ÒÄ· ÖÄ· ÖÄ· ÒÄ¿ ÒÄ· Ò ÖÄ· · · ÖÒ· ÇÄ º º º º º ³ ÇÄ º ºÄÒ ÇĶ º Ó ÓĽ ÓĽ ÐÄÙ Ó Ð ÓĽ Ó Ó Ó DOOR version 4.5 User Documentation by Michael Wilson The Village 408-229-0706 USR Courier HST 14.4K 2400/9600/14.4K 24 hours / 7 days Once upon a time, there were three very good friends. Their names were Larry, Moe and Curley. Even though they spent all their time together, they would always fight. The way they fought inspired similar actions in school cafeterias around the world. Their style of getting even was so special, that we at Compufax had to make a game for Bulletin Boards around the country that emulated this style. This is Food Fight! First, I will tell you what you will see in the game, then I will tell you how to play. When you first log into the game, you are presented with a title screen that tells you that you are in FOOD FIGHT. It will also tell you if the sysop has been naughty or nice (whether he has registered this game or not). If you press return, 2 things could happen. This depends on whether you are a new user or not. IF YOU ARE A NEW USER ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ You will be presented with a screen telling you about the game. Next you will have the option of choosing an alias. This alias will be the name that everyone in the game knows you by. If you choose an alias, no one will ever know your real name! choose your alias wisely, for you will not have an opportunity to change it once you are in the game. IF YOU ARE NOT A NEW USER ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ I will check for, and display, any new personal messages for you. I will also tell you what happened to you since your last call. This list will give you the names of the people who threw things at you, what they threw, whether they hit or missed, and how much damage was done to you. FOR EVERYONE ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ I next display the message left by the last caller, if one. At last, you arrive at the main menu, the control center for the game. The Main Menu has the following options: NOTE: items marked (optional) can be disabled or changed by the sysop, and may not be available in every Food Fight game on every board. MESSAGES and WHAT HAPPENED? ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ After the initial title screen, Food Fight will check for messages for you. It will also check for activity against you. If the game is an active one, this may take several moments. Please be patient. Fight another Player ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This is the main point of this game. From here, you are presented with a list of all other players active in the game. You need to choose one. Then, you are transported to The Arena. In The Arena, your name and score are listed at the top, and you opponent's are listed on the bottom. The left side of the screen lists the foods that you have, and the quantity. The foods are labels A - J. Pressing one of these keys will throw the desired food at your opponent. You will be told if you hit or miss, and will notice a change in your score and your opponant's score. You will also be told if your opponant has protection AFTER you throw. If one of your hits disables his protection, you will also be told this. Pressing 'O' will allow you to choose another opponent. Pressing 'X' will exit back to the main menu. Prior to exiting or choosing another opponent, you have the option of leaving a 1 line message for the player you just threw food at. It will be automatically displayed next time he calls. Remember, that if you miss, your target can pick up the food and throw it back at you. You better hit...or duck. Go to the Store ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This is where you buy the food to throw. All available food is listed with the cost. Entering the desired food number, you are asked how many you want. After each transaction, your dollar amount is decreased while your food arsenal is increased. Pressing Q will exit back to the main menu. You can only carry a maximum of 500 pieces of food. So, if you are saving up for a grand assault on another player, keep this limit in mind. Also remember that the more food you carry, the easier it is to steal it. Look for Money ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Every day, each player may look for money. They must do this to buy food to throw at other people. There are 6 places where you can look for money. Each has a chance that something bad may happen. This means that you trip, are mugged, hit by a car, etc. If something bad happens, you will lose some food and/or some money. There is also a chance that something good may happen. This means you find more than the standard $20.00. No matter where you look, you will find a minimum of $20.00 Places to Look ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Sidewalk Street Alley School Yard Parking Lot In your Pockets You will need to experiment to find the best place for you to look for money. As a hint, looking In Your Pockets will always return $20.00 with no chance for bad and no chance for good. Color Toggle ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This will toggle the color on and off. Default is whatever was in the BBS system file. View Player Scores ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This will list all the players in the game, their score and the last time they played. The list is sorted with the highest score on top, and the lowest score on the bottom. Sysop's Bulletin ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ The sysop has the option of making a bulletin telling the players anything he wants. If he has created such a bulletin, it will be displayed when you press this option. You will be told if no such bulletin exists. Daily News Report ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This is the newspaper that will tell you everything that has happened in the game. You can specify a date to search from. It is suggested that you enter the date of your last call. This is a good way to see how people are doing in hitting and missing, who is the most agressive, what the most popular food is, etc. Examine Configuration ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This will display a screen detailing the following inforamtion: Version Number Names, hit percentage and damage of avialable foods Lottery tickets allowed per day Is stealing allowed? Are spys allowed and their cost Winning score Losing score Post a Message ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This allows you to leave a private message for any other player in the game. You can enter the full name, or any of the first part of the name. You will be prompted when the game thinks it knows who you want the message sent to. The editor that you will use to post your message provides automatic word wrap. You must use the BackSpace key to erase errors. Once you are on a new line, the old line is not editable. You can enter up to 150 lines of text, To save your message, press ESC. If you wish to abort your message, press Alt-X. Buy Protection (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This feature is optional, and may disabled by the sysop. If the sysop does not support this feature, and you wish him to, leave him a comment. When you exit the game, and other players come in, they can, and most likely will, throw things at you. You may buy protection against this, so that you will not lose as many points when they hit you. When you choose this option, you will be presented with a menu that looks like this: TYPE PERCENT POINTS COST ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 1 Tennis Racquet 5 10 $10 2 Table Cloth 10 20 $20 3 Heavy Coat 20 60 $30 4 Wool Blanket 35 85 $42 5 Garbage Can Lid 50 150 $60 6 Table to Hide Under 85 500 $175 S Sell your protection 0 Abort Protection purchase H HELP on your protection purchase These items are 100% configurable by the sysop, but these are the defaults. There is a help option that will explain the headings and use of the menu, as I am going to do here. TYPE: This is the type of protection PERCENT: This is the percentage of damage that the protection will absorb, and deflect away from you. For example, if someone throws a pinapple at you, and hits. Normally, this would do 100 points of damage. But, if you had a Garbage Can Lib, the pinapple would only do 50 points of damage (50% of 100). The Garbage can lib would absorb 50 points (50% of 100). POINTS: The points is the amount of damage the protection can absorb before becoming useless. In the above example, the garbage can can absorb 150 points before becoming useless. After 3 hits with a pinapple, absorbing 50 points per hit, the Garbage Can Lid would disappear, and you would be without protection. The amount of damage that your protection absorbed will be listed in the daily battle report telling you what happened to you since your last login. Using protection is up to you. The more protection you buy, the less points you will lose, but the less food you can buy and throw. So, buying protection will basically slow down the advancement of your score, and will also slow down its decline. SELL YOUR PROTECTION: If you buy some protection, and later wish to upgrade, you must sell your current protection first. If you do not, your current protection will disappear, and you will lose it. When selling your protection, the door will figure the cost per point left and offer you a reasonable sum based on that calculation. It may or may not be "top dollar", depending on the mood of the store. If you like what is being offered, then answer Y, if not, answer N. You may try to get a higher price if you do not like what is being offered, but be warned, if you try too often, the store will close, and you will not be able to sell your protection at that time. Protection is not additive. You cannot have a coat and garbage can lid. A good food fighter must be quick on his feet. To much protection will weigh you down, so multiple protections is not allowed. Try the Lottery (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This feature may be disabled by the sysop. Also, the number of tickets you may buy is set by the sysop. If you feel that the sysop should change the settings of this feature, leave him a comment. This option allows you to buy a lottery ticket. You can win up to $100. Each tickets costs $1. To play the lottery, enter a 4 digit number. The computer will then generate a random 4 digit number. For each digit you match in the same location as the computer, you win money. The jackpot, won by matching all 4 numbers, is progressive. The more money that is lost in the lottery, the larger the jackpot will become. $100 is the minimum jackpot at all times. All winnings, however, are also taken from the jackpot. So, if a player wins a dozen small prizes, the jackpot could return quickly to the $100 mark. To summarize, all money paid for tickets adds to the lottery jackpot. All money won is removed from the jackpot. Winning the jackpot guarantees a prize of at least $100. Example: If you enter 1234, and the computer has 4321, you don't win because none of your numbers are in the same position as the computer's. If you enter 1234, and the computer has 1223, you would match 1 number (the first 2). The prizes are as follows: For matching 1 number: $1 For matching 2 numbers: $15 For matching 3 numbers: $50 For matching all 4 numbers: JACKPOT You may buy a BLOCK of tickets, where your single number is matched against any number of tickets. Much quicker if you want 30 tickets using the same guess number. Tax Man (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ If you win over $100 in the lottery, there is a chance that the tax man will appear. Just like the real one, this tax man will take (without asking) 20-33% of your winnings. The sysop can disable the tax man. All money taken by the tax man, however, is put into the jackpot. ATM - The Bank (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Due to the excessive crime around the Food Fight World, we have built a bank. You access the bank by pressing 'A' from the main menu. If it is your first time in the bank, you will be told the rules of the bank, and given an opportunity to open an account. If you choose to open an account, you will need to choose a 5 digit account number. YOU MUST INPUT THIS ACCOUNT NUMBER EACH TIME YOU ENTER THE BANK! If you do not know your account number, your account will be closed, and all bank contents will be lost. To open an account, you must have either $50 cash, or 30 pieces of food. The bank is the place to store both food and money. Either way, you must also have a $5 processing fee to open the account. Like all banks, this one is closed from time to time. when it is closed, you may not transact business. Sometimes closures are temporary. Logging out, and logging back in a few hours later might find the bank open, or it may not. Once inside the bank, you can deposit, withdrawl or take out a loan (optional). If you deposit, you will be asked if it is food or money. You will then put in the amount, and the food/money is deposited. Withdrawals operate the same way, except in reverse. NOTE: Taking out a loan may be disabled by the sysop. If you want to take out a loan, press [L]oan, and Guido the loan broker will appear, ready to lend you money. You can take out any amount from $50 to $500 in $50 increments. Guido will then inform you of the terms of the loan and the interest rate. If you feel this is to high of an interest rate, or too short of a term, just say no. You may try for different terms and interest later if you wish. If, however, you try too often, you might make Guido mad, and you won't get any money. MAKE SURE YOU PAY YOUR LOANS BACK ON TIME. If you don't Guido and the boys will show up, and take your food and money, plus some of your points as interest, You'll still owe the money, however. The longer you don't pay, the worse it gets, so pay your debts. If you lose (go below the losing points), and are forced to start back at zero, you still owe the money. If you owe a loan, and have enough points to win, you will be told to pay back your money before you can win. YOU CANNOT WIN THE GAME WITH AN OUTSTANDING LOAN ON THE BOOKS. There is no way to get out of a loan except to have the sysop totally reset the game. To pay back a loan, just push P from the bank menu. The [L]loan option will be replaced with a [P]ay option after you have a loan. You can only have 1 loan at a time. You must keep your PIN number secret. If someone else knows it, they can steal your money from your account. Therfore, when your friends are over, do not let them look over your shoulder. The Bank is only enabled if the sysop allows stealing. Rob a Player or Bank (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This is an optional feature and may not be enabled in the current game. If you wish this option to be enabled, and it is not, leave a comment for the sysop...perhaps he will enable it. This option will allow you to: [A] Steal from another player (food and money not in the bank) [B] Steal from another player's bank account (food and money in the bank) [C] Steal from the bank Vault - general funds, no player's money Stealing From Another Player: If you think some other player is doing too well for their own good, you can steal from them. Buy choosing this option, you will be asked to enter a partial name of the player you wish to rob. You can find out player's names from the [V]iew Scores option on the main menu. If the player exists, you will be given the option of stealing food or money. STEALING MONEY: You will be shown the amount of money the player has. You then enter the amount you want to steal. THE MORE YOU STEAL, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING CAUGHT! You will be told if you are successful or not. STEALING FOOD: You will be given the option of stealing specific food, or all of the players food. THE MORE YOU STEAL, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING CAUGHT! You will be told if you are successful or not. If you are successful, you will get the food or money you wanted. If you fail, however, you will lose points. The points you lose could be substantial, so be careful. Stealing From Another Player's Account: If you wish to steal a player's money from the bank, you must know two things: The player's name and their account number. You will be asked to enter both. If you guess right, you get everything they had in the bank. If you miss, you could spend the night in jail. Stealing from the Vault: If you want to go for the big bucks, you can try to dynamite the vault. This is a dangerous plan since you could get caught by the police. You may also use too much dynamite, and blow yourself up! If you succeed, however, you will find as much as $1500. Hire a Spy (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ If you do not already have a spy, when you enter the "steal" screen, you will be presented with an option to hire a spy. The default cost is $150, but this option and the price are 100% configurable by the sysop. If you have enough money, you can buy a spy. With a spy, you have the option of viewing a player list that has all the money and food displayed. This way, you can see who you should steal from. A spy does not let you look into player's bank accounts, however. Also, with a spy, you have a 10% better chance of stealing without getting cost. Spys will last for the rest of the game, but there is a chance that if you are hit with massive amounts of food, your spy might get hit and leave. Kill Yourself (optional) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ If you feel you are too far down to get back up, or if you are moving away and cannot play anymore, or, if you just don't like the game anymore, you can Kill Yourself. This will remove all evidence of you from the game, and will not allow you to play again for a number of days set by the sysop. 5 days is the default. Exit to the BBS ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This will exit the door and return you to the BBS. You will be given the option to leave a 1 line message for the next caller. It will be displayed no matter who the next caller is. WINNING ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ By [E]xamining the game configuration, you will see what score is the winning score. The game is over when someone has reached that score. When the game has been won, no one else may play. If you try, you are told that the game has been won, who won it, and when it was won. LOSING ÄÄÄÄÄÄ If your score goes below the "losing score" set by the sysop, then your character will be deleted, and you will be forced to start over. This feature was added to give player another chance if they really did poorly. If you go below the losing score, the game will immediatly exit. You must sit out for one complete day before coming back into the game. When you come back into the game, you will enter as a new player. PRIZES ÄÄÄÄÄÄ The sysop has the option of offering a prize to the winner of Food Fight. If he has enabled that option, then you are presented with a description of the prize each time you enter the game. PLAYS ÄÄÄÄÄ The sysop may limit the number of plays you have per day. Make sure to examine the game configuration for that information. SUGGESTIONS ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ If you have any comments or suggestions that would make FOOD FIGHT better, please use one of the following means to conact the author: Mail: Compufax Consulting Services 7145 Aptos Beach Court San Jose, CA 95139 BBS: The Village 408-229-0706/408-229-0709 Leave comment for the SYSOP in the Main Conference [000] CompuServe: 76207,1673