Action Arcade Adventure Set
Diana Gruber

Appendix A
The Games on the Companion Disk

Three games are included on the companion disk, along with the source code for two of them. You can use these games to get ideas for your own games.

Playing Tommy's Adventures

To start Tommy's Adventures, go to the appropriate subdirectory (the default is \fg\tommy) and type TOMMY. The Tommy's Adventures title screen will appear. Press any key to begin game play. While in the game, the following keys are active.

Arrow Keys	Move Tommy left, right, up, and down. The screen will scroll as Tommy moves to keep Tommy within a tolerance area.
Ctrl	Shoot. Tommy can shoot while standing, running, jumping, or falling.
Space Bar	Kick. Tommy will do a forward spin kick when facing right, or a backward spin kick when facing left.
F1	Turn off the scoreboard. The scoreboard in the upper left corner of the screen will disappear.
F2	Turn on the scoreboard if it is off.
Esc	Make the status screen appear. When you see the status screen, you have the option of pressing Q for Quit, W for Warp, or any other key to continue with the game.
W	Warp--advance to then ext level.

Playing Quickfire

To start Quickfire, go to the appropriate subdirectory (the default is \fg\qf) and type QF. The Quickfire title screen will appear and will animate. Press any key to begin game play. While in the game, the following keys are active.

Arrow Keys	Move the Quickfire airplane left, right, up, and down. The screen will constantly scroll to the right as the airplane moves, and will also scroll vertically and diagonally as needed to keep the airplane within the tolerance area.
Ctrl	Shoot. The Quickfire airplane will fire a series of bullets at the other airplanes. As other airplanes are hit, they will explode, and the score will be incremented.
Esc	Exit the Quickfire program. Upon exit, the frame rate will be displayed on the screen.

Because of disk space considerations, the sound effects and music for Quickfire were not included on the disk. If you want to hear the original Quickfire music from Rob Wallace, you can download a more complete version of Quickfire from our BBS at (702) 796-7134.

About Quickfire

Quickfire was written using the same general strategy as Tommy's Adventures. Video memory is resized in Mode X to allow 4-way scrolling. Sprites and levels were designed in the Fastgraph game editor. The objects (airplanes, bullets, and explosions) are controlled using action functions. The main differences between Quickfire and Tommy's Adventures are the continuously scrolling background, the lack of foreground tiles, and ignoring the tile attributes. Several articles about the Quickfire source code were published in PC TECHNIQUES beginning with the December 1993/January 1994 issue.

Playing Hedge Row

To start Hedge Row, go to the appropriate subdirectory (the default is \fg\hedge) and type Hedge. The Hedge Row title screen will appear briefly as the first maze is drawn. While in the game, use the mouse to maneuver your way through the maze. In addition, the following keys are active.

C	Cheat--see the path through the maze.
N	Next maze.
R	Recursive maze solution. Watch the fascinating recursive algorithm in action as the computer attempts to solve the maze.
Esc	Exit Hedge Row and return to DOS.

About Hedge Row

Hedge Row is included as an example of how to use the level editor to write a different kind of game. The maze tiles are in the file HEDGE.PCX, and the mazes are stored in files with LEV extensions. You can view and modify these files in the level editor. A GAME.DAT file on the disk lists the data files for each maze and can be used with the game editor. The source code for Hedge Row is also on the disk. More information about how Hedge Row works can be found on the disk in the file HEDGE.DOC.

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