AstroFire Instructions (24th May 1994)

(C) Owen Thomas 1994. All Rights Reserved.

Description

AstroFire is an arcade game featuring stunning 256-colour raytraced graphics. Blast your way through 75 levels of asteroids and alien ships, collecting power-ups to boost your fire-power and your defences! Do battle with 18 different types of enemy craft!

ORT Software

Requirements

AstroFire requires:

- 286 or faster IBM-compatible PC (386 or better recommended)

- Colour VGA graphics

AstroFire also supports Sound Blaster cards (but NOT Adlib).

To start AstroFire:

1. Switch to the drive where the game is installed (eg. C:)

2. Switch to the subdirectory where the game is installed (eg. CD \ASTRO)

3. Type ASTRO

Alternatively, you can start AstroFire with one of these switches:

ASTRO -QUIET

ASTRO -SCREENSHOT

This is to help journalists take screen shots. If at any point you want to restore the original High Score table or Option settings, just type RE-INIT at the C: prompt.

Before you run AstroFire, I advise you to skim through the following list of common problems and solutions. This could save a lot of wasted time and help you enjoy the game more.

Common Problems and Solutions

* If the graphics appear either too dark or very washed out, don't forget to try adjusting the settings on your monitor. Different monitors give very different results!

* If the game runs slowly on your computer, there are three solutions:

(1) Don't use Joystick Control (select the Keyboard Option instead).

(2) Switch off all sound effects.

(3) Buy a faster computer.

* If you can't get your joystick to work, check the stick is centred when you start the program and when you select Joystick Control from the Options

Menu.

* It is not advisable to run AstroFire under Microsoft Windows because

(1) you won't get any Sound Blaster effects and

(2) the game may run slowly or even halt completely.

* If you have a Sound Blaster compatible card, but are unable to get any sound

effects to play:

(1) check you're not running the program under Microsoft Windows,

(2) check that AstroFire displays a "Sound Blaster Detected" message whilst it is loading up, and

(3) check that you have selected Sound Blaster sound on the Options screen. If that doesn't work, all I can suggest is that you choose PC Speaker sound effects instead - sorry, but sound cards are notoriously idiosyncratic!

* If the program locks up or "behaves oddly", there may be a conflict with your sound card. Try starting AstroFire without sound (ie. ASTRO -QUIET).

* If you receive a message telling you there is "Insufficient Memory" try booting your computer with a minimum boot disk or modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files (see your DOS manual for further instructions).

Try to give me as much information as possible: what happens, when it happens, what error messages you get, which version of the game you are using, what computer you have (make AND type: eg. Dell 386sx, Gateway 486dx), which version of DOS you use, what type of sound board you have, what memory managers you're using (eg. EMM386, 386MAX) and whether you're using a disk-compression program (eg. Stacker, Double Space).

The rules are pretty simple: kill everything!

There are two information bars at the top-left of the screen. The first, marked 'S', represents your shields. Each time your ship is hit, your shields are depleted - when they reach zero you die! Fortunately, you can boost your shields by collecting red power-up gems. The second bar, marked 'W', represents the strength of your weaponry. You can boost your fire-power for a short period by collecting gold power-up gems. If your weapon reaches full power it will release a devastating ring of laser bolts - very useful when you're in a tight corner! You start the game with three lives and you can gain more by collecting mauve power-up gems. The number immediately to the right of the bars tells you how many lives you have left. The number at the top-right of the screen is your score.

Hints

If the game is too easy or too hard, try changing the difficulty level on the Options Menu: on the easy level, your ship will be able to take more hits; on the the hard level, power-up gems will appear less frequently. Try to stay in the centre of the screen and never let your ship build too much momentum. To slow your ship down, just thrust away from your direction of travel. If your ship is hidden off the edge of the screen, don't just hang around waiting to be hit - take a chance and just accelerate ANYWHERE. Keep the number of asteroids on the screen to a minimum by picking off the larger rocks one at a time: shoot one large rock, shoot all the smaller rocks released, and only then shoot the next large rock. Shoot the UFOs from a distance - the closer you are, the more likely you are to be shot yourself. Some of the alien craft home in on your ship. You can confuse them by moving off one side of the screen and appearing on the other.

Distributive size: 400K Windows-95,98,ME,2000,XP,NT

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