
 ************* Veck 1.5 SE - by Ayden Wolf - smayds@gmail.com
 ** V E C K ** Visit http://smayds.com/ for updates and candy
 ************* Find me in #remakes on irc.remakes.org, bitch!

  Veck is a perplexing and annoying game most akin to either
 Robotron: 2084, or its most recent knockoff, Geometry Wars
 (standard or 'evolved'). The game, like other games of its
 pedigree, is best played with two joysticks (or rather, one
 joypad with two sticks).

  The program will show you a simple input setting routine
 when first run. Please try to ignore its silliness. Should
 you wish to reconfigure your keys, simply hit F12 from the
 title screen. The config file will be deleted and the game
 will restart.



 *****************
 ** THE PREMISE **
 *****************

  You're in space. Get used to it. You'll be here for a while.

  Move with one stick, shoot with another (cursors and WASD
 also work admirably, at a pinch). You step up a level of
 weaponry every sixty seconds, which is just as well, because
 the bad guys do too. Ouch. If you manage to make it past
 level fifteen, you get treated to that ultimate in retro
 gaming: a restart :s Of course, did I mention that your
 engines get upgraded every level too? Now, in this game,
 that's not necessarily a good thing. Hope you don't have a
 twitchy thumb there, compadre.

  The Energy display might take a little explaining. You start
 with a million energy units, up to a maximum of 10 mill. The
 only reason for this is to be nice and symmetrical with the
 score over there on the left. Your energy increases steadily
 as you play, AS LONG AS YOU KEEP MOVING! The more you move,
 the faster your energy refills (call it the anticamperbot -
 get out of those corners and PLAY!)

  Now, if you should decide to touch an enemy, the enemy will
 be killed and you'll take a certain amount of damage. Certain
 enemies kill you all-the-way-dead, but most just hurt you a
 bit. If the energy display blinks briefly at you, you've just
 taken a hit. If it flashes all psycho at you constantly then
 you should most certainly not get hit - game over. Of course,
 as you trek through the levels, you take more damage per hit
 from the enemies... c'est la vie.



 *************
 ** ENEMIES **
 *************

 Brainless Bluie
 ---------------
  Exactly what the name says. These things are so wimpy they
 even pop themselves. Be warned, though - they sting to touch.
 And they wanna touch you so bad. What they lack in brains,
 they more than make up for in persistence. And numbers...


 Red Rammer
 ----------
  Heavy and slow to turn, the Rammer's got it where it counts:
 the engine. You may be able to outturn this little bastard
 but you won't outrun him. Watch out for the rebound. If he
 gets a bead on you he'll rush in and scone you, so keep an
 eye on which way he's pointed!


 Red Reaper
 ----------
  Oh lookie, somebody went and put a big rayshield on the
 front of a Rammer. Same old Rammer but the shield keeps
 itself pointed at threat # 1 - You. It doesn't stop anything
 other than your shots, however. What it does do is place a
 hell of a strain on the Rammer's power supply - this puppy
 explodes on its own after just a few seconds. Of course, that
 doesn't score you any points... The biggest thing to watch
 out for with these is the shield - it makes it very hard to
 tell when one of these little buggers is lining you up.


 Blue Hole
 ---------
  What happens when you take a whole bunch of Bluies and cram
 them into a singularity? Yep. These things are known to hold
 hundreds - but these bluies are even slower and weaker than
 ever, due to the crushing gravity. Paler, too. Of course,
 numbers have to count for something... kekekekekekeke etc.


 Purple Pest
 -----------
  Nobody's sure what the hell these things are, but they're
 fast, tough, and apparently dumb, ignoring you for the most
 part. Are they happy to just bounce contentedly off the
 walls? Of course not. Bloody things charge you. Watch it.


 Hypermatter Reactor
 -------------------
  These magnificent yellow machines roam the endless bounds of
 Hyperspace, tracking down and ingesting any hypermatter they
 happen upon to fuel the next leg of their journeys. Oh dear,
 your ship's powered by hypermatter? Well why didn't you say
 so? Passive hunters, they'll just sit and wait for you to
 come to them - and they happily pop back into hyperspace if
 you don't oblige within a few seconds. Don't even think about
 bumping into one unless you want to die.

 
 Orange Explodabomb
 ------------------
  Easily recognizable by the screams of terror you'll be
 making. Oh, and it's orange. You look up 'Blast Radius' in
 the dictionary, you get a picture of this. KEEP AWAY. You,
 other enemies... it doesn't discriminate. Anything caught
 nearby when it goes off will be toast, so this perplexing
 swirly ball can help you out a great deal (of course, no
 points get awarded unless you kill an enemy yourself :D )



 *******************
 ** CONFIG STUFFS **
 *******************

  Access these options through the Veckonfig program:


 Resolution
 ----------
  Fairly obvious. You want the game in a 1280x1024 window?
 How about 800x600 fullscreen? That's right, set those options
 right here.
  You should note that changing resolutions just gives you a
 larger play area - the objects don't scale up. I prefer this
 way around - in fact I removed the scaling code from the draw
 routine. You can change resolutions and it feels like a new
 game :D


 Colour Depth
 ------------
  Either 16 or 32 bits of colourific vector fun. If you're
 having trouble using the hi-colour modes (or if you're just
 funny that way :D) try 16-bit only. Only works in full screen
 modes of course. And it'll make the fade effects look a bit
 gradated.


 Display Fading
 --------------
  Instead of clearing the screen each frame, it gets faded
 down by either a medium amount (some fade) or a ridiculously
 tiny amount (OMG). You'll be committed if you try the second
 one for more than a few minutes... Only worthwhile in
 fullscreen.


 Joystick Deadzone
 -----------------

  If your pad's giving you grief, and you've tried calibrating
 it, and you still shimmey and shoot everywhere, try adjusting
 this. Just follow it with your desired deadzone amount, from
 0-100%. The game uses a default of 20%, so if that's too much
 for you (man, you got one FINE gamepad) just set it lower.


 Sounds
 ------
  Here you can enable sound effects, music, and rumble
 feedback. You set the amount of feedback over here:


 Pad Feedback
 ------------
  Much like the Trance Vibrator from Rez, you can strap your
 gamepad to your girlfriend and BOTH enjoy the game :D

  If you find that your pad doesn't rumble, but it does in
 other games, go into the game controllers panel and click
 "Advanced". Try setting your pad to be the default for old
 games. This only works with Windows XP.


 Misc Visual Crap
 ----------------
  You can turn off the dinky wee background gradient if you
 dislike it, and set the number of stars in the vortex. You
 can also scale the scores.
  Fairly difficult to explain, this one. If this isn't turned
 on, the scores remain the same size, in pixels, no matter
 what resolution you run the game at. If it is on, they look
 the same size, in inches or milimetres or whatnot, on a
 fullscreen display. I prefer playing with this option
 disabled, but up to you. Actually, that wasn't so difficult
 to explain after all. Fairly easy to explain then.



 *********************
 ** GAME WON'T RUN? **
 *********************

  It's more than likely XInput. Try starting the game with
 -noxinput on the command line. Otherwise, email me with all
 the details. Ta!



 **********************
 ** GAMEPLAY TACTICS **
 **********************

  Okay, first of all, DON'T SIT STILL! Your shield only
 recharges if you keep flitting about the screen. This will
 probably be wildly unpopular, but for crying out loud, what's
 the fun in camping?

  The Red Reapers are pains in the arse. Get all up in their
 faces to make sure that every bullet you fire hits them, and
 you'll be able to get rid of them more easily.

  If you REALLY feel like cheating, there's a commandline
 option that prevents you from dying (so you can't make the
 hiscore table either). Hex edit, hex edit...


  Cheers for playing, I think you're great.



 ****************
 ** DISCLAIMER **
 ****************

  I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry... If this game
 causes your computer to catch fire, your hard drive to crash,
 your dog to run away, or the end of the universe, then please
 accept one simple fact: I didn't FORCE you to install it :D

  If you paid for this game: You're a nutter. It's free. FREE!

  If you sold this game: Am sent the boys round k!
