PHOTON STORM Typed in by PARASITE of LSD. OBJECTIVES Kill all enemies in an attack wave, thereby opening up your stargate and enabling you to warp through hyperspace. Collect as many Plutonium Pods as possible, which can be used as extra shielding whilst negotiating the Hyperspace Tunnel between levels and to prevent the enemy from collecting Plutonium pods (which are used to build and activate the enemy Battlestar.) If the Battlestar is activated, you must defeat it in mortal combat to end the wave and open the Stargate. Stay alive. Get further into the attack levels, and amass a truly awesome score. HOW TO PLAY Once the game has loaded, the title page ius displayed. From here you may press the left mouse button to commence a one-player game, or the right mouse button for two-players. In two-player mode, players compete for the highest score, with play alternating between player one and two each time a ship is destroyed. If the game is not started, it will display the demonstration screens. Press the Left mouse button to return to the title screen and start a new game. CONTROLING YOUR SHIP Your ship will appear on the screen, followed by the enemies and the Stargate (The Stargate is a large glowing triangular object). Your ship is in the centre of the screen, and remains there throughout the game. As you fly around, the gameworld moves relative to the ship.The ship is contrilled by a combination of mouse and keyboard commands. FIRING The left mouse button is the fire button. Holding this down results in a triple-beam of laser fire, and there's no reason to stop until everything is destroyed! THRUST The right mouse button controls the thrust. If this is not pressed, your ship drifts through space at whatever angle it happens to be turned to. Pressing thrust causes two things to happen; your ship accelerates, and it also turns to face the aiming point. So, by a combination of moving the aiming point and using the thrust button, you can turn the ship to go wherever you want, and control the speed. With a little practice this will become second nature. BOOST There is a keyboadr boost button - the left shift key. Holding this down doubles the speed of the ship. however using this uses your avaliable boost energy, which is shown by one of the two linear gauges in the score area (the one with the flame by it), and when this reaches zero, you can boost no longer. However while you are not boosting, the energy recharges, but it must reach beyond a certain threshold (about 25% of the guage) before it will become availible. SMART BOMBS Pressing the control key releases a Smart Bomb (this destroys all enemies and missiles on the screen). You begin the game with four of these, and are displayed as purple spheres in the box to the left of the central Scanner in the score area (to the right if you're player two). Extra Smart Bombs can be obtained during play by blasting Starflakes; they yield a bonus pellet which, if collected, will give either a Smart Bomb, some invincibility, or an extra life. SINGLE BEAM This is for the confident player. It reduces the triple beam laser to a single beam one. Anything shot with this gives double points. To obtain the single beam, just hold down the alternative key while firing. THE SCANNER This is the centrally-located box in the score area. It displays objects in the gameworld which are not immediatly visible on your screen, as different coloured blips. As the gameworld is large, it features automatic resolution switching. If you are a long way from any other objects, the scanner zooms out until it picks up an object. As you approach an object the scanner steps down a resolution to give you a more localised view of the immediate region around the ship. The Scanner Zoom Factor is displayed underneath the scanner; X8 is maximum zoom out (this covers the whole gameworld); X1 is the area immediately local to your ship. HEAD-UP DISPLAY This consists simply of rudimentary geometric objects superimposed upon the field of play: a green triangle represents the location of the Stargate; the red circle represents the enimy Battlestar. the display represents a scaled-down version of the real gameworld with respect to your ship. So, flying towards the green trianglerepresenting the stargate would eventually bring you to the actual stargate. When an enemy ship steals a Plutonium pod, to return it to its Battlestar, it will appear as a white cross on the head-up display. Destroying such a laden enemy ship yields a bonus, and the stolen plutonium is released for you to collect. Should the enemy Battlestar recieve too much Plutonium, it will activate. When this happens all the enemies in the level except for the Battlestar dissappear, and the Battlestar comes to get you, unleashing hordes of reeking Ferrets in your general direction. To complete the level and open the Stargate, you then have to destroy this monstrosity, a task involving lots of hits, and some nifty use of boost. YOUR ENEMIES You will meet various types of enemy, all with one aim, to splatter you to atoms. Some attempt to collide with your ship, others lay mines or fire bullets, some release streams of fireballs, and many do more than one of these things at the same time. On the later levels you will meet the most insidious of all, the green orb-like Abductors, which seek out and capture floating Plutonium pellets and take them back to the Battlestar. STARFLAKES Shooting one of the Starflake enemies releases a pellet, which will may be blue with a little 'W' on it. Collect the pellet before it decays and you'll be rewarded with the purple blobby lasers for about 30 seconds. If it is a pink orb, which is the most common, they work as Smart Bombs, destroying everything on the screen, and automatically collecting you any plutonium, and you also get five seconds of shield. If it is a green orb, it will give you about 30 seconds of shield, letting you fight without risk. PLUTONIUM This is represented by rotating radioactivity-symbols. You must collect this and take it back to the Stargate. You can collect more then one piece, and they all stream out behind your ship, in fact, the more you carry, the more points you get. Just collect as much as you dare, and take them back to the Starport, you will be rewarded with bonus points. The more pellets you collect the better, as you'll find out when you finish a level. FINISHING A LEVEL This occurs when all enemies on a level are killed. The message 'THE GATE IS OPEN - THE WAY IS CLEAR' will appear on the head-up display. Flying through leads to a tunnel, you should reach the bonuses and the Warp to the next level. The first few are very easy, but they get harder, avoid flying outside the walls. You can sustain a number of hits detonated by the number of green pixels in the oscillating chain superimposed on the bottom of the display, each collision will result in the loss of one pixel. If you collide too many times, you explode, and although you don't lose a life, you will restart at the beginning of the level, and lose your bonus points. STARGATE If you enter the stargate when you are not carrying any plutonium, and when it is not yet open, the following occurs; If there is a Plutonium pellet somewhere in the gameworld, the Gate teleports you to the vicinity. If no abdoction is occuring, the Stargate tries to warp you onto a free- floating Plutonium pellet. If there are no pellets, the stargate tries to put you near a Starflake. If there are no Starflakes, it puts you near anything that is still alive. If there is nothing at all around, the Stargate warps you down the galaxy a bit. PAUSE Press the right Shift key during play to go into a fountain simulation. You can press the mouse buttons to alter the gravity and pallette and move the 'fountainhead' with the mouse. You can now press 'Q' to abort the game. If you prefer something more traditional, hold down the thrust button whilst pressing the right Shift key to freeze the display. Pressing restats the game. End.