ZoneGame from Outer-Space   this version 31 march 1996
=========================
John Biddiscombe (The lord of Darkness)
J.Biddiscombe@rl.ac.uk

I used to play a game called Crossfire on the Apple II, when I was a kid
at school. It was years ago, but I liked it, and here is my effort to
recreate something like it.

Installation
------------
Unzip with -d option to keep sprites sub-directory.

I've modified it to work with both Delphi 1 & 2 on Win3.x & Win95
Use zgame16.dpr for Delphi 1 and zgame32.dpr for Delphi 2
( the only difference is the options file 16bit = .opt 32bit =.dof)

Keys
----
A      - fire
S      - left
D      - right
' @    - up
/ ?    - down
space  - stop (and start new game when you die)
escape - pause/unpause

Tip : Hold the space bar down and fire in different directions

Bonuses
-------
Yellow cross       - 2 health
Red and Blue cross - 5 health
Mine               - 10 health
Yellow star        - Increases fire speed (up to a limit)
Blue star          - Increases damage level of your bullets

If you fly into an exploding bonus, you'll damage yourself. (1 point at the mo)
Bonuses only last for a random (sensible) amount of time. If you or a monster
shoots them, their lifetime goes down.

Monsters
--------
The way it works is this...
On level 1
           1st monster takes 1 hit,  2nd 2 hits, 3rd 3 hits
On level 2
           1st monster takes 2 hits, 2nd 3 hits, 3rd 4 hits
On level 3
           1st monster takes 3 hits, 2nd 4 hits, 3rd 5 hits
etc etc etc
The more blue bonuses you collect, the less you'll notice how much
harder they are to kill.
Mosters fire more bullets and home in on you a little more as you progress
up the difficulty levels.

Notes
-----
I've now sorted out all the bugs that I know of and it works fine on
Delphi 1 & 2 in Win3.x & Win95. I've added some comments to the source
to help you understand what/why/how.

If you can clear all the screens like me (level 14), then you'll realize
the game is too easy, but I'm not finished yet.
I'll improve the bullets. On some displays the vertical bullets fall down
the screen exactly in sync with the raster and disappear for a bit. Very bad.
The bonuses will be changed, the mines will explode and send bullets in 4
directions, Hyperspaces will be added, special monsters that come into the grid,
extra things as and when I think of them.
Minor improvements are also needed, (like the bonuses can appear on you, or
on other bonuses, but not often).
The game gradually gets faster, but at some point your PC will not be able
to keep up and the speed will fluctuate, depending on how much is going on
on screen. Pentiums not a problem really.

If the exe file is very big, make sure the debug info is turned off in the
project options.

I'll use DirectDraw in the future. If I ever get time to do the neccessary
conversions. That'll make a huge difference.

Acknowledgemants
----------------
Thanks to Guy Brotherton, for drawing several of the monsters and testing the
game.

Thanks to The Paint Shop Pro people for making these sort of graphics a doddle.

I've stolen several bitmaps from other sources (can you guess where...) I hope
the Doom and Heretic people don't mind, I've modified them to make them a bit
different. I'll delete them If I receive any complaints. Thanks anyway for
writing good stuff.

Thanks to Borland for Delphi and all the Pascals in the past.

You can help
------------
If you have any ideas for improvement, or fancy drawing me some more monster
sprite images, please email me.

Criticism, bug reports, abuse, etc also accepted gratefully (!).

I shall upload this to the Delphi super page in a few days.
I'll try to do updates whenever I improve anything significant.
I have lots of work to do too so it won't be soon !

John B


 