Cybernoid 2 - The Revenge
From Retrospec 2002
(http://www.retrospec.co.uk / http://www.retrospec.org)



	Disclaimer:

This game is distributed as-is and no responsibility is accepted by
any of the parties mentioned within for any damage or loss incurred
through its use.

The original game is copyrighted to Hewson Software, however I'm happy
for this remake to be distributed on a non-profit basis over the web.

It may not be covermounted on a magazine CD, DVD or floppy without the
prior written permission of the author (Graham Goring - however I'm
damned if you're gonna' get it anyway) and probably Raphael Cecco, too.
Oh, and probably Hewson, who'll no doubt put the kibosh on that as I've
heard they can be jolly letigious. They make the Darling brothers look
like Linus Torvald.

It may also not be distributed via websites other than those listed at
the end of this file without prior permission (which'll probably be
granted unless you've got "GROW A BIGGER PENIS!!!" banners all over your
site) and the distribution zipfile and therefor the files contained
there-in should most certainly not be altered in any way, shape or form.



	System Requirements:

Well, it has been written on an Athlon 1.2Ghz machine with a GeForce 3
and a half-gig of RAM, but I would hope it'll run happily on any DX7
equipped machine of P200 spec or better. It might frame-out on the larger
explosions on such a system, but to be honest I reckon most peeps have
at least a P400 these days and there's no reason it shouldn't run like
a dream on those.

One thing of note is that although Blitz Basic says it only needs DX7
(maybe DX7a) to run, I've found that I've needed to install DX8 on some
machines to avoid the game giving an illegal memory error upon exiting.
Doesn't seem to affect all of them, just some, but I suspect it's
something to do with the allocation of memory to graphics. But I'm
probably wrong, so just ignore me and grab your latest drivers. :)



	History Lesson:

This is a classic shoot 'em up from the heady days of 1988. My first
experience of Raffaele Cecco's work was getting a copy of Cybernoid from
a friend (a la tape-to-tape). After playing it solidly for several hours
before dinner I was so excited that I felt all nauseous and pukey. Great
stuff!

However Cybernoid 2 wasn't seen by mine own eyes until I was looking in
the window of Computabase in Plymouth (while playing hooky from my job -
I was eventually rumbled and fired, much to my shame). Seeing the amazing
amount of colour and things going on in the game amazed me completely (it
even distracted me from the Atari ST running Where Time Stood Still) and
so I spent a good few hours mooching in the shop and staring at people
playing the game on the Speccy +2 provided for testing software. If I
recall correctly I even tried having a go myself but got turfed off the
machine by the shop staff. The sods.

I didn't actually get a copy myself until a fair bit later, and even
then it was a slightly ropey copy as the inlay was an Amstrad one with
a gaudy "Spectrum" sticker plastered messily over the corner. Still, I spent
many happy hours playing the game and probably even got to level 3 at one
point before being blasted to smithereens.

Anyway the reason I remade it was because Russell Hoy was working on a
remake and I was helping him out a little with the programming. Anyway,
I got a *little* carried away with helping him out bit (I wrote a level
editor and a bunch of other stuff) and so he kindly offered me the chance
to take over the remaking of the game. I didn't need telling twice. :)

And so several months later, here's the game itself. I hope you enjoy
playing it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Which was quite a lot,
surprisingly. Oh, except the wall-huggers. I hated writing that bit.



	The Game:

The idea of the game is to get through the five levels of the space
pirates base in a strict time limit (about 5 minutes per level) recovering
1500 points worth of cargo on each level (you can find it lying around or
get it by killing the little aliens that spawn in most of the rooms). It
doesn't really matter if you manage to get the 1500 on each level, but if
you do it's worth some bonus points and an extra life at the end of the
level. Given how chocka' with enemies the game is, those extra lives will
come in handy.

The game is played from a side-on perspective with a flip-screen display
that prevents you from going back on yourself. Though there are often
a fair few enemies on screen, you are fortunate that your cup positively
runneth over with weapons of mass destruction - ranging from rockets to
smart bombs which clear the whole screen. You can also upgrade your ship
with an orbital mace that kills pretty much anything, a rear firing laser
gun and an orbital ship which fires when you do.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to pick up and play, so why don't you do just that?



	The Controls:

The default controls are as follows:

     CURSOR UP - Up
     CURSOR DOWN - Down (only used in the Pause menu and when entering high scores
         as gravity pulls your ship down anyway)
     CURSOR LEFT - Left
     CURSOR RIGHT - Right
     LEFT CTRL - Fire (hold down for approx half a second to activate sub-weapon)
ESCAPE - Pause game
     1 - Select Rocket (follows an upwards or downwards curve depending on
         your ship's vertical motion)
     2 - Select Timebomb (explodes after a few seconds destroying nearby
         large emplacements. Doesn't harm the spawning enemies)
     3 - Select Shield (protects you from harm for about 5 seconds)
     4 - Select Bouncers (bounce around the screen killing most things in
         their path and destroying destructable scenery)
     5 - Select Seeker (homes in on the nearest large enemy and blows up -
         will only launch if there's a viable target on screen, also locks
         onto some organic growths in the base)
     6 - Select Smart Bomb (destroys all enemies on screen instantly, except
         the pesky wall-huggers)
     7 - Select Tracer (drops from the bottom of your ship them follows the
         edge of the screen destroying all enemy emplacements in its path)
     Z - Previous Weapon
     X - Next Weapon

You can also use a joypad (it has to be DirectX compatible, though). Now, I use
a PlayStation Dual Shock Pad connected via a PSJOY adapter, this means that
the DPAD actually registers as button presses instead of a digital or
analogue value of movement in the X and Y axis. However your common or
garden Sidewinder is quite different as it uses a Dpad which outputs a
proper analogue value.

To allow for this when you define the joypad controls it first asks you to
try moving the Dpad around and see if any red arrows light up, this will
indicate that you have an nice and proper output on your joypad (if you're
using a DSP in non-analogue mode you might find that your pad permanently
registers a down-right direction, lighting up the appropriate arrows)
however if you can't control which arrows light up then just follow the
instructions on-screen and you should still be able to configure your pad
with the minimum of fuss.

If, after that it still fails to work, then tough cheese, use a keyboard. That's
how real men play. ;)

Btw, I've had reports that you can't use the keyboard controls at the same
time as the joypad ones (which shouldn't be true at all) so I'd be interested
to hear back from anyone who suffers the same problem (if you could include
details of your OS and joypad type that'd be swell).



	Credits:

Original game by Raffaele Cecco, original graphics by Hugh Binns, original
music (Spectrum) by J Dave Rogers and (Commodore 64) by Jeroen Tel.

Remake programming by Graham Goring, remake graphics by John Blythe, remake
level design and building by Russell Hoy and all remake original and remixed
music by Will Morton.

This game was written in the excellent Blitz Basic (http://www.blitzbasic.com)
which was itself written by Mark Sibly.

The game also makes use of Terabit's Pak routines to store most of the files
in one tidy location and to stop nosey peeps from nicking the graphics
without going to a bit of trouble. Get the routines by visiting Lee Page's
website (http://www.terabit.btinternet.com) if you're interested.

Testing was carried out by those staunch fellows of Retrospec, thanks in
particular go to Russ Hoy for finding a few bugs and suggesting the expansion
pack thing, John Blythe for getting me to put in joypad control and finding a
few other bugs, Dan Condon for complaining about the difficulty and making me
see sense about letting the player start on any previously reached level and
Neil Walker for making me put in the previous/next weapon buttons in the
keyboard controls because he can't remember 7 numbers. ;)



	Thanks:

Raffaele Cecco and Hugh Binns for writing the original game.

Russell Hoy for letting me steal the project from him and then staying on to
help with it. :)

John Blythe for the cracking graphics and the nice new rendered title screen.

Will Morton for the great remix and the lovely atmospheric in-game piece.

Mark Sibly for writing Blitz BASIC in the first place.

Lee Page for his PAK routines.

And all the rest of my Retrospec chums for their critiques and moaning. Aw,
hell, I better name-check them or they'll just moan like ninnies...

 Dan Condon-Jones - For seeing sense and embracing BB2D.
 Neil Walker - For being our Web Guru and spending all his time tinkering with
the site instead of pulling his finger out his arse and writing a game. ;)
 Matthew Smith - For not being more narked at me due to my consistent failure
to produce graphics for him.
 Richard Jordan - For being one of our founding fathers, producing the best
damn remake ever and in doing so indirectly getting me my job.
 Jeff Braine - For having more screws loose than my self-assembled wardrobe.
The mad goon!
 Peter Jovovich - For returning to the fold once more after many months in
the wilderness.
 Myke Pickstock - For staying in the wilderness. ;)
 John Dow - For being an incredibly prolific founder member and providing
the webspace at the start.
 Ignacio Perez - For being a lovely bald Spaniard and in many ways initiating
the approaching wave of isometric games from Retrospec.
 Tomaz Kac - For his even lovelier (sorry Ignacio!) isometric engine which
may well lead to a well-loved pair of secret agents returning after a long
absence.
 Bill Harbison - For joining us recently and putting us all to shame with his
commercial quality graphics. The big sod! :)



	Version History:

V0.9 - Private demo release lacking most of the levels and some graphics
such as explosions but the majority of the programming is done. All that
really needs sorting is the end of level guff, the end of game effect and
the implementation of Terabit's lovely pak file stuff. As for bugs, well,
I think it's relatively free of them, but if you find some then do give us
a yell.

V0.91 - Private demo release lacking a few levels, some graphics and a
fair few sound effects. This version has the .PAK stuff implemented and
a nice new intro for the various involved parties in the project. Also
fixed the ship to face forward at the end of levels. May have accidentally
included porn in the data.pak file. ;)

V0.92 - Um, I forget what was new in this one... C'est la vie.

V0.93 - A few new sound effects, abut the main change is a whopping great
speed increase brought about by a blindingly obvious change to the room
display code. Quite why I didn't think of it earlier is a mystery... Also
added some new debug stuff so I could see what it was spending most of its
time doing (which *was* drawing the screen but now nothing is an obvious
resource drain). This debug mode has the knock-on effect of making the game
appear really ugly so I can safely put out BETA test copies without the
risk of it doing the rounds too much. Might be interesting to see how she
flies on a P200... Also might have fixed the end-of-level stuff. Oh, and I
made the Gunports easier to blow up (they are now vulnerable 40% of the
time instead of just 20%).

V0.94 - Well, it's December 31st now (2am) and I've just finished programming
in all the joypad support after having not touched the game for several
months. Tsk, eh? Anyhow, it seems to work okay on my machine (WinXP using
a PSJOY adapter and a PS1 DSP). Lets hope it works on everyone elses, eh?

V0.94b - Gah! Well, it's a few days later and John Blythe has pointed out
an annoying little fact, which is that pads like the M$ Sidewinder have
analogue D-Pads. Oh buttocks. Well, a few graphics and a swift recode
later and I now support those accursed things. Just hope it works on his
machine. No idea why his keyboard controls ceased working, though... Also
discovered after replaying the original that even if you don't get the
1500 points of cargo you advance to the next level. Always assumed it made
you replay the level for some reason. Odd. Anyhow, I altered my version
to match.

V0.94c - And "Gah!" again. I just got in touch with Sunteam who're doing
the other remake of Cybernoid (theirs is of the original, though) and we
exchanged Betas. Their one is looking quite lovely and plays a damn fine
game, however they're also adding all sorts of extras to theirs that I
simply could be arsed to compete with. However as an upshot of this I
expect mine'll be out sooner. Oh, the point of this all? Well, Mike pointed
out that people with only 2 button pads will get stuck in the "define pad"
option as it requires at least 4 buttons to be defined with unique button
codes. This is sorted now and you just press Escape to skip a function. Also
followed my boss's advice (John Pickford - I am the lord of the name-drop!)
and centralised all the control code. Makes things a lot easier.

V0.99 - Well, I just put in Russ's final level and then added a few little
bits and bobs to it. I also drew a few background tiles and stuck them on
every damn screen in the game (that was fun :P ) and added some lovely
secret stuff to the game as well (which wasn't as much as I'd liked but I
ran out of ideas as well as room). Did a few more sound effects (the swoosh
on the screen-wipe and the end of level lifts) and pretty much finished up.
The only thing left to do now is the end of game sequence, which'll
probably give hints for the cheat codes (which'll probably be really difficult
to find by doing an ascii search of the binary because they're stored in a
really odd manner) and a few more sound effects (for piffling things that I
may well say "Sod it" about). Oh, also had to rewrite the display routine a
little to allow for the inclusion of backgrounds as destroying blocks was
causing it to cut chunks out of the display. Whoops. What the hell am I gonna'
do for an ending effect?!

V0.991 - Wow, now we're splitting numbers too small. Really shouldn't have
jumped from .94 to .99 so eagerly. Anyhow, I've put in expansion pack support
now so that if anyone is stupid enough to create a map-pack they can do so
and it'll be recognised by the game. I may well tart up the editor now and
include it with the release. Then again, I may keep it separate. I'm just that
contrary. Also stuck in the extra keys for Neil Walker because he's a big
girl's blouse. A pink one, too. I really should update to the latest version
of Lee Page's pak routines... Might even alter the version numbers - I've
always been fond of revisionist history. ;)
Oh, I also changed it so that the extra level wasn't a secret any more but
part of the main game (ie, there are 5 levels to travel through instead of
the original 4). Hopefully RH and JB'll come through with extra maps for me
so we can make this an even bigger release. I'd love to have 8 in there in
the end.

V0.992 - Well, I did a lot of coding for the ending sequence, the code is
a bloody mess (staggeringly bad - I mean it) but I quite like the effect. In
particular the parallax working in two dimensions is very pleasing. The
graphics for the player character are a bit crap, but seeing as he'll be
on screen for all of a few seconds I really couldn't give two figs. Still
need to code the beginning of the end sequence (did the fun bit with the
planet landing first. Cheeky me.) and see if Will Morton's got any music
hanging around I could pilfer for it. Also *really* need to do some more
sound effects. Gah! Boredom approaches!

V0.999 - Well, I'm pretty much done now. All I need now is a tiny wee media
file or two and it's all dealt with. In the mean time I've found a few wee
bugs including one that dropped the tracker collar off of rooms on map rooms
below a certain level (stoopid typo) and another which meant you could
collect bonuses when you were dead as your ship flew back to the restart
position. Together with the bugs that Russ found I reckon it's almost
bug-free. Obviously not completely, though. ;)
Finished the end sequence as well. Not brilliant but not bad. Certainly a
crapload better than the original one (seeing as there wasn't one in the
original version).

V1.000 - Well, thassit! I got the final bit of music off of the talented
Will Morton and then Dan Condon-Jones pointed out another little oversight
on my part which is that some joypads are plugged into port 1 instead of
port 0. Whoops! So that's supported now. Anyhow I'm now happy to release
the damn game to the public and get on with the next project. Hell, that
took way longer than I hoped it would...

V1.001 - Slight update due to a bug found where there was a hole in the map.
Oops. Also at the request of several people I've changed it so that enemies
all fire cyan bullets so you don't get the orange ones confused with your
bouncer weapons. Um, anything else? Oh yeah, added a sound effect for when
you press fire.



	Contact Details:

Graham Goring - grahamg@zedtwo.com (http://www.duketastrophy.demon.co.uk)



	Links:

www.blitzbasic.com - to find out about Blitz BASIC, the language this game
was written in. Very easy to get to grips with and fairly powerful, too. This
game was written in Blitz BASIC 2D, but there's a 3D version which allows
you to make stonkingly lovely looking games with graphics in them that are
a whole "D" better than mine. ;)

www.retrospec.org - Home to Retrospec, a group of lovely people (and Neil
Walker) who remake old games. So far only three of our number are using
Blitz BASIC, but soon more will come under it's influence! Bwu-hahaha!

www.terabit.btinternet.com - Website of Lee Page who wrote the great file
packing routines. The very routines that stop nosey oiks stealing John's
graphics. You know who you are!



	Where To Get This Game From:

The latest version (excluding private beta releases) should be available from
http://www.retrospec.org or mabe http://www.retrospec.co.uk, however in the
instance of those servers going kerplooey, then you should be able to find it
on my personal webpage of http://www.duketastrophy.demon.co.uk. Actually, if
Retrospec.org has gone a/t then head over to www.blitzshowcase.com and hope
they allow downloads for peeps without Blitz User IDs. Only use my personal
webpage as a last resort and bare in mind it'll only be on there as long as
I've got room for it. As soon as the next project comes along I'll be dropping
this from Duketastrophy faster than a hot potato with nails in it.

Please note that personally I have a very limited amount of bandwidth (about
a hundred meg a day) and what with this game weighing in at about 7.5mb zipped
it'll only take 16 people grabbing it from my own site in one day for my page
to get bumped to the crappy servers. Bare this in mind. If you do find it
anywhere else, by the way, please do mail me with details of where you found it,
it'll be quite cool to see where it pops up on the 'net. :)

Well, as long as it's not somewhere shite like GameHippo. ;)

Actually, it'll probably find it's way onto [JJ] and [Hitman's] excellent
Retro-remakes before long. If you're interested in remakes of old games I
can recommend no better place to go looking than their site. Truly exhaustive.