******* SNOWFORT ******* (STRATOPLEX: THE SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE) It's the middle of August 1995, time for another game from me, Pete W Storonskij, author of INCINERATOR, CASTLE INCINERATOR, MANGLED FENDERS, CHECKERS CONQUEST, CONUNDRUM, SPLATTERPAINT, and now SNOWFORT!!! SPLATTERPAINT is my awesome abstract paint engine! ***** NEW FLEET SPECIFICATIONS ***** I HAVE FINISHED REVAMPING THESE AWESOME ORIGINALS! MANGLED FENDERS: ARMORED COMBAT EDITION A smarter, faster, CHECKERS CONQUEST New CONUNDRUM puzzles and enhancements (new fleet details later on in this document) All these games are now available from me! ******* NEW GAMES UNDER DEVELOPMENT! ******* Coming soon: STRATOPLEX: Embrace The Adrenaline... The ULTIMATE Game In The History Of The Universe! (abbreviation: "TUGITHOTU" :) Explanation of this phenomenon later on in this document. ******* MY ANIMATIONS ******* GOLFING WITH NUKES: an animation about destroying a golf- course. Planetary Fly-By: The first part of my planetary incursion animation, featuring my exclusive technique allowing you to see a rotating, zooming earth with a polar orbit! ******* INTRODUCTION ******* (What is STRATOPLEX?) I have succeeded in my mission of creating The Ultimate Games In The History Of The Universe. This is the most diverse fleet of games ever created by a single person! Now you can play Snowfort, the first game designed using the aesthetic design principles of "Feng Shuey". You can now get my games for new lower prices, as defined in the middle of this document. You can get 1 disk from my armada for $3, 2 disks for $5, 3 disks for $8, 4 disks for $10, etc... All quoted prices are USA Dollar Quotes. Current exchange rates cannot be printed, as they change daily. To save postage, avoid sending metal coinage, and round to the nearest full currency unit. Also, you cannot print your own currency, even if you intend to become your very own country. Skip to the end of this document if you want to read my short story. It is another extra, inherent in this newest game. *** *** *** *** WHAT IS SNOWFORT? *** *** *** *** (Remember, STRATOPLEX is coming soon!) SNOWFORT lets you build snowforts and throw snowballs to your heart's content. You can be any of the characters in Snowfort: a Player, a snowman, or Death. Each has it's own special characteristics to master. Battle between 6 players to gain territory by rolling up large snowballs to either build impassible walls, or throw them at your friends. Players can move and fire in all 8 joystick directions. Snowfort defines the highest levels of playability ever in any game. Destroy fortifications with snowballs or stand by the fire- drum to gain energy. This melts snowballs as well as Snowmen so watch out for it. Death goes around draining people's energy, and are really just reincarnated CONUNDRUM tiles :) You can choose to control Players, Snowmen, or Death, whatever you prefer. As always, this game is hard drive installable by simply dragging the files over. ******* PLAY SEQUENCE INSTRUCTIONS ******* (STRATOPLEX, STRATOPLEX, STRATOPLEX) All characters can make snowballs. In order to do this, you must hold down the fire button on the joystick and run around where there is some snow. This lets your character build up a massive snowball. What the snowball is used for (and it's effects) are determined by the size of the snowball. In the Control Panel, the six snowball sizes can be programmed to do what you want. If you are standing still, and you hold down the fire button, you can fire a continuous barrage of the smallest snowballs. It is this "Snowball Barrage" that enables you to guard access corridors in the snow. You will notice that you leave a trail when gathering snow. You will also notice that the trail is getting slowly filled in with falling snow. It's Snowing! The rate of snow fall is based on spare processor time, so faster Amigas have awesome blizzards! The teleporters in the corners of the screen will take you from one end of the playing field to another. This is a useful tactic if you are cornered, or want to invade another fort. You can place snowballs over the teleporters to block them, which is also useful at times. Each player has the ability to teleport if they are stuck, by using the F1-F6 keys. There are a limited number of these, so they should not be wasted. The Player character is the basic character type, and can slowly replenish energy at the fire-drum. The Snowman character has the ability to walk around and gather snow for it's energy bar. This is done only if the fire button is NOT pressed, since Snowmen can also make snowballs. Of course, the fire-drum will hurt a Snowman if it is too close. The Death character has the ability to drain energy from other players. Death cannot drain energy from other Death players, nor can it gain energy from the fire-drum. Death is by far the most powerful of the players. There are three basic types of game: Elimination, Capture the Flag, and Tag. The Elimination objective just lets you attack each other normally, by building forts, hiding behind them, and throwing snowballs. The other types of game allow these actions as well, but with some modifications. Capture the Flag allows you to grab an enemy's flag, then run over to your home base and touch your starting point. This kills the player whose flag it is, and relocates the flag. Flags cannot be teleported, so you have to move through the thick of battle to get the flag home. Most importantly, your snowballs will teleport players to their starting position, making it possible to guard your flag effectively. The Game of Tag has a pointer that drains energy from the player with it. Touching another player allows you to pass the pointer to another player. The pointer is randomly relocated if the player with it runs out of energy. ******* CONTROL PANEL INSTRUCTIONS ******* (The Pete W Storonskij game of STRATOPLEX) The control panel lets you drastically modify the game's parameters, and to set conditions that will determine the difficulty level, as well as the very nature of the game. GAME OPTIONS: Toggle between Elimination, Capture the flag, and Tag. Fort Setup: This lets you design the playing field for the game. You can put in or remove the Fire-Drum or the Teleporters, or any of the starting fortifications. Practice will let a player explore with no enemies to contend with, mostly to teach the player how to play. Use the ESC key or space bar to exit from this section. Play starts the game, have fun... The Save option lets you save the current control panel state, so when you load the game, you have customized settings. Quit will exit the game, darn. SNOWBALL OPTIONS: There are six snowball sizes to set. You have the options to individually set them to a Fort-Building snowball, or one of three types of thrown snowball. Thrown snowballs either stop at fortifications, damage fortifications, or go directly over fortifications. You can actually ruin the game if you set them in certain ways, but try it anyway, since you can always change it back. PLAYER OPTIONS: There are three types of players, as mentioned before: a human Player, a Snowman, and Death, with death being the most powerful. Individual players can either be turned off, set to joystick control, or set to one of four computer intelligence levels. The player's speed can be set to fast, medium and slow. The team option lets you decide who is on who's side, so you don't have to kill off players on your side. Finally, you can set your number of lives from one to six. This determines (partly) the length of the game, and the difficulty level. In the demo version, most of the options set in the Control Panel will be negated when you start to play. The game will notify you of this. The computer players are also notorious for cheating, since they get infinite lives, and you don't :) *********** LEGAL MANEUVERS *********** (STRATOPLEX: EMBRACE THE ADRENALINE) Snowfort is copyright © 1995 Pete W Storonskij, all rights reserved. All of Snowfort's support files, Icons, song, and short story are copyright ©1995 Pete W Storonskij, All Rights reserved. The full version of Snowfort is not distributible in any way, except for directly from me. This is the playable demo version, which has been sufficiently disabled to let you know which features you can get by registering for the full game. SnowfortDemo and all of it's support files, icons, song, and short story, are to be distributed intact, unaltered and present, and in the manner in which I have designed them. I am hereby lifting the CD distribution ban for all of my demo versions, as it has served it's purpose for which it was declared. It is another testiment to my generosity! ******* TESTING, TESTING, 1,2,3 ******* (THIS SPACE FOR RENT, maybe not...) After several months of exhaustive testing on all Amiga models from an armada of testers, I have determined that all of my games will work on all Amigas with sufficient memory. If any of them don't work, then go into the cli, and type either "SET CPU" or "RESET VBR" or both, this will fix all previous loading difficulties. Thanks to the people who told me that too :) :D (Actually, my A3000 uses the 030 chip, and some of my games were developed with it, so they definately work with it :). Also, my stock A1200 runs all of my games perfectly :) ******* MISDECLARATIONS... ******* (XELPOTARTS, XELPOTARTS, XELPOTARTS) I would like to fix a few misdeclarations floating around: First of all, SplatterPaint wasn't used for my artwork, DPaint and Brilliance were my tools for creating them (although they certainly could have been made with Splatterpaint, but it would have taken lots longer for me to create them :). All of my games work with WB 1.3 (Including Mangled Fenders, referring to a misprint in one of the adverts in an England magazine), the culprit there is noted above, that SET CPU and RESET VBR fix. Also, I seem to have a new cellar, as well (a perfectly harmless, and amusing (in a good way) saying :) :D. I have also heard that my snow sculptures have melted, well, that is true :). My new fleet of snow sculptures goes into production this winter. I have done some sand sculptures, as well as more traditional mediums, like oil paintings :) ******* REVOLUTIONARY PRICING STRATEGY ******* (STRATOPLEX, worth more, same low price, coming soon) Here it is! You can get any 2 disks of my armada of games for $5 for just 1 disk for $3. These prices effectively negate previous declarations (since it might be possible to combine them with this one and wind up with the entire fleet of games for something less than I can afford :). This lets you get 4 disks for $10, instead of the previous 3 as offered earlier. These are the FULL VERSIONS, which are only available directly from me :). Let's see: 1 disk costs $3 2 disks cost $5 3 disks cost $8 4 disks cost $10 etc... Disk #1) Incinerator and New CheckersConquest Disk #2) Castle Incinerator and New Conundrum Disk #3) Mangled Fenders (V1.1) Disk #4) SplatterPaint Version 1.67 (with some of my artwork) Disk #5) SNOWFORT Disk #6) Mangled Fenders: Armored Combat Edition Disk #7) New CheckersConquest and New Conundrum I recommend disks 1, 2, 5, and 6 as a set, since you get SIX FULL GAMES for $10, instead of the standard $20 for a single game of the same calibur. Remember, My games are of the same, or higher quality than all other games! Let's see: 6/10, or 12/20, Value Quotient for my games. compared to 1/20, Value Quotient for a fictional other game. A simple calculator yields that you get twelve times the value out of my fleet than you can possibly get with this example. What if you only like half of them? Well, you still get a six times value from me, and even more if you decided beforehand only to get the ones you like! Splatterpaint is freely distributible in it's full form, so spread Splatterpaint around :) Let's see: 1/0, Value Quotient for Splatterpaint, this is the highest rating anyone can ever get! The Rating is so high, it is undefined by conventional mathematics. Remember, only my paint program, and my checkers game, defy the laws of the Universe! (Version numbers may increase, which is a good thing) Mangled Fenders V1.1 has memory conservation code, and will try to fit the game in available memory by substituting car graphics (This is also a good thing). ******* BLIZZARD or "Lacooni" ******* Make sure your background is white, if not, change it to white for viewing of this "lacooni". Now that you have experienced a blizzard, it's time to continue with the document:) ******* AWESOME GAMES BY ME ******* (STRATOPLEX: Wear a Titanium Helmet for safety) In 1994, I have developed and released an entire fleet of 5 awesome games. These games have set new standards in the games industry. My games are simply the greatest ever to exist. They have the highest quality graphics, gameplay, and ingenuity that exist only in my games! In the last part of this document, I declared cheaper prices for my games, so I have removed references to cash for full versions from the descriptions below. Remember, the only source for my armada of full versions is directly from me :) CONUNDRUM is my abstract hexagon based puzzle board game, where the object is to negate all of the colored tiles by placing them next to each other. This game was inspired by all of those hexagonal floor tiles you commonly find on bathroom floors. Despite the high level of abstraction, Conundrum is very simple to play, and Conundrum is highly addictive for any puzzle gamer. My awesome original has a new swath of power in the new version of CONUNDRUM. It has 20 new bonus round puzzles, as well as several new "Super Tiles". Super Tiles enclude a Wipe Tile to destroy the grey matter, and Super Negator Tiles that drain color from all of the tiles on the board. The greatest enhancement yet is the addition of a second "ready" position, so you can choose between two different tiles to place on the board. The 10 second Death Limit remains as ominous as ever. You can also play just the bonus rounds, if you like. There is even a cheat mode in this spectacular new game! MANGLED FENDERS is my top view, 6 player demo derby game, where the objective is to destroy all of the other vehicles, by crashing into them. There are cash awards to all the players, depending on the order in which they are destroyed. There are different types of vehicles, so you can pick the one that suits you. You can even pick multiple cars to one input device, as a novelty feature. Both joysticks are supported in Full Version, as well as continued play. The ARMORED COMBAT EDITION of MANGLED FENDERS lets you stock up on essential ammo and blast your way to victory with your choice of 6 battle tanks from various countries. The fire button releases barrages of powerful munitions against enemy targets that lie in your path. This Is True Mangled Fenders Style! INCINERATOR is THE Decisive 3D missile attack/defend game, where you defend your city from the enemy's missiles and helicopters, with your laser cannons, forcefields, and super bombs. Every other round, you get to pulverize the enemy city, with missiles of your own. It supports NTSC/PAL, is hard drive installable, has high scores, and a secret cheat mode. CASTLE INCINERATOR is a graphics rewrite of Incinerator, with castles instead of cities, and horses instead of missiles. The graphics are the only real change, but WOW, they are so awesome. Well, I have had the chance to improve it a bit more than that, as I have improved the sounds and gameplay too. I have made what used to be the helicopter more powerful, as it can now drain the shields with a special beam. Actually, the helicopter is now a giant bird, with flapping wings instead of rotor blades. It was fun rewriting the docs for it. It looked silly in text, having to defend a castle from flatulent horses, with laser wielding mages. It will be available from me only, since I am greedy (well, not really :), so it is another incentive to register with me. CHECKERS CONQUEST is a checkers game with lots of features, and has intelligent computer opponents. There are lots of options, including changing the board layout, and showing possible threatened positions. There is no demo version of Checkers Conquest, as the freely distributible version of it is available almost anywhere, another testiment to my generosity. The New Version of Checkers Conquest has another level of computer intelligence, a standard numbered game board, and new options like Fast play and a new rule option. Gee, let's see, thats one... two... three... four... FIVE games, all released in 1994, that was a lot of stuff, I should be exhausted by now, but no! As you are experiencing first hand, I have another game, a paint program, and a few of my awesome originals redesigned and already released! This brings my fleet of games up to an awesome armada! It is my policy to give at least something to everyone, this is why Splatterpaint and Checkers Conquest are freely distributible. It is also why some games only have minimal disablement. I have also given bonus games to my registerers, since they are the fuel that keep the Incinerplex running. This conjures up images of people being sacraficed to volcanoes, oops. ******* FUTURE GAMES ******* (STRATOPLEX: DON'T STARE DIRECTLY INTO THE MONITOR) I have played around with several possible new games, even a standard shoot-em-up, and this is what I have come up with: STRATOPLEX: This game, when finished, will be without a doubt The Greatest Game Ever Conceived In The History Of The Universe. The release date for this game is yet to be announced. This awesome game uses my exclusive "Embrace The Adrenaline" Play Sequence and Algorithm, as well as the aesthetic design principles of "Feng Shuey". "Embrace The Adrenaline" refers to my new Play Sequence, which is also an Algorithm and a Set of Protocols. When used in conjunction with the reverse polarity version of the Ambiance Inhibitor, yielding an Ambiance Spectaculomoplex Matrix that causes a synaptic overload that creates hours of unadulterated pure adrenaline pumping through your vital organs. Also, if you stare directly into the monitor, a Psionic Wave Cascade will sweep through your brain and cause your head to explode, oops. Unfortunately, withdrawal from this sensory overload phenomenon could cause motion sickness, halucinations, or total neural disruption, resulting in a spontaneous bursting of the human head, and a possible chain reaction of human head explosions from the insuing Psionic Wave Cascade. Of course, to avert this catastrophe, you should delve directly into oragami, and stick your tongue slightly out of one side of your mouth. The resulting drooling will ground your psionic reserves, avoiding the side effects. You should also keep your cats or other animals away from the monitor, causing similiar effects. YOU SHOULD NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, split the output to two monitors, and face them at each other. This will cause a rift in the continuum, and the insuing flux will draw the entire Universe in on itself. This may cause a chain reaction and completely incinerate the entire Omniverse, where our Universe resides as a seemingly insignifant bubble. Actually, it is this reaction that powers the Stratoplex in the first place. OOPS, this seems to define a paradox, a conundrum that will destroy the entire Stratoverse, oh darn. ******* WRITE TO ME ******* My address is: Pete W Storonskij Incinerplex Games 200 A street Lincoln, NE 68502 USA Please specify which games you want, as I have written several games. If you want, just say hi, or blah, which ever one you prefer :) ***** SHORT STORY ***** (Still don't know what STRATOPLEX IS?, darn :) Here is a short story I wrote back in 1990, so the plot might be a bit rusty, and any acronyms of modern events is purely coincidental (ITO, oops :). ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** Several Years after the Thrantoxian planetary cloaking device became operational, and with the completed construction of a new and much larger fleet of Planet Cruisers, the Thrantoxians felt they were safe to explore the galaxy. The entire fleet of 10,000 Planet Cruisers was ready to leave the planet by the time the Ambiance Inhibitor was fully powered down. The energy plasma generators at the planet's poles slowly ceased pumping energy into the electromagnetic field and the image of the planet slowly emerged. The planet of Thrantox 4 was surrounded by a vast network of hexagonal space station sections, loosely interconnected by shafts of blue light. It was this design that enabled the Ambiance Inhibitors to cloak the planet. Immediately, the Planet Cruisers began streaming through the spaces between the stations. Once all of the ships were clear of the planet, the Ambiance Inhibitors started to rebuild the field that would disguise the planet once again. The fleet of Planet Cruisers set their course to the location of the last battle. All of the ships powered up their main engines and left orbit of their planet in three thick waves and exited the star system. After several days of flight, when the constellations deformed out of recognition, the Thantoxians knew they were getting close so they started to power down their engines. When they arrived at the battle area after a relatively short journey, they found that all of the ships destroyed in the last battle had formed sort of a globular asteroid field in the region that the battle was in. The Thrantoxians analyzed the debris and discovered that everything constructed by the enemy empire had been reduced to globs of radioactive dust. The Thrantoxians figured that the enemy empire had sent ships to the battle area and vaporized anything that could give away the enemy's technology. The debris from their own ships was still largely intact, so they decided to collect spare parts and install any undamaged weapons they found within the field. After the Planet Cruisers were refitted, they powered up their engines and proceeded to go to the enemy's home planet, it's location still marked by a thin trail of radioactive dust. The planet was still covered with Super Planet Cruisers, but there was nothing orbiting the planet, and there was very little activity detected on the planet. The Thrantoxian fleet sent several messages to the enemy planet, and none of them received a reply. Half of the Planet Cruisers activated their Ambiance Inhibitors and broke off to explore the neighboring planets for ambush fleets that could unexpectedly ruin their efforts to destroy the enemy planet. The ships analyzed the other planets and found no signs of activity. The Thrantoxian fleet grew tired of waiting, so they targeted the enemy ships on the planet, but their laser guidance systems were compromised by the thick atmosphere. The Thrantoxians knew they couldn't use their laser weapons, so they started to bombard the enemy fleet with their arrays of missiles. The missiles appeared to be hitting their targets, but there was no damage. The Thrantoxians were about to give up when one of their missiles had detonated in the center of a region of ships and had destroyed all of the ships in that region. Analysis of that region showed that there were large amounts of radioactive dust in the atmosphere around the destroyed enemy ships. The Thrantoxians were confused by this, so they started a simulation to comprehend this phenomenon. The enemy ships didn't respond. There didn't seem to be anyone on the entire planet. There were no defence systems, and the enemy ships were being destroyed too easily. They decided to wait until the simulation was solved. When it was, they discovered that there were large deposits of radioactive metals in the ground located under the centers of the regions of ships. This coupled with the atmospheric phenomenon would produce the effect of magnifying and multiplying the images of anything sitting on the deposits from an orbital viewpoint. The Thrantoxians decided to continue their target practice, concentrating their efforts on the centers of the regions of ships. Soon the planet was blanketed with a thick cloud of radioactive dust, rendering it uninhabitable. The fleet that was sent off to explore had discovered that there was a second, faint trail of radioactive dust that continued out of the system in another direction. They had once again powered up their engines and decided to follow the trail to whatever lies ahead. After travelling about twice as far as they had come, they had followed the trail to a system of synthetically constructed planets. They immediately cloaked half or their ships for protection. There was an asteroid belt here, similar to the debris field at the battle scene so the Thrantoxians figured that the enemy fleet was vaporized. Further analysis of the asteroid belt showed something very strange. There was very large lettering written in the radioactive dust that said "WELCOME TO THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE INTERGALACTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION". The fleet had recieved a message directing them to land on one of the planets in the system and meet in the conference room in the largest planet. After docking their ships in convienent parking garages burrowed deep into the synthetic planets, the Thrantoxians took transport ships to the conference room where they met the leaders of the enemy empire. The enemy leaders continued to explain how there was a really large battle between all of the intergalactic empires at this location, and that the loss of ships was so great that they could no longer defend their empires. They continued to explain how they all got together to build a system of synthetic planets that would be the Headquarters for the Intergalactic Treaty Organization. they also said that they had mistakenly built their fleet of Super Planet Cruisers out of radioactive metals that decayed in a few years. After a discussion concerning he future of the universe, the leaders of the enemy empire said that they would send transport ships to Thrantox 4 to fill them in on the details and show them around the synthetic star system. The Thrantoxians wanted to use their own ships, and this is when the leader of the enemy empire said that this was all a trick to destroy the planet of Thrantox and all of it's inhabitants. They also said that the Thrantoxian Planet Cruisers were already being destroyed by their own forces. The conference room had become a war zone. The Thrantoxians headed off to the transport ships and signaled their fleet of the fiasco. This is when half of the Thrantoxian fleet emerged from the asteroid belt where they were waiting to make sure this wasn't a trap or anything like that. 5,000 Thrantoxian Planet Cruisers armed to the teeth with lasers and missiles came down on the planets in gigantic sheet-like formations and blasted away at the surfaces of the planets. They destroyed several hundered enemy Super Planet Cruisers that were streaming out of the planets, and damaged the surfaces of the planets. Panels broke away from the planets revealing natural planets plated with extensive armor that was designed to make them look artificially constructed. About a thousand Thrantoxian ships and a few hundered hijacked transport ships escaped from the parking garages that looked suspiciously like incinerators. 20,000 enemy Super Planet Cruisers emerged from the planets firing all of their weapons at the attacking Planet Cruisers. The Thrantoxian fleet flew their ships close to the planet surfaces in their sheet-like formations that wrapped around the planets. They bombarded the planets as they fired thick laser volleys at the enemy Super Planet Cruisers. The Thrantoxian ships broke out of their orbits simultaneously and flew in their formations like gigantic intergalactic knives, splitting up the main mass of the enemy fleet. The enemy Super Planet Cruisers were picking off the Thrantoxian ships much faster than the Thrantoxians were destroying them, so the largest Thrantoxian sheet formation proceeded to the smallest planet in the system and wrapped themselves evenly around the planet. Thin shafts of blue light slowly started to interconnect the ships. This is when they extended their Field Ambiance Inhibitors around the planet making it disappear. The rest of the Thrantoxian fleet led the Super Planet Cruisers on a collision course with the cloaked planet. The Thrantoxians diverged into a donut formation, with the planet passing through it's center. The plan had worked, as the enemy ships crashed into the planet, thinking that the Thrantoxians were trying to retreat. After the battle, all of the enemy ships were destroyed and only one quarter of the Thrantoxian ships had survived. The Thrantoxians sent their ships home, as they were once again victorious over a really large enemy empire.