TEAM 06 – Badgersoft Jonathan Bouchard Marc-Antoine Côté Nadine Hariri Vincent Arabian Alexander Hugh Sam Radhika Chandra
Asteroids User’s Manual
A LETTER FROM BADGERSOFT:
Dear all,
The game you are about to play is a game that involves
hand-‐eye coordination, persistence, and practice. It is a game that has been developed by a team of six aspiring engineers with full dedication involving a huge learning curve and teamwork. The purpose of developing this program was initially for the requirements of a university course we the members of the team, were taking; however surely now, we can confidently say that we’ve learned a great deal about how to work effectively in a team, how to program such a game, as well as document the progress of the project.
In this user’s manual, you’ll find the specifications of
the program, what exactly the game does, how to use the program (i.e. how to play the game), and what other glitches you may come across as the user.
We hope you enjoy using this program as much as
we’ve enjoyed programming it! Remember, the easiest way to win this game is by practice, so play it as much as possible!
Sincerely,
The Engineering Team of Badgersoft
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USER’S MANUAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 ASTEROIDS – OVERVIEW OF THE GAM E
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2.0 HOW TO PLAY
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2.1 M ENUS 2.1.1 MAIN MENU 2.1.2 SETTINGS MENU 2.1.3 PAUSE MENU 2.2 S PACESHIP 2.3 E NEMIES 2.3.1 ASTEROIDS 2.3.2 ALIENS 2.4 A DDED F EATURES 2.4.1 LIFE DROPS 2.4.2 WEAPON DROPS 2.4.3 HOT SEAT PLAYERS 2.4.4 LEVELS AND SCORES
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3.0 GLITCHES W ITH THE PROGRAM
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1.0 ASTEROIDS – OVERVIEW OF THE GAME
Asteroids, the game created by Badgersoft, is a replication of the original game Asteroids created by Atari Inc. The original Asteroids was one of the most popular and influential games of the 1980’s and ended up selling over 70,000 arcade cabinets. The game created by Badgersoft is indeed inspired by the original Asteroids, however this new game has many features that to original game lacked such as bonus drops. This game could be played by all ages, is for pure enjoyment and can be used as a way to improve one’s hand eye coordination. There are many levels that the user could achieve in this game and the Badgersoft team fully encourages those brave enough to try to pass them all!
2.0 HOW TO PLAY This game is user friendly and simple to understand how to play. The user must have access to the source code of the program as well as have an installed software development environment such as Eclipse. Once both of these elements have been downloaded, the user only needs to choose to run the program and the game begins in another window frame. How to proceed once the main menu is available will be described in the next section of this manual
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2.1 MENUS The menus are a great for the user to navigate their way around the game. The user must use their mouse and click on the desired option in order to navigate around each menu. There are multiple menus implemented in this game, all serving for various purposes. The three principal menus of the game are described below. All sub-‐menus give you the option to go back to the previous frame and therefore back to the main menu where the user can exit the game.
2.1.1
MAIN MENU The main menu is the first frame the user will see when they run the program. In the main menu there is the option of starting a new game, viewing the top 22 high scores, going to the sub-‐menu of changing the settings of the game, and finally exiting the game.
If the user chooses to start a new game, a new
game within the same window will begin immediately and give the player 1.5 seconds of invincibility where no asteroids or aliens can kill it. If the user chooses to exit the game, the program window will also close.
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2.1.2
SETTINGS MENU If the user chooses to change the settings of the game, this sub-‐menu should be clicked on in the main menu. Once the Settings sub-‐menu has been entered, the user has multiple setting options that they can change. If the user clicks on Game Options then they will be navigated to another sub-‐menu where the user can choose whether they want to play in Hot Seat mode or Multiplayer mode. Single player mode can be simply chosen by going to the main menu and starting a new game. Clicking on the Controls option in the Settings sub-‐menu brings the user to a frame that gives them the option to change the key mapping of the keyboard that controls the movement of the user (i.e. the spaceship). Currently, this has not been implemented in the program. By clicking on the Audio option in the Settings sub-‐menu, the user has the options of turning off the sound effects (Sound FX option) and/or the general background music (Music option).
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The last option the user can click on in the Settings sub-‐ portfolio is the option of changing levels of difficulty in the game. The user can choose between Easy, Medium or Hard, which would start the game at various levels of difficulty. Currently, this has not been implemented in the program.
2.1.3
PAUSE MENU The pause menu can be viewed when the user presses the “p” key on the keyboard during a game. When the pause menu appears, the user has the option of going back to their game in which case the spaceship will be re-‐centered on the screen with the invincibility of 1.5 seconds, but leaving the score and position of the enemies the same as before. The user will also have the option to go back to the main menu, settings or exiting the game.
2.2 SPACESHIP The spaceship in the game is the user playing the game. The user has full control on where the spaceship flies and when it shoots. The default keys that control the movement of the spaceship are the front and side arrow keys. By pressing on the front arrow, the spaceship moves forward, however by pressing down on the forward key, the spaceship accelerates to a maximum speed. The user can turn the spaceship right and left by pressing on the right and left arrow keys respectively.
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To have the user’s spaceship shoot the enemies in the game, the user can simply press on the spacebar of the keyboard for every shot.
2.3 ENEMIES There are two enemies in this game; the asteroids and the aliens. The enemies’ main purpose is to kill the spaceship; hence the user will lose lives and will approach “Game Over” more quickly. The spaceship can lose a lives by either colliding with the enemies or by being shot by the alien enemy. As the user, try to stay away from the enemies, better yet, kill them by shooting them to proceed to the next level!
2.3.1
ASTEROIDS There are three sizes of asteroid enemies, all at random and all traveling in random directions and at random speeds. If the spaceship shoots an asteroid of the largest or medium size, the asteroid will split and create two asteroids of the size smaller to its original size. The only way to eliminate this enemy would be to shoot an asteroid of the smallest size.
2.3.2 ALIENS The alien enemies are a more dangerous enemy. These enemies can travel at random speeds and in random directions, however the one
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thing the spaceship must look out for are the alien’s shooting ability. The aliens are programmed in a way that they find the position of the spaceship and shoot towards it at a certain rate. The only way to kill the alien is to shoot it directly.
2.4 ADDED FEATURES The features of the game don’t stop at enemies and the spaceship. There are a extra features that separate this game from the original Asteroids game.
2.4.1 LIFE DROPS The life drops appear at random when an asteroid or alien has been killed. The spaceship must collide with the life drop to be granted an extra life.
2.4.2 WEAPON DROPS There are two weapon drops in this game. One that allows the spaceship to have a trishot, and one that gives the spaceship a super beam shot. If the spaceship however has the option of picking up both of these shots, the spaceship will have a combined super bean trishot. Similar to the life drop, the spaceship must collide with the weapon drops to be granted the special shooting abilities.
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2.4.3 HOT SEAT PLAYERS The hot seat player’s option can be chosen from the Settings sub-‐menu, and then choosing the Game Options. This allows two players to play with separate scores and lives. For example, if player 1 plays and dies, it will be player 2’s turn to now play. When player 2 dies, it then returns to player 1’s turn to play with player 1’s score and lives left from when they left off.
2.4.4 LEVELS AND SCORES
The user’s experience with this game is based on the scores and levels system. When a user plays and succeeds in killing all of the enemies on the screen, the player will proceed to the next level of the game. As the user jumps to higher levels, there will be more enemies that appear on the screen for the user to kill. The scores vary for each type of enemy the spaceship kills. Killing the largest size asteroid, medium size asteroid, smallest size asteroid and alien gives you 100, 200, 400 and 300 points respectively.
3.0 GLITCHES WITH THE PROGRAM
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