Bottoms Up    by Michael Dowling

Thanks for downloading Bottoms Up. This is the instruction manual. Here you can find information about the game and how to play.

Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Getting Started
  • Playing the Game
  • Troubleshooting
  • Credits

    Introduction

    Welcome to the world of Bottoms Up. You play the role of a drunken Irishman. One snake survived Saint Patrick's expulsion of snakes from Ireland hundreds of years ago. The evil snake despised the Irish for ridding their land of its kind and swore revenge. It secretly gathered up an army of snakes and snake charming mercenaries. Then they stole all the beer in Ireland. Your job is to get back as much beer as possible while killing every snake you see. Find and kill the evil snake and put an end to this misery.

    Getting Started

    When you first turn on the game you will see a loading screen. Don't panic if it takes too long because it has to load a lot of data. Then you'll see the main menu. Use the ARROW keys to traverse the menu, and use ENTER to select an entry.

    Play will take you to the FILE SELECTION menu (discussed later).

    Timed will take you to the TIMED MENU. There you can play any level you have already beaten and see if you can get the fastest time.

    Battle will take you to the BATTLE MENU. There you can compete head to head against a fellow human.

    Options will take you to the OPTIONS MENU. There you can change the game's settings. Customize your controls, turn the sound on or off, set the detail level and camera view for 2p mode, and change the screen resolution. All your settings are then saved to /DATA/SCRIPTS/INIT.TXT. If you have any problems, you can manually edit this file.

    Quit will quit the game :)

    File Selection Menu:
    Select a file by hitting enter. If all the slots are taken and you want to delete one, hit the delete key. Then when you get an open slot hit enter on it. You will then be asked if you will play ONE PLAYER or TWO PLAYER. Then you will be taken the IN-GAME menu.

    In Game Menu:
    HUNT: you go out to hunt and kill snakes.
    BARTER: go to the BARTER MENU and try to buy items. If you have enough gold, you can purchase anything. Buying weapons is very key to your success in Bottoms Up.
    SAVE: you need to save your game regularly. The game doesn't do this for you.
    QUIT: go back to the main menu.

    Playing the Game

    Playing the game is deceptively complicated. The simple objective of each level is to kill all the snakes. The number of beers you have (represented by a beer bottle and the bottom left hand corner of the screen) represents how many hits you can take. The number of coins you have is also down there. The current item you have lined up for use is also represented there too. To change this hit BUTB. There are many objects on the map that can affect you.

    Coins give you more coins so you can save up to buy things.
    Powerups give you +1 of whatever kind of powerup it is.
    Trampolines bounce you over walls and obstacles.
    Generators generate random objects.
    Land mines blow things up that walk on them.
    Switches flip spikes up or down. If something is on a spike when it's flipped up then it loses HP.
    Charmers charm snakes out of BASKETS. The more charmers, the faster they charm.
    Fire decreases an objects HP by one every time it hits it. Fire also kills undead snakes.
    Pots of gold give 100 coins.

     Troubleshooting

    If you have any problems with the display or sound, you probably need to download the newest DIRECTX files. Go to the DirectX page and download the newest version. If that doesn't fix it, try messing with the /DATA/SCRIPTS/INIT.TXT file. Change up the settings and follow the directions in the header.

     Credits

    Michael Dowling: programming, design, some sfx, some gfx

    Amarillon: Mode7 code
    Thanks to the makers of
    ALLEGRO and FMOD