
 ************* Veck 1.0 by Ayden Wolf (Smayds/Hara Kazuma)
 ** V E C K ** smayds@gmail.com, or find me in #remakes
 ************* For the RetroRemakes.com Mini-Comp #10: Vectors

 Veck is a perplexing and annoying game most akin to either
 Robotron: 2084, or its most recent knockoff, Geometry Wars
 (standard or 'evolved'). The game, like other games of its
 pedigree, is best played with two joysticks.

 The program will show you a simple input setting routine when
 first run. Please try to ignore its silliness. Should you
 wish to reconfigure your keys, simply hit ESC ingame (if you
 should fail to see the popup confirmation dialog, simply hit
 Enter). The config file will be deleted and the game
 restarted with the current sessions' command line options.



 *****************
 ** THE PREMISE **
 *****************

 You're in space. Get used to it. You'll be here for a while.

 Move with one stick, shoot with another (cursors and WASD
 also work admirably, at a pinch). You step up a level of
 weaponry every sixty seconds, which is just as well, because
 the bad guys do too. Ouch. If you manage to make it past
 level fifteen, you get treated to that ultimate in retro
 gaming: a restart :s Of course, did I mention that your
 engines get upgraded every level too? Now, in this game,
 that's not necessarily a good thing. Hope you don't have a
 twitchy thumb there, compadre.

 The Energy display might take a little explaining. You start
 with a million energy units, up to a maximum of 10 mill. The
 only reason for this is to be nice and symmetrical with the
 score over there on the left. Your energy increases steadily
 as you play. Now, if you should decide to touch an enemy, the
 enemy will be killed and you'll take a certain amount of
 damage. Certain enemies kill you all-the-way-dead, but most
 just hurt you a bit. If the energy display blinks briefly at
 you, you've just taken a hit. If it flashes all psycho at you
 constantly then you should most certainly not get hit - game
 over. Of course, as you trek through the levels, you take
 more damage per hit from the enemies... c'est la vie.



 *************
 ** ENEMIES **
 *************

 Brainless Bluie
 ---------------
  Exactly what the name says. These things are so wimpy they
 even pop themselves. Be warned, though - they sting to touch.
 And they wanna touch you so bad. What they lack in brains,
 they more than make up for in persistence. And numbers...


 Red Rammer
 ----------
  Heavy and slow to turn, the Rammer's got it where it counts:
 the engine. You may be able to outturn this little bastard
 but you won't outrun him. Watch out for the rebound. If he
 gets a bead on you he'll rush in and scone you, so keep an
 eye on which way he's pointed!


 Red Reaper
 ----------
  Oh lookie, somebody went and put a big rayshield on the
 front of a Rammer. Same old Rammer but the shield keeps
 itself pointed at threat # 1 - You. It doesn't stop anything
 other than your shots, however. What it does do is place a
 hell of a strain on the Rammer's power supply - this puppy
 explodes on its own after just a few seconds. Of course, that
 doesn't score you any points... The biggest thing to watch
 out for with these is the shield - it makes it very hard to
 tell when one of these little buggers is lining you up.


 Blue Hole
 ---------
  What happens when you take a whole bunch of Bluies and cram
 them into a singularity? Yep. These things are known to hold
 hundreds - but these bluies are even slower and weaker than
 ever, due to the crushing gravity. Paler, too. Of course,
 numbers have to count for something... kekekekekekeke etc.


 Purple Pest
 -----------
  Nobody's sure what the hell these things are, but they're
 fast, tough, and apparently dumb, ignoring you for the most
 part. Are they happy to just bounce contentedly off the
 walls? Of course not. Bloody things charge you. Watch it.


 Hypermatter Reactor
 -------------------
  These magnificent yellow machines roam the endless bounds of
 Hyperspace, tracking down and ingesting any hypermatter they
 happen upon to fuel the next leg of their journeys. Oh dear,
 your ship's powered by hypermatter? Well why didn't you say
 so? Passive hunters, they'll just sit and wait for you to
 come to them - and they happily pop back into hyperspace if
 you don't oblige within a few seconds. Don't even think about
 bumping into one unless you want to die.

 
 Orange Explodabomb
 ------------------
  Easily recognizable by the screams of terror you'll be
 making. Oh, and it's orange. You look up 'Blast Radius' in
 the dictionary, you get a picture of this. KEEP AWAY. You,
 other enemies... it doesn't discriminate.



 ************************
 ** COMMANDLINE STUFFS **
 ************************

  Well, it was a short competition (and I really should have
 cracked in sooner) so I didn't put an elaborate menu in.
 I did, however, whack together a configurator proggie.
 However, if you REALLY want to, you can also specify the
 following commandline parameters:


 -width and -height
 ------     -------
  Fairly obvious. You want the game in a 1280x1024 window?
 Just put -width 1280 and -height 1024 somewhere on the
 command line. Would anybody with a 3072x2048 display please
 get in touch to let me know how it plays? :D 640 and 480 are
 the lower bounds, and the program laughs at you if you do
 something silly like -width banana...
  You should note that changing resolutions just gives you a
 larger play area - the objects don't scale up. I prefer this
 way around - in fact I removed the scaling code from the draw
 routine. You can change resolutions and it feels like a new
 game :D


 -fullscreen
 -----------
  The perfect complement to the above parameters, the screen
 mode will be changed (if it can) to match the selected
 resolution. 75Hz vwait only, to match the engine's timebase.


 -16bit
 ------
  If this isn't specified, a 32-bit screen is used. If you're
 having trouble using the hi-colour modes (or if you're just
 funny that way :D) this locks the display to 16-bit only.
 Only works full screen of course. And it'll make the fade
 effects look a bit gradated.


 -fade and -excessivefade
 -----     --------------
  Instead of clearing the screen each frame, it gets faded
 down by either a medium amount (-fade) or a ridiculously tiny
 amount (-excessivefade). You'll be committed if you try the
 second one for more than a few minutes...


 -scalescores
 ------------
  Fairly difficult to explain, this one. If this isn't
 specified, the scores remain the same size, in pixels, no
 matter what resolution you run the game at. If it is
 specified, they look the same size, in inches or milimetres
 or whatnot, on a fullscreen display. I prefer playing with
 this option disabled, but up to you. Actually, that wasn't so
 difficult to explain after all. Fairly easy to explain then.


 -nostars
 --------
  Spoilsport. I love the starfield. :(


 -nogradient
 -----------
  Don't like the funny dull background? Get rid of it here.
 Automatically disabled in 16-bit modes as it looks arse.


 -nomusic
 --------
  Believe it or not, this disables music. And funnily enough,


 -nosfx
 ------
  does the same for sounds.


 -deadzone
 ---------

  If your pad's giving you grief, and you've tried calibrating
 it, and you still shimmey and shoot everywhere, try adjusting
 this. Just follow it with your desired deadzone amount, from
 0-100, i.e. '-deadzone 15'. The game uses a default of 5, so
 if that's too much for you (man, you got one FINE gamepad)
 just specify -deadzone 0.



 ********
 ** V2 **
 ********

 Yes, there will be a Veck 2, and it'll have that background
 grid that gave me so many hassles, the bombs, more enemies,
 and waaay more balanced gameplay (as I'll playtest it a bit
 better :D) Cheers for playing, I think you're great.



 ****************
 ** DISCLAIMER **
 ****************

 I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry... If this game
 causes your computer to catch fire, your hard drive to crash,
 your dog to run away, or the end of the universe, then please
 accept one simple fact: I didn't FORCE you to install it :D
