Emerald Mine V6.00 Game.dox ================================ Here is some information to help you play Emerald Mine V6.00 MENU: After you've started the game a menu will appear, which will look something like this: -------------------------------------------------- EMERALD MINE PLAYER V6.00 BY NO ONE INC. AND RUPPELWARE SINGLE PLAYER NAME HIGHSCORES LEVEL START SCORE PLAYED WON -------------------------------------------------- You can select a function with the joystick, which moves around a "roller bar", basically a rotating box. From here you can choose one of a few functions: SINGLE PLAYER/TEAMWORK: ----------------------- This bar allows you to toggle through three choices- ONE PLAYER, TEAMWORK, or QUIT. "One player" selects a single player game, "Teamwork" selects the wonderful two-at-once game, and "quit", erm... Now I forget ..... Ah- "Quit" Quits. To quit, select quit and push up on your joystick. NAME: ----- The NAME function allows you to select a previously played game, or to begin a new game. Each time you quit, your chosen name will be saved, along with your score and which level you have completed. You must have finished a level to play the level after it. So, like, if you have played up to level 45 but didn't finish 45 (your mother wanted you to tidy your room / your spouse wanted you to tidy the house / you went out and stopped playing computer games for a while), you will only be allowed to play levels 45 and below, until you finish 45. Clear? So anyway, here you may either choose a new name:- select "NAME" and press fire. You'll see a list of the current names the game knows about and alongside the names, the levels those "names" are currently failing miserably to complete. At the bottom of the screen, there are two more "bars". One says "Choose a player", and the other says "Save players". You can either choose a current game / player from one of the slots visible on the screen, or.... The "Choose a Player" bar is gently reminding you that the game is waiting for you to do just that. If you don't see your name or your chosen name in the list, you'll have to create another player name. To do this, click on "Choose a player". It will magically change to "Enter New Name". To enter a new name, move the box (with the joystick) up to a line on the player name list that you wish to replace and press fire. You will be asked if you're sure. Press the Y key (for "yes") or the N key (for "no"). Once a player name is gone, it's gone, so you must be certain you want to write over it. There should be some empty slots to start the game with, anyway. *Anyway*, if you pressed "Y" (for "Yes"), then you can type in your new name. It could be your name, or your girlfriend's name, or even your second cousin's name. It really doesn't matter, because it just symbolises one saved game. Moving to and clicking on "Save players" saves the current players list. Whichever you decided to do, you'll now be back at the main screen. HIGHSCORES: ----------- This function displays the highscores for the current level, so you can brag to your friends just how brilliant at everything you are. No really. A high score is a name, a time, and a score. The high scores list is sorted by score, so the one at the top is the highest score. You may want to see who is fastest to finish a level, or whatever. Do as you like, we really don't care, as long as you're having fun. Name and score are obvious, but the time displayed will be positive if you *finished* the level, or if you dies before completing, it will read "0". This doesn't mean you're a loser, no siree, but maybe you had an "unfortunate accident" on the way to the exit after some seriously dextrous gameplaying? Yeah. Right. LEVEL: ------ This function allows you to select which cave you start on. As I mentioned before, so it wouldn't come as a total heart-rending surprise, you may only start playing on levels you have completed before, or on the level after the ones you have completed. Don't go shouting your girlfriend for a game on level 80 if you've only completed up to level 26. She won't be impressed. Press fire here, anyway, and the box will start rotating .... the other way! Now you can use left and right on the joystick to choose your starting level. Press fire again to return to the normal mode of operation. START: ------ Pressing the large clearly-labelled and impossible to misinterpret START bar actually begins the game (I know- why didn't they name it something obvious like "BEGIN"? ). If you're testing the game from the Editor, you can return to the main menu by pressing the backspace key. IN GAME FUNCTIONS: ------------------ Basically it's all fast and frenzied (No, really) joystick action. But then again, isn't it always? Move our hero around the screen with up, down, left, and right on the joystick. You might also find out (although it's kind of a secret that we don't tell everyone) that pressing the fire button and a direction may affect the object in that direction, so you can sometimes use it to *safely* dig away a piece of earth ( Safely? What *am* I talking about?). Stay healthy and try not to die is our advice. More realistically, if you're not familiar with the Boulderdash concept, you should take a look at the Boulderdash section hdden in this document. It's jolly interesting and gives you good general clues as to progressing in the game. If you really haven't heard of Boulderdash type games before, then I suggest that you immediately lock your doors and window, buy in a good supply of frozen pizzas, and play Emerald Mine constantly for a few months. Then you'll maybe be lightly grasping the potential depth of such a game. No really. Here's a potted clue: Dig the earth, drop boulders (but not on your own head), drop bombs, create mayhem, but ultimately collect diamonds (ok, ok, Emeralds). When you have enough diamonds, an exit will start flashing (and will look like a heart- ahhhh) and you'll be told to find the exit. Run to the exit, and you've finished the mine. What could be simpler? These keys do stuff: ESC Kill yourself and return to highscore or main menu. Use this if you are trapped or made a mistake. F1 Switch to player 1 (when playing teamwork) F2 Switch to player 2 (when playing teamwork) F3 Switch to both players (when playing teamwork) F4 Pause ON F5 Pause OFF F6-F10 Sound (partially ON/OFF) BS Return to Editor (only if you were testing from editor) Above all, do have a good time. BOULDERDASH: ------------ First, there was a game called "Boulderdash". It was a *good* game. The graphics weren't great, and the sound wasn't great, but it was *great fun*. In Boulderdash, you guide a little man (Rockford) around a cave, and collect diamonds. When you have enough diamonds, you go to the exit and have finished the level. This, in itself, does not constitute "fun". The enjoyment came from the variety of obstacles that Rockford could interact with. Not wanting to be space-age and uppity about it, Rockford could push stuff around, drop things under gravity, and generally affect the cave in many wonderful ways. Boulders could be dropped, Butterflies could be killed (possibly by dropping boulders on them) and exploded into diamonds (yummy- more points), and Fireflies annoyed everyone because they chased around but never produced diamonds. Bah. In short, you were in a game world which you could affect in many, many, many different ways to achieve your goal of collecting enough diamonds to escape. You had the freedom to blow things up, push boulders around, make a mess of things and figure out how to work around your error, and generally exercise your brain as well as your joystick. But Boulderdash didn't last long. As the 8-bit machines lost popularity, conversions were made for the 16-bit machines. These frankly didn't cut the mustard. They look even more dated now than their 8-bit counterparts. These official conversions were good, if only as an example of excellent level design, but didn't hold up well in the playability stakes. Many other versions were made, too, by shareware and freeware programmers. Some were very good, but none captured the essence of what, for me, Boulderdash was all about. They were slow and clunky. The mines weren't designed well, and the games generally didn't allow you to "intuitively panic" and make it out in one piece. There was a light on the horizon, though, in the shape of Emerald Mine. Emerald Mine is an embellishment of the original Boulderdash concept. There are more objects in EM than in the original BD. Lots of nice *interesting* objects. Some are even *fun*. ;) Emerald Mine is, for me, a replacement now for Boulderdash. I don't think I will ever see a true conversion of BD to my machine, so I will make do with a similar concept game which retains the same playability as BD had. The key to BD-style games is to *explore*. If you aren't certain what an object does, play with it. You could only die. You could only die. And once again, you could only die. Being blown up by your own bomb isn't so bad, unless you did something *really* silly to be in that position. You learn to ride the blows. *Experiment* with the various creatures. Some are stupid, others not so stupid. Watch what they do, where they go. Stop moving down and stopping underneath boulders. It's not good for you. And here's another clue- Level 33 is *excellent*. Have fun, because it's what it's all about.