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[Show comments] [Show snapshots] [Show videos] [Show content] [Replace file] Welcome to M I R R O R M A G I C I I --------------------------- A game for Unix/X11, DOS and Windows by Holger Schemel. (c) 1994-2000 by Holger Schemel. Introduction ============ This is a nice little game with color graphics and sound for your Unix system with color X11, DOS or Windows. You need an 8-bit color display or better. It will not work on black&white systems, and maybe not on gray scale systems. It was first released as "Mindbender" in the year 1989 on the Amiga (with ports on other computer systems) and is in fact a clone of the C64 game "Deflektor". As the Amiga is a bit outdated now, I decided to port it to Unix systems and later to DOS and Windows. Getting started =============== Just 'cd' to the 'mirrormagic' directory and type 'mirrormagic'! This works only on Linux boxes, because the included binary was compiled for Linux systems. If you have another Unix system like HPUX, NetBSD or SUN, you first have to type 'make' to compile it. This may be needed on Linux systems, too, if you have an older system (kernel, libraries, ...). The Menues ========== You can see eight blue circles on the left side of the eight green menu texts; these are buttons to activate the menu commands by simply clicking on them with the left mouse button. The button will then change to red. The menu 'name' --------------- First, you have to choose a player name. Just click on the button for the 'name' menu. The screen will change and offer 10 player names to choose from. At the first time, they will all be 'no name'. Choose the last entry 'enter new name', choose one of the 'no name' fields and type in your name. It will then appear as the actual player's name on the main screen. If you choose a certain special name, you will be in a cheat mode where you can choose all levels without playing the lower levels before... :) The menu 'level' ----------------- If you have played some levels of this game, you can choose the already played levels at any time, but you cannot choose the higher levels. This means, you can choose levels from level 0 to the highest level that you have ever won. This is known as your 'handicap'. To choose a level, click on the two buttons on the left or right hand of the level field. If you click on the button left of the text 'level', the level field will switch to '50' or, if >=50, back to '00'. This is because the levels '50' to '99' are empty, but you can build your own mirrormagic levels with the built-in level editor. Hall of fame ------------ Click on this button to see a list of the best players of this level. Click again to go back to the main menu. Level creator ------------- This brings you to the level editor, if you have switched to level 50 or higher, which are empty and can be filled by yourself. See below. Info screen ----------- This screen shows you all elements which appear in the 50 levels. Click again to go back to the main menu. Start game ---------- This will start the game. Setup ----- To change some things in the game, use the setup menu. You can enable/disable "Sound" (enables/disables _all_ sounds in the game), "Sound loops" (only allowed on Linux systems with VoxWare[tm] sound driver; don't worry if you never heard of it -- it's the name of the standard Linux sound driver), "Game music" (can always be enabled on very fast systems [exception: you don't like it], on slower systems it will take some percent of CPU time which will slow things down a bit) and "Toons", which will forbid/ permit the little animated toons. "Exit" quits the setup menu without saving the changes, "Save and exit" will save and then return to the main menu. Quit ---- Exit the game. How To Play The Game ==================== When the game has started, you can see the playfield on the left side and a control field on the right side. The control field contains the following elements: Level indicator Tells you what level you are playing. Spell counter Shows you how many 'spells' you still need to win the current level. Score counter Shows the current score. In some levels there are some extra items giving extra score points. Music On/Off The two buttons (red and green) left and right of the 'stop' button can be used to disable / enable background music. On slower systems (and a 486DX33 with Soundblaster _is_ a slower system) it increases the game speed to turn off back- ground music. You can completely turn off all sound effects in the setup menu, although it is much more fun to have them enabled when it doesn't eats up to much speed. (Note: On a stock Amiga 500 (with MC68000, 7 MHz) from the year 1987, on which this game originally was developed, the graphics, the sound and the overall gameplay was _much_ more smooth than on a 486DX/33 with accelerated Cirrus 5426 graphics and a Soundblaster Pro. The Amiga version had some additionally background music and, yes, it all ran in multitasking with AmigaOS. But you may have a Pentium100 anyway. Just a note.) (Another note: The sound server currently needs about 10% CPU time on my 486DX/33/SBPro system when playing background music. I wonder if this would get better with a better soundcard, like Gravis Ultrasound, or if only pure CPU power helps in this case...) Stop button Click here to stop the current game. You are asked if you really want to quit, so you can use this button as a pause button, too. Fuel (blue) Shows you how many time is left to finish the current level ('magic energy'). Heat (red) Shows you if the magic beam is overheated. If this reaches the top, the game is over. On the left side you can see the playfield itself. Your task is to get all the 'magic kettles' which contain 'magic spell ingredients'. To get them, you have to hit them with the 'magic beam' that starts from the magician. The gnomes (with red hats) each have a rotatable mirror which can be rotated by clicking with the left or right mouse button, so you can reflect the 'magic beam' to another direction. If you have gotten all the 'magic kettles' (the ones with the color cycling, if you play at an X server with read/write colors), the 'magic door' opens and you only have to direct the 'magic beam' to this door to end the game. If you have some time left you will get a time bonus and see your placement in the hall of fame. To complicate the game, the following levels will contain more and more of some strange elements to help you in the level or to make it harder. You can see them all on the 'info screen' from the main menu. Just try out what they do when you see them in a new level - you will quickly find it out... :) The Level Editor ================ To build your own levels, just choose a level number between 50 and 99 and then choose 'level creator' from the main menu. You then will see all available elements on the right side. Just choose the element you want to place from the right and place it on the left side. All three mouse buttons are mapped to draw in the playfield, the middle or the right one erases the filed under the mouse button - I have forgotten which one, just try it out! ;) 'clear' clears the level, 'exit' saves it after a confirmation. And Now Have Fun! ================= Have fun playing the game, building new levels and breaking all high scores! ;) If you have any comments, problems, suggestions, donations, flames, send them to info()artsoft.org or Snail Mail Holger Schemel Detmolder Strasse 189 33604 Bielefeld GERMANY Have fun, Holger |
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