorized distributors: In the United States: -------------------- MVP Software 1035 Dallas SE Grand Rapids, MI 49507-1407 phone: 800-968-9684 24-hour order line only (616) 245-8376 information, technical support, or orders. fax: (616) 245-3204 order price: $29.95 plus $3.00 shipping in the US, $4.00 shipping to Canada, $5.00 shipping everywhere else. Michigan residents please add appropriate sales tax. In Australia: ------------ Budgetware 9 Albermarle St Newtown NSW 2042 phone: (02) 519-4233 Fax: (02) 516-4236 order price: $A45.00 (includes shipping) In the United Kingdom: --------------------- Testware Ltd 46 The Avenue Harrogate, N Yorks HG1 4QD phone: (0423) 886 415 Fax: (0423) 889 728 order price: 30 pounds (includes shipping) In Denmark and all of Scandanavia: --------------------------------- Pro-Soft Benloese Skel 4 G DK 4100 Ringsted phone: 53 61 90 42 fax: 53 61 93 91 order price: 210,00 kr. + VAT 25% + s/h 25,00 In Japan: -------- P. & A. Company Ltd 302 Bellwins, 1367-23 Nakagami, Akishima, Tokyo 196 phone: 425-46-9141 fax: 425-46-9142 BBS: 425-46-9143 4500 yen includes shipping and taxes PICKLE WARS TRILOGY ORDER FORM Name ________________________________________________________________ Address _____________________________________________________________ City _______________________________ State ______ ZIP _______________ Country (if outside USA) ____________________________________________ CIRCLE HD DISK SIZE: 5-1/4" -or- 3-1/2" IMPORTANT! Price of Pickle Wars Trilogy $29.95 Shipping and Handling (US) 3.00 Shipping and Handling (Canada) 4.00 Shipping and Handling (all other countries) 5.00 Michigan residents add sales tax 1.32 ------ Make check payable to "MVP Software" Total enclosed: $ Master Card/Visa information (credit card orders only) Card number __________________________________________ Expiration number ____________________________________ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- VOLUNTARY QUESTIONS: Please help us determine what features you would like ==================== in future products. Circle what type of equipment you have: 8088 286 386 486 Pentium Circle the speed of your computer(Mhz): 10 12 16 20 25 33 40 50 ___ Circle any that apply: Joystick Mouse Modem_______ SVGA card____________ (speed) (type) Sound Capability: Adlib Sound Blaster SB Pro Thundercard PC speaker only Other ____________________________________ Where did you get Pickle Wars? Friend CompuServe GEnie AOL Prodigy Software Creations BBS (name): _______________________ phone # __________________________ address _______________________________________________________________ Shareware Distributer (name): _________________________________________ Are you a game player? Please answer the following questions about what you like and don't like in computer games. Approx # of commercial games owned: ____ #Registered shareware games: ____ Circle preference: Beautiful Graphics Game Complexity Circle preference: Solo against computer -OR- Modem 2-Player Circle preference: Strategy Action Simulation Other_________ Long term game playability: Few Levels w/ hard difficulty Lotsa Levels --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send this order form and your check to: MVP Software, 1035 Dallas S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49507-1407 US or Canada 24-hour order line: 800-968-9684. Fax: 616-245-3204. Tech support, information, or overseas order line: 616-245-8376.