
"Gridfire" by Foppygames, August 2006 (www.foppygames.nl)

This game is a remake of and tribute to "Crossfire" by Jay Sullivan
and Chuck Benton which was published in 1983 for the Commodore 64
by Sierra Online.

Written for the Retro Remakes competition 2006 (www.retroremakes.com).

This game is freeware.

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SETTING UP THE GAME
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Press the space bar to proceed from the Retro Remakes screen to the
title screen. On the title screen, use the arrow keys and the space
bar (or Ctrl key) to activate the buttons you see there.

Use the buttons to:

 START            =  start playing
 EXIT             =  stop playing and exit to windows
 LEVEL UP / DOWN  =  set the game's difficulty level
 SOUND UP / DOWN  =  set the sound volume level

On the title screen you can also watch the current best scores for
each difficulty level. Both the settings and the high scores will be
stored upon exiting the game so when you play another day the
same settings and scores will be there again.

If you want to reset the high scores to zero, this can be done by
deleting the file "settings.dat". (This also resets the settings.)


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HOW TO PLAY
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After activating the START button on the title screen, the game begins.
Control your red and white ship using the arrow keys (up, down, left,
right). Fire your gun using the Ctrl key (or space bar). You can fire
without moving by first pressing and holding Ctrl and then pressing one
of the arrow keys.

Now try to shoot all enemies. Avoid bumping into them and avoid their
bullets. Touching an enemy or its bullet means you lose a life. An extra
life is awarded for every 5000 points you score. Extra points can be
collected by running over the red "lantern" bonus objects. These appear
after you have fired a certain number of bullets, and they also disappear
again after another amount of bullets being fired.

Keep an eye on your ammo level at the bottom right corner of the screen.
When you are about to run out of bullets, an ammo bonus object (4 white
dots) will appear somewhere on the screen; collect this to restore your
ammo.


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CONTROLS
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 Arrow keys           = move up/down/left/right
 Ctrl (or space bar)  = fire
 Esc                  = exit

Pressing Esc during gameplay will bring you back to the title screen;
on the title screen, pressing Esc will end the game.


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TIPS AND THANKS
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Personally I prefer using Ctrl instead of space bar to fire, as it seems
this gives more direct response. You can use either the left or right
Ctrl key.

Note that especially on early levels and lower difficulty settings
it is possible to out-run bullets.

Finally I would like to thank the people at Retro Remakes for organizing
this competition!

Thanks for playing the game,
Foppy (Robbert Prins).


