===================================================================== Welcome to Elasto Mania! A motorbike simulation game based on a real physical model. Registered version 1.0 Copyright (C) 2000 Balazs Rozsa. ===================================================================== Do not distribute! ===================================================================== SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000 DirectX 5.0 Pentium 133MHz 16MB RAM 4MB Hard Disk ===================================================================== INSTALLATION To install Elasto Mania run the self installing EXE file and follow the instructions. The game requires DirectX 5.0 or later installed on your system. If you don't have this, you can download it from: www.microsoft.com/directx The best times of the internal levels are stored in the file state.dat. If you had the shareware version of Elasto Mania 1.0 before this registered version, you can copy your state.dat file from the folder of your shareware version of the game to the folder of this registered version. In this way you will transfer your times from the first 18 levels to the registered version. ===================================================================== ELASTO MANIA'S HOME PAGE Visit our web site for free external levels, competitions and the latest version at: www.elastomania.com We also have a links page where you can find a lot of links to fan sites for the game. If you have any questions about the game, please send an email to: balazs@elastomania.com ===================================================================== HOW TO PLAY THE GAME You have to ride a motorbike and complete the various stages. You can get to the next level only by completing the previous one successfully. You can skip five levels in total, but you can go back and complete a previously skipped level later. You can choose to play on any of the levels you have previously completed. For all stages the best ten times are recorded along with the name of the player. The levels become progressively more and more difficult to complete. To control your motorbike while playing, you use the following keys (unless you have customized the controls in the Options menu): UP arrow: accelerate (this puts a constant degree of force on the rear wheel). DOWN arrow: block both wheels. RIGHT arrow: turn the bike clock-wise. LEFT arrow: turn the bike anticlock-wise. SPACE: turns your bike around so you can go in the opposite direction. During the various stages there are several objects that appear on the screen. You can contact an object by touching it with your helmet or any of your wheels. The three different object types are: - FOOD object: You have to touch all of these before you can accomplish a level. If you touch it, it will disappear. (Though the food objects are moving vertically, the invisible circles you have to touch in order to eat them are not. If this bothers you, please turn off their moving under Options from the Main menu!) - KILLER object: You will die if you touch it. - EXIT object: You can finish the level by touching it. (It works only if you have already collected all of the food objects). The exit object is a flower. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Setting the look of the display You can toggle on/off the visibility of the little view window by pressing the 'v' button while playing or replaying. And with the 't' button you can do the same with the time display. (These two settings are stored separately for the play and the replay modes. For play mode the default is off, for the replay mode it is on.) If the frame rate on your machine is low, you can press the '-' button while playing in order to reduce the size of the screen. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Multiplayer game The multiplayer mode is a split-screen two-player mode. You can play in a co-operative way in order to make a good time, or against each others trying to eat more food than your opponent. In the Flag Tag mode you compete to have the flag on your bike for more time than it is on your opponent's bike. The flag starts on biker A and biker B by turns. To get the flag, you have to touch the wheels of the other bike with your wheels. The head doesn't work for this. After capturing the flag, it flashes for a short while, until the two bikes get a minimum distance apart. During this time the flag cannot be recaptured again. ===================================================================== THE EDITOR Getting help about the editor To get help about the various editor functions you should enter the editor and right click with the mouse on the particular buttons you want help for. That is the main help for the editor, but you should read the rest of this file also to get a better understanding how the editor works. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The editor screen On the left of the editor screen is a column of buttons. The buttons in the upper half are command buttons, which means they will take action at the moment you click on them with the left mouse button. The buttons in the lower half are the tool selection buttons. If you click on them with the left mouse button, you select a tool. You can use a tool in the working area of the screen. A one line help of the current tool is always displayed at the top of your screen. You can get help on the command and tool selection buttons by clicking on any of them with the right mouse button. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting started with the editor When you start working with the editor, I suggest that you work only with simple polygons and don't work with pictures nor with 'grass' polygons. Only after you are familiar with the polygon aspect of the editor, should you begin to work with pictures. The following information about the editor is mainly in connection with putting graphic objects onto the levels. --------------------------------------------------------------------- What file types uses the program for the levels When you play a level, the topology of the polygons and the placement of the objects and pictures (like the trees) come from a level file (with the extension of '.lev' in the LEV subdirectory). But this file doesn't contain any graphics, like the texture of the background, the pictures of the trees, or the apples you have to gather. The graphics are stored in a separate file with the extension of '.lgr' in the LGR subdirectory. The level file contains only the name of the lgr file. In this way you can have many level files using one .lgr file, thus saving a lot of disk space because the .lgr files are usually much bigger than the level files. Actually all internal levels of the game use one lgr file, default.lgr. If you load a level file to play or to edit it, and there is no LGR file with the name that is specified in the level file, the default.lgr file will be used instead. Probably the names of the pictures in the level and LGR file won't match, so the non-matching objects won't appear on the screen when you play and will be removed from the level file if you load it into the editor and save it. The game works only with maximum 8 character long .lev, .rec and .lgr file names (plus extension). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Making your own LGR files For editing the level files you can use the built-in editor. But you can not change the LGR files with the editor. If you want to add pictures to an LGR file, you have to use a command line program, make_lgr.exe. This program is not part of the game, you have to download the LGR Development Kit separately from our site (www.elastomania.com). It is available for free and the same Development Kit can be used for the shareware and registered versions also. Since this Development Kit is not part of the game, I did not put as much effort into making it easy to use, and polishing it as I should have. I only made it available for the public so that those who want to include their own graphics into the game can do this, if they are willing to spend time understanding exactly how this program works. They should have prior knowledge about manipulating image files, using color palettes and using DOS command line tools. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Working with pictures Pictures don't affect the way you ride your bike on a level, they are only there to make the level look nicer. There are two kind of pictures: normal pictures and masks with textures. The bushes, trees and all objects are normal pictures. In most cases you will create normal pictures and very seldom will you use masks with textures. With the Create Picture tool you can create new pictures. Just click the left mouse button where you want to place the selected picture. But first you must select a picture by clicking the right mouse button anywhere above the working area. A dialog will appear with three fields: normal picture, mask and texture. You can either select a normal picture, or select a mask with a texture. If you select a mask or a texture alone, you won't be able to put it into your level. I suggest that you only use normal pictures and don't bother with Masks or Textures too often. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Properties of pictures Every picture has two properties: distance and clipping. - The distance determines which pictures hide the others. The range of the...
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