.BREAKOUT B R E A K O U T Page 1 - - - - - - - - Breakout was designed to be a game of skill. This game is simple to learn and should give you and your friends hours of fun. This game is distributed as part of the SHAREWARE concept. You are allowed to freely distribute this game as long as this document, unmodified, is distributed with it. If you use this game and find it enjoyable, please send $10 to: Hal Strausberg 102 Grove Street Lexington, MA 02173 The response to this request will be used to determine whether a 3-D version of this game would be of any interest. REQUIRED HARDWARE ----------------- This game requires PC, XT or AT with an EGA or EGA clone and a High Resolution color monitor. PURPOSE of the GAME ------------------- The purpose of the game is to remove as many "bricks" as possible by bouncing the ball against them. Each removed brick scores 10 points. If a player manages to remove enough bricks to "breakout" through the bricks to the other side, the game enters expert mode. In expert mode, the ball moves quicker and the player's paddle becomes smaller. Each brick removed in expert mode scores 15 points. If the all the bricks are removed, a new panel of bricks are displayed and the player is allowed to continue. The speed of the ball is reduced to the pre-breakout speed but the paddle remains small. When the player breaks out again the speed will increase again. HOW the game WORKS ------------------ The number of players at a time is limited by the amount of memory your particular system has. A MS-DOS 3.x machine with 640K of memory should be able to have well over 350 players playing at the same time (although why you would want that many I couldn't begin to guess). Each player has 5 balls to use against the bricks. Each player has one turn at a time but the players need not play in order. The current player can PASS on his turn (even in mid-turn) on to the next player. When the player's turn comes up again it will start exactly where it left off. The game is designed to use a mouse, although one can play the game with just the keyboard. To play the game with the mouse you simply move the mouse pointer to the START box and press either button. When you release the button the game will start. To move the paddle, simply move the mouse from side to side. Whenever you press a mouse button, the game is temporarily suspended and the mouse pointer B R E A K O U T Page 2 - - - - - - - - reappears on the side of the game on top of the START box, you can move the pointer to any box on right. When you let go of the button, the box under the pointer will be the action you have chosen. You can QUIT the game (this QUIT is for the current player only). You can PASS (this will allow the next player to play without you loosing your turn). You can also PAUSE (which will leave you suspended until you select the START box). You can play the game without the mouse by using the arrow keys and the shift keys. The up and down arrow keys move the pointer from one box to the next (with the HOME and END keys moving to the top and bottom box respectively). To select one of the boxes simple press RETURN. To go back to play without selecting anything press the left arrow key. To temporarily suspend the game press the right arrow key. Finally, the left shift key moves the paddle to the left and the right shift key moves the paddle to the right. It is a little harder to operate the game this way so you may want to slow the game down a little (see the section on changing the game attributes). On each serve, the ball starts towards the paddle just under the first row of bricks. The exact direction the ball travels is random. The speed of the ball is very slow until the ball is hit by the paddle, then the speed of the ball returns to the appropriate velocity. This is done to give the player a fair start. KEEPING SCORE ------------- For each brick a player removes from the game board the player scores 10 points. If the player is in expert mode (has broken through all the bricks and has hit the top of the game box with the ball) each brick scores 15 points. Every player's score is compared against the high score at the end of each ball. If the high score is lower than the current player's, the current player's score replaces the high score. At the end of the game all players scores are listed and those scores which are greater than or equal to the high score are marked as winning scores. After the scores are displayed, the players may play again by answering "yes" to the "Play Again?" question. If the players wish to play again, the highest score is preserved and the players must now try to beat the last game's high score. CHANGING the GAME ATTRIBUTES ---------------------------- This game was written on a ZENITH Z200 system which is approximately equal to a 8MHz PC/AT. If this game is too slow or too fast for you, it can be adjusted by a command line argument when it is started up. This is done by typing a space after the game name followed by an 'S' followed (no space after the S) by value you want B R E A K O U T Page 3 - - - - - - - - the speed of the game to adjust to. This number should be in the range of -6 to 6. A number less than zero slows the game down, while a number greater than zero speeds the game up. To make the game run as slow as it possibly can, you would type: dos prompt> BREAKOUT S-6 Another adjustment that can be made is to turn off the the tick sound that is made when the ball hits something. The is done by adding a no sound argument in the command line. This is a slash followed by 'NS'. The command line would look like: dos prompt> BREAKOUT /NS For a slow game with no sound you would type: dos prompt> BREAKOUT /NS S-6 The is one more adjustment the user can make. When the game is started, a title screen is displayed and you are asked to enter the number of players that will be in this game. If you choose you can enter the number of players on the command line. This will cause the game to go right to the game board. So... a slow game of breakout with no sound and three players would look like: dos prompt> BREAKOUT /NS S-6 3 Any combination of these arguments can be supplied in any order. If you want any changes to be permanent, I suggest you start this game via a .bat file. This bat file would look like: BREAKOUT /NS S-6 %1 Here the number of players is supplied when the program is started and the rest is always entered. MISCELLANEOUS ------------- It is possible to effect the path of the ball sightly. If the ball is hit at the ends of the paddle it will alter the path of the ball. For example, if the ball is coming from the left side of the box and strikes the left most part of the paddle, the resulting bounce will be slightly more vertical. If the ball was hit on the right most part of the paddle, the resulting bounce would be slightly more horizontal. The opposite it true if the ball is coming from the right part of the box.