Overview

| Zooom is a classical arcade style action game. You are in control of a fighter that can move across the screen and fire various weapons, while enemies continue to stream in from the upper screen border. But Zooom features modern technology: A DirectX enhanced engine, all-rendered graphics and lots of features guarantee for an up to date gaming experience, while bringing back the unique feeling of action games that are rarely released in this time of rts, threedee and roleplaying. In addition, Zooom is highly customizable: Players can create their own levels using the built-in scripting language, and advanced users can even create plugins containing whole new sets of enemy graphics and behavior. This page gives you a brief overview on how to play Zooom: How does the interface work, what weapons, powerups, fighters and enemies can you expect, and how can the game be configured. Creation of custom levels and plugins is treated in another section. Have fun! |

Interface

| The interface of Zooom consists of a master window which behaves just (well, nearly) like your everyday window. It can be moved, even during gameplay, and closed. There are several special areas the game uses to display information during gameplay, which are described below. During interaction with the menu interface, there are four buttons visible on the right of the viewport area. Button one, START GAME will commit whatever campaign you have selected using button two, CAMPAIGN. Button three, SETTINGS, provides a screen in which you can set sound volume, detail level, difficulty and joystick support. Button four, COMMUNITY, displays information on the Zooom webpage and the program itself. |

|  | 1 Damage display. If this meter reaches zero, you will loose a fighter. While shields are operating, you will take no damage. |
| 2 Shield display. Shields protect you from taking damage, but will gradually deplete when you are hit by enemy fire or if you collide with objects. |
| 3 Fighter fleet. Displays the number of fighters left in your fleet. If you loose the last fighter in your fleet, the game is over. |
| 4 Power-on lamp and button. Click on this to close the ZOOOM window and exit the game. |
| 5 Move bar. Move the ZOOOM window by grabbing this bar with the mouse. |
| 6 Sattelite view of game world. Your score, the highscore (HI) and the score at which the next extralife will be granted (UP) is displayed here.. |
| 7 Frames-per-second meter. If this bar is below 50%, you should reduce detail levels. |

Controls

| Controlling Zooom is extremely simple a task. To preserve the original arcarde feeling, there are just buttons for movement and one action button. Of course, you can use your joystick instead, and doing so is in fact highly recommended. |

|  | UP Press the up arrow key on your keyboard or push your joystick up to toggle through menu options in the interface, or to move your fighter upwards in the game. |
|  | DOWN Press the down arrow key on your keyboard or push your joystick down to toggle through menu options in the interface, or to move your fighter downwards in the game. |
|  | LEFT Press the left arrow key on your keyboard or push your joystick left to change the selected menu option in the interface, or to move your fighter left in the game. |
|  | RIGHT Press the right arrow key on your keyboard or push your joystick right to change the selected menu option in the interface, or to move your fighter right in the game. |
|  | ACTION Press the space key on your keyboard or push your joystick button to open or close a menu in the interface, or to fire your fighters weapons in the game. |
|  | EXIT Press the escape key on your keyboard to quit Zooom in the interface, or to pause and/or leave during the game. |

Gameplay

| Zooom is played with two goals in mind: To complete the campaign you are playing, and to achieve a score as high as possible by shooting as many enemy ships as you can. Select a campaign to play in the CAMPAIGN menu. Then select START GAME to play the selected campaign. During each campaign, when reaching certain score standings an extra fighter will be awarded to you. This UP scores vary from campaign to campaign. Within a campaign, there are several levels to be completed. Fight your way through a level and finish it to advance to the next level. If you loose a fighter during a level, you will be reset to the beginning of this level (NOT to the beginning of the campaign). You will loose all upgrades you have collected so far, though. If you loose the last fighter in your fleet, the game is over and if you have broken the highscore for the campaign you've been playing, your score will be entered in the highscore table. Completing the campaign makes for an entry in the highscore table, too. If you find yourself unable to complete a certain campagin, or always get stuck at the same point in a level, try reducing game difficulty. This can be done in the SETTINGS menu. Higher difficulty levels will make your fighter's weaponry weaker and that of the enemies stronger, as well as increasing enemy shoot frequency and aiming accuracy. |

Fighter

| Your life in Zooom is concentrated on controlling your fighter, dodging enemy fire and mowing down wave after wave of baaad aliens. But behold, your fighter will not stay the same during the game. Various upgrades will transform your basic weekend warrior spaceship into a capable war machine able to face even the most dangerous of enemies ... if you manage to get your hands on the upgrades send to you by high command during your missions. |

|  | Cannon At first, your fighter is equipped with a cannon. You can use upgrades to acquire a twin-mounted or even tripple mounted cannon. The cannon is quite low-powered and inaccurate, but features a high firing rate. |
|  | Laser On this level, your fighter is equipped with a laser cannon. Much more powerful than the basic cannon, the most significant drawback of the laser is its low firing rate. In additon, maximum configuration for this weapon is twin mount. Lasers are also used by first level drones. |
|  | Phaser Basically an advanced laser cannon, this weapon packs even more power into a single shot. If your fighter is equipped with this one, enemy fighters will not stand a chance against you. Again, the only drawback is the low firing rate. Phasers can be single mounted or twin mounted. Second level drones also use this weapon. |
|  | Shocker Incredible powerful, the shocker is the weapon of choice against heavily armored foes. By disrupting electronic systems, one shot is able to do about as much damage as a dozen cannon shells. Because the shocker is a big assembly, its only mounting option is single-mounted, in front of the fighter. As you've propably expected, firing rate is very low. |
|  | Hypergun The dream of all you pilots out there. Big, powerful, quickly recharging, and guess what... you can even tripple-mount it! Problem is, there aren't all that many hyperguns available these days. |
|  | Drone Not actually a fighter itself, a drone will accompany your ship and try to protect it from enemy attacks. Drones come in various configurations: Some will stay behind you and give you supporting fire with laser cannons, others will circle around your position and blast away with heavy phasers. Always good to know you're not alone out there, isn't it? |

Upgrades

| As mentioned above, your fighter will be upgraded during the game if you manage to collect updates. But there is more than just better weapons coming down on you: Mount more than one weapon a time, protect your fighter with energy shields, repair battle damage or even add a new ship to your fleet. |

|  | Twin Mount If your current weapon is capable of being twin-mounted, your fighter will be re-equipped with the twin-mounted version of the current weapon. |
|  | Tripple Mount If your current weapon is capable of being tripple-mounted, your fighter will be re-equipped with the tripple-mounted version of the current weapon. |
|  | Weapon Upgrades your fighter to the next weapon configuration, conserving the mounts you currently are equipped with. This will not work if you have the hypergun equipped ... who would trade a hypergun in for something else, anyway? |
|  | Shields Charges you shield banks to 100 percent. As long as there is power left in your shield banks, your fighter will not take damage. |
|  | Repair Repairs 50 percent of any damage your fighter has taken in combat. |
|  | Drone Upgrades your fighter's drone compagnions to their next configuration. |
|  | Fighter Adds a fighter to your fighter fleet. Maximum nuber of fighters in you fleet is nine. |

Enemies

| Know your enemy: The following reference of enemy fighters is far from complete and does only include ships from the standard pack distributed with Zooom. There are more ships in the game, still more in the plugins available on the Zooom official website, and finally plugins provided by players will extend the variations of fleets that engage you to infinity. |

|  | Blocker Not much more than a rotating piece of metal that blocks your way. This enemy construction should best be considered cannon fodder. Warning: Bigger versions of this ship are said to be able to shoot back! |
|  | Gunship Mount a big gun on a blocker and this is what you get. Heavily armored and equipped with various weapons, the only good thing that can be said about this enemy is that it can only shoot straight. |
|  | Interceptor Interceptors tend to come in slowly and carefully at first, only to roll into deadly attack runs at your positions, using their fireball cannons quite frequently. A formidable enemy. |
|  | Capital ship There are several captial ships in the enemys inventory. All of them are very slow and have way to much armor for you to take on. But their deadly laser towers, which will easily track your wildest maneuvering, are vulnerable to your weapons. |
|  | The Boss The enemys command center is located here. Incredible armor and weaponry. You will meet this one ... sooner or later. |

Cheating

| Yes, it's possible to cheat. Yes, it takes the whole fun out of Zooom. Yes, you should only use cheating if you have to test a custom level or plugin, or if you have become completely frustrated by a specific level. No, if you are cheating, this fact will not be broadcastet, along with your name, to the Zooom website and posted there for everyone to see ... that's definitely a rumor ;-). To Cheat, hold down CTRL key and press 1 for the next fighter weapon, 2 for the next mount level, 3 for the next drone level, 4 to completely repair your fighter, 5 for shields and 6 to add a fighter to your fleet. For those of you willing to develope their own levels, 7 will destroy your ship (is this cheating?), 8 will instantly complete the current level and 9 will turn on debug mode, which displays the current position within the level and turns all harmful collissions off. |