O P E R A T I O N   B L A C K   S U N   v0.41 beta (06-05-99)
-------------------------------------------------------------

(c)1998/99 by Genlog Productions



#include <std_disclaimer.h>



   "We do not accept responsibility for any effects, adverse or otherwise, 

    that this code may have on you, your computer, your sanity, your dog, 

    and anything else that you can think of. Use it at your own risk."





What is Operation Black Sun?

----------------------------



OBS is a 2D-arcade-space-shooter-killing-game. You are able to move

in any direction you like, you can collect weapons, use teleporters,

kill other ships, play with your friend on one computer in splitmode or

just have a nice time flying over or bursting lasers through green, dancing, 

little men which spray cute particle blood when killed.....:-)



System Requirements

-------------------

CPU: P-133 (was the slowest PC I found to test it, it ran fairly well)

RAM: tested with 32 MB only, I think 8 MB should be enough, tell me if not

OS: MS-DOS or Windows



IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO HAVE VBE/AF DRIVER INSTALLED FOR 

BETTER PERFORMANCE.



Installation

------------

Unzip the zip-file WITH FOLDERS and run SETSOUND.BAT to configure your 

soundcard. After that, start BLACKSUN.EXE, configure your keys, set up

everything else and start the game. 



Options Menu:

  - Sound/Musicvolume      -    quite obvious, isn't it ? :)

  - Force Doublebuffering  -    if you have problems with pageflipping, try this,

				the game could run slower then

  - keysetup	 	   -    setup your key-config here



What can I do?

---------------------



Ok, only deathmatch on one computer is working right now. Select a map, set 

your skill level and number of enemies and have fun shooting them.



Useful things to know

---------------------



- when another ship hunts you down with a rocket launcher, don't try to escape,

  instead, turn around and use the pulse cannon to shoot the missiles or drop

  mines to stop them

- another good thing is to stay near walls when someone shoots with rockets,

  if they don't hit you, they hit the wall and can't come back for another try

- don't get too close to turrets when you kill them, they explode with a burst

  of laserbeams going into all directions

- it is very useful to read the tutorial in 1P mode

- the turrets will also shoot at CPU-ships, so trap the ships and make them 

  fly into the turrets

- you can observe the whole map when you're dead, just use your arrowkeys or

  whatever you configured for moving your ship to scroll around

- if the screen stops updating you have too many objects in the game or your

  CPU is too slow. Wait until it starts updating again or press ESC and start

  a new game

- skip intro with <ESC>





The console

-----------



You can popup a console by pressing ~ ( as in Quake ). Known commands are:

  

  - god   			- neat msg

  - call me cheater		- enable cheats

  - i want killing tools	- get all weapons

  - i will never die		- godmode

  - kill			- kill yourself

  - restart			- restart map

  - quit  			- quit game





The editor

----------



Within this package is a mapeditor inluded. It is not documented yet and still 

has a few minor bugs. Not every feature of the editor is usable by the game 

(e.g. scripts). The interface should be quite easy to understand, the only 

thing which isn't quite obvious is how to use the selection-bar on the right:

  press PGUP to go up

  press PGDOWN to go down

That's it. Everything else is self-explaining or will be explaied in future.



If you made your own map and think it is funny, send it to me and I will include

it in the next version and upload it to the homepage for others to download.





Features (v0.41 alpha)

---------------------



- 2D tile based / free scrolling / parallax / multiple viewport graphics engine

- 2 player splitscreen mode

- 32 direction moving

- keyboard is completely configurable

- support for all standard soundcards incl. WSS & Gravis Ultrasound

- resolution up to 1024*768

- animated, transparent sprite+pixel explosions

- 4 weapons with 3 upgrade levels each: 

       - standard MP : fast but weak 

       - laser       : slow but strong

       - proxymines  : they don't move at all, but are very dangerous

                       good if you're hunted down, or for confusing

		       homing missiles

       - missiles    : wait until the CPU ships have them :-)

- 4 specials just waiting to be collected

- kind of AI ( still buggy )

- super thrilling sound engine  :)

- regions on the map, which affect ships in different ways

- ingame tutorial (singleplayer only)

- a great mapeditor

- XM-music



More to come

------------



- scripting will be finished soon

- multiplayer IPX (perhaps also TCP/IP) modes (deathmatch, teammatch, CTF and all

  those neat multiplayers modes known from other games)

- singleplayer campaigns



How to play

-----------



The standard config looks like that:



general keys:



PAUSE     : PAUSE

SCREENSHOT: SHIFT-PRTSCR

EXIT      : ESC



1P mode:

  THRUST FORWARD: UP

  THRUST BACK   : DOWN

  TURN LEFT     : LEFT

  TURN RIGHT    : RIGHT

  FIRE          : L-CTRL

  SELECT WEAPONS: 1/2/3/4

  NEXT ITEM     : X

  PREV ITEM     : Y

  USE ITEM      : ALT





For 2 player mode controls have a look at the keyconfig page.



Report Bugs

-----------



If you found a bug, please mail us with the name, version and build date of 

the game as subject. 

If the game crashes, please send us a mail including the things above, 

OBS.LOG and what happened just before the crash if you noticed something

special.



Known bugs:

 - game crashes occasionally when exiting 





Mailing list

------------



Go to our homepage and subscribe to my mailinglist if you want to be informed

about updates and future developments.



About this game

---------------



This game is written in C++ using D.J. Delories' DJGPP compiler, 

Shawn Hargreaves' Allegro library for I/O routines, and the

MIDAS library for music and sound. The source code is 200k in size and will

grow as time runs.



Credits

-------



Joerg "Sharky-X" Rueppel

    Coding, Design, Music, SFX, GFX



Andre "Nemesis" Kleinschnittger

    GFX, Design, Intro-Pics



Waldemar Bartikowski

    AI-Code



Guenter Ladwig

    menu-code



Speedy-J

    The track, which is played during the game is done by him. I don't

    know him, I just found this track on the web and put it into the game.

    If you think, you're the composer of this great track, please contact

    us.



David Lyr 

    2D tileGFX



Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz

    Story, Missions



Jens Kroniger

    Intro Music



Ivan Baldo

    Pixelperfect collisiondetection routines



Ben Wyatt

    posted the TriArea function to the agp-list ( very helpful for AI )



Doug Eleveld

    I use his INI-file routines from DEGUI



Chris La Mantia

    I got his console code from 'Speedfreak'



The MIDAS team

    Sound/Music system



D.J. Delorie 

    Compiler



Shawn H. 

    Allegro



Thanx fly out to:

-----------------



Jamie Love, George Foot, Johan Henriksson & everyone else who made suggestions 

or helped us out here and there.



Contact

-------



You're always welcome to mail us with your comments, suggestions and any other

thoughts you want to inform us about.



Thanx in advance for any reply. 



E-Mail: sharky-x@gmx.net

WEB: http://www.sharky-x.de

that should be all for now



cya and have a nice DOS :-)

Joerg "Sharky-X" Rueppel
