Hot Air v0.5 Copyright (c) 1994, Joe Rumsey This is a work in progress, there are still bugs, and this documentation is not complete. This version is Freeware, you may distribute it so long as no profit is made. A reasonable fee for disk copying may be charged. There is no other version *YET*. Eventually I hope to have a shareware version with all the bugs cleaned up and many more levels. So far however, this is IT. It's just been sitting around too long stagnating, so I've released it as is. Please report any bugs you find, and maybe I will eventually get it finished for real. For now, you can send me money if you just feel like making me happy, but you won't get anything back from me ;-) However, if you send me a disk and a SASE I *will* send the disk back with a copy of all my other games. This includes Mother Lode, Crazy Pipes, and Bomb Squad. It may include more than that, those are all I guarantee it will have :-) To play the game, just double click on the "Hot Air" icon. To run it from a CLI window, make sure you are in the directory which contains the data files and type "Air". Note that while it does take over the Amiga's display, it is NOT taking over the whole computer. Tasks you have running will continue to run, and when you quit the display will be restored. This being an early version, there's not title screen or options page. Starting from the CLI you can type "Air " to start on that level(the default is 1). In addition, there are a few keyboard commands: quits immediately(actually, the only way to quit right now;) n skip to the next level p Pause: while paused, the joystick will scroll around the level instead of controlling your man. < and > control playing speed. r "R"eplay - will replay what you've done on this level. Only way out of replay mode is to quit (ESC). I Intend to use this to make a demo mode. If you think it's worth keeping in the finished version, let me know. To control the game, use a joystick in port 2. Left/right make your man move(either running or in midair) and pushing up causes him to jump. The button will normally plant a bomb. Planting a bomb next to certain objects (left, right, above or below, not diagonally) causes things to happen. Yellow striped walls will disappear, and crates of TNT will explode the same way as bombs. IE if a crate of TNT blows up next to more TNT, it sets off a chain reaction. Explosions do not hurt you at all. Pressing the space bar will switch your man to placing shields instead of planting bombs. Shields will block balloons from passing, but not you. A shield can be removed by blowing a bomb up on top of it(known current bug: shield image doesn't disappear). So what do you do with bombs and shields? The object of the game is to guide the balloons that are floating around to the exit at the top of each level. The exit is a circular opening with 4 flashing green lights. Balloons naturally just drift slowly upwards until they run into something. Most things they run into will just make them stop and bounce around. They do bounce sideways a little bit, so they may "dribble" over the edge of something blocking them. There are also fans which can blow the balloons around. Fans, in defiance of physics, blow outward in BOTH directions. Of course, they only blow as far as there's a clear path. Which is one use for bombs: to clear out obstacles blocking a fan from blowing the balloons somewhere useful. If a balloon RUNS INTO a fan, it pops. This is bad. On most levels you need to get ALL of the balloons to the exit. At the top of the screen you will see info on how many are needed, left, etc. The current version has no way to restart a level when you find you can't finish it. This will be corrected, but for now either die(the main type of "monster" is a fireball that slides back and forth on a platform. Not present on every level...) or press which quits entirely, and restart the game. There are also spikes which will pop balloons, guide them away from these. Most levels are set up to let you guide the balloons just by clearing a path for them. Sometimes you will have to move fast to clear one path so that they don't go the wrong way. An option on most levels is to use your shields to contain the balloons somewhere safe while you clear a path, then blow up the shields. There are gems which work like keys: grab the gem first, then go to the matching lock(matching colors) and run over it. There are other objects around, experiment! Also, the first level is a sort of tutorial. Follow the arrows around, and try to plant a bomb everywhere you see an explosion. This will show you the basics. As I've said, this version isn't exactly finished, and it does have bugs. Some I know about, some I probably don't. Please let me know, and especially tell me anything you think would improve the game itself. If anyone's interested in creating some levels, I will consider sending you the level editor. Otherwise, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it available or not. If/when I release a shareware version of the game I'd like to release it with ~15 levels, and then include 20-30 more with the registered version. That's the main thing that's been keeping me from finishing this. It's very difficult coming up with good levels for this game. Most of the time they wind up either being trivial or impossible. I hope all the levels I've included(aside from one or two which are obviously not finished) are somewhere in between. (About the shark on level 6: YES I KNOW IT SPLITS IN HALF! You mean real sharks don't do that?? Oh alright I'll fix it sometime :-) Ok, enough rambling, play the game! Questions, comments, suggestions, hate mail, other stuff should be sent to: (preferred) InterNet: jrumsey@cs.ucr.edu (not checked often)GEnie: J.RUMSEY Snail Mail: (Not likely to get a response w/o email) Joe Rumsey 3636 Watkins Dr. Riverside, CA 92507 Other Amiga games I've done: Mother Lode Crazy Pipes Bomb Squad And if you happen to have access to the internet, and can run DNet, check out Netrek! DNet and the DNet Netrek client are available on ocf.berkeley.edu in /pub/amiga. Briefly, netrek is a 16 player internet game based loosely on star trek. The game itself is not my invention, but I've been heavily involved in the Amiga client. (Hopefully we'll have an AmiTCP version soon... I don't have AmiTCP installed myself, but I'm working on it. Volunteers to do the conversion are welcome to the source. In fact, anyone is welcome to the source, just ask!) DNet is a great way to connect to the internet even apart from the netrek client. If you can connect to a system that gives you a Unix shell with telnet/ftp access, you can probably run DNet. Give it a try! The latest version is 2.40(there is a 2.42, only needed if you can't get the Unix side of v2.40 to compile. This applies mainly to SysV systems). As of this writing, the latest version of the DNetrek client is on ocf.berkeley.edu in pub/amiga with the filename ntparadise.2.3p8.dnamiga.lha Paradise is an extension of regular netrek, but this client works equally well with either. -Joe Rumsey July, 1994