Outer Limits
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Your mission in this game is to defend against the dreaded
Dupliod invasion. You are the commander of outpost '231' on the
outer limits of the Federations territory. The Dupliods are the
sworn enemy of the Federation. Your outpost stands in there way,
and they are determined to destroy you and your outpost.
Your mission is to guard the city by blasting all Dupliod
space ships before they fire on your city. The city supplies you
with all your power. Once the city is lost so is the out post.
There are basically two types of Dupliod ship design. The first
type simply flies by and fires at the city. The second flies back
and forth trying to avoid your laser blasts. These ships are
smaller and are harder to hit then the fly-by kind of ships.
Your city is equipped with a city-wide energy dispersing
shield. It will protect the city from laser blast fired from the
Dupliod ships. The shields are at 100% when you first start the
game and decrease each time the shield is hit.
Because of your position in space you will also have to
defend your outpost from meteorite bombardment. The shields will
handle meteorite strikes but at a cost of 5% per strike. During a
meteorite storm the dupliods will stop there attack. To stop the
meteorites from hitting the city you will use a specially
constructed bombardment craft to pulverize the meteorites.
The craft will automatically appear via the city's own defence
control.
The interface in this game is simple and clean. Under the
Atari symbol you can find out about the game or activate any
accessories. Under the menu selection 'GAME' you can either select
to play or quit. Under the menu selection 'LEVEL' you can select
(you guessed it) the difficulty of play. Under the menu selection
'SOUND' you may turn on or off the sound. Last but not least under
the menu selection 'HIGH SCORE' you may find out the last recorded
high score.
The game works with the mouse only no joy stick. Pressing the
space bar during game play will pause or un-pause the game play.By
pressing escape you may leave game play and use the menu bar
again. I have added a CHEAT MODE (generally so you can see how
fast a GFA Basic game can work) that will raise the shields to
10,000%, leaving you virtually indestructible. To get into cheat
mode just press 'C' or 'c' while in game play, and an alert box
will advise you that cheat mode is activated. This may only be
done during game play and not while the menu bar is present.
The source code for Outer Limits is included and is fully
commented on. In the source code you can find the subroutines
on how to load bit block images and move them on the screen. You
can learn how load degas pictures and manipulate sounds via the
'WAVE' command.