COPYRIGHT BLURB: The Qbic program, its code, graphic images, sound effects, music score and documentation are copyright (C) 1992 Ronald Pieket Weeserik. It may be distributed freely, provided that both the program and the documentation are present and unaltered. The following files must be included in any distribution: QBIC - The main program file. QBIC.DOC - The documentation file. (The one you are reading!) SHAREWARE BLURB: THIS GAME IS CHARITYWARE... If you enjoy playing Qbic, and intend to keep it, you are asked to make a donation to a deserving charity of your own choice. Consider for instance: The Terrence Higgins Trust FREEPOST 52-54 Gray's Inn Road London WC1X 8BR The Terrence Higgins Trust has played leading part in the fight against AIDS, and must continue doing so. FEEDBACK: Any feedback, postcards or plain chocolates you may send to: Ronald Pieket Weeserik 26 Saltoun Road London SW2 1EP England Or Email: ronald@cix.compulink.co.uk GAME HISTORY: Qbic is loosely based on my second commercial game, called Fuzzball, published in 1986, released only on the MSX format. (I was paid five hundred Dutch guilders for that - about one hundred pounds in those days.) In the years that followed I made programming games my job, and produced seven MSX and four Amiga/ST titles, among which Amiga Silkworm, The Ninja Warriors, SWIV and Rodland. Fuzzball has always been my personal favourite. Both because of its playability and its history. However since I don't own an MSX computer anymore, an Amiga version was called for. I could not call it Fuzzball, because another game has recently been released with that name - a game that has nothing to do with my original MSX Fuzzball. PLAYING THE GAME: You control Qbic with the joystick. Qbic can only jump diagonally. Therefore, you must turn the joystick by 45 degrees in clockwise direction. So 'up' will become 'back/right', 'down' becomes 'forward/left', 'left' becomes 'back/left', and 'right' moves Qbic 'forward/right'. (There is an alternate control method available, see the 'BUTTONS AND KEYS' section.) Be careful not to jump off the pyramid - you can't fly! Jumping onto a spinning disk will take you back to the top of the pyramid. The object of the game is simple: on each pyramid, change the colour of all the cubes into the target colour. The target colour is shown in the top left hand corner of the screen. You will encounter various characters while doing that. In order of appearance: Spheric - You will see a lot of these. It is the simplest of your enemies. All you can do is dodge them. Snakey - Bounces down the pyramid as a large purple ball. Once hatched, he will pursue Qbic relentlessly. If you can, jump onto one of the spinning discs, just as Snakey is about to get you. This animal must be far-sighted. Mind you, his eyesight improves with age! Cling - This is what is called a 'sidewalker'. Disregarding newtonian physics. Hint: if you time it right, you can jump over them! Cool - Blue, that means he is safe to touch. Cool as he is, he doesn't look where he's going and will jumble up your work. Jump on him to send him away. Magic - These blue crystals come like a gift from heaven! When touched, their magic spell will freeze everything on the pyramid, apart from Qbic himself. During this magic time you may jump around freely, but be quick - it won't last forever... BUTTONS AND KEYS: Press the fire button to begin a new game. During the game, the fire button is used to speed up the bonus countdown and the 'Get Ready!' screen. Pause the game by pressing the 'P' key, or the space bar. Press again to resume play. The escape key aborts the game, and takes you back to the title screen. During the attract sequence, the escape key is used to turn the page. At any time, but not during the game, pressing F1 or F2 will take you to the control selection screen. If you find the diagonal joystick hard to get used to, try the 'straight' control method. See what you like best. Use F1 or F2 to select. At any time, but not during the game, pressing the HELP key will show you the info screens. Press the space bar or 'P' to pause the page, so you can read it at your own tempo. At any time, pressing 'Ctrl-C' will end the program, and return you to the shell/workbench. If you have entered a new high score, the new table will be saved onto disk. WARNING: Qbic will take over the machine. It will do this in a relatively nice manner, but if you want to make trouble, you can. Don't try to multitask. Don't try to access the disk once Qbic has loaded. I have made Qbic as safe as I could, but I cannot make any guarantees. NOTE: The program will try to save the high score information to the current directory. If you do not want the program to write to your floppy, flip the write protect tab, and cancel the requester. If you are running Qbic from a hard drive, make sure that the current directory is ram:, or something like that. NOTE TO 512k RAM AMIGA OWNERS: Qbic needs about 420k to run. On a 512k machine, with the operating system taking up more than 80k that is a close shave! You will probably not be able to run Qbic from the workbench. Try this: 1) Make up a floppy disk with Qbic, Qbic.doc, Run and EndCli on it. 2) Create a startup-sequence that reads: RUN >NIL: