NOTES ABOUT HARDCORE FOR GAME TESTERS: Accompanying this text file is HARDCORE.PRG, which is an early version of the game HARDCORE currently being written. This demo version contains five levels; after level five they repeat and the difficulty of the game increases. The demo will run on any 68000- or 68030- based Atari with 1 Meg or more of RAM. It is still a bit quirky in places and crashes occasionally. Please do not distribute the game in this raw unpolished form. Please play the game and write back to me with criticisms. I'm especially interested to hear any comments about: the speed of the game(too slow or fast?), smoothness of graphics (frame update) - does it get unacceptably slow in your opinion? playability (can you understand what to do? is there enough skill required - or too much?), graphics (are they OK? can you actually see them?) and anything else about which you have an opinion (about the game, that is - not about whether you believe in God or why the damn Tories got back in). Thanxx: -- Y a K April '92 HARDCORE: Game description and play instructions Hardcore is an insanely fast shoot-em-up. It is different from the majority of such games in that (1) the player is represented onscreen not by a single object but by five objects, one of which is immortal and (sometimes) intelligent; and (2) the game is not oriented about a particular axis (e.g. horizontally-scrolling or vertically-scrolling games). Like Llamatron, the game is played in a screen-sized arena. The player is represented by five objects: four guns and a 'puck'. Each of the four guns runs along one edge of the arena. Using the mouse, the player can move the guns at the left-hand and bottom edges of the screen. The guns at the top and right-hand edge move in the opposite direction to the player-controlled guns; so if the player moved the bottom gun to the left-hand edge, the top gun would move to the right-hand edge. (Wizened types may remember the Vic-20 game Hellgate, which had the same arrangement of guns). The guns fire continuously into the arena without any mouse buttons being pressed. Pressing the left button activates side lasers along all four tracks. The final player element in the arena is the puck. The demo game defaults to the smart-puck option, in which the puck actively seeks to destroy enemies independantly (this mode will be one of the CPU- assisted play modes of the final game). Bullets fired at the puck cause it to ricochet around the arena. Big points are earned for killing enemies with the puck. It is indestructible. Whenever the puck hits an arena wall, the gun attached to that wall gets 30 jiffies of invincibility (denoted by a flashing wall and a glowing shield around the gun). Pressing the left mouse button on the title page begins the game demo. Your guns and puck will appear, followed by the enemies. Enemies rez into the arena by a cross-shaped particle system effect. They can be destroyed by shots from the guns or by impact with the puck. Some enemies are shielded and require multiple shots to destroy. Occasionally, beasties will appear. The player will receive a bonus if he can 'collect' the beasties with the puck. The player begins a game with twelve lives, represented by twelve cans of Coke at the right screen edge. One can of Coke is turned into a can of Pepsi each time a gun is destroyed. When the player's stock of the Real Thing is completely replaced by the inferior substitute liquid, the game is over. The player's guns may be destroyed by impact with any enemy or projectile. A destroyed gun explodes and provided enough Cokes are left, a replacement is rezzed in straight away. BONUSES AND GOOD THANGS Skilful play and amassing points will result in a large sheep emerging from the left-hand screen edge. Each sheep carries an icon representing a powerup goodie. You get the powerup by causing an ovine collision with the puck. If the sheep remain uncollected they will eventually depart on the right-hand edge of the screen. Big-sheep powerups are as follows: ICON EFFECT Coke can Extra life Lighter Hot Bullets for a while Glowing star thing Next 10 enemies to rez in destroyed immediately Yellow puck Give player direct control of puck (guns disappear; player is invincible for duration) Small puck in + sign Give puck XY lasers (tasty) Heart Beasties run towards puck Brain Makes puck smart (if it isn't already) Llama Shot enemies turned into beasties Hot bullets are also given for 30 jiffies for killing or collecting anything with the puck. (Hot bullets, for anyone who never played Llamatron, are strong bullets which are not stopped by collision with enemies). Staying alive is rewarded by occasional Rave periods. During Rave periods, the guns are indestructible and the bullets are hot. KEY COMMANDS For your convenience the following key commands may be used during gameplay: 'p': Pause game ('o' to restart) 'h': Change Hz on an ST; crash a TT. 's': Toggle Strobes off/on 'i': Toggle puck Intelligence off/on 'n': Go straight to Next level of demo PLAY GUIDELINES Try to grok the screen as a whole rather than attempting to watch individual guns. Use the cross-shaped rez-in patterns of the enemies as an advance indicator of where they will appear: when you are playing well you don't really see the enemies because the moment they rez in you're already aimed and pumping a couple of streams of bullets into the space in which he appears. When playing with the non-AI puck, be sure to keep it in play. Never let it lie idle. Use it whenever possible to kill enemies, because you get more points and Hot Bullets, which not only destroy enemies more effectively, but also accelerate the puck to great velocity. Getting the puck into a really fast ricochet has the dual advantage of wiping out a lot of enemies and shielding the guns on the walls from which it is bouncing almost continuously. When you start finding the game easy, try starting a game and immediately press 'i' to turn off the puck brains; this is the equivalent of a no-CPU-assist mode. DEVELOPMENT The game will have the following added: a lot more levels with new enemies introduced constantly throughout; option for control by joystick; 2-player mode (one pair of guns controlled by Player One on mouse and the other pair BUGS What I'm after is thoughts about gameplay rather than a bug report. I know it's quite buggy at the moment: it'll sometimes just lunch out, there can be discrepancies between the displayed number of lives and the amount of your guns onscreen, and sometimes the firing of the puck in player-control mode and the behaviour of vector-seeking bullets can be strange when there are less than four guns on screen. All this stuff is known and will be fixed. -- UPDATE 3/5/92: There are now five levels, most of the bugs are fixed (although don't be surprised if it occasionally decides to go out to lunch {or, indeed, any other major repast}). The side-firing bullets have been taken out, as they didn't deliver the instant death required when you're in a tight spot. Instead you now get lasers along all four tracks which instantly fry any destructible enemies within range. There is no limit on firing these lasers but conventional firing stops while the side lasers are on. Play the game in 60Hz if your monitor can take it to fully appreciate the manic speed of this game. Pip Pip! -- A Large Hairy Bovine Thingie