Welcome to Mutant Storm. The latest joypad smasher from PomPom.
Firstly ... congratulations. You have just got hold of probably the best shoot-em-up since, well, Space Tripper!!
Secondly ... are you sure you know what you're doing? ... because you are about to take a beating!!
Background Story:
set far away, on a strange claustrophobic planet...
the once peaceful inhabitants have been struck by a dark cosmic ray, causing them to mutate into a wide range of horrible mean nasty vicious blighters
these mutants like nothing better than to run amok and kill things, except when they are sleeping
your job, as our hero/heroine, is to clear the planet of this sinister evil menace,
to destroy this mutant storm
Overview:
Mutant Storm is inspired by Williams classic RoboTron, Smash TV and Jeff Minters fantastic Llamatron.
To those unacquainted, this means two joysticks, one controlling fire direction, and the other controlling movement. Sounds confusing? ...don't worry, its very simple once you try, and very effective when you're used to it.
Prepare for a fantastic journey, set over 89 levels of psychedelic 3D environments, getting ever more crowded with nasty beasties, all generated in a state of the art game engine.
Viewed from well above, you and your enemies can always be seen. Always be killed, and always be laughed at! There's no hiding. No tactics. No planning. Your enemies created this world and they sure aint gonna help you out!
You like to play hard? Then the game gets harder. Feel like your doing well? ... don't expect it to last!
Survive long enough, and you get rewarded with score multipliers, doubling your score. Making the enemies even angrier. Making them that bit more determined to kill you.
Lose a life and watch your multipliers tumble, and the beasties slow down and relax, safe in the knowledge that you are just a big softy really!!
Mutant Storm for gamers who want pure action.
Game Play:
The basic aim of Mutant Storm is to get as higher score as possible. This isn't always achieved by simply getting far into the game. Here we will cover the various elements in Mutant Storm, and do some explaining.
Difficulty
The difficulty in Mutant Storm is graded in colored belts, in much the same way as any martial art. We shall call our art Blastikkidoo.
When the game has been installed the player starts on white belt, which is for beginners.
As the game is being played, the difficulty steadily increases depending on how well you are doing. This is shown in the bottom left hand corner, and the next belt, yellow, is reached when this gets to 100%. The next at 200% and so on all the way to black belt super Blastikkidoo master!!
In order to start the game on a higher belt ( difficulty ) you must first finish the game to that standard. So if you manage to finish the last level ( 89 ) on a higher belt, say yellow for example, than you can start the game from yellow belt from then on if you wish.
Each time you finish the game with a higher belt than your previous best, you can start a fresh game on those belts too.
Losing a life takes a chunk of your difficulty away, this has the effect of making the game easier, but lose too many lives and you may not have earnt enough difficulty to advance to next belt.
There are separate high score tables for each belt. These correspond to the belt you started on, not finished.
Score Multipliers
At the top of the play area, there is a multiplier bar. This slowly fills as you earn more points. When full, you are awarded score multipliers. First 'x2' which doubles all points earned from then on. Fill the bar again, and get 'x3' which triples points and so on.
As you can imagine, you score can get pretty big if you don't lose a life for a long time, but that's a big IF! If you lose a life, your multiplier drops by one, and the bar empties. So you could be very nearly at 'x4' and will still drop to 'x2' if you lose a life.
Of course, as you've already read, staying alive gets the game difficulty higher and higher so trying to keep yourself on that 'x6' might be trickier than you think!
Power Ups
No shoot-em-up would be complete without power ups and Mutant Storm is no exception. The power-ups get released periodically by aliens and don't stick around for very long so be quick.
They come in 3 flavors:-
The Red offensive power ups don't last long when picked up so make the most of them!
3-Way : Take a guess!
Laser : Fires a fat laser which cuts through anything. And we mean anything.
Missile : Launches a stream of homing missiles. No need for aiming here!
Blue ones are defensive
Spinners : These barbed sparks spin around your ship obliterating anything they touch. Doesn't last very long, so use well.
Shield : Protects your ship with a permanent shield. If your ship gets hit, you lose the shield instead of a life.
And Green ones are points bonuses.
Smart Bombs
These trigger a huge explosion killing everything within blast radius. Be warned, you don't have too many of these, and you get no points for killing anything with them. Remember... it's better to use a smart bomb than lose a life! The game starts with 3 bombs, and an extra one is awarded at every 10th level.
On every 10th level, spare smart bombs are counted up and awarded with bonuses. These bonuses can become pretty huge if the player uses no smart bombs at all!!
Extra Lives
Extra lives are also awarded along with a smart bomb at every 10th level.
Menu Instructions:
Play > Single Player ->
Play > Two Player ->
Starts a new game, after you have chosen a ship style and colour. Every 10 levels there is a checkpoint, and as you progress you will be able to choose to start from any of the checkpoints reached. When you've completed all the levels, you will then also be able to choose a skill level / belt colour to start from.
High Scores
This takes you to the high score tables. There are separate tables for single and two player and for each belt.
Options ->
Display
From here you can change the various display options such as resolution and colour depth. There are also settings for in-game details such as the background detail and particle effects.
Set these to lower settings and drop the resolution and colour depth if the game is stuttering (low fps) on an older graphics card. ( older 3dfx video cards will need the colour depth and texture quality to be set to 16 bits )
* New option -> Big Cross Hair for mouse input
Sound
There are controls on this page for setting in-game and front end SFX volumes.
Control > Single Player ->
Control > Second Player ->
This page is for configuring the player controls.
Mutant storm allows for two joystick play using any dual-stick game pads that are available. This also allows for analogue sticks, giving far more than just 8 way fire. Don't worry!, you can still configure the game to work with a joypad which only has a single d-pad and buttons.
This page easily allows for configuring of the two joysticks for move and fire as well as a Dead Zone setting for controlling joystick sensitivity in case you've got a twitchy joy pad.
As well as being able to assign any joystick movement or button press to any control, you can also choose any keyboard buttons in the same way by changing the INPUT setting to Keyboard and selecting keys.
There is also a Mouse & Keyboard Input method. This uses an on screen cross hair to control the direction of fire, and as such, has no options for setting the up,down,left & right fire controls. In mouse mode, the Joystick Dead Zone setting becomes Mouse speed, in case your mouse feels too twitchy, or sluggish.
Finally there is Lock Fire. This single button allows for single fire button play, though its not recommended!! Pressing the button locks the craft in its current fire direction, and fires. The craft will stay locked until the button is released, allowing the craft to change aim before locking again. Remember, locking the fire does not mean the crafts movement is locked. The move controls still move the craft regardless of firing.
Help
Brings you here.
Exit
Exit the game.
Beta MultiPlayer
Mutant Storm also has a beta multiplayer game mode.
We are still undergoing testing for a full multiplayer release in the near future.
Multiplayer games can be started by selecting Play> Two Player from the main menu. Be sure the controls for both players are connected and configured before continuing.
Multiplayer Game Play
The multiplayer game play is both co-operative and competitive!! Basically, just as in single player mode, there is one score, one set of lives and one multiplier, which you share. So if one of you uses a smart bomb or loses a life, that is taken from the collective store.
So if you want to see far into the game, then its best to work co-operatively.
However, at the bottom of the play screen there are two percentage. These show how much of the score was earned by each player, which brings an obvious competitive edge to the gameplay. Using this, its easy to see who has scored the most points.
Where it becomes interesting is how these percentages change as the game is played.
At the end of each level the player who scored the most points on that level wins a percentage bonus where some of your opponents percent mark is taken away and added to the level winner.
Any player losing a life or using a smart bomb also loses some of his/her percentage mark to the other player.
These percentage rewards are : -
Opponent uses smart bomb : 5%
Opponent loses a life : 10%
Player wins a level : 5%
At the moment, the belt system works independently to the single player mode. Earning a belt in single player does not allow that belt to be played in multiplyer, and vice versa.
Remember the multiplayer game mode is still undergoing development and any ideas and comments would be greatly appreciated and taken on board.
Thanks to all our potential beta testers!!
Problems & Solutions
Why haven't we included any music? Basically because this would double the download size, and you can always use a music player to play your favourite tunes in the background.
Fix for refresh limitations in Windows 2000 & XP available from
http://xp-refresh.net/
Getting a 3dfx card to work with Windows 2000 & XP solutions
http://www.voodoofiles.com/
http://www.ntcompatible.com/content.php?page_id=12
( Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, Microsoft and its logos are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. )
And please be patient for fixes to problems, as there are just the two of us...
Thanks
To our testers:- Yoongiz Baxter, Kwakkoo Kiriarcou & Jaggolovos
and these great pieces of software and the people who made them:-
http://www.lua.org/ -> Lua is a powerful light-weight programming language designed for extending applications. We use it to script the levels and beasties.
http://www.mingw.org/ -> "Minimalistic GNU for Windows", a port of GNU GCC and binutils to compile and link code to be run on Win32 platforms...
http://www.opengl.org/ -> Our preferred gfx api
http://www.jrsoftware.org/ -> Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs.
http://www.bhenden.org/ -> ISTool is a freeware script editor for Jordan Russell's Inno Setup compiler.
http://www.gimp.org/ -> The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html -> Win32 port of gimp
http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/ -> Win32 installer of gimp
That completes our guide. Don't worry if it all seems a bit confusing. Run the game, and it will all make sense when you start to play.
Please send any feedback or suggestions for improvements to dudes@pompom.org.uk
© 2002 pompom www.pompom.org.uk
