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12/27/97 This is the original RRGS v3.0 Manual, plus TIPS and TRICKS, included in the YOURS.SDK archive. I've had so many email request for the YOURS disk, I've decided to upload it to Ground so anybody that wants it can simply download it. Enjoy, Cheers & Happy New Year! Tom -------------------------------------- MANUAL for : Runaway Robots GS - v3.0 The RRGS program comes on (2) disks, as: RRGS.SHK and YOURS.SHK. The RUNAWAY ROBOTS GS (RRGS) program data disk, CONFIGURED TO ALLOW YOU TO LAUNCH THE PROGRAM (RRGS) VIA ANY GS/OS finder (FROM v5.02 THRU v6.0.1) and the: YOURS data disk, which contains a few SHR (256) picture examples of select levels, to help you design your own and learn how to win each level of the games 200 constructed levels. (Please Note: You can make up to 400 levels if you desire) This disk also contains several tips & tricks on playing, editing and saving levels with. Requirments: Apple IIgs; Rom 01 or 03, with at least 512k and a 3.5 drive. (TWO 3.5 drives are recommended) The DEMO is set with a driver for 3.5" APPLE DISK only. If you are using any other driver device, you need that driver file in the DRIVERS folder, using any version of GS/OS or ProDOS 16. The program, is hard-drive installable, via any standard file copy method. The hard-drive copy proceedures are listed below. Follow the directions under that section to make sure you have copied all the files needed in the right named directories on your hard-drive. The, YOURS (DATA DISK) also contains a SCENE file that has been altered. Levels 40-65 are blank and you can load and save to the SCENE file on this disk. Make sure that load enable is active and selected. NORMAL PLAYING: Click mouse button or press return key to terminate the demonstration (DEMO). Title Desk Top appears. Choose Original in Play menu or press Apple-O to start playing the original 200 scenes/levels. GAME DESCRIPTION: One day a computer that controls battle robots crashes. All the battle robots lose control of themselves and begin to attack everybody and everything, sometimes even each other. You must destroy all the robots and terminate runaway, (defeat each level 01-200). Your weapon is a gun. Sight for the gun appears as a cross-hair , which you move with the mouse. You fire the gun with the mouse button, to make the runaway robots change direction. Enemy robots have a radar antenna. Antenna's direction shows their direction of movement. When antenna looks right or down they move to the right or down, according to the presents of the floors or ladders. When enemy robots reach the end ladders or the floor, they search new movement direction by rounding the antenna clockwise. They reverse direction if you hit them, firing your gun and aiming at them with the mouse and cross-hair sights of the gun. You can not destroy them with your gun. Your gun is always used to reverse their direction of movement. They are destroyed when they step on a land mine or you hit and explode a dynamite bundle that is near where they are. To destroy an enemy with the dynamite, an enemy and the dynamite character must be piled up, that is, they must be on-top-of-each-other. When a land mine on a ladder crashes/explodes, the ladder changes to the floor. When dynamite on the floor explodes, the floor changes to the ladder. The enemies behind glass plates (Powder-blue squares), do not move and do not shoot you. So they are safe for you to ignore from danger. You must shoot glass plates to move enemies and destroy them. Your bullets can not penetrate a steel plate. You can not hit an enemy behind a steel plate. The enemies behind the steel plate can move, shot at you and you must be careful not to let them hit you with their shots are damage will occur. Land mines and dynamite can be set behind glass plates or steel plates. If a glass plate, an enemy, and a dynamite are piled up, then you can destroy the enemy by hitting the glass plate once. Your bullet destroys a glass plate and crashes/explodes the dynamite, so the enemy robot is destroyed. When enemy robots shot you, your damage appears in the upper left of the screen. A land mine and dynamite can destroy one enemy at a time. Be careful when two enemies are piled up. When one enemy is destroyed, floor or ladder changes, so another enemy becomes fixed, in this situation, you press "C" key to invoke control dialog box and click restart button. If you do not, you are stuck in that level, with enemy fixed/frozen in that spot and you can not proceed to the next level. So remember to use "C" key when you are stuck in this situation as above described. The Restart only restarts the level you are in currently. It will not take you back to the 001 level, unless that is the level you are playing in. Press the ESC. key to pause/freeze the game - press it again to continue. Press C to enter/invoke control dialog box. Control Dialog Box: Frequency volume controls: sound frequency and spatial location by approximately +- 30%. To emit sound locate the cursor on the speaker icon box and press mouse button. Holding down Apple key, locate cursor on speaker icon box and press mouse button to change the sounds (clicking mouse pointer in the speaker icon, at different areas, results in noticable audio location changes in some of the sound samples. Restart button, restarts current level/scene with current damage level. Terminate button, forces end of play on current level. You can play any level/scene number with up/down button and the load button. New level/scene will start with current damage level. Click OK button or press return to close control dialog box. If you win all 200 levels/scenes, without game over, you can see epilogue. To see epilogue you do not need to play sequentially. You can play any scene to the 200 level/scene, using Load button in the control dialog box. But you need to win all 200 levels. Scene number advances by (1) increment. When you win the scene/level 200, if there are any scenes/levels that you have not won yet, the game goes back to first level/scene. Title DeskTop: Title DeskTop has a menu bar on the top of the screen and title appears on the DeskTop. When demonstration is running click mouse button or press return key to return to the Title DeskTop. When you are playing a scene, invoke/enter control dialog box by pressing "C" key and click Terminate button to return to the Title DeskTop. The menu bar has four menu's. About- A description about Runaway Robots, version is presented in both; English or Japanese. Help- Short help manual. You can also see Help by pressing the Apple-H. Help has four buttons on modes. Press appropriate button to see one of the four contents. Click OK button or press return key to close the Help. Play menu: Orignial- Play original 200 scenes. Program disks ( Boot.Disk- Runaway) must be in the disk drive. You can also play original scenes by pressing Apple-O. Yours- Play your own scenes/levels that you created by the Editor and saved to your data disk. Your data disk must be in disk drive. Volume of your data disk must not be named :RUNAWAY. Editing- When you are creating/editing your own level/scene, you want to play it to check details and make sure it is playable. Editing is only active, when you have activated Editor. Demo- Runs the demo level/scene, which is non-interactive tutorial only. (Click mouse pointer on DEMO) Tutorial DEMO level will start after both title screens are shown, during the beginning of the program. Quit- Quit Runaway Robots & restarts the game, from the boot disk, returns to finder if launched via GS/OS or you can turn off the computer. You may also quit by pressing Apple-Q. (All Apple & character key combinations work in either upper or lower case characters (Example- Apple-Q or Apple q). Cap lock can be up or down. Edit menu: Undo- Cancels previous action in creating your own level/scene. It only cancels the last action on the edit design on the screen you are working on. You can also undo by pressing Apple-Z. Undo is only active when Editor is active. Character- Choose a character to draw with. Click a character in a character window to choose. Character is active when the Editor is active. Mode- Choose drawing mode. Mode is divided into two parts. One part chooses drawing or erasing. When you choose a pen or an eraser, cursor reflects this choice immediately. Another part chooses an effect of pen or eraser. There are three choices of effect. Line, Square and Fill. Click OK button or press return key to close Mode Dialog box. Mode is active when Editor is active. Color- (YOU CAN USE ANY OF THE SUPER-HIRES (SHR) 4096 COLORS) Change colors of the characters. Apple IIgs has 16 color tables. A color table has 16 color entries. In Runaway Robots, 14 color entries are adjustable. You choose a color table using color table scroll bar that appears on the left side of window. Next, selected color table number appears to the right of the words 'Color table'. Below the words 'Color table' 14 adjustable color entries appear. You choose a color entry and that color entry will be changed by clicking on the 14 color entries of your choice. Down arrow indicates which color entry is selected. Three color scroll bars, RED-GREEN-BLUE appear on upper left of window. These scroll bars reflect the value of selected color entry. You can change color by moving the three color scroll bars. There are character examples on the lower left part of the window. Character examples show how the characters colors change. Playing screen is divided into 21 blocks vertically, (except the top 11 blocks). Top block number is 0. Bottom block number is 20. You can choose one of 16 color tables for each block. ( This gives you access to all 4096 colors to use in the Apple IIgs). Two scroll bars to choose a color table, for a block, appear on lower right part of the window. Click OK button or press return key to close Color dialog box. Color is active when Editor is active. Plane- Screen consist of 5 planes. Front most plane is steel and glass plates. Following planes to the opposite are 'enemy', 'mine', 'floor ladder', and 'background'. Opposite planes are hidden by front planes. Choose front most plane for easy editing. This choice is active in editing, not playing. Plane is active when Editor is active. Enemy- Up to 20 enemies (robots) can exist in a scene/level. You can not play any scene that has more than 20. This menu item counts current enemies number, warning you if more than can be used are on the screen/scene/level you are editing. Enemy is active when Editor is active. Disk- A scenes/level window appears on upper left part of Disk dialog box. Scenes window shows scene/level number that is included on a disk. To select a scene, use scroll bar of the scenes window to show the desired number of scene and click on that selected number. To load a scene data, select a scene number and click load button or double click scene number. (If double click does not work correctly, check the control "Double Click" in Options in your Control panel. To delete a scene, select a scene and click Delete button. To change disk drive click Disk button. When you change a disk in a drive, click Disk button after you change a disk. When you format a disk click Format button. Format dialog box opens, then click a device name. If you are using two 3.5" disk drives, RAM disk, and one or two 5.25" disk drives, first 3.5" disk drive is; D1, RAM disk drive is D2, the other 3.5" is then D3, and the 5.25" drives are D4 & D5, Etc. When you save a editing scene/level, choose a scene number by up/down button and click Save button. Load disable/enable button appears on lower left part of the disk dialog box. If you choose load disable, before clicking Save button, that scene/level data will not be loaded by Editor. This is used to avoid anyone glancing or sneaking a peek at your scenes secrets. Click OK button to close disk dialog box. Disk is active when Editor is active. Editor - invokes editor. You can also invoke editor by pressing Apple-E. When editor is active, check mark appears to the left side of this item. Editor is complimentary with Title. Title- Select title Desktop. You can also select title Desktop by pressing Apple-T. Title is complimentary with Editor. Drawing with Editor: Click desired point on the desktop to draw a character or fill by the character. Holding down the mouse button, drag mouse, and release the mouse button to draw a line or a square. Erase is active only for the selected character. Background patterns always exist so they can not be erased. Screen consist of five planes. Front most plane is steel plates and glass plates; and the back are enemy, mine,floor, ladder and background. When you draw a mine, you draw on the mine plane. So, other planes are not affected. Undo is active for characters, not for colors. The sound is in 8-bit quality and it's using Stereo pan effects, with 30 sound ocillators and 15 channel stereo sampling sounds. (A Stereo card is necessary in the Apple IIgs) Hard-drive Installation: Create a folder in your hard-drive named: RUNAWAY. Copy the following files from the disk (RUNAWAY) into the folder you created on your hard-drive; named RUNAWAY. (Use no other name for the folder). Be sure to copy this into the main directory of the RUNAWAY folder. Next create a folder with-in the hard-drives folder named -> RUNAWAY. Copy all files from the RRGS disk that are inside the RUNAWAY, sub-directory into the RUNAWAY sub-directory (folder) on your hard-drive. This example-diagram will clarify what is intended here. (HD1-RUNAWAY/RUNAWAY) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tips & Tricks for Runaway Robots GS TIPS and TRICKS The Runaway Robots GS v3.0 program two disks set has the pictures of selected levels that you should print out in color and study. These pictures will give you ideas on how the weapon characters are placed and how to design various levels of your own and save them. You can format a disk via the program using the editor disk function or the dialog box by pressing "C". These are also the methods to save your edited game level or levels. Each game level saves in sequence; i.e., 001,002,003 & so on. You can save any designed game level with which ever level number you choose to save it with, via the dialog box, to a formatted ProDOS data disk, either 3.5" or 5.25". The default name the program formats a disk with: "MY.DATA". Study the pictures that you printout and compare the 640 graphic pictures of level 60. One is color and one is black & white. These 640 pictures show the hidden weapons characters, and you can compare them to the 320 graphics printout of level 60 to reveal the hidden weapon characters. etc. to see where enemies & dynimite, land-mines, etc. are hidden. Each saved level you design/edit takes up between 5 to 40 disk blocks on a formatted Prodos data disk. The more complex the designs per level, the larger the number of blocks needed to write that edited level to the master file, SCENES, in the folder "RUNAWAY", on your data disk. If you load disable and save a level, that level can not be loaded. To save a level that you can load and play make sure to load enable before you save. You must keep in mind, that the disk volume named "RUNAWAY" is the original game disk and all 200 levels of the file "SCENES" on that disk, are load disabled. If you wish to defeat the game for sure, do the following; 1. Aquire a copy of Fontrix GS. 2. Boot Runaway Robots disk and load a level, via the "C" key. 3. start playing that level, then remove disk and replace disk in drive 1 with: Fontrix GS. 4. Press apple key-control key-reset key 5. This reboots the Apple IIgs, to allow "Fontrix GS to boot and shows the last SHR screen, which has the picture of the level you loaded. 6. There are 200 levels that you can capture as pictures, in this manner. 7. After you have the picture on screen and have loaded the program "Fontrix GS", when the picture is on screen via Fontrix GS, save the picture using the level number, to keep track of each picture and which level it is. Make sure to save the picture file as a SCREEN FORMAT, via Fontrix GS, to retain the true color backgrounds of each picture. (Note: the program "Runaway Robots uses all 4096 colors with 16 palattes. ) If you save the SHR SCREEN PICTURE as a compacted picture file it will lose 15 palettes and retain only the first palette colors. You can also reveal the hidden characters in each level, by switching from 320 to 640 mode in Fontrix GS, to allow you to see the hidden characters with the 640 mode, then save the level picture in 640 mode to show you where each levels hidden weapons, enemies, etc. are located. You can also use the saved pictures to give you ideas on how to design your own levels for the game. You can then replace them in either the original program disk, "SCENES" file, or add them to that file as level 201 and up, when saving the file, make sure it is load enabled if you wish to access it for future editing, etc. You can add to the 200 original levels or write over and existing level in the original "SCENES" file on the disk RUNAWAY. The maximum number of levels the file will support is 400. It has 200 to start, thus, you can save over and existing level or you can add to the original 200 load disabled levels, by either saving as levels 201 & up, load disable or load enable. The choice is yours. You can also reload and save to another data disk of your own, any level you save that is saved as load enable. You can not load or resave any level that is saved/created and is load disabled. With these design/save capabilities you can create new levels and save them as you wish. With enough time and patients you will never run out of new levels to save and replay. It should be made clear that to see the grand-finally-epiloge scene/animated surprise, you must win and progress all the way from levels 001 through level 200 of the original. You can also use a cheat method to see this impressive grand finally-epiloge sequence. Make a duplicate of the RUNAWAY DISK (Original game data disk). Delete all levels but 200. Play that level and win, then you see it. That is a real cheat, and the only way you can see it without playing and winning all 200 levels of the original in sequence from 001-200. Its a lot faster than playing the game for several months until you master how to win all 200 levels in sequence. But, it takes all the fun out of the final result of winning. The Help options cover all aspects of explaination of all four modes, in brief. To gain a full understanding of them, read the Manual file on this disk. Final note: the more pictures of levels you capture, print, study and retry, playing, the faster you will complete all 200 levels of the original. To make it really hard to win/complete, save up to 400 levels total, making the original game twice as hard to complete. The Editor is in the program, available for you to use and learn with. The more you use it the more you learn. MAKE SURE TO MAKE A DUPLICATE OF THE "RUNAWAY" PROGRAM DATA DISK, and play with it, saving levels etc. That way you still have the original if you mess up the duplicate.