Chopper Challenge Documentation

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
1.1 The Storyline
1.2 System Requirements
2. Installation and Configuration
3. Playing the Game
4. Cheat Codes
5. Bonus Round
6. Score Management
7. Game Statistics
8. Status Keys
9. Change Log
10. Credits and Contact Info

1. Introduction
Welcome to Chopper Challenge, an action-packed shooter from X-Sight Interactive, where you'll be firing at the Copter Man, avoiding bombs, picking up items, and racking up points.

1.1 The Storyline
You are a hacker, and you find yourself at the wrong side of the law. After hacking your way into the sensative data of the US government computer banks, the FBI are attempting to track you down. After many months of futile searching the FBI have had to higher out the inthymous copter man. A half man, half machine, complete and utterly ready to slice you down.
With blades of steal, razor sharp, whirling above you, following your every move. Up until now you have managed to avoid the copter man, you knew he was coming, as you planted a trace programme that aloud you to read his briefing. Fleeing around the country, searching in vain for a weapon that you can use to defend yourself, you see to your amazement a complex, a museum, with old weapons. Charging into the complex you walk down a corridor, and you  see in a glass case a lazer gun, still intact you are amazed. A sense of uneasiness falls over you [this is too easy you think, there must be a catch] However, the sound of the copters ominous blades have fallen silent. Continuing forward, you stop at a door, the door is locked. Backtracking you break the glass case, no alarm sounds to your relief, and take the gun. Turning it on, you see to your amazement that it's fully charged and ready to use. Grabbing the gun, you fire 3 shots into the lock, which melts away. The door swings open and you walk through. You find yourself in a large room with a glass roof. You're barely inside the door when it swings shut and locks with a click. With a screaming sound of steal, and breaking glass the copter man swoops down towards you grinning evilly.
Whirling round you fire 3 bursts into the helicopter.
Ow! the copter man screamed and began flying around the room. You look at the small screen on your laser gun, and to your horror, you see that it will only last 10 minutes. Then, with a whistling sound, a bomb falls out of the air. You dodge it, and think that this has just got a whole lot more dangerous.

1.2 System Requirements
To play this game you will need:
Windows 98 or higher.
DirectX 8.1 or higher.
A multi-channel sound card with speakers or headphones. Headphones are recommended.
Microsoft Sapi 5.
A microphone, if you want to record your names.
An Internet connection for posting your high scores.

2. Installation and Configuration
To install the game, simply run the setup file and follow the instructions. Once the installation is complete, you will be asked to run the configuration program. If you skipped this, select Configuration from the Chopper Challenge folder in your start menu. On the configuration screen, enter the name you want to use when posting your high scores to the online scoreboards. You can also optionally enter your email address, which will be displayed on the scoreboards. Once this is done, you can start the game, by either going to the Chopper Challenge icon on your desktop or in your Start Menu/Programs. 
Once the game starts, you will hear the introduction, then be in a simple main menu with the following options:

Start Game: Starts a new game.
Test Speakers: Plays a sound to check if your speakers are positioned correctly.
View Local Top 10: Allows you to view a list of your top 10 scores for the game.
Post Score to X-Sight-Interactive.net: Allows you post your score to our online score server.
Exit: Pretty self-explanatory, I should hope. In case you don't know, it exits the program and returns you to your lovely windows environment.

3. Playing the game

When you select the Start Game option, you will be asked to choose a difficulty level. On easy difficulty, you can miss a maximum of 20 times, and bombs subtract 10% of your health. On normal, you can miss 10 times, and you lose 20% health on bomb hits. On Impossible, you can miss 5 times, and you lose 25% health per hit.

While playing, you will hear the helicopter, items and bombs pan in your speakers. If you've never played an audio game before, the concept is simple, a sound in the right speaker indicates that it is to the right of you, and vice versa. On Easy and Normal difficulty, you will hear a looping tone sound when you center the copter in your speakers, indicating that you can fire and successfully hit it.

To play the game, use the left and right arrows to move in the playing ffield and press the space bar to fire your laser gun.

When you hear a bomb, indicated by a whistling sound, walk away from it to avoid being hit. On Easy difficulty, bombs are dropped from a hatch in the bottom of Copter Man's chopper, therefore they will detonate at the position where he was when he dropped them. On Normal and Impossible difficulty, Copter Man is equipped with a robotic arm that will swing bombs to a random position on Normal, and specifically target you on Impossible. The only way you'll be able to anticipate them is by the whistling sound, and in the case of Impossible difficulty, you'll have to run whenever you hear a bomb. When a bomb lands, it will detonate and if you are close enough, it will subtract health as explained above. Bombs can hit you from further away from the point where they detonate based on your difficulty level, and also drop more frequently on each consecutive difficulty.

If you hear a special item, indicated by a tone sound, simply walk over it and you will automatically pick it up. The time you have to pick up an item is also based on your difficulty level, and there is a chance that the Copter Man will pick it up before you. If you miss the item completely, he will also pick it up after 10, 5, or 2 seconds for each respective difficulty level. In that case, he is given a gun which will subtract 2, 5, or 10% health, depending on difficulty level, every time you walk under it. If you do manage to pick up the item, it will be one of the following:

Evade Bombs: Makes you invinsible to bombs.
Annoying Bombs: Causes bombs to fall rapidly.
Health Bonus: Gives you a random health boost between 1 and 25.
Triple Shot: Gives you a gun that will give you 3 points per hit.
Bomb Catcher: See below.
More Time: Adds 1 minute to the game clock.
Less Time: Subtracts 1 minute from the game clock.

All items last 30 seconds, with the exception of health bonus and the more/less time items, obviously. When the item expires you will hear a bell sound.

Fortunately, your laser gun won't always be your only weapon against Copter Man. If you manage to pick up a bomb catcher item, you will be able to catch his bombs before they detonate, and throw them up at him! To catch a bomb when you have a bomb catcher, simply move directly under a falling bomb and press the left shift key, and you will automatically catch it before it detonates. You can hold a maximum of 10 bombs at one time. Press the B key to hear how many bombs you have.

Now, here comes the fun part. If you've managed to catch a bomb, throwing it up at Copter Man couldn't be easier. Just stand directly under his chopper and press the left control key. You will hear the bomb whistling away from you, and if you were under thecopter it will hit him, and give you an easy 5 points. If, however, you threw the bomb up at thin air, it will naturally fall back down and detonate.

The game lasts for 10 minutes, and the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. If your health falls to 0, the game ends and you are destroyed by the Copter Man, and he will triumph. I hope you won't let that happen!

From time to time, the Copter Man will taunt you, in order to distract you, make you feel worthless, and increase your chances of losing. He will also kindly remind you when you have 1, 2, or 5 minutes left. Unfortunately, there is no way to disable these taunts, so we sincerely hope you enjoy them.

If you do survive the 10 minute battle, you will blow the Copter Man up, and you've beaten the game! Just because you've done it once doesn't mean its over. There's still cheat codes to earn, 2 more difficulty levels to play, a bonus round to unlock, and scores to beat!

4. Cheat Codes

To earn the cheat codes, you must earn at least 250 points on the normal or impossible difficulty level, after which a cheats.txt file will be generated in your Chopper Challenge directory with instructions on how to enter the codes.

5. Bonus Round

Yes, this game has a bonus round, and its completely secret! Here are a few hints: You must play the game for at least 5 minutes, you must have at least 50 health, and playing involves finding a hidden door. You have escaped the complex, and the Copter Man must send robot-controlled choppers after you through the hidden door. The rest is up to you to find out, and if you do manage to find and beat the round you can earn an extra 50 points! Good luck!

6. Score Management

After each game, whether you play the whole game or hit the escape key, your score will be checked to see if it fits into your local top 10. If it does, you will be told so, and to enter your name. Type it in and press enter. You will then be asked if you want to record your name, which will allow a recording to be played when reviewing your local top 10 scores instead of them being read by Sapi. If you don't have a microphone or do not want to record for some other reason, hit escape. Otherwise, hit enter and you'll be asked to start recording after the beep. There is a recording time limit of 5 seconds. If you exceed this time, or press the space bar before the 5 seconds are up, you will be returned to the main menu. You can hear your local top 10 scores by going to the View Local Top 10 option in the main menu. The game will automatically check for recordings in your Chopper Challenge Directory/sounds/rec. If it does not find one, it will say the name using Sapi.

To post your score to the X-Sight Interactive score server, go to the post score option in the main menu and press enter. If you have used cheat codes or if your score was 0 you will not be able to post, and you will hear no messages. If your score is in the top 10, the game will attempt to post it to the server. If posting is successful, you will be told so and returned to the main menu. If you receive an error, check your internet connection. If you know you are connected to the internet, the X-Sight Interactive server is probably experiencing problems, and you'll have to try again later. If you did successfully post your score, and you by some luck made the top 10, you can go to www.x-sight-interactive.net to view the scoreboards.

7. Game Statistics

After you play a game of Chopper Challenge, statistics about the game will be generated and put in the stats.txt file, which you can view by going to the Game Statistics Menu in the Chopper Challenge submenu of your Start menu/Programs. The newest games will be at the end of the file, including the date started and ended, the difficulty level, your final score and health, and items you picked up.

8. Game Keys

The following keys can be used in the game:
Right arrow: Move right
Left Arrow: Move left
Space Bar: Fire laser gun
Left Control Key: Throw bomb
Left Shift Key: Catch bomb
S: Says your current score
m: says your number of misses
H: Says your current health.
B: Says the number of bombs you are carrying
Escape: Return to the main menu.

9. Change Log

1.2 (December 7, 2007)

Fixed a bug in the score posting
Bombs now fall more frequently, and are in random positions on normal and impossible difficulty
Items also are more frequent, and the Copter Man now picks up the item if the player does not
Added some random taunts
Added more ending sounds
Enhanced the scoreboards to include email addresses and date of posting, and made it look nicer
Added bomb catching and throwing
Increased the volume of some sounds

1.1 (November 21, 2007)

Fixed the score pages and menus so that they will use proper grammar
Fixed the score site and local scores menu so that only scores above 0 will be shown/played
Illiminated the necessity for silence.wav to act as a recording stub
Improved some sound qualities and provided a different tone sound
Shortened some of the gaps during spoken options and prompts
Score is spoken via audio now, not sapi. Only thing sapi reads out now are unrecorded names.
Escaping from the menu also fades out the music.
Music fadeout exit now occurs after the exit message rather than before.
Will take you to the main menu if there are no items to view in the view scores menu



10.  Credits and Contact Info

There are many people I need to thank for helping make this game possible. First, Damien Sadler, who taught me to program. I would probably never have made any games without your help. Also, thanks to all the beta testers who tested the game, squashing all the bugs so it could have a stable release.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or problems with the game, you can contact X-Sight Interactive at support@x-sight-interactive.net. If you received any kind of run time error, send us the text of the error dialog box and a description of when the error occurred. We always welcome suggestions on improving the game, so don't hesitate to drop us an email. Enjoy the game!