CROAKER - An Amphibian Nightmare! Scientists tell us the worldwide population of frogs is steadily decreasing. They cite pollution and loss of habitat as the probable explanation. Another scenario is explored in BMG Software's real-world simulation, CROAKER. Every year, hundreds of thousands of frogs and toads traverse the world's interstates and highways. Perhaps they are searching for a better life, a more abundant food supply, a wetter pond. Perhaps they are acting out of some deeper instinct as yet unknown to man. Whatever the reason, many of these frogs and toads are killed in senseless and violent automobile accidents. Nature also hinders the progress of our distant, web-toed relatives. More often than not, small creeks and rivers provide insurmountable obstacles. Although frogs are excellent swimmers, they are no match against a strong current, preferring instead to sit bug-eyed on a stationary lily pad. Nevertheless, most frogs and toads will attempt the hazardous crossing, leaping from log to log until they reach their destination. Some are successful. Many are not. Born out of this life and death struggle is CROAKER - An Amphibian Nightmare. HOW TO PLAY: Like life, the concept of CROAKER is both deceptively simple and, at the same time, amazingly complex. Frogs are controlled through the use of a joystick. Movement of the joystick corresponds to movement of the frog. Each player must maneuver his or her frog through the heavy traffic, hop across the median (avoiding hungry snakes), leap from log to log across raging rapids, and land safety in the cool comfort of the mud flats. Along the way, frogs can pick up extra points by devouring a tasty fly or landing on a lily pad on the way to a mud flat (using a lily will double the points awarded). HARDWARE: CROAKER should run on any Amiga computer with one megabyte of ram. An accelerator is recommended and one megabyte of chip ram is required to run the full version. However, 512K chip machines can still run CROAKER in its special 512K mode. This mode is selected with a command line argument when running from the CLI or through the CROAKER icon via a ToolType. The 512K mode also offers the best game speed for those without an accelerator. This is accomplished by limiting the playfield size (the 512K version does not scroll), and displaying the traffic and logs in a mutually exclusive manor during the one player game (this saves valuable blitter execution time). RUNNING CROAKER: Croaker may be run from the CLI and supports two command line arguments. The first alows the MicroDelay to be changed and the second is a numeric flag indicating if the 512K mode is desired. For example: Croaker - this will run the full version with default delay Croaker 42000 - this will run the full version with delay 42000 micro seconds Croaker 42000 1 - this will run the 512K version with delay 42000. A delay must always be specified to choose the 512K mode from the CLI. Croaker is best run from the Workbench by double clicking on the CROAKER icon. ToolTypes supported are as follows: MicroDelay=# ChipRam=[ Low | High ] Inertia=[ On | Off ] For the 512K mode ChipRam=Low must be used, otherwise use ChipRam=High. The MicroDelay number should be between 30000 and 50000 (but feel free to try other values). Inertia will affect how the frog jumps from log to log. When it is turned on, the frog will carry the horizontal momentum from the source log on its flight to the destination log (most people will probably prefer Inertia=Off). ToolTypes may be changed by selecting Information on the Workbench Screen with the Croaker Icon selected. See your Amiga manuals for further help. OPTIONS: CROAKER has three basic play modes: one player, two player team, and two player competition. Scrolling is always enabled in one player mode (except for the 512K version) and play continues until the player has lost his or her frogs. Each level requires five frogs to successfully reach the mud flats before advancing to the next level. Two player team mode gives two players eight frogs between them. The players work as a team and are given a single score. In two player competition mode, each player is given five frogs to compete against their opponent for the best score. For both two player modes, extra options come into play. The game may be set up with or without scrolling. If scrolling is turned on, there is the added challenge of larger playfields as the game progresses. In addition, if scrolling is enabled, the frog closest to the mud flats will control the scrolling and the screen will be positioned based on that frog's location. This provides an extra challenge for the frog that's behind. If a frog is scrolled off the bottom of the screen, it can either stay put (if it doesn't move, no harm will come to it) or it can attempt to blindly hop back to the screen. Once the lead frog is successful or dead, the traffic around the lower frog will start to move, leaving very little reaction time to save the frog. When scrolling is turned off, the playfield will never grow larger than one screen in height. Another option for two player modes is Occupy1 or Occupy2. Occupy1 allows each mud flat to hold only one frog. Once all five mud flats have a frog, play continues on the next level. Occupy2 allows each mud flat to hold one frog from each player. Also, there must be one frog from each player in each mud flat before play will continue to the next level. With Occupy2 selected, a player who has successfully landed five frogs on the mud flats will have to wait for the second player to do the same (or die). In this mode, control is disabled for the first player to get five frogs to the mud flats. His or her frog will remain motionless at the bottom of the screen. The number of colors displayed may be selected from the options menu. The player has the option of eight, sixteen, or thirty-two colors. The more colors you choose, the more processing power will be required from your Amiga and the slower the game action will be. An A3000 will run all three color modes with little or no degradation in performance. Other Amigas will notice a sharp difference in the performance between color modes depending on their processing power and whether they have 16 or 32 bit memory access. You may save the current options to avoid changing them each time you play. SCORING: Each mud flat scores points as follows: 25 15 10 15 25. As you can see, the outer flats are worth more points than the inner ones. Also, this score is multiplied by the current level before being added to your score. For example, on level ten the scoring is: 250 150 100 150 250. In addition, if a lily pad is used by the scoring frog, the score is doubled. Flies will also appear from time to time. They are worth the same number of points as the outer mud flats (25 on level one, 250 on level ten, etc.). The top fifty scores are saved on a high score list for single player and team mode. I hope you agree this high-quality program deserves a spot among your frequently played games. I am asking $5.00 for the password list required to play more than one level (unless you're a lucky guesser!). I thank all of you in advance who send in $5.00. Here is my address: Brian Grier 9335 Pratt Circle Omaha NE, 68134 Thanks again. I hope you enjoy this game. Croaker is brought to you by BMG Software: Brian Grier - Coding and Graphics Brad Grier - Music, Sounds, and Title Graphics Look for these other BMG Software games: BlitzTank, and 3DTTT.