The Very Best of Atari Inside

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Text File | 1995-08-15 | 15.6 KB | 291 lines

WingLord by Victor Bruhn Copyright 1994 Guardian Castle, which sits high above the villages in the valley below, has come under attack by the minions of the evil wizards of the Northlands. They have found a way into the tunnels under the mountain atop which it sits. The enemy has gained control of most of the caverns and passages that run through the ground underneath the castle, as well as a very large portion of the castle itself. Sinister beings roam through these areas at will, and are crushing all resistance offered by the castle's contingent of soldiers. Evil creatures, some mounted by riders and some not, continue to advance into the halls of the castle and through the caverns in a seemingly unstoppable march, leaving the peaceful valley residents at risk against invasion. Now, however, hope has come to the valley...Teleporting into the air above the castle, WingLords arrive from the forests to the south to do battle with the invaders. Mounted upon winged unicorns whose beauty is matched only by their quickness and power, they descend into the depths of Guardian Castle and drop into a room through the ceiling to intercept the group of creatures which has been sent to occupy it... As the WingLords watch, two Apprentice riders enter the room, also through the ceiling. Battle is joined, and a jousting battle begins between the adversaries. The powerful Fire Lances carried by the WingLords easily destroy the enemy riders upon superior contact, while providing their wielders with a shield against the enemy that will absorb one blow and allow the magnificent unicorn steeds time to use their natural teleportation ability to temporarily leave the battlefield. These weapons will also put forth a burst of energy that will destroy those enemies who also use missile weapons. The WingLords wait for the onslaught that is sure to come, ready to battle the fire spitting Yellow Jackets, the Dark Riders that are also armed with fire spitting lances, and the dreaded Wing Masters, deadly flyers who are immune to missile weapons and must be jousted against... System Requirements and Stuff ----------------------------- WingLord has been tested on and runs on all Atari 680x0 systems. It can be run with Warp 9 in residence (no effect), though it doesn't get along with MultiTOS very well, and on the TT it was tested on GDOS had to be disabled. WingLord was intended to be run on STe/post STe Ataris, and as a consequence machines without DMA sample playback capability will have minimal sound. Also, regular ST machines (no blitter at 8 MHz) may run into a small amount of flicker in two player games when the screen gets crowded (due to the 50 Hz screen update rate). WingLord: Overview ------------------ WingLord is a fast action game with a shoot-em-up element thrown in for variety. Each player controls a warrior who is mounted upon a winged unicorn, and battle is joined in the air with a number of different enemy types through direct contact and the use of missile weapons. The arena consists of a ground level, a ceiling, and different combinations and layouts of ledges in between. Combatants enter the arena by dropping through sliding doors located in the ceiling. Collisions with ledges, the ceiling, or the ground cause no direct harm. The screen wraps in the horizontal direction (that is, flying/walking through the side of the screen simply transports the player to the other side.) Players control their mounts using joysticks. Title Screen ------------ Various options are set and game play initiated from the title screen. Periods without any user input lead to other displays, such as a demonstration, credits, and enemy descriptions. Each player has two settings that can be manipulated: flap power and control. Flap power defaults to medium, and can be changed by moving the joystick up or down. This is simply a measure of how much vertical force accompanies each wing flap; high power allows the player to climb faster, while low power gives the player better control. The control option refers to who is controlling the player: a human, the computer, or nothing. This is set using the appropriate function key, as indicated on the screen. It is possible to set both players to computer control and have the game play itself, which gives a nice demonstration of game play and potential strategies. In this, the registered version, the player may begin the game at wave 1, wave 21, or wave 41. This option is displayed along the right hand side of the title screen, and is controlled with the arrow keys. Pressing the space bar starts the game. Pressing the escape key from the title screen will end the program. Control ------- The game is joystick controlled. The joystick button controls the wings. If the button is up (un-pressed), the wings are up. Pushing the button down brings the wings down. Flapping the wings causes flight. Gravity pulls down constantly on the player/mount, and the mount can land safely at any speed. The stick provides horizontal control. Moving the joystick to the side always causes the player to face that direction. If the player is not in flight, it will also affect the movement of the player; it will either increase the speed of walking (running?) or cause the mount to skid to a halt. If the player is in flight, joystick movement must be accompanied by a flap of the wings to change horizontal speed. The players also have at their disposal a missile weapon that fires from the tip of the lance. This is only useable while the player is flying. Pulling back (down) on the joystick fires a bolt of energy from the tip of the lance that travels horizontally. Be warned, however, that this bolt will only affect Yellow Jackets and Dark Riders; Apprentices and Wing Masters are not harmed by it. Each player has a door in the ceiling of the arena whose color matches the color of their mount, either yellow or white. When the player is not in the arena and is in the game (ie the game hasn't ended for that player), the appropriate door in the ceiling will slide open. The player then may enter the arena by pressing their flap button. The door opens at the beginning of the game, whenever the player gets hit (until the game is over), and after a new arena has appeared. The player may wait as long as they please to make entrance; this can be used tactically, as a pause, or to prolong a game for a player (while the other player continues to do battle). During game play (any time that the arena is on the screen), pressing the escape key will end the game and exit back to the title screen. When the game is over for both players, the game will stay in the playing screen for a short time before returning to the title screen. Pressing the space bar during game play pauses the game. Playing ------- The main manifestation of combat occurs through jousting. When enemies collide, the combatant with the higher lance (or stinger, in the case of the Yellow Jacket) wins. The other either dies (the bad guys) or is teleported out of the arena (players). When the player exits, if their game isn't ended, their door in the ceiling slides open to allow them to re-enter the arena. Battle can also be done (sometimes...) from a distance using the missile weapon. Certain enemies are vulnerable to this, and others aren't. Those that are vulnerable, however, also posess a missile weapon which they can use against you. If two shots collide, it is possible that they will intercept each other, although this doesn't always happen. At the beginning of each wave, the four outer doors slide open, and your enemies for that wave will begin dropping through them. When all of that wave's enemies have entered the arena, the doors will close. Again, during and after a game, pressing the escape key on your keyboard will return you to the title screen. Other Stuff ----------- The player's score and the number of times you can teleport out of the arena during comabat (read: lives) are shown at the bottom of the screen. An extra combat teleport (extra life) is awarded for every 10,000 points. Also shown at the bottom of the screen are the numbers of each type of enemy that you can expect to have to face during the current wave. A couple of ways to gain extra points are to hit shootable enemies from long range (for an extra 200 points), or to get through the Survival Waves without being hit. Beginning with wave four, Survival waves occur every fifth wave, and a successful performance on the player's part is accompanied by 3000 bonus points and a small touch of fanfare at the end of the wave. There are four different enemies. Information on them can be accessed from the title screen by waiting a bit (shortly after the game's instructions) of by pressing the appropriate key, as indicated at the bottom of the display. Note that the Apprentice and the Wing Master must be jousted against, and cannot be affected by missile weapons, while the Yellow Jacket and Dark Rider can be shot (and can shoot back, as well). Use the ledges to your advanage! Many of the layouts were specifcally designed to allow you some type of advantage, such as divide/conquer possibilities or making enemies vulnerable when entering the arena. When the computer controls a player, it will usually reach a score of around 20-40k, though it many times does much better (I've seen two computer controlled players reach beyond wave 34.) They are most vulnerable on waves with many ledges, as their thought processes don't take them into account. The computer will do a very good job of helping the beginning player out or helping the advanced player reach higher levels more easily. TIPS ---- Remember that your shots travel farther than the bad guys' shots... The manner in which the computer players begin each wave, that is, by hovering in the top-middle of the screen, isn't such a good idea after wave 20 or so...particularly on swarm waves, because the Yellow Jackets are very quick by this time and can reach you fast. It's tempting to want to shoot it out with them, but when possible, try to bounce the Yellow Jackets. Once you learn to keep above them, they are pretty easy to take out, at least individually. Don't be afraid to run from groups of Yellow Jackets; sometimes it's just plain foolish to hang around and try to outshoot them. Yellow Jackets are stupid, and will always simply move toward the closest player to them, even if it means they try to go up/down through a ledge. Getting them to 'key in' on one player who is safely under or over a ledge from them is a great strategy if there is another player that can pick them off from a distance while they're distracted. Use the screen warp. Hovering near the edge of the screen and firing across the boundary sometimes gives you free shots, as your enemies don't see across it. Use the ledges to your advantage. Hover underneath them at the start of a wave as you try to pick off any Yellow Jackets and Dark Riders as they enter the arena. The ledge layout with the four short ledges illustrates a great strategy if you can hover in the middle of the arena (horizontally speaking) at the height of the upper ones...As enemies drop into the arena from the outer doors, they hit the ledge and stop for a moment...this is a really good time to take a shot, as they are sitting still, and they are too far away to return your fire... For waves with Wing Masters, try to hang around at the bottom of the screen, standing/walking, at the start. Wing Masters will sometimes walk slowly until one player has higher altitude than they, at which point they begin flapping their wings. This is how they behave at the beginning of a wave. If you wait near the point where they will hit the bottom of the screen as they walk off a ledge like this, you can flap once or twice and take them out, since they will be travelling downward too fast to recover quickly and will be vulnerable for a moment; this does take some practice to learn, though. Dealing with Wing Masters is easiest if you make your move on them while they are travelling *down* and you are below them. When you can fly up over them while they are coming down, you have a moment in which they are at a disadvantage as they try to recover from their downward movement. Bouncing off the top of the screen or off the bottom of a ledge and into them is also good to try in this situation; Wing Masters are fast, and you need to make quick moves on them. If you make a move and 'miss', don't push it; retreat to a safe place and try again on your own terms. Vital Statistics ---------------- WingLord was written on a 2 meg Atari STe, TOS 1.62, no hard drive system with an Atari SC1224 monitor. WingLord was written primarily for the Atari STe and is meant to take advantage of some of its features not found in the original ST line (DMA sample playback and the BLiTTER chip, specifically). It was written using Heat 'n Serve C, with Easy-Go by Mountain Software as the environment (thanks, Anthony), and edited with ST-Page (the fastest text editor I've seen on the ST with the possible exception of Tempus). Icons and text font designed by Victor Bruhn using Iconner (by Victor Bruhn). Custom samples taken on a Roland S-10 and transferred using S-10 Converter (by Anthony Watson). Sample editing performed with SoundLab (WingLord would not have __any__ decent sound if not for this program; thanks DMJ!) Text files were edited with Pen Pal and SpiritEd. Title screen text/graphics and ledge designs by Victor Bruhn and Anthony Watson. All programming code (with the exception of the resolution change) by Victor Bruhn. All main coding and graphics generation was done in C. All sample playback is done using the STe's DMA capability, and is done at at least 12 kHz to allow for use with the Falcon. The program runs in ST low res. All graphics refreshed at 50 Hz on ST's and STe's, and 60 Hz on the Falcon030 (and perhaps the TT) when 50 Hz monitor refresh isn't available. Thanks to: ---------- Anthony Watson for being a faithful tester, week after week, and for recording and converting the music and frying samples. Also for all the help and prodding where the fixed graphics (title screen, ledges, etc.) are concerned. WingLord would have looked/sounded cheap otherwise. Jim Dalgleish for coming up with some *really good* suggestions. Gary Lee Lentz, Sr., for running a great BBS that I could stay in touch with Anthony on. My Mom, Bette Bruhn, for drawing me a nice castle (even though I did a poor job of transferring it to the computer...) Clayton Walnum for C-Manship. Ian Lepore for putting out and supporting a great PD C compiler. Kelly, for being my wife. I love you. Jesus Christ, for being my Savior. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you enjoy this game. Any questions and comments will be answered to the best of my ability, so bring 'em on! Thanks for buying the SKYLINE CD! Victor Bruhn 7700 NE 63rd St. Vancouver, WA 98662 USA Internet: vicb@clark.edu victorb@up.edu The Bear Cavern BBS: (206) 944-2002 NOTE: After 1994, the area code will be changed to (360).