WINDY DAY

                          by Harvey Warwick

Can you guide the windblown traveller back to his home? He's out in a gale-
force wind with nothing between him and the elements but the clothes he's 
wearing and an umbrella.  Among the storm debris, watch out for windblown gulls
and kamikaze kites.  If you're quick, you can deflect these with your umbrella
and earn points for it.  The wind can blow good things along, too:  it's always 
nice to have a hat on a blustery afternoon.  But are you daring (or foolish) 
enough to pit this windblown waif against a tornado - with only an umbrella for
protection?  (Hint:  it can be done!)

To play, plug a joystick into Port 2 of your Amiga, and double-click on the icon
to play the game.  To deflect/destroy incoming objects, hold the fire button 
down to open the umbrella and interpose it between the traveller and the object.
It's usually better to move backwards (to your left) when trying to destroy 
something with the umbrella, as you have less chance of getting hit yourself.
You get an extra life every 10,000 points.

This game was created with the Shoot `Em Up Construction Kit from Accolade.  It
was originally intended for the Amiga Plus Shoot `Em Up contest, but it was not
completed in time, so I am distributing it instead.  I wanted to create a game
that scrolled sideways, which SEUCK unfortunately does not support directly, so 
I cheated a little.  The backdrop is still, but by using background-like 
objects that move sideways, I simulated a moving backdrop.  The trick of making
this effect is to take the background objects and start them completely off-
screen.  By repeatedly moving them up one path unit (off-screen), clicking the
fire button to rest the object, then moving it down and pressing the fire 
button again, objects can be made to appear onscreen at any desired time.  For 
a continuous moving effect, I created a sidewalk area on most of the levels 
with an invisible object shooting out "bullets" that are the sidewalk cracks.
The playing area had to be restricted so the traveller could not walk into them
(it gave new meaning to "step on a crack and break your back").  This method 
has one serious drawback, however:  it uses up the available "path movement" 
units very quickly.  As a result, Windy Day has only seven levels.  I would 
have liked it to be longer but that was the most that could be done with the
effect I was trying to achieve.  SEUCK is not the best game-making program but
for the price, it's not bad.  If SEUCK is ever upgraded (are you listening, 
Accolade?) I would like to see sideways scrolling backgrounds supported.  
Having the "Join Enemies" option extended to the Player 1 and Player 2 objects
would be nice too.  Even so, SEUCK has to be the easiest to use game creation
program around.