O O O O
o o o o
o . . o
. .____. _______ .
._______________________.___________ | |__ .__\__. \ ____.___________.
| __ / ___ | __ /__|___ __/___|__ _ | \ \| | __ |
| |_/ / \_| | |/ / ___/ | __// |___\ | |_/ |
| ______/|___________|____|\_______|__________|_____| \_____|_____ |
|____| /_________|
F O R .____.
.________________________ _____________._____________| |__
| __ / __ /_\ __ | ____/____) __/______
| |_/ / |/ / \ \_| | __/ | | |_/ /
. | ______/_____|\_________\__________| | |____|___________/ .
|____| |____|
o . . o
o o P R E S E N T S o o
O O LACEWING [AOS4] O O
AN ABSTRACT ARENA SHOOTER
PORTED BY .................... SPOT
SUPPLIED BY .................. SPOT
DEVELOPER........... LINLEY HENZELL
...................... CAPTAIN PORK
TYPE ......................... GAME
REQUIRES .................. ALLEGRO
- --- -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- -
LACEWING
Version 1.10
Release date: 25/11/2003
A game by Linley Henzell & Captain Pork
Copyright 2003
Produced using:
- the DJGPP compiler
- the RHIDE interface
- the Allegro game libraries
- the GIMP (for the graphics)
- Psycle (for the sounds)
Thanks to:
Jek for playtesting and various suggestions, and anyone who's ever
contributed to any of the software used in the production of this game.
Lacewing is distributed under the terms of the Free Software
Foundation's General Public Licence (GPL) - see the file LICENCE.TXT. It
comes with no warranty, and no liability is accepted for any harm it may
do to you or your computer. In the unlikely event that it injures you,
contact your MP or other local representative. Read the licence for more
information.
The source code should be available from http://users.olis.net.au/zel/
If it's not there, try contacting captainpork()fastmail.fm to find out
where it's gone.
Contents -
1. Briefing
2. Basic Piloting
3. Hints
4. Miscellaneous
**************************
1. Briefing
**************************
Welcome, pilot.
As you would know, the situation is serious. An alien invasion force is
slipping through the mysterious confines of Null-Z space towards Earth.
All attempts at diplomacy have failed and we expect our outer perimeter
defences to be under attack in a matter of hours. We are unlikely to be
able to stand up to an assault of this magnitude without resort to
desperate measures.
This is where you come in. Our xenotechnology experts have found a back
door into the alien Null-Z grid which we hope can be used to sneak past
the bulk of their forces. We can project one, or maybe two, attack craft
into these regions of the grid, with limited reserves. It isn't much,
but it's our best hope.
Your primary mission objective is the destruction of each of the four
controlling intelligences of the alien invasion force. With these out of
the picture, the whole attack will collapse. They are located deep in
the grid, and you will need to fly through several sectors of heavy
defences in order to reach them.
You are expected to meet two forms of resistance. The first consists of
elements of the alien force set up to guard the intellects. These are
critical targets, and you must take out all of them in each sector in
order for us to be able to advance you to the next sector. Your
Head-Up-Display (HUD) will indicate how many remain to be destroyed.
The second consists of the hostile native inhabitants of the grid. These
may look harmless, even cute, but if you allow them to reach the bottom
of the grid they will mutate into much more dangerous forms. Although
these are not essential targets, you may like to zap a few of them to
harvest the energy they sometimes carry.
You will be relieved to know that our xenotechnologists have managed to
temporarily isolate the primary defence system in each of the sectors
you will be required to enter. They estimate that you will have between
two and three minutes in each sector before the local system can
re-activate. Do try to finish up before that happens.
The standard vehicle for a mission such as this is the Lacewing Grid
Superiority Fighter, although if you prefer another craft we have a
variety of interceptors, bombers, gunships, fighter-bombers,
hunter-killers and other nasty things for you to fly. I am afraid that
the trickiness of the Null-Z space projection required for this mission
means that all craft will be inserted in their basic forms, but you
should be able to find enough energy in the grid to be able to upgrade
your vehicle as you see fit.
Good luck!
**************************
2. Basic Piloting
**************************
Lacewing can be played by one player, or by two players using the
split-screen cooperative mode.
Each of the craft you can choose from has its own strengths and
weaknesses, but at first they all perform identically (and not very
well). You can upgrade your craft's systems by harvesting energy from
disrupted aliens. Pockets of energy look like little yellow circles, and
when you pick them up they move your upgrade indicator (along the bottom
of the screen) to the right.
The idea is to pick up energy until the upgrade indicator is over the
system you want to upgrade (any overflow past the last upgrade, usually
Shield, is wasted), then press the Upgrade command key. Each system can
be upgraded five times.
You may from time to time come across other things to gather, like
super-dense energy, regenerative anentropy (aka repair squares) and
warps which allow more reserve ships to be projected. Don't leave
anything laying around for too long or it'll dissipate and be wasted.
* Weapons and defences:
All types of craft come equipped with a basic cannon, which has
unlimited ammunition and reloads quickly. Without upgrades, though, it
is quite weak.
In addition, most have a secondary weapon system - either missiles
(long-range) or bombs (short-range but very destructive). This becomes
active as soon as you obtain an upgrade which affects it. Secondary
weapons are usually more powerful than the cannon, but take a while to
reload. Some craft have other weapon systems as well, like point-defence
turrets or semi-autonomous combat drones. These also activate when
upgraded.
All craft are protected by armour and most can be upgraded to generate an
absorption field, aka a shield. Shields offer less protection than armour,
but recharge.
* Commands:
The options menu allows you to redefine the keys you use to issue
commands. It also has a key test functions so that you can work out
which combinations of keys your keyboard has problems with (this is a
hardware problem, and there's nothing I can do about it. Sorry).
The commands are as follows:
- Forward
Activates your craft's main drive system, propelling it forwards. Speed
upgrades increase the acceleration.
- Left/Right
Rotates your craft. Speed upgrades increase the rate of rotation.
- Brake
The grid exercises a slowing effect on most objects passing through it, a
little like air resistance. All craft are equipped with drag field generators
which, when active, greatly increase the rate at which your movement
through the grid is slowed. Press the brake key to activate the generator.
The Retro Rocket upgrade replaces the drag field.
- Slide Left/Right
If you have added the Slide upgrade to your craft, it can accelerate
sideways with these commands.
Note that your craft's engine can only produce a certain amount of
thrust, so if you have multiple sets of thrusters active at once (say
you are sliding while moving forward) output is split between them,
giving no increase in net acceleration (actually, a small decrease).
Rotation is gyroscopic and does not affect acceleration in this way.
- Fire
Fires your cannon and, if link fire is on, your secondary weapon as
well.
- Secondary fire
Fires your secondary weapon. A couple of red dots shows up in your
targeting indicator when your secondary weapon is ready to fire.
- Toggle link fire
Sometimes you want to aim your secondary weapon carefully before firing,
sometimes you want it to fire whenever it's ready.
- Upgrade
Upgrades whichever system is highlighted.
- Pause/quit
The escape key always pauses the game and lets you quit.
* Head-Up-Display (HUD)
Your HUD contains a large amount of useful information, if you know
where to look.
Near your craft (which appears in the middle of the screen) is the
targeting indicator, which tells you which way you're pointing and
changes colour when your weapons are ready to fire. If your craft is
carrying a weapon with lock-on capability, you will also see the maximum
range of the weapon's sensors and a designator around your current
target.
The top left shows a countdown until sector defences become active, the
number of targets you must eliminate, and the current sector number.
The top right shows your score. You get extra reserves at 1,000, 10,000,
and 20,000 points, and every 20,000 after that.
The bottom right shows your scanner. Your position is indicated by the
white cross. The yellow dots indicate targets which must be eliminated,
while orange dots are non-critical targets.
Along the bottom of the HUD is your upgrade display. The system you will
upgrade if you press the Upgrade key is highlighted in yellow.
Finally, the bottom left holds the status display. This indicates the
health of your armour, the strength of your shield (if you have one
installed), the link status of your secondary weapon (if your craft is
equipped with a secondary weapon) and the status of your drag field
(unless it's been replaced by retro rockets). Your reserve of ships
runs up the left side of the HUD.
**************************
3. Hints
**************************
If you're having trouble, here are some hints & tips to mastering
Lacewing:
- Try to keep moving as much as possible. The drag field decelerates
you much faster than your drives accelerate you, so it's often better
for dodging bullets. Of course, it only works if you're already moving.
- Activate your shield as early as possible. Try to get it by level 4.
- Having said that, once you have one level of shield you may be better
off upgrading armour.
- Link fire is only really useful for craft with seeker and/or
fast-loading missiles, or if you just don't care where your ordnance goes.
- The drift device (Doom Fork only) dramatically reduces the drag your
craft experiences provided that the drag is below a certain level. If drag
is above that level the device does nothing. So it helps your acceleration
but doesn't do so much for your top speed.
- Instead of flying directly at enemies, try flying past them and
strafing them instead. But that doesn't work for all of them.
- Instead of finishing a level early to get points, you may be better
off hanging around and farming non-critical targets for a while.
- Watch out for singing jellyfish!
**************************
4. Miscellaneous
**************************
* Cooperative
To enter cooperative mode, just start the game as normal and make sure
that both players press fire when prompted.
In this mode you begin with four reserve craft which are pooled between
the players, but you don't get bonus reserves at 1,000 points (you have
to wait for 10,000).
* Duel
Since Lacewing contains a two-player cooperative mode, I thought it
would be silly not to add a competitive mode as well.
Note that the game isn't really balanced for duelling, so some craft are
much better at it than others.
* Options
As well as allowing you to redefine the keyset, the options menu has a
few other functions which may not be so obvious. You can turn sound on
or off and adjust the volume. You can set the sound mode to mono, or to
stereo (which pans the sound according to the position of its source
relative to your position, and only works in single player games), and you
can test your speakers to see if the stereo needs to be reversed. You can
also tell the game whether you want it to synchronise the video to the
screen retrace; this removes some minor flickering but can slow the game
down, so if your computer is dropping frames you might like to turn it off.
* Changes since version 1.0:
I don't remember all of the changes, but here's a rough list:
- 4 craft (the last 4) added
- some of the existing craft changed
- a few new enemies
- bombs do a little less damage and have a slightly smaller radius
- missiles with the rocket upgrade travel much further
- some of the late-game enemies are easier to kill
- repairs now give a flat 75 points regardless of your armour level
- various new effects and other things that I now forget added
- you now have more time on the later levels (this was a bug)
- one or two other minor bugs fixed
* System requirements:
- Minimum
P150
32MB RAM
That's the tested minimum, although it will probably work on a less
powerful computer - I just haven't had the chance to test it on eg a
computer with 16MB RAM. You'll probably want something better,
though, so that you can run with a decent framerate when lots is
happening on the screen.
- Recommended
P233 or better
32MB RAM
Some kind of sound card that Allegro can autodetect (probably most of them)
If the game refuses to load or just crashes, you could try disabling the
sounds altogether to see if that fixes it.
Edit the lacew.cfg file and change
Sound_init=1
to
Sound_init=0
If that doesn't work, I have no idea what's going wrong. Sorry.
* Source Code
The main() function and a list of modules is in main.c.
As I use RHIDE I don't have a makefile, but building Lacewing is easy:
just compile all the files and link them together. You must have Allegro
properly installed to be able to do this, of course.
* Acknowledgements
Lacewing was fairly obviously inspired by a whole lot of old arcade and
arcade-style games, most of which I had versions of on my Commodore 64
(those were the days). Without thinking too hard about it, these
include: Centipede, Slapfight, Spacewar, Asteroids, Juno First, X-out,
Armalyte and others I now forget. In terms of more recent games, I
downloaded Quadnet (great fun) and Warning Forever shortly before I
started working on Lacewing.
* The End
Thanks for downloading Lacewing. If you like it (or if you don't like it
and can explain why in a constructive manner), please send me an email
at captainpork()fastmail.fm. Have fun!
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