Battle Zone

INSTRUCTIONS

Battle Zone
-----------
By Cunning And Devious Games
Copyright 1996

Programming, Music and SFX: Andrew Gower
Graphics: Andrew Gower and Ian Gower
Written in STOS and 68000 machine code

Introduction
Battle  Zone  is  a 2 player  strategy/skill  game.  Each  player 
controls  an  army of worms,  the aim being to  use  the  various 
weapons  at  your disposal to wipe out  your  opponent.  You  can 
either play a friend, or against the computer.

Starting A Game
Once Battle Zone has loaded you will be presented with the  title 
screen,  press  any key to jump to the main menu.  Here  you  can 
choose 1 of 3 options. These are:

Single  Match - Starts a match between 2 armies of  your  choice. 
Playing  against  a  friend  is  much  better  than  playing  the 
computer.  The  computer  intelligence works best on  the  random 
landscapes, and the 'food' landscape.

Tournament  -  You  can select from  3-10  Teams  of  worms.  The 
computer will then decide which team plays which.  Winning  teams 
move to the next round, and play each other to find the champions 
of the tournament.

Edit Teams - Allows you to edit the team names and  members.  You 
will  be presented with a list of all the teams,  select a  team, 
and enter the new names as prompted.  It is possible to save  the 
modified teams to disk. Select  then choose one of the 
slots from 1-10.  Next time you play Battle Zone,  click on  edit 
teams,  followed by  and the slot number, to load your 
teams into memory.

Playing A Match
Once you have chosen your teams you will be asked which landscape 
you  wish  to  fight across.  You can either choose  one  of  the 
predrawn  landscapes from disk,  or ask the computer to  randomly 
generate  a  new  landscape.  After  a  short  pause  whilst  the 
landscape  is generated or loaded you will be taken to  the  main 
game.

The game is turn based,  each worm takes it in turn to move, with 
worms being selected from each players team alternately.  If  you 
lose  a worm however you will get less turns per round,  as  that 
worm will no longer get a turn.

The  screen will scroll to centre your first worm on the  screen. 
You can move it around be using the left and right cursor keys to 
move,  and the spacebar to jump.  Be careful not to walk off  the 
edge or bottom,  as if you do your worm will die.  All objects on 
the screen act as obstacles. There is no background scenery which 
you can walk over, so if two objects overlap slightly they behave 
as if they were just one object with the combined outline of  the 
two.

Next you need to try and damage an opponent's worm. The teams are 
colour coded.  Worms on 1 team have Red numbers above their name, 
the  other team has yellow numbers.  These numbers represent  the 
worm's remaining health. It is a good idea to go for a worm which 
isn't very secure if there is one,  (For example, on a very small 
island),  as  you  may be able to blast it off the  edge  of  the 
screen, and kill it.

Once  you have decided which worm you want to attack you need  to 
choose from one of the 14 skills detailed below to do it, you can 
perform one action a turn, control than passes to the next worm.

Bazooka:  Select  the  first box on the bottom control  panel  to 
select a bazooka. Press the right mouse button to arm the weapon, 
and  a cross hairs should appear on the screen.  Your  worm  will 
always  try to shoot through this.  Try moving the mouse  pointer 
around to see how it affects the cross hairs position.  Once  you 
have the angle you wish to fire the shell at,  click and hold the 
left mouse button. The longer you hold it down the more power the 
shell will be launched with. Your power can be seen in the box at 
the top right of the control panel.  When you release the  button 
the shell will be fired. It won't necessarily go straight to your 
mouse pointer though,  as it will be pulled down by gravity,  and 
blown by the wind. (Wind strength is indicated  in the box in the 
bottom  right of the control panel,  by a brown line).  When  the 
shell hits the landscape,  a small part will be blown  away,  and 
any worms nearby injured.  Make sure you use enough power so that 
the firing worm is not injured by his own weapon!

Rocket:  Similar to a bazooka except it homes in on it's  target. 
Before arming the weapon,  click where you wish the rocket to aim 
for.  Cross hairs will appear to indicate the target.  Next,  arm 
the rocket and fire it using the same procedure as for  bazookas. 
It is a good idea to shoot rockets up into the air,  with  plenty 
of power,  and then let them home in on the target on their  own, 
as  this  makes them less likely to hit the  surrounding  scenery 
before getting there.

Grenade:  Also  similar  to a bazooka,  grenades  however  bounce 
before  exploding making them harder to aim.  To  compensate  for 
this they do more damage, and are effective further away from the 
explosion. Grenade's aren't affected by wind either.

Cluster Bomb:  Similar to a grenade,  except when it explodes, it 
fires  out  5  shells in random  directions,  which  then  damage 
anything they hit.

Dynamite:  Move your worm to where you wish to drop the dynamite. 
(Normally  on top of an enemy worm).  Then click the  left  mouse 
button  anywhere on the main screen.  Now run away  quickly!  The 
dynamite explodes shortly after being dropped, damaging any worms 
nearby.

Air  Strike:  Air strikes can't be used until all the worms  have 
had at least 1 go, as they are very powerful, and this allows the 
worms the chance to move to some cover to protect them. To use an 
air  strike  click  on the screen where you wish  to  target  the 
attack.  An aeroplane will fly across the top of the screen,  and 
drop bombs on the target. If there is anything above however, the 
bombs  will hit this,  so worms can hide under overhangs  in  the 
scenery to some extent.  The bombs drift left slightly, so if the 
target  is  very low on the screen,  allow for this  by  clicking 
slightly to its right instead.

Teleport: If your worm is stuck on an island, or wants to move to 
a  more  strategic  position that can't be reached  on  foot  (or 
tail?),  you  may wish to teleport it to a new  location.  Simply 
click on the screen where you wish to go, and if there's anything 
there to land on, you will be teleported.

Fire  Punch:  Move your worm so he is facing  another  worm,  and 
click anywhere on the main screen. The other worm will be knocked 
into the air in the direction your worms is facing by the  punch. 
This will not damage it,  but if the worm is standing on a cliff, 
you  may be able to knock it off the edge of the  screen  killing 
it.

Tunnel:  Click  the right mouse button;  crosshairs  will  appear 
indicating which way you wish to tunnel.  Move it to the  correct 
direction,  and click the left mouse button.  The worm will begin 
to dig in the selected direction. If there is nothing in front of 
the  tunnelling  worm it will stop.  Be careful  when  tunnelling 
downwards  not to tunnel right through the ground,  and  off  the 
bottom of the screen.

Girders:  When you move the mouse on to the screen you will see a 
girder  underneath the mouse pointer.  Move the girder where  you 
wish to place it,  you can rotate it with the right mouse button. 
To  place it on the screen click the left mouse  button,  and  it 
will contribute to the scenery. Girders can be used as bridges or 
placed  above  the worm,  as cover  from  incoming  shots.  Note: 
Girders cannot be placed too close to any worm. If you cannot put 
a girder on, try moving it away from any nearby worms.

Machine  Gun:  A short range weapon,  useful for finishing  enemy 
worms off.  Click the right mouse button to arm the weapon,  then 
click where you wish to shoot at. The target must be near to your 
worm,  and there must not be any other scenery in the way. With a 
machine  gun  you  get 2 shots,  and the firing  worm  cannot  be 
injured  as a result of nearby blasts.  (It might be  blown  back 
slightly however.)

Kamikaze: Face your worm in the direction you wish to attack, and 
click the left mouse button.  The worm will fly across the screen 
in a horizontal line doing considerable damage.  Any worm it hits 
will instantly lose 80 health.  If the worm encounters scenery it 
will fly through it for a short distance leaving a tunnel behind, 
before exploding.  The only disadvantage of kamikaze is that  the 
worm doing it dies as a result, useful if a worm is nearly dead.

Plasma Gun:  Similar to machine gun,  except it can fire straight 
through scenery which is in the way. You only get 1 shot however.

Skip Turn:  If none of the above weaponary suits,  you can always 
skip  your  turn,  by  selecting skip  turn,  and  then  clicking 
anywhere on the main screen.

Limited Weaponary
You will notice that when you select a weapon,  the name will  be 
displayed  above  the  control panel,  followed by  a  number  in 
brackets.  This is the number you have remaining have.  Once  you 
run out, you can't use that weapon any more.

Game Over
The  match  will end when one of the teams  has  been  completely 
destroyed.  You  will be displayed a screen showing who  won.  It 
also tells you which worm was best,  which was worst,  which  was 
more  violent,  and which was most picked on.  Press any  key  to 
return  to  the  title  screen,  or play  the  next  match  in  a 
tournament.

Pre-drawn landscapes
On the disk there are several predrawn landscapes for you to play 
across. It is also possible to draw your own. To do this you need 
to draw three screens with your favourite art package,  and  save 
them  in Degas uncompressed format (PI1).  These screens need  to 
link together horizontally to make up the landscape. To save disk 
space they can be compressed with Atomik afterwards if you wish.

To make sure your landscape looks right you will need to use  the 
correct colour palette. The colour palette is as follows:

Colour    Red  Green Blue      Colour    Red  Green Blue
0         0    0     0         8         6    6     6
1         2    2     2         9         5    5     5
2         0    4     0         10        4    3     2
4         4    2     0         11        3    3     3
5         3    1     0         12        7    4     0
6         2    0     0         13        0    3     0
7         6    0     0         14        0    2     2

Don't use colour 3.  When you have finished drawing your picture, 
colour 15 should be used to fill in all the areas which the worms 
can walk on.

Once you have drawn your pictures,  copy them on to a blank disk. 
Next they need to be renamed so the program can find them. Rename 
the  first  picture  to  1.pi1,   the  second  picture   to 
2.pi1,  and the third picture to 3.pi1,  where  
is the name of your landscape (Maximum length 7 letters).

Load the game like normal, then insert your picture disk when the 
title  screen appears.  When you start a match the  program  will 
automatically detect the new landscape, and it will appear on the 
landscape selection menu.

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