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                         F  I  G  H  T  E  R  S        
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                               Version 1.2

                 * Shareware version - please distribute! *

Contents


1. Installing Elite Fighters
        1.1 Requirements
        1.2 Installing the game
        1.3 Sound setup
        1.4 Possible problems
        1.5 Running the game

2. Playing Elite Fighters
        2.1 Main menu
                2.1.1 Tournament
                        2.1.1.1 Players/computer
                        2.1.1.2 Tournament chart
                2.1.2 Practice
                2.1.3 Options
                        2.1.3.1 Pilots
                        2.1.3.1 Sound volume & other settings
                        2.1.3.2 Keyboard settings
                2.1.4 Credits
                2.1.5 Quit to Dos
        2.2 Battle
                2.2.1 Battletechniques & -hints
                2.2.2 Ship console
                2.2.3 Steering and controlling the ships
                2.2.4 Features of the ships
                        2.2.4.1 Power Control
                        2.2.4.2 Damage system
                        2.2.4.3 Armament and special functions
                2.2.5 Battlefield
                2.2.6 Battle settings

3. Registering Elite Fighters
        3.1 Normal package
        3.2 Orderform

4. Coming up

5. Version history


                        1. Installing Elite Fighters



1.1 REQUIREMENTS


Elite Fighters needs at least these to run:
        - IBM PC or compatible, 386 or faster
        - 4 MB RAM
        - DOS 5.0 or newer
        - about 3 MB of hard disk space
        - VGA-card and -monitor

Recommended:
        - 486 or Pentium
        - Fast VLB or PCI graphics card
        - 16-bit stereo soundcard (Gravis Ultrasound)

-
1.2 INSTALLING THE GAME
-

        Extract the game with PKUNZIP to the directory where you want the
        game to be. Simple, isn't it?


1.3 SOUND SETUP


        Elite Fighters uses Digital Sound & Music interface, DSMI by Otto
        Chrons. It produces multichannel digital sound and music, even with
        a normal SB. Gravis Ultrasound is the best soundcard for this
        game (and for many others), as it gives the best sound quality
        and still doesn't waste valuable processor time.

        Before you start playing Elite Fighters, you must give the program
        the right information about your soundcard by giving a command

         SETUP

        at the dos prompt. From appearing menu, select "Set sound card" and
        answer the appearing questions. If you aren't sure on some question,
        just press ENTER. At the end, save setup information by choosing "Sa-
        ve & Exit" from the main menu.

        You must choose a sound card, NO SOUND - option isn't available yet.
        This matter will be fixed in future updates.

        Wrong settings may cause the Elite Fighters to crash, so be careful
        with those settings!

        ! If you have SB16 or SBPro, and you can't get 'em working with EF,
          try normal SB. That should at least work... !

        The drivers (.DSD) are same as with Otto Chrons DMP (4.00 or newer),
        so if there will be any updates or new drivers, just put them to same
        directory, where Elite Fighters is and run SETUP.


1.4 POSSIBLE PROBLEMS


Because of the differencies of the PC-compatible systems, we couldn't test our
game in all possible hardware. Most of the problems will be solved, if you
will be patient and change the settings a little bit...but if you still can't
make Elite Fighters run without problems, please write to us with e-mail or
send a letter to the following address:

                              Timo Hirvonen
                           Vanha Myllyrinne 6H
                              01360 Vantaa
                                 Finland

Add stamps for the reply-letter with the letter. We try to respond to you as
soon as possible.


1.5 RUNNING THE GAME


        The game starts with a command "RUN". From the appearing menu, you can
        choose one of the following:

                - "Start Elite Fighters" starts the game and shows the intro.
                  Choose this if you are playing the first time.
                - "Start Elite Fighters, Skip intro" Starts Elite Fighters,
                  But skips the intro.
                - read instructions (Finnish or English)
                - Exit to Dos...you know what that does, don't you?


                        2. Playing Elite Fighters



2.1 MAIN MENU


2.1.1 TOURNAMENT


From the TOURNAMENT menu, you can start Elite Cup. Elite Cup is a competition
between spacepilots. From year to year it gathers all the pilots of the univer-
se to battle for the title: "Universum's best spacepilot" After hard qualifi-
cations the jury chooses 8 best spacepilots, who can participate in the legen-
dary Elite Cup. Competition is ruthless and loosers will be thrown out from
the tournament.

2.1.1.1 Players/computer


 After choosing the TOURNAMENT, you can choose the number of human players.
The tournament contains always 8 pilots, so up to 8 people can play in same
tournament. If there are less than eight human players, computer will play
the part of other spacepilots.

2.1.1.2 Tournament chart
---

 After each battle a TOURNAMENT CHART will be shown to the players. From it,
you can easily look, that who will play the next battle. You can also see
pilots, who are going to the next round or to the final.

2.1.2 PRACTICE


 If you don't want to play a whole tournament, you can choose PRACTICE from
the main menu. Choose pilots and ships and GO!
 The computer pilots are the last pilots in list. Just press left arrow, and
you'll see them (their names are red).

2.1.3 OPTIONS


2.1.3.1 Pilots


You can create pilots by choosing CREATE PILOT from the OPTIONS menu. It is
very simple to create a pilot. Just choose a face and give name for your pilot
and for your armada. Saving the pilot is automatic, but ONLY after you
have ended the program by choosing QUIT TO DOS from main menu.
   You can also delete a pilot or modify a pilot by choosing DELETE PILOT or
MODIFY PILOT from the OPTIONS menu. After creating a pilot you can use it in
a TOURNAMENT or you can PRACTICE with it.

2.1.3.2 Sound volume & Other settings


From the OPTIONS menu you can set the volume of music and SFX by choosing
MUSIC VOLUME or SFX VOLUME settings. You can adjust them by pressing the cur-
sor keys to yhe left or to the right. You can also change the amount of money,
which the players start with. The default setting is 50,000$

2.1.3.3 Keyboard settings

You can also change the keys, wich you use in the battle, from the OPTIONS
menu by choosing SET NEW KEYS.

The default settings are these:

Player 1:                                       Player 2:

End:       Special                              Q: Special
Page down: Fire                                 W: Left
(4):       Left                                 E: Right
(8):       Accelerate                           R: Accelerate
(6):       Right                                T: Fire

Insert:    Power of the gun                     1: Power of the gun
Home:      Power of the shields                 2: Power of the shields

Page up:  Power of the engine                   3: Power of the engine


2.1.4 CREDITS


From the Main menu, you can choose CREDITS to see credits! On the background
there is a beautiful music... The meaning of this is to bring the names of
the authors to public or something like that...

2.1.5 QUIT TO DOS


QUIT TO DOS does guess what...

Btw: You can find this command from the main menu


2.2. BATTLE


2.2.1 BATTLE TECHNICS AND - HINTS


        - Move the power to the engines and evade.

        - All power to the shields! Push the enemy against the planet!
          (Only for experienced players)

        - You can always make your opponent feel bad by destroing yourself.

        - And when you are loosing the game:
                1. Shut down the computer and make a story about a
                   "Mysterious blackout"
                2. Use physical violence
                3. "My dinner is waiting..."
                4. Plaim the game and it's bugs.
                5. "Hey man, relly, the weather IS nice"

         - Remember to shoot!

2.2.2 SHIP CONSOLE


 In the battle, you can get information about your ship's shape from the ship
console. It contains 5 graphical descripers and the technical skeleton picture
of the ship.
   The horizonal descripers are W or the weapon recharging indidicator and H is
the strength of the hull. The vertical descripers indicate the state of the
power control system. Descripers W, S and E show the amount of the energy of
the ship that is redirected to (W)eapons, (S)hields and (E)ngines.
        From the technical skeleton picture you can see the state of
shield and other parts of the ship. The shields will decrease trough yellow to
red and finally they will turn grey, wich means that there are no shields, so
that hull is without protection and it will take damage.


2.2.3 STEERING AND CONTROLLING THE SHIPS
---

When steering a ship, remember the following things: There are no brakes, if
you want to break, turn the ship around an accelerate. The steering system
is very sensitive and even a slightest movement order will be registered and
executed (Every ship will have its own reactions, off course)

2.2.4 PROPERTIES OF THE SHIPS
--

2.2.4.1 Power Control


Power control system gives you a possibility to redirect the "Energy" of the
ship to weapons, shields or to engine. The more energy you give to one compo-
ent, the more better it will work. If the power is redirected to weapons,
weapons will have more power, if you give the energy to your engines, your
ship will fly faster and so on...
   Power control is the essential part of the battle. The one who knows how
to use it well is most likely winner of the battle.

2.2.4.2 Damage system


  After the ship has lost it's shields, the hits will damage the hull. Hull
can't always protect all the systems of the ship, and so the engine, weapon
or the steering system can have a malfunction...

2.2.4.3 Armament and special functions
--

Every ship has it's own weapon and speciality.

2.2.5 BATTLEFIELD


  The battlefield consists a planet, a space and several meteors. The gravity
of the planet and the meteors make the battlefield interesting and challenging
to the player.
  You can find various bonus-items inside asteroids! They'll give for ex.
greater firepower, 4xShields or fix your ship. You can collect them by
first shooting an asteroid to pieces, and then flying over bonus-item....
Note that there aren't bonus-items in every asteroid! Bigger asteroid, bigger
chance to find something...

2.2.6 Battle Settings


  During the battle, you can change the zooming mode by pressing F5. There are
two ways of zooming in this game: Steady zooming (Default) and sliding
zooming. And with tke key F6 you can adjust the number of details and
therefore make the game run faster.
  By pressing F7 you can toggle shield regeneration on/off. If you turn it on,
shield will restore slowly towards full strength. The battles will more likely
be longer then... try it!


                        3. REGISTERING ELITE FIGHTERS


   You can order Elite Fighters from outside Finland by sending cash ($15 +
$5 for shipping) and the printed order form (ORDER.FRM) to address:

        Timo Hirvonen / Thunder Software
        Vanha Myllyrinne 6H
        01360 Vantaa
        Finland

NOTE!! The cash must be in US dollars !!

   Post is always not so reliable, so... you can also use direct money
transfer to our account, if you live in Nordic country (maybe it's possible
somewhere else - ask your local bank or post office). Pay amount equal to
$20 US Dollars ($15+$5) to following account:

        PSP Koivukyl, Finland
        Jussi Heinmki
        800020-13735906

Then post the order form and receipt from money transfer to us.



3.1 NORMAL PACKAGE


   By ordering the normal package you will get a registered version of Elite
Fighters that includes 16 new ships, many new musics, much better manual
than this is and many good little details...
   Updates will come...and they contain bug fixes, new ships, possibly new
musics and pilots!


3.2 Ordering form


        The ordering form is in the file ORDER.FRM

        You can print it by typing in the DOS prompt:

                COPY ORDER.FRM PRN:



                        4. COMING UP


  All the possible bugs have been tried to take away, but as always, there
are some left in the game for you to find out...

Here are some features to wait for:

        - better gravity!
        - New, better ships!
        - better graphics!
        - playing without a soundcard

There is also another game coming from us: Lords Of Elements !!!
More about that later...

We have many plans for future... for example, you can expect really massive
3D games from us, soon.....



                        5. Version history


Version 1.0b

        * first public release - lots of bugs!

Version 1.21

        * new, rotating texture-mapped 3D-planet
        * better computer Artificial Intelligence
        * Bonus-items
        * gravity changed
        * it's now possible to put recharging shields on (F7)
        * new ship - Trekkie
        * Help-button (F1) - works also as pause
        * Top Ten (appears if you dont press any key for 15 sec. in Main Menu)
        * a lot of different bugs fixed
        * and some other little things added or modified



                                1.6.1995



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