                  Solar Wars 2001 Release Documentation
                  -------------------------------------

Here's the scenario: sometime in the 22nd century, mankind felt cocky enough to 
engage in a global nuclear war.  As a result, almost the entire world population was 
wiped out.  All that are left are a couple of small, feuding factions of people.  Since there 
is not enough arable land left on Earth any more, the warring factions took to the stars 
to fight over the celestial bodies: The Planets.  You and an opponent are on opposing 
sides of the war.  Armed with your high-powered spatial battletanks, you will have to 
carve your own slice out of the solar system.

Solar Wars is a two-player game.  It was designed for the Nintendo Entertainment 
System, and can be played on any decent Nintendo emulator or on the actual 
hardware.  Solar Wars was developed on computers but tested throughout its 
development on a real NES.  If you'd like to find out how to get Solar Wars onto a cart
yourself, visit my Solar Wars page on my homepage, http://mypage.direct.ca/c/ccovell/
If my page is no longer active (for some reason), e-mail me at ccovell@direct.ca.


Basic Controls:
---------------
Once you start Solar Wars, you have the choice of which world to start fighting on.  You 
can choose all of the nine solar planets, and the Earth's moon.  Once you decide on a 
world, the game begins.  Each player will see only his side of the battlefield at a time.  
You can manoeuvre your tank across the terrain by holding down the B button, and 
pressing Left or Right.  Your tank is pretty mobile, but it is not powerful enough to climb 
tall cliffs, and it can't go too high up.  After choosing a suitable position for your tank, 
you can adjust the power of your shot both horizontally and vertically, by pressing L/R or 
U/D.  When you have chosen the power of your shot, press the A button to fire a volley 
at your opponent.  If your shot is too powerful, it will just fly off the map.  If your shot is 
not powerful enough, it could land right on top of you and dig you into a hole.  
Fortunately, you can't destroy your own tank.

If you aim correctly and hit your opponent, you win a point.  The war is fought over three 
rounds and three worlds.  The player who wins the most rounds (who accumulates 9 
points) wins the war.


Strategy
--------
Solar Wars is an action-oriented game.  Thus, each round is meant to be short and 
violent.  But there is still a bit of strategy involved.  For instance, you can use the varied 
terrain as cover from your opponent's fire.  If you are hiding behind a steep mountain, 
your enemy will have to aim his shot higher so that it comes down on you from above, 
not straight at you.  Or, your opponent might decide simply to blast his way through the 
mountain to get at you.  Fortunately, you can move around before you fire.

 One effective way of disabling your opponent's defences is to dig him into a deep hole.  
That way, his mobility is drastically limited, and so is the range of his shots.

Since you are usually fighting away from the Earth, bear in mind that each world has its 
own properties such as gravity, atmosphere, climate, and windspeed.  These can 
adversely affect your aim in battle.  Those who are accustomed to a gentle breeze on 
Earth might get a rude awakening fighting amidst the 720 km/h winds of Neptune, for 
example.


About The Game
--------------
Solar Wars was developed over the months of July to October, 1999.  The concept 
came into my head when I was talking to somebody on IRC after I had just released a 
demo called Stars.  He asked me, "Are you ever going to make a game on the NES?"  I 
had said that I didn't know what kind of game hadn't already been done to death on the 
NES.  But NOBODY had made a game like Scorched Tanks (a favourite game that I 
used to play all the time on the Amiga with my buddies) or Scorched Earth before on the 
NES.  And I guessed it was "doable".  I never imagined that it would turn into a game 
like this.  Solar Wars is the first actual video game that I have ever made, on any game 
system.     

This game was developed almost entirely on my Commodore Amiga 1200, which has 
served me very, very well for over six years.  I used the assembler DASM to assemble 
the code.  I used programs like Deluxe Paint V and ArtPro to create or modify the 
graphics in the game, and used a few of my own programs (available on my webpage) 
to convert and compress graphics into a NES-usable form.  My PC and Mac were used 
for various graphical and developmental purposes.  I used an EEPROM programmer 
connected to my PC in order to test Solar Wars on my NES and NES clones.

In 2001, I decided that I wanted to improve the game by removing the major bugs that
were left.  So, with this 2001 release, I have fixed most of the remaining bugs in
the game, as well as made a couple of minor cosmetic changes (which should be obvious.)
Because I've fixed all of the bugs relating to the sound driver, the "Silent" version
of Solar Wars will not be needed anymore.  (Unless you want to read the poem that I had
hidden (?) in the binary of the Silent game.)  :-)  I've even added several little secret
things for you to search for in this new version.  Sorry, no hints!

I would recommend using this game on LoopyNES or NESticle for the PC, Graybox for the
Macintosh, or DarkNESs on the Amiga.  They have functioned in various ways most similarly
to a real NES.  Have fun, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about Solar Wars!

                                                           -Chris C. 4/19/2001

Staff:  Game design, graphics, and programming by Chris Covell (ccovell@direct.ca).  
You can find his homepage at http://www.sfu.ca/~ccovell/ or at 
http://mypage.direct.ca/c/ccovell/.

Music composed by Joey "Memblers" Parsell (5010.0951@tcon.net).  His homepage is 
currently at: http://mem.tcon.net/users/5010/0951/ or at http://nesdev.parodius.com/. A
big thanks to Joey for coming up with some great music!

The music code was programmed by Michel Iwaniec "Mr. Bananmos" 
(bananmos_uv@hotmail.com).  The code is a replayer for his ABSOLUTELY USEFUL 
tracker for the NES, NerdTracker 2.   Be sure to look for it.  Thanks, Michel!


Copyright & Distribution
------------------------
This game should entirely be respected as the collected works of Chris Covell, Joey 
Parsell, and Michel Iwaniec.  This game is freeware.  It is free for anybody to download 
or transmit.  Nobody may modify the contents of the game or archive without the written 
consent of the authors.  The game code and source will continue to be the work of the 
respective authors, even after the source code is released.  Failure to respect the
wishes of the originators of the game will result in your being told to sit in the "bad
boy" corner and think about what you did, or even worse punishments, according to the 
authors' whims.

This game will be distributed as such:

SolarWars2001.NES             (Full, Bugfixed game of Solar Wars)
README.TXT                    (This file)

Thank you, and have fun!
