BOING! THE GAME--------------------------DOCS Password protected...do not change this doc....typos most probably in the original manual.... PAGE 1 MANUAL PROTECTION Boing! The game uses manual copy protection. You will be asked to enter a word from the manual before the game will start. You will be given a page number, a paragraph number, and a word number for the required word to enter. When counting paragraphs and words ignore headings and chapter numbers. Omit all punctuation when entering the word. Enter alphabetic characters only. PAGE 2 The Saga of Seymour Greene Once upon a time there was a group of investors who wanted to make the world's best beach ball. But they couldn't afford the high-tech equipment or engineers. So they started out selling beach towels. The beach towels sold well. Finally, the investors saved enough money to buy fancy equipment and hire some engineers. One of these engineers was Seymour Greene. Anxious to design the world's best beach ball, Seymour and the other engineers immediately set out in their efforts. Everyone worked hard, putting in long hours to create the world's best beach ball. PAGE 3 They knew that their beach ball would sell millions because the competition was not great. There were only three other companies making beach balls. International Beach Ball Manufacturers was one of them. IBBM was by far the biggest beach ball company. But all their balls were blue. And they thought that all beach balls should be blue and cost a lot. AppBall was another company with expensive balls. They did have the biggest balls. But their balls were only available in black and white. Cute Beach Ball Manufacturers also sold beach balls. CBBM had a nice beach ball that was inexpensive and even came in many colors. But because their beach balls were so cheap, the serious beach goers thought they were just toys. Besides that, the company was run by Mr. Evil. Then the engineers did it! Their beach ball was completed. It was by far the best beach ball in the world. It was reasonably priced, allowed you to use several of them at the same time, and came in a flashy red-and-white checkered design. PAGE 4 The beach ball was a true work of art. They named it the Boing! Ball. But then the investors ran out of money. They couldn't advertise their new Boing! Ball because they were broke. Bankruptcy was just around the corner. The investors had to do something fast! They panicked and sold their company to CBBM and Mr. Evil. It was a sad day. All the engineers were angered because the new company didn't want to keep them. They didn't even want to keep Seymour, but they did. Soon people realized that Mr. Evil wasn't the right man to run CBBM, and so they fired him. Mr. Evil was persistant though. He bought another company who thought they were in the beach ball business but, in actuality, made woofle balls. This didn't help CBBM much though. They themselves didn't have much money to advertise the new Boing! Ball because they had spent so much acquiring the small company. Some Boing! Balls sold. The people who bought them loved them. They told their friends. They brought their Boing! Balls to the beach and showed others that there really was a good beach ball they could buy. People couldn't believe how easy the Boing! ball was to use. Some people couldn't understand why it wasn't blue and expensive, or why it wasn't black and white. They just didn't understand. PAGE 5 CBBM had problems convincing people that their Boing! Ball was the best. They seemed to muff things up a lot. People who owned the Boing! Ball were frustrated with CBBM. They wanted everyone to know about this marvelous new beach ball. Years passed and CBBM tried to sell the Boing! Ball. They didn't do well. They even made some improvements to it, although some of the improvements weren't as good as the people expected. Seymour had many ideas, but nobody at CBBM would listen. You see, the other beach ball companies soon realized that the Boing! ball was the world's best beach ball, and they started to copy it. Soon the Boing! Ball would be surrounded by imitattions. Then one day He arrived. He promised much, but so did his predecessors. He was charming and motivating, as a prince should be. Prince Nickleman advertised the Boing! Ball. He hired and he fired. He reorganized. He knew it was important to convince the serious beach goers that the Boing! Ball was better than the rest. No one knows how the story will end. Prince PAGE 6 Nickleman is trying. Some people think that Prince Nickleman could do much better if old King Irvine would retire. King Irvine has been at CBBM forever and it seems he may be clogging up the pipes a bit. We would like to say that they all lived happily ever after. But we will just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, Seymour has become disillusioned with his job, often slipping into daydreams filled with evil green Boing! Balls that would like to have him for a snack. Help Seymour escape from his imaginary underground cave system so he can snap out of his daydream and return to work. He's already been warned about his daydreaming and this time he's sure to be fired. Keep Seymour from getting canned. Who knows, he might replace King Irvine someday and save CBBM. THE END PAGE 7 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF SEYMOUR GREENE The alarm went off. Gradually, portions of Seymour's brain realized this. He opened his eyes and eventually made out the numbers on the clock. They said "7:00". It seemed as if he'd only gotten to sleep an hour before. In fact, he had Seymour Greene had been practicing all night long. He played bass for a small band with big aspirations. Though they had not actually produced an album or even played for an audience larger than their neiborhood, they looked forward to the big time. For instance, it had already been decided that they would not only smash their guitars after each concert, but they would shoot the backup singers and set fire to the auditorium as well. It was only after pondering his bladder pressure that Seymour remembered that today was his first day PAGE 8 on the job with Cute Beach Balls, or Beach Balls 'R' Us, or whatever it was they called themselves; he couldn't remember. Seymour rolled out of bed and trod over to his desk. There he found the remains of a Twinkie and and a cold cup of coffee that had been there for as long as he could remember. Ignoring the sweatsock steeped in it, he took a swig and downed the Twinkie. Not much refreshed, Seymour then stumbled into his bathroom and started a nice, steaming shower, which awakened him enough to realize his pajamas were still on. Later, as he dressed, something bothered him. "Is it that this is the last job I could possibly get, and I'd better not blow it?" he wondered. "No, no. Is it that I've got a hangover so hungover that I'd rather die now than avoid the rush?" "No, that's only part of it." It was like a high-pitched squeal that made his head hurt. He paused to comb his remaining hair. "Oh, right. That's it." PAGE 9 Seymour turned off his alarm clock and went to the living room. He peered ou through the fornt window shade. It was the knid of warm, beautiful, sunlit day that uplifts everyone. Seymour only noticed that the neighbor's dog had pooped on his lawn again. PAGE 10 This page for doodles. PAGE 11 II. By education, Seymour was a plastics engineer. He attended the Pompous School of Technical Design, where he majored in Polymer Engineering. In grad school he invented those little lids that prevent one from spilling hot beverages. Their only drawback is that they don't let any of the actual beverage reach the mouth On the way to work, he stopped by a convience store for gas. he also bought an Extra-Large Gulp of their patented 781 degree coffee, which he spilled in his lap only two blocks away. He invented several new words in the process. He pulled into a parking lot and stopped the car. Seymour had a patented technique for taking up almost seven parking spots with one car. Normally done to protect expensive foreign cars, Seymour had an even better reason; he drove a Pinto. PAGE 12 He checked his watch and was unpleasantly surprised to find that it read "8:04". He dashed madly into the building and up to the receptionist. "Where is Research and Development?" "Left around that corner, down the hall, third floor, door to your right." Seymour was already in motion before she completed her sentence. He went left around the corner, down the hall, third door, which read "Men". "Couldn't be right," he thought. He retraced his steps. After several more tries, he gave up and wandered dejectedly around, totally lost. A man walked by wearing an official-looking badge. "Err..can I help you?" he asked. "Yah," Seymour said, taking a bit of paper from his pocket. "I'm looking for a...Dr.... Bolchetzky." He looked up. The man waggled his badge at Seymour. It read "Dr. R.M.S. Bolchetzky". "That's me. And you're...?" PAGE 13 "Greene. Seymour Greene." "Ah, yes. You'd be our new engineer, hm?" He checked his watch. "You're a tad late, Greene. Tomorrow I expect to see..." Bolchetzky's eyes wandered off to the ceiling and seemed to shut down. Seymour waited for him to finish his sentence. He waited some more. He turned to see what the man was staring at and didn't. "Ahh. ...Sir?" Bolchetzky's eyes lost their glaze and he harumphed. "Well, shall we get to work, Greene?" "Seymour, sir. Yes." "More what?" "Seymour. Call me Seymour." "Right." Bolchetzky opened a door and invited Seymour in. PAGE 14 This page for doodles. PAGE 15 III. As he stepped through the door, a wondrous sight met Seymour's eyes. Before him was one of the best-equiped polymer labs he had ever seen. It even had a new Polydistildripulatizimation machine. "Here we are, my boy. Here you will find all of the tools needed for our research. But first we need to set you up." After introducing Seymour to the lab's current occupants, Bolchetzky instructed one of them to raget Seymour down to personnel. PAGE 16 Seymour spent much of the morning filling out forms and other supposedly necessary bits of paperwork. He was also assigned an employee's badge bearing a hideous photograph, some meaningless identification numbers, and a large barcode. Later, he was led to the men's room, handed a small jar, and instructed by the company nurse to fill it. Confused, he thought, "Must be some intelligence test," as he went to the sink and filled it with water. He got a terrible scowl and a great deal of verbal abuse out of her when he returned. Finally, about lunch time, they sent him back up to the lab. He was feeling terribly hungry and tired. "Mumfph! Your boak!" said his boss through a mouthful of cold lasagna. The R & D crew was on their break. "Haff fum." Seymour sat down and wolfed it down, ignoring the fact that Italian food PAGE 17 gave him a bad time. He finished feeling much better, though still rather sleepy. "We've been working on designing a better air seal around the edges of the plastic panels that form our beach ball. Any ideas, Seymour?" Seymour grabbed a piece of the plastic material and pondered. "Hmmm. Well, yes. I think we could inpregnate it with a solvent while it is under pressure and at 400 degrees. That should fuse the panels well enough." "We tried that once before. You think you can come up with the right solvent?" Dr. Bolchetzky asked. "Yah. Give me a little while to work on it." "Ok. Well, I and the rest of the guys are going to visit International Plastics to look into some new materials. Meanwhile, we'll leave you to work on it. Good Luck!" Dr. Bolchetzky and the rest of the R & D crew filed out of the room and could be heard walking down the hallway. Seymour sat down at one of the lab benches and started writing down some equations. "My, it feels good to sit here," he thought. "I'll bet it would be really comfortable to fold my arms like this and lay my head down like this and... and then..." PAGE 18 Seymour dreamed a wonderful little dream. It involved diving into a vat filled with chocolate and scantily-clad women. It ended abruptly when he slipped off of his stool. Dazed and hurt, he got back up and resumed working. Again, his eyelids drooped. "No. I've GOT to work on this," he thought. His thoughts drifted back to the women in the vat, one of whom he was really hitting it off with. PAGE 19 He dozed back to sleep. This time, the women were nowhere to be found, and he had this disgusting little multi-headed creature following him about, asking if he'd like to play a quick game of cards. "No," he would tell it, "I'm looking for someone." The little creature suddenly morphed into something vaguely resembling Morgan Fairchild, except for some interesting anatomical rearrangements. "You mean like this?" it asked. Seymour woke in a cold sweat. "It must be the lasagna," he thought. He really wanted to resume the first dream, but he couldn't. He was torn between manipulating more chemical equations and going back to sleep. "I will do MUCH better work when I'm well- rested," he rationalized. Seymour went back to sleep. He did indeed dream again. He caught a quick glimpse of the women, this time bathing some kind of pudding, but they suddenly disappeared. He was alone in a barren dreamscape. He tried running in a direction. Nothing. He tried another direction. Nothing. He sat and whimpered, wishing he could wake up. PAGE 20 Off in the distance, he heard a faint sound, There was a dot on the horizon. He got up and ran frantically toward it. As he got closer, he could make out a faint "boing!..boing!boing!"sound, and he began to make out details of what looked like a tall, stone building. He stopped to analyse the situation. "What the hell IS that?"he wondered. The building had very odd dimensions. It was 24 stories tall, a couple hundred meters long, but only a few meters thick. Even more striking, its faces had no perceptible walls. Before he had a chance to come to any conclusions about it, about it, he blinked and found himself standing in it. "Oh, nooo." He heard that bouncing sound again. It was getting louder. And louder. Shortly, a black and green ball with large, sharp fangs sailed into view. Seymour had no idea what to do....... PAGE 21 IV. PLAY BOING! THE GAME HERE. IF YOU WON, CONTINUE READING. PAGE 22 This page for doodles. PAGE 23 V. With a startle and a gasp, Seymour awoke. He was standing in front of the lab bench with a pencil in his hand. Wild scribbles covered his worksheet. Dr. Bolchtzky and the rest stood in the doorway, staring at him. With obvious concern in his eyes, Dr. Bolchetzky approached the bench. "Let's see what you have done, my boy." He picked up the notebook and stared at it. Seymour, still recovering, put down the pencil and sighed. "This is it," he thought, "I'll be sacked." Dr. Bolchetzky flipped through several pages of Seymour's scribbling. "Ah-huh....Hmm....Yes.... Well." He periodically looked up at Seymour, who began to collect his thoughts. Bolchetzky tossed the notebook on the table. "I've got to tell you Greene..." "Greene...He called me Greene,"Seymour mused dejectedly. PAGE 24 "That's a fine piece of work. I think we can do it." I'll send your specs down to the fabrication this afternoon and we'll see what comes of it." Bolchetzky patted him on the back. This was not what Seymour expected. He looked at the page. To his immense surprise, it contained a long sequence of equations representing a new bonding technique. "I can see we've got a dedicated engineer with you, Seymour. Not many people would work through the night on their first day." Dr. Bolchetzky said. "Through the...! You mean it's tomorrow? I mean today? I mean...," Seymour sputtered. He looked at his watch. He had gone to sleep 20 hours before. "We can take it from here, Seymour. Why don't you go home and get some sleep." Seymour remembered his nightmare. "I think not, Sir." PAGE 25 This page for doodles. PAGE 26 GAME & EDITOR INSTRUCTIONS Boing! The Game Copyright 1989,1990 by Kevin Kelm and Alternate Realities. Distributed by Micro Momentum, Inc. Boing! The Game is written in dedication to the first Amiga demo program, Boing! The Demo. Remember it? The big checkered ball bouncing in stereo, much to the amazement of everyone? Yah, that one. Boing! The Demo was written long ago by three of the original Amiga Gurus: Sam Dicker, Dal Luck, and =RJ= Mical. Thanks go to Dale Luck for permission to use the name "Boing! The Game." GAME PLAY Game play is very simple, really...normally the controls are no more complex than those of Pac-Man. Plug a digital joystick into port 2. To start a game, simply insert the disk labelled "Boing! The Game" and reboot your Amiga. Watch the introduction until the word "Boing! bounces on the screen. To start the game, press the FIRE button on your joystick. PAGE 27 ACTUAL GAMEPLAY The game centers around Seymour Greene, a plastics engineer at a beach ball company. There are two "critters" in his world: the good, red-and-white-checkered Boing! balls, which he is to collect for points, and the evil, black-and-green- checkered balls, which for some reason not explained by modern science, are ravenously hungry. For Seymour, His only defense is to find a large needle and poke a bad ball with it, after which the needle is ruined. Listed below are the controls: P Key:Pause the game. From here, pressing either ESCape or the FIRE button will return you to game play. ESCape:Kills Seymour. If he is on the initial screen, the game is immediately ended. If he is on another screen, then:If he is EXACTLY where he entered the screen, he is returned to the initial screen. If not, he is returned to where he entered the screen. The reason for this is that Seymour can easily get into unsolvable trouble, and losing a life is sometimes preferrable to losing the whole game. LEFT:Moves Seymour left,where possible. He cannot jump or fall off the end of a floor. RIGHT:Moves him right, where possible. PAGE 28 UP: One of two things. If can climb a ladder, he will move up. If not, then he will perform some operation (possibly (NONE), depending on what he is standing in front of. See below for more info. DOWN:If Seymour can climb down a ladder or slide down a pole, he will do so when you press down. If not, he will "duck" down a bit. This can be useful in avaoiding evil balls. And that's it for control! Now we will go through the kinds of things in his world. They are drawn below in no particular order: ____ = A floor. Walk on it. |_| |_| |_| = A ladder. Climb it. | | | | = A slide-pole. Slide DOWN it (only). | \__/ ---- = A telepad. Press up on the stick and appear God-knows-where on another telepad. PAGE 29 \ ----- = A floor lever. Press up to flip it. Wall rocks will move. | ----- = A wall switch. Press up to flip it. Floors will move. O ----- = An arch-way. Press up to EXIT THE WHOLE LEVEL. This is considered an achievement; in V1.0, exciting is how you move to the next level. o | = A needle. Press up to grab it. You can | then kill one evilball. If you already carry a needle, it disappears and this one is picked up(one is lost...for good). \|/ ----- = An intermittent flame jet. Avoid being melted at all costs! "Connectiveness" is a noteworthy concept here. If a floor is very close to touching a ladder or slide-pole, you can move from one to the other. If they are not, it is unreachable from here. Also, keep in mind that "Boing! The Game" is a multi-screen affair. Always test the screen boundaries to see if they connect. PAGE 30 FURTHER RULES If you fall through a crumbling floor or a disappearing floor, you will continue to fall until Seymour: A)Lands on another floor, B)is killed along the way by something, C)Hits the bottom of the screen. If it is possible to fall into the screen below, he will. If not, Seymour dies. THE SCORE BAR From left to right, the numbers are: LEVEL-NUMBER LIVES-LEFT SCORE SCORING 1) Catch a good Boing! ball................10 pts. 2) Pop an evil ball with a needle..........25 pts. 3) Exit a level............................100 pts. Every 1000 points, you get an extra life. If you get every point possible in a level, you are designated a MASTER of that level, and if your score is high enough to get on the high scores list, it will say "MASTER". THE GAME EDITOR Use the game editor to create your own Boing! game levels. To start things rolling, insert an INITIALIZED, BLANK AmigaDOS Disk in DF0: and PAGE 31 select the menu, Create Game. This will setup the disk as a Boing! Data Disk. Next, using the mouse, select image blocks from the menu on the bottom and place them in the screen to create floors, ladders, etc. Use the red arrow gadgets on the bottom to move from screen to screen, and the menu "Go To Level" to select which level you want to visit. Clicking on the three color gadgets in the middle of the menu let you change the colors for the current room. In the lower right corner of the template gadgets you will find a question mark. This is the "query" gadget. Select it and click on any square in the current room and if there is information about that square that is not plainly obvious, the editor will tell you about it. Doing this to flames and balls will let you modify their characteristics. Following are some guideline about Boing! game creation: -Avoid putting more than 5 balls in any one screen. -Be sure to provide at least one exit for each level. -Don't forget to place the player in the level. You may put more than one image of the player in the level, but only the bottom-right-most one (in the whole level) will be used. -For best results, be sure that it is possible to make it through the level without dying. PAGE 32 -Also be sure that it is possible to MASTER the level without dying. -ALWAYS ALWAYS save each level to disk before exiting or moving on to the next. If you do not, your changes will be lost. -The system game levels (those included) are not editable. BOING! EDITOR MENUS STUFF About:Tells about the editor and Boing! Exit: Exits the editor GAME Change Disk: Allows the user to switch game disks being edited. Create: Turns the blank, formatted disk in drive DF0: into a valid Boing! game disk. If there is already Boing! data on that disk, IT WILL BE ERASED! LEVEL New: Erases all information in the current level back to floor plans. This occurs only in memory; the disk is not affected. Goto: Jumps from the current level to another level on the same disk. If changes have been made but not saved, they are lost. Save to disk: Saves the current level to disk. PAGE 33 ROOM New: Erases all information in the current room of the current level, but does not affect the disk. Any changes made before to this room are lost. Save to buffer: Save the current room and its colors to the buffer. Get from buffer: Sets the current room to the contents of the buffer. DOCS typed by the nimble fingers of /'Valkyrie