REVENGE Freeware Release - 8/2/97 =================================== After several years as shareware, I have decided to release LLAMATRON and REVENGE OF THE MUTANT CAMELS as freeware. I think we've got about as much out of the games as we're ever going to, and without my dad to assist, it's not really practical for my mum to continue supporting the games from back in the UK. Many thanx go to everyone who has registered the games over the years, and to everyone else - enjoy, have fun! LLAMATRON and REVENGE OF THE MUTANT CAMELS may be distributed freely, so long as no money is charged for the games. Please keep this readme.txt file included in the distribution. Thanx. ------------------------------------------------------ Greetings, chipheads! Welcome to Revenge of the Mutant Camels for the PC. I hope you enjoy it as much as Llamatron. It's a different kind of game but I hope you'll like it just as much. Once again, the PC conversion was done by the very excellent Jonathan Howell, who has once again done a wicked job of porting my 68K code to the PC. Rather him than me... I hate segmented address spaces The game runs on any PC with a 286 or higher CPU with a VGA display. The game supports the Soundblaster sound card and may be played with the keyboard or joystick. ABOUT THE GAME: Revenge isn't quite as flat-out manic as Llamatron. You may or may not be relieved to hear that. Revenge has the same gameplay modes as Llamatron: Solo, Droid (called CPU ASSIST in Revenge) and Two-Player. The gameplay is as follows: You are a rather threadbare-looking camel. If you are playing CPU Assist or Two-Player, you are accompanied by a large shaggy goatcreature called an Ancipital, which stalked C64 screens long before Psygnosis ever did Shadow of the Beast. You are the Good Guys. Your mission is simple: stay alive through 42 zones of 7km each. These zones are populated by rampant telephone kiosks, skiing kangaroos, butch Greenham Common Peace Women, manic Minters, flying sheep and all the usual nonsense. These are the Bad Guys. They try to kill you off and you, naturally and in keeping with the traditionally calm, rational and thoughtful nature of videogames, get to waste them with lots of spectacularly destructive weaponry. SPECIFIC DETAILS: [PC-specific note... all references to the joystick and pressing FIRE may also be interpreted as pressing the arrow keys and SPACE for the purposes of playing off the keyboard]. To run the game, simply unzip everything into a directory, and then type REVENGE to run the game. (For Win95 users - the game works fine in a DOS box. Just double-click the REVENGE.EXE icon). As default, in this release the game is set up to run with keyboard controls and without sound. Why no sound? Well, on my PC the sound driver doesn't work correctly, and I want to distribute the games in such a way that they will work on most PCs. The sound *may* work for you though - if you want to try (and if you want to enable joysticks), run the INSTALL program and use the Change Game Options selection. There is no need to use the "install to hard disk" option at all, since I assume you will have already unzipped the game to your HD anyway. The game will load and display the title screen appropriate to the version. Pressing FIRE gets past this screen and you'll find the game in auto-demo. You might like to eyeball the demo a while; it will demonstrate the first few levels, but to see the rest you have to play! You can interrupt the demo at any time by pressing the fire button. Pressing FIRE to interrupt the demo brings up a menu screen. Menu screens are all the same in operation, there are always three options. You select which option you want with the stick and bop the FIRE button on your selection. The first three options are: VIEW HISCORE TABLE (view highscore table, of course) PLAY REVENGE (leads you to Game Start) RESUME ATTRACT MODE (resumes the demo) The default is Play Revenge. Pressing this yields the Game Start menu: RESTART: Allows you to start the game at a Restart Point PLAY: Start game QUIT: Not play after all Selecting Restart brings up a text-entry screen where you must enter a valid Restart Code (more on these later). Selecting PLAY brings up a final menu from which you select Solo, CPU Assisi or Team play to begin the game. We recommend that you play your first few games with CPU Assist controlling the goat. As you get more skilful, I recommend Solo. CONTROLS: Your camel is controlled with a joystick thusly: Left and Right do pretty much what you'd expect, Up causes the camel to leap into the air and Down causes the beast to lie down on the ground. {Keyboard users - use the arrow keys, and spacebar as the firebutton}. Being a camel, the animal spits continuously, and being a Mutant Camel, what it spits is a variety of lethal bullets. The camel fires in the direction the joystick is pointing. If you hold down the FIRE button, the camel will not jump or sit down, enabling you to aim shots directly overhead whilst remaining on the ground. If you are playing with the CPU Assist goat, you can use it in conjunction with your camel. Normally the goat runs around aiming and firing at enemies independantly. If you get alongside the goat (or ahead of it; it will run to you) and sit down, the goat will mount your hump. Once there you can carry it around and it acts as a 'smart' gun turret, aiming at enemy targets, and as a shield, protecting your hump from being hit. The goat will stay on your hump until you die or until you sit down again, which causes the creature to leap off. (It is possible for the camel to pick up Player Two on the team game, but Player Two can leap off). At the beginning of each wave there is a period of time during which the goat will come to your side, enabling you to get the beast securely mounted before the level begins. Each level takes place over a set distance. That distance is denoted onscreen by a Start Post, six 'Kilometre Posts' and an End Post which scroll by on the ground. The attack begins only once the camel passes the Start Post, and ceases immediately it passes the End Post. Between levels you receive a Shield Bonus for remaining shield left, and an Energy Boost which increases your shield strength, but never by as much as you'd like. The Shield Energy indicator is the camel's face on the right-hand side of the status bar. As your shields get damaged a big red 'X' gets drawn through the face. When the 'X' is complete it's MacMutant Camelburgers all round at Cairo Macdonald's. Every five levels, you get to a Restart Oasis, where you get to see a silly animation of the camel getting refuelled, and you are given a Restart Code. Make a note of the Code, as you can use it to restart a game from that point whenever you play Revenge. Use the 'From a Restart Point' option on the game start menu. [UPDATE: One criticism we've had from ST users is that in the font used D's and O's look too similar, and that the restart code disappears from the screen too quickly. Yakly advice: keep a biro by the machine, remember that if you don;t press FIRE during the oasis scene you've got about fifteen seconds, and D's are bevelled at the top whereas O's are square] Now, on to the goodies: Powerups and Weapons. As you play the game, you'll notice that some of the enemies, when shot in a particular way, will yield clouds of tiny bonuses which float up the screen. This is an excellent thing, because you score the bonuses AND you get an increased chance of getting a powerup. Powerup icons are square and drift down from the top of the screen. You claim a powerup by touching it with your beast. The powerups are as follows: 'P' - Power-up current weapon by one level. (Weapons have four levels each of powerup - current level shown next to shield gauge - power runs down with time). APPLE: Add small amount to shield (12 apples=full shield) WEAPONS: Four powerups, each with a small blue icon inside representing the weapon type. When power runs out, weapon reverts to the default small blue bullets. NIKE TRAINER: Doubles the scroll speed and therefore halves the time taken to reach the end of a level. Useful on tricky levels. CAMEL: Gives an extra life. SMART BOMB: Kills or damages everything on screen. HALO: Makes you invincible for about 20 seconds. CUP OF TEA: Like a smart bomb, only more so. 'W': Warp directly to next restart point. The goat can also collect all these powerups; so you can both have different weapons going at the same time, which can be most useful! That's the good news. The bad news is this: every time you or the goat get hit, there is a chance of an Anti-Powerup being released. They look like your usual powerups (coz they're handled by the same routine) BUT they always have some RED in the border of the icons. Do not collect these icons. They do you bad. POWER DOWN (looks like a backwards 'P'): Power down current weapon by one level. CIGARETTE: Makes your animal have a ciggie. Control becomes slow, erratic and jerky until the ciggie is smoked. CONFUZER: (two arrows <- -> with a warning triangle underneath) Nasty one this. In solo and CPU assist, it causes the left/right joystick commands to become inverted for about ten seconds. In two player mode, the players find themselves controlling each other's beasts! Confuzed beasties have a green question mark over their heads until it wears off. SKULL: No mistaking this icon; it's red and baleful. Instant dead camel unless you've got a halo. CPU-Goat can eat this with impunity, but Player 2 in Team Mode is mortal. KEYBOARD CONTROLS: During a level you can press 'x' to quit back to the menu at any time; 'p' pauses the game and 'o' resumes play. Should you complete all 42 levels, you will get to the Red-Hot Zone where it all happens again but harder. If you get through THAT you get to the White-Hot Zone, and Ghodhelpyou if you get there! Okay, I've told you what everything does in the game. Now some hints on how to play. HOW NOT TO GET THE HUMP PLAYING REVENGE OF THE MUTANT CAMELS: 1: MILK THE BONUSES. You can play Revenge just to survive but you won't get a huge amount of points or powerups that way. The game is set up to reward the skilful player with riches and bonuses once that player knows what to shoot and when. For example, on level 1 you can just shoot the birds once and they fall down dead. But if you keep shooting them as they fall, they yield lots of bonuses. So you get your beastie on your hump, go directly underneath and fire straight up at them, keeping firing as they fall down onto you, and you'll get loads of points and loads of powerups. 2: LOOK FOR SWEET SPOTS. Some levels have a particular place a prudent camel can stand and not get hit (much). Maybe you have to send the goatie on ahead of you. Maybe it's better on your hump. Study each wave and formulate a strategy. 3: HAVE A CIGGIE! Because of the way ciggies slow down your camel, if you get one just as you start to jump you will stay in the air a lot longer than you usually would. This can be a Good Thing if there's a lot of nasty stuff at ground level. 4: ADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT WEAPONS. ROUND BLUE BULLETS (default): Good all-round weapon; can be aimed in any direction. LASER: Can only be aimed left and right, but inflict more damage than RBBs, especially when powered-up. Excellent for some enemies, but a bitch to be stuck with when you really need to be able to fire up. COMB BULLETS: Can be aimed in any direction except straight up or straight down. Feeble in their lowest-power state, but with successive powerups they expand into lovely screen-filling swathes. OVAL SINEWAVE BULLETS: Can be aimed any direction except straight left and right. Very slow on low power, these bullets are still devastating because they are not stopped by the enemies. They do a huge amount of damage and release a lot of powerups. Get them powered-up for best ease of use, and despite their strength they're not appropriate to every situation. 5: CHOOSE YOUR GRAVESITE. If you know you're gonna die and you're on a heinous wave, make sure you die as close to the right-hand side of the screen as possible. Your new camel won't be released into the fray until your tombstone has exited on the left, and by the time it does appear you'll be that much closer to the end of the wave. 6: SNIPPETS. You can herd kiosks but eventually you have to jump them. Exploding sheep are best viewed from high above. Coke cans and Atari logos are absolutely lethal. 10p bits do more damage than falling receivers. Chips only disgorge bitstreams if you hassle them. Beware the pink laserbase in Space Invaders. When the vicar invites you to tea, herd the mugs vertically. REVENGE: HISTORICAL NOTES. The original Revenge was written in autumn 1983 on the C-64, just before I had my first ever skiing holiday. It was part of a sequence of games comprising Attack of the Mutant Camels (implemented on the C64 and 8-bit Atari), Revenge (C-64) and Return of the Mutant Camels (C-64). This latter game was Yak's last C64 game, and some of you may have been unfortunate enough to encounter Mastertronic's Amiga and ST versions of that last game released as Revenge II. Those versions were a travesty of the original Commodore game. Mastertronic used five programmers and took as many months to produce an absolute dog of a conversion. They'd changed a lot of the levels and relentlessly eradicated every ounce of playability Yak built into the Commodore original. If you ever see the Mastertronic version anywhere, don't buy it because it is dreadful. They never even showed me a copy before they released it - I had to buy it from a shop in Basingstoke - and it's awful. There is only one true 16-bit Revenge, and this is it. The names of the 42 levels, and the overall themes, are the same as those in the original Commodore game. Those of you who played the old game will be better prepared to handle the enemies as they behave in a manner similar to their Commodore counterparts (sometimes). Of course the original game had no goat, no powerups, no restart points, no team mode and only one bullet on the screen at once, so don't expect it to be exactly the same as you remember! Well, that's it really! Have plenty of beastie fun, and if you like the game, share it with your mates - it's free, after all. Enjoy! \ (:-) - Y a K 8/2/97 (llamaman@ix.netcom.com) /