
              StarMines II - The Planet of Mines - v 1.1

               Copyright (C) 1992-1993 by Jari Karjala.


This program is distributed as CardWare. This means that you can give
unmodified copies to your friends (and fiends), but I want to see how
widely the game is played. Therefore: if you like the game, send me a
postcard (a local view would be nice) to the snail mail address below.



Game idea
---------

You start with your small scout ship at the level 1 of the Planet of
Mines. You can advance levels by flying through transportals.

Try to collect as many Bonusoids as possible while avoiding or
shooting the alien objects.

Luckily, you have unlimited fuel and ammunition supplies.  You can
shoot everything, but perhaps you should not...



System requirements
-------------------

At least a fast 286 system with 300 kBytes free RAM and a register
compatible VGA card. 

The program uses an undocumented 256 color mode (resolution 320x240)
and split-screen display. If it does not work with your VGA card,
please let me know.

Sound Blaster is supported if the BLASTER environment variable is set
correctly (your sound card installation program usually does this).
For example, BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T3, where Axxx means the I/O address
(usually 220), Ix means the interrupt (IRQ) number (must be 1-7), D
the DMA channel (must be 1-3) and Tx means the Sound Blaster type
(not used by StarMines II). If the game crashes in a Sound Blaster
system, try starting it with the /Q option (see below).

If the BLASTER variable is not set, the PC speaker is used for sound
effects. If they game seems too sluggish, try disabling sound
effects.

The game has been tested under MS-DOS 5.0/6.0, DR-DOS 6.0 as well as
the full-screen DOS session of Windows 3.1, OS/2 1.3, 2.0, 2.1 beta
and Windows NT beta (Sound Blaster has not been tested under all
these systems). I don't recommend running the game in a DOS session
since it degrades performance. Switching out of the DOS session while
the game is active may result a system crash if the video driver
cannot handle non-standard VGA modes.

The following settings should be used if the game is played in an
OS/2 2.0 DOS session: HW_TIMER off, VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION off,
VIDEO_FASTPASTE off.



Controls (US keyboard) 
----------------------

'z' or 'left'   rotate counter-clockwise
'x' or 'right'  rotate clockwise
'm' or 'up'     thrust
',' or 'space'  shoot
's'             stop motion (kind of cheat!)

I recommend using the letter keys, they are much easier than the
cursor keys! 

If the scrollers seem to run too fast (can't you read them?), you can
use the 'Pause' key as usual to stop the scroll. It also works during
the game (useful if you want to take a photo of the screen:-).



Command line options
--------------------

/C      Always keep the player in the Center of the viewport (equals
        to Options Centering ON). It may make the playing easier.

/F      Display Frames per second statistics (target 20 fps). The
        count is average on the current level. It is not shown
        immediately after level change to get a more accurate
        reading. 
        
/N      No startup menu, start game immediately.

/Q      Be Quiet (equals to Options Sound OFF).

/Sx     Synchronise to ever x'th frame, default 3, which means 60/3=20
        frames per second. This option disables sound. /S1 combined 
        with /F and /T is useful for measuring CPU/VGA performance of
        your computer. My 486/33+Trident8900 can scroll at 50-60 frames
        per second, depending on the level complexity (a bit too fast
        for normal play:-). This option can also be used to slow down
        the game if it seems to be too fast...

/T      Activate Test level with a background map of varying
        complexity and a maze with many sprites. Good for speed
        testing, but could be useful for practise, too.

/V      Fly in Vacuum (equals to Options Friction OFF). This makes
        the controls more like the original StarMines (most people
        think this is quite a bit harder). Either way, StarMines II
        is no physical world simulator:-)

The options /C, /Q and /V (which are also available in the options
menu) are saved in sm2.cfg file when exiting. 



Programming Info
----------------

The original StarMines was created and released as a demo of my
Sprite Toolkit (STK110) in 1990-1991. This toolkit supports only
monochrome EGA and Hercules, but it includes the C source code for
the sprite library, sprite editor and the StarMines game. It is
available on several anonymous FTP sites (try nic.funet.fi if you
cannot find it on any site nearer to you). 

Even though the Sprite Toolkit is monochrome, I do recommend it if
you are interested in action game programming. You'll see that the
graphics portion of a game is very small part of the total code.

If you are interested in Mode X VGA programming, take a look at the
articles by Michael Abrash (Dr Dobb's Journal, August-September 1991)
and the XLIB library by Themie Gouthas, also available on anonymous
FTP. (I did not use Themie's code as is in StarMines II, but it did
give me ideas.)



Hacker Info
-----------

Once again, I included some interesting tricks to examine. For
example, try forging yourself into the hall of fame. There are also
certain ways of CHEATing... (which seem to fail with some keyboards!)

If you are interested in the source code of StarMines II or if you
want to design more levels and/or aliens, you are welcome to contact
me (I cannot quarantee a reply, though. Including a self-addressed 
stamped envelope does make reply more probable :-).



Disclaimer Info
---------------

This program is provided "as is" without any kind of warranty. I
assume no responsibility on how you use it. If you manage to lose
your computer, job, mind or blow up the universe by playing StarMines
II, don't blame me!



Version Info
------------

Version 1.1 
        - Sound Blaster support
        - More colorful radar
        - Frames per Second display during game (option /f)
        - Added new cheat keys
        - Added new levels
        - Added a test level (/t)
        - Bug fixes

Version 1.0
        - Initial release



Contact Info
------------

Internet mail: 
        Jari.Karjala@iki.fi -or- jka@nic.funet.fi -or- jka@niksula.hut.fi

Postcard mail:
        Jari Karjala
        Veropellontie 11
        00740 Helsinki
        Finland

Don't forget to send your postcard!
