REDHAWK - MELBOURNE HOUSE REDHAWK PLAYER MANUAL 1. INTRODUCTION Welcome to the world of comic fantasy, superheroes and supervillains. You are superhuman Redhawk and must control his two completely separate identities: Kevin Oliver - a human with all the human weaknesses; and Redhawk - a being capable of flight and incredible feats of strength. You can choose to fight crime, pitting Redhawk against common criminals and even supervillains. This choice leads to popularity and superhero status. Alternatively, you can lead a life of crime and ignore Redhawk's unpopularity and supervillain status. The choice is yours. Whatever you decide, you must make your decisions quickly as time waits for no man (superhuman or not). While you consider your actions, the other characters in the game will continue with their own. LOADING INSTRUCTIONS 1. Place the cassette in your player, making sure that it is rewound to the start and that the EAR socket of your Spectrum or Spectrum+ is connected to that of the tape player, as detailed in the Spectrum manual. 2. Enter the command LOAD "" then press the ENTER key. 3. Start the tape player. The game will now load automatically. 4. In case of difficulty, alter the volume level and consult your Spectrum manual. 5. In the most unlikely event of a genuine fault, please return the complete package to Melbourne House Publishers at the nearest to you of the addresses shown. We will gladly replace it. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN IT TO THE PLACE OF PURCHASE. (This notice does not affect your statutory rights) 2. THE SCREEN DISPLAY The top half of the screen is the Strip, a row of three panels in which the comic action unfolds. Each event in the game is illustrated by a picture which appears in the rightmost panel. The strip is scrolled left to make room for the new picture. Consequently, the last two pictures can always be seen to the left of the current picture. Below the Strip is the information display. This consists of a rolling digit clock depicting the time of day on the game; a heart icon and a bar meter depicting the current strength of Redhawk; a graph icon and a bar meter depicting the current popularity of Redhawk; and a picture of the face of your current identity - Kevin or Redhawk. The significance of these will be explained later. Below the information display is a box into which you enter your commands for your character. Text entered here may be edited using a powerful editor which is described in "THE EDITOR". At the bottom of the screen is a function key reminder. To aid entry of commands. ten commonly used words are programmed onto ten function keys. Their use is described in detail later in the manual. Finally, when you make a mistake or when the computer wishes to draw your attention to something, a message 'pops up' at the top of the screen. When you have read the message, press the key to continue with the game and the message will disappear. 3. THE EDITOR You can give your current character (either Kevin or Redhawk) a command by typing it as a sentence in English and then pressing . It is important to remember that a command is only issued after you have pressed . Therefore it is possible to type a command in readiness for something, wait for a precise moment and then issue it just by pressing . The type of commands you can give are described in "PLAYING THE GAME". For the moment it is enough to know that they must be typed in as English. The commands you type appear in the box on the lower half of the screen. The place you are typing to is indicated by the '+' cursor, which moves along as you type. You can type in commands longer than the width of the box. When you reach the edge of the box, your command continues onto the next line. Do not be worried if the split occurs in the middle of a word, the computer will understand it as one word. Your commands may be up to eighty characters long if you want! 3.1 EDITING A COMMAND Inevitably, you will make typing mistakes. The simplest of these is hitting the wrong key. To correct this, press the key until you have deleted all the unwanted characters. You can now type over what you have deleted. Another mistake you can make is leaving out characters. To correct this, use to position the cursor. To create space for the missing characters, hold down and press until you have enough space for the missing characters. You can now type into this space and then move the cursor back to the end of the line as before. NOTE: The position of the cursor when you press is important as it is taken to be the end of your sentence. Anything after this position will be ignored. This means that you must make sure the cursor is at the end of your command before pressing . There are exceptions to this, but these will be explained shortly. 3.2 RE-ISSUING PREVIOUS COMMANDS Often during the game you will want to re-enter a command you typed earlier. This saves on typing; it does not 'take back' your earlier command and undo the consequences. So, if the command you want is still visible, press the until the cursor is on the line you want. Now move the cursor to the end of this line using and when you are ready, press . Now, if not already there, you can return to where you were before by . If the command is not visible then all is not lost. The editor actually holds ten lines of text, although you can only see four at any given time. A way of looking at the box on screen is as a four line window over a ten line area. You can move the window over this larger area by trying to move the cursor up when at the top of the box, or down when at the bottom of the box. In this way you are free to edit any of the ten lines. You start off with the box over the top four lines. As you enter new commands, the ten lines gradually fill up. When you enter the eleventh, the first line is lost for good; when you enter the twelfth, the second line is lost; and so on. Sometimes, you may only want to re-enter the first few words of an earlier command. You do this by moving the cursor to where you want the command to end and press . As explained earlier, this will cause the rest of the line to be ignored. You will notice when you try this that a full stop is placed at the end of the command. If later on you wish to remove this dot in order to re-enter more of the line, you can just type over it as you would any other character. 4. FUNCTION KEYS To save typing, ten commonly used words have been programmed onto function keys. A reminder of these is given at the bottom of the screen display. Each of these words is available by holding down and then pressing the appropriate digit key <1>..<0>. When you do this the computer types in the word just as if you had pressed each key yourself. Therefore it is possible to edit words produced by function keys just like any other words. The ten keys and words are listed below along with their on screen reminders. KEY Function Screen display 1 GET GET 2 DROP DROP 3 SAY " SAY 4 KWAH" KWAH 5 EXAMINE EXAM 6 WAIT WAIT 7 UNTIL UNTL B FLY TO FLY 9 STORE STO 0 RECALL REC SPECIAL KEYS It is possible to halt the action in the game by holding down the key with the key. This will stop any new panels being displayed until the keys are released. If the same keys are being held down as someone finishes speaking, their speech will be repeated. This enables you to replay a character's speech if you miss the start of it. 5. PLAYING THE GAME When the game has loaded, the computer will give a bleep and you must then press to start the game. The story begins with Kevin leaving hospital. He can't remember who he is, where he is, or how he got there. A single word fills his mind - "KWAH". What happens next is up to you. You control your alter ego by entering commands in English. You can command him to go, move from place to place, to handle objects, speak, give things to people, take things from people, fight people and so on. The vocabulary you must use to achieve these things is described in "THE VOCABULARY". However, all actions take time to do. Most only a second or so, but things like movement may take several minutes; depending on the distance your character is travelling and how fast he is going. When a lengthy action such as this occurs, the rolling digit clock goes into fast forward mode. Minutes roll by at the speed that seconds normally elapse. When the action is completed, game time reverts to its normal speed. If, during a long action, you change your mind and decide to do something else, then entering a new command will abort the first one. Short actions cannot be aborted this way. Immediately to the right of the clock are two bar meters. The top one represents Redhawk's current strength. Simply staying in superhuman form takes energy, as do all actions performed in this form. If Redhawk's strength falls to zero then he is forced to return to his human form. In the form of Kevin, Redhawk's strength gradually increases until it reaches maximum. During the game, Redhawk may have to fight people. In combat, Redhawk's strength is pitted against that of his opponent. Therefore it is not a good idea to punch a supervillain when Redhawk's strength is low. Kevin's strength is not displayed, but it is quite easy to test his strength by playing the game. Below the strength meter is the popularity meter. This indicates Redhawk's current popularity with the media and the town's inhabitants. It can be increased by arresting criminals. If Redhawk lets a criminal get away then his popularity will decrease by an amount which depends on the importance of the criminal and the crime. The media are always quick to pick up any offence committed by Redhawk and so any such action will result in reduced popularity. When popular, Redhawk is a superhero and when unpopular, he is a supervillain. Obviously, some of the people Redhawk comes across will be none too helpful if he is unpopular. When playing the game, feel free to experiment. As is described in "THE VOCABULARY", it is possible to store the status of the game instantly. Then if things go wrong, you can always recall your stored game in an instant and try something else, even if your character died. People may not always respond to something in exactly the same way and it often pays to try again. If you get stuck on something, leave it for a while and go and try something else, it may help to solve your problem. Above all, keep a close eye on the clock. If you have come across adventure games before, remember that 'Redhawk' is a game based around characters and not just objects. Something strange is happening and it is up to you, Kevin and Redhawk to find out what! 6. THE VOCABULARY The following sections show most aspects of Redhawk's and Kevin's vocabulary. In most cases just examples are given, but one or two verbs have further explanation. Do not take this as a complete vocabulary list as such a definition would be very large indeed. 6.1 SENTENCES Commands are given as sentences in English. For example: PICK THE BOOK UP There is often more than one way of giving the same command. For example, the following two commands have the same effect: PICK UP THE BOOK GET THE BOOK There is no reason why you have to give your commands one at a time. You can enter multiple commands in a number of ways: GET A BOOK AND THEN GIVE THE BOOK TO THE LIBRARIAN GET A BOOK, GIVE THE BOOK TO THE LIBRARIAN GET A BOOK. GIVE THE BOOK TO THE LIBRARIAN GET A BOOK, GO SOUTH, GO INSIDE AND WAIT As you can see, sentences may be separated by commas, full stops, "AND" or "AND THEN". It is a matter of taste which ones you use. To reduce the amount of typing necessary, certain words are optional. These are: "THE", "THEN", "A" and "SOME". In addition to this, if doesn't matter how many spaces you leave between words. One other feature which saves typing is the use of abbreviations for commonly used words and phrases. These are described in the following sections. 6.2 LOCATIONS AND MOVEMENT LOOK AROUND / LOOK ABOUT / LOOK LOOK AT THE LIBRARY / LOOK AT LIBRARY SEARCH PARK CAREFULLY / CAREFULLY SEARCH THE PARK GO eg. GO NORTH / GO N / N GO DOWN / GO D / D ENTER / GO INSIDE / GO IN / IN GO TO eg. GO TO THE PARK / GO TO PARK GO TO CITY STATION FLY Like GO but faster. FLY TO Like GO TO but faster and with the advantage that you can fly from almost any location to any other location. GET A TAXI TO eg. GET A TAXI TO THE LIBRARY/ GET A TAXI TO LIBRARY You can get a taxi from almost anywhere to anywhere else. Unlike FLY TO common sense is applied. Consequently, the taxi would stop outside the library in the example. The taxi fare is five pounds. GET A TRAIN TO Like GET A TAXI TO but cheaper and slower. Obviously, trains only go from station to station. The train fare is one pound. 6.3 INTERACTING WITH CHARACTERS LOOK AT eg. LOOK AT THE LIBRARIAN / LOOK AT LIBRARIAN SEARCH Do a body search SAY "" eg. SAY "HELLO THERE" / SAY "HELLO THERE SAY TO "" eg. SAY TO THE LIBRARIAN "TELL ME ABOUT THE MUSEUM" SHOUT "" HIT HIT WITH eg. HIT LIBRARIAN WITH A BOOK ARREST 6.4 HANDLING OBJECTS INVENTORY / INVENT / INV / I WEAR PUT ON THROW AT THROW AT eg. THROW CAMERA AT POLICEMAN THROW BOOK AT CAMERA GET FROM GET OFF TAKE FROM TAKE OFF eg. GET A CAMERA FROM LIBRARIAN READ EXAMINE / EXAM 6.5 WAITING WAIT UNTIL