        ---------------- Exolon DX - By Graham Goring ----------------
   ---------------- John Blythe and Chris "Infamous" Nunn ----------------
       ---------------- Mac Conversion By Peter Hull ----------------

                  ---------------- Dedication ----------------

This game is dedicated to Steve "The Toker" Phelps who was one of the founder
members of Retro Remakes, a website which has striven for many years to
promote remakes and provide a warm, enthusiastic and welcoming community which
gives advice and encouragement to all who pass through there, while
simultaneously reporting upon any news in the remaking world.

Steve tragically passed away in July of 2005, he will be missed by all who
either knew him, or whose lives he and Retro Remakes touched. Here's hoping that
heaven has a broadband connection, so he can keep up with the scene.



                  ---------------- Disclaimer ----------------

I, Graham Goring and we, Retrospec accept no responsibility for this game doing
something downright foul to your computer including the wiping of random files
which it could've sworn it was meant to, corrupting other files it thought it
had been told to save to and creating new files in embarrassing locations which
lead to questioning from the police after a routine inspection at PC World.

Furthermore we accept no responsibility for loss of vision, hearing, life, limb,
co-ordination, money, memory, property, dignity, soul or rhythm. However if you
do gain one or more of those, we will expect a nice thank-you letter. Unless
it's a third foot or something... In which case a picture will do.

Throughout development this game has been fairly carefully bug-tested, though,
so you shouldn't have too many problems.



             ---------------- Minimum Requirements ----------------

The only thing that might be a problem with this game is it's reliance on
OpenGL. Many PCs come with woefully out of date OpenGL drivers and so if the
game crashes upon startup you should consider upgrading yours. This game makes
use of OpenGL 1.3, which means it should run on anything from the time of the
GeForce 1 or 2 onwards. Anything older than this like a TNT or Matrox card or a
stinky on-board graphics adapter will probably fall over. Considering that a
low-level GeForce 4 will probably cost you about £30-40, you might want to think
about upgrading.

If it doesn't work after that, then I refer the honourable gentleman to the
above disclaimer - but look at the bright side, you can run Half Life now...



          ---------------- Introduction and Objective ----------------

Hello! And welcome to the second ever thing I've managed to produce during my 6
years at Retrospec - pretty appalling track record, eh?

Exolon is a single-player game - this means it's only really fun for one person,
or two people who've each tragically lost an arm.

The game is a platform shoot 'em up where the player fills the shoes of a
soldier who may or may not be called Vitorc (I was never really sure on that
point) who has to traverse through several levels of flip-screen destruction,
laying waste to anything and everything that crosses his path.

In addition to walking, the player can also jump, duck, fire their gun or launch
a rocket from their backpack. With these abilities at your disposal you should
be able to successfully obliterate any of the numerous hazards which you'll
encounter in the 125 screens which lie between you and your goal.



                ---------------- Control Freak ----------------

Default controls are cursors to move (up for jump, down for duck), Z to shoot
the gun and X to fire a rocket. Escape brings up the pause menu. If you manage
to screw up the controls, just delete the file "config.txt" and it'll restore
these as the defaults.



                ---------------- Other Options ----------------

You can also change the colour depth and window settings in the game, although
the new settings will not take effect until you restart the game. You can
manually alter the settings in the file "config.txt" if you like by using values
of "16", "24" or "32" for the colour depth and "TRUE" or "FALSE" for the
windowing. The default setting is 16-bit windowed.



              ---------------- What's In A Game? ----------------

Useful Objects:

Bonus Ammo Pickups - These appear in two varieties, one of which replenishes
your gun ammo back up to 99 shots and one of which replenishes your rockets
back up to 10 shots.

Teleporters - These will be found in pairs on many screens. Pressing the jump
button while standing under one will almostly instantly teleport you to the
other one. Use this to choose between differing routes through the rooms and
also to avoid enemies.

Upgrade pod - About halfway through each level you'll find an upgrade pod. If
you can get into it and press jump you'll get equipped with an upgraded combat
suit and a dual-firing gun. Press jump again to change back to the regular
combat suit if you're some kind of masochistic fool.



Enemy Types:

Spawners - These small enemies appear in various guises from the right edge of
the screen and make their way to the left in a variety of patterns. They can be
destroyed by a single shot from your gun.

Gunpods - These fire bullets at random intervals which can be ducked. They can
only be destroyed through the use of a rocket.

Dual Cannons - These fire a stream of shells at you which must be shot, they
fire them high and low so you'll need to duck to hit the low ones. The only way
to destroy them is to get past them.

Hybrid Cannons - Later on you'll meet these, they're a combination of Gunpods
and Dual Cannons.

Birth Pods - These spherical objects contain a dozen or so viral organisms and
will often need to be destroyed with a rocket so you can get past them, thus
releasing the virii.

Virii - freed virii will move around randomly until killed with a single shot
from the gun or they bump into something.

Forcefields - These vertical beams will stop you from progressing until
destroyed by many shots from your gun.

Tracker Missiles - These are almost unavoidable as they speed towards you,
destroy their control center with a rocket to stop them!

Upstompers - These will erupt from the ground periodically, killing you if
you're above them. They are deadly to the touch so avoid! If you are lucky
enough to be wearing an upgraded combat suit then these will not hurt you in
the slightest.

Land Mines - Touch these and you'll get several thousand newtons of explosive
force in a place where it hurts. Like the Upstompers these will not harm you
if you are wearing an upgraded combat suit, which leads me to suspect that
aside from upgrading your gun the only thing the suit does is place a hefty
book into the back of your trousers like they did in the Bash Street Kids.

Baiters - Each room must be completed within about 50-60 seconds, waiting
around beyond this will trigger the appearance of a Baiter enemy, which is
indestructable and will in most circumstances relieve you of a life before
allowing you a further 50-60 seconds to complete the room. This should rarely
be a problem, though, unless you play games with all the fluidity of my mum
typing a letter.

Obstructions - If it's in your way and you can't jump over it, shove a rocket
into it. If you've run out of rockets, wait around for a kind Baiter to pop
your clogs for you. That might be a bit of a game design faux pas these days,
but tough titty.



              ---------------- Scores Galore ----------------

The scoring scheme in this version of Exolon is quite, quite different to that
of the original and so high-scores aren't comparable between the two. I predict
that this will annoy precisely two-point-five people in the world, and
accordingly, I really don't care.

However if you wish to boast about your fantastic scoring feats (where they
relate to Exolon DX, of course) then why not open up the file called
"hiscore_upload_codes.txt" in the exolon/ sub-directory. In there you'll find
magical sequences of enchanted digits, which when pasted into our fairy-dust
powered webpage will turn in golden pixie... somethings.

Oh, I just don't care, honestly.



              ---------------- About This Program ----------------

This version of Exolon DX was started in late 2004 as a way of testing out the
capabilities of my spanky new Allegro/AllegroGL/OpenGL/FMOD powered engine. The
previous version of the game had kinda' dragged to a halt due to a combination
of factors (a key one of which was my big fat yap). 

That version of Exolon DX was being made using the excellent Blitz BASIC,
however with the move over to AllegroGL it's meant that a whole plethora of
more advanced special effects can be included in the game, while at the same
time drastically reducing the number of people who'll be able to get my
shoddily sellotaped together engine to run on their machine. In turn, this
increases the number of people who'll complain about the game, crucially
damaging my self-belief and preventing me from going out and engaging in
healthy activities like talking to girls or getting a real life. This is the
only way to guarantee the future release of games from me.



          ---------------- Credit Where Credit's Due ----------------

The version of Exolon upon which this version is based is the Spectrum one,
programmed by the much-admired Rafaelle Cecco in 1986/7 and released by Hewson
Consultants. The original graphics were by the talented Hugh Binns and the
memorably catchy music and crunchy sound effect were by ace tune-scribe J Dave
Rogers (I think...).

This version of Exolon was programmed by the overweight and lazy Graham Goring,
with graphics by the offensively-ginger John Blythe and music by crackpot
conspiracy theorist Infamous. Sound effects were dragged from various dens of
internequity and then changed with editing packages in an attempt to obscure
their source and stave off legal action. The original remake was also made by
aforementioned cyber-hussy Russell Hoy, without whom this version would not
exist.

This program makes use of Allegro, a fantastic game-centric C library started by
Shaun Hargreaves in the 1990s. These days it's tended to by a large group of
monk-like people who rake its pebbles and prune its bushes in a loving manner.
The program also uses AllegroGL, an extension to Allegro which makes it possible
to use OpenGL alongside it. I also use the FMOD sound library, which is just
groovy and free as a bird if you aren't charging for your game.



                    ---------------- Thanks ----------------

All the lovely people at Retrospec for help during testing and answering
programming queries: (Names listed here alphabetically so they don't argue about
who I love most) Allan Bentham, John Blythe, Jeff Braine, Dan Condon-Jones, Adam
Dawes, John Dow, Bill Harbison, Thomas Harte, Russell Hoy, Richard Jordan,
Pierre Jovanovic, Tomaz Kac, Arif Majothi, Andy Noble, Ignacio Perez, Matthew
Smith, Neil Walker and Andrew Zaffman. (Apologies to Dan and Pierre, but your
names were too long to fit in the hi-score table - Or in Dan's case, too posh)

Allan Findlay, Bone and Jan Van Valburg for helping me whenever I had problems
learning C.

Warren Lancashire for using reverse psychology to make me realise how arse C++
was. ;)

John & Ste Pickford for giving me my first job in the games industry and
promoting me whenever I proved myself incapable of whatever I was meant to be
doing.

Carleton Handley for giving me useful feedback during the making of this game
and also reminding me whenever there were good telly programmes to download.

Paul Pridham and Dan McDonald for likewise giving useful feedback during the
making of this game, in particular Paul Pridham because of his crappy graphics
card which throws a wobbly when you try and multitexture. However I'm deducting
points because of his habit of blathering on about Forth all the time.

All the wonderful people at Retro Remakes who unconditionally give encouragement
to remakers whether their game is good (like mine) or a pile of shite (like Neil
Walker's). In particular OddBob for always making me smile and Steve Watson for
being nice above and beyond the call of duty. I'll also name-check Wolverine
here in the hope that he'll draw some graphics for me.

NeHe for the fantastic OpenGL tutorials - I only read the first 12 but that's
all you need to know if you just wanna' stick sprites on the screen.

Mark Sibly for making Blitz BASIC, without which I'd have never been ready to
learn C afterwards. It's like a gateway drug, only good!

James Curry, because he'll bitch if I don't thank him.

Rafaelle Cecco, for writing the original game. I apologise for spelling your 
name differently every time I type it. I also apologise for making an engine
which refuses to run on your machine.

And all the other people that I obviously don't like enough to remember. You
know who you are... Especially you, fatty.



                 ---------------- Known Issues ----------------

Okay, there's one big bug that's still in the game and I'm damned if I know how
to fix it without the help of someone who can replicate the damn thing. And so
for that reason, there's a special magic key built into the game...

If you're ever playing and after dying you notice your life counter change to
something weird, or you die and don't reappear or you lose your last life and
you don't get the GAME OVER image, then press F8 on your keyboard. That's F8!
(it used to be F1, but that's too near to the Escape pause key) and the game
will exit.

After that, locate the files called "error_demo.dem" and "entity_dump.txt" in
your game directory and the exolon/ sub-folder and send them to me at
"graham@duketastrophy.demon.co.uk". If it enables me to fix the bug then I'll
update the game on the website and you'll get a credit in this very readme file.



               ---------------- Version History ----------------

V1.00 - First release, may contain traces of nut.
V1.01 - Eep. Memory leak. My bad.
V1.02 - Later enemy behaviour fixed.
V1.03 - Altered code so that people whose OpenGL didn't support
        "GL_EXT_secondary_color" can still run the game. Also changed game
        to include debug version for anyone who it still crashes for on
        startup. Plus MikeW's demo helped my find a vile little bug which
        could cause the game to crap out in very rare circumstances. Also
        added code so that it doesn't try multi-texturing on anything less
        than OpenGL 1.3, which should stop some other crashes. I hope.
V1.04 - Tightened up the code involving scaled entities as it could cause
       	some mysterious flickerings in the game. Also fixed up a few other
        bits and bobs. Like V1.03 this includes a debug version of the game
        which runs slower but will help track down errors should the game not
        run on your PC at all. Bizarrely, sometimes this version will work but
        the regular one won't. Note that it runs like an ABSOLUTE DOG for the
        first few seconds. I mean like 0.25fps, so don't be alarmed.



                  ---------------- Legal Guff ----------------

Exolon (c) 1987 Hewson Consultants
Exolon DX released by Retrospec, all scripting and artwork (c) 2005 Retrospec.
Music (c) 2005 Infamous.



               ---------------- Contact and Website Details ----------------

Graham Goring - graham@duketastrophy.demon.co.uk
 - http://www.duketastrophy.demon.co.uk & http://www.drderekdoctors.com

John Blythe - Is out of the country. Actually, that's not true but I'm damned
 if I remember his e-mail at this moment. Lawks.

Infamous - http://www.infamousuk.com/

Retrospec - http://retrospec.sgn.net/

Retro Remakes - http://www.retroremakes.com/

Allegro - http://www.allegro.cc

AllegroGL - http://allegrogl.sourceforge.net/

fmod - http://www.fmod.org/





