
                   Z O N E   O F   T H U N D E R

                      THE COMBAT EXPERIENCE

                          VERSION  1.98

                          Public Domain

                   Written 1995 by Juergen Thumm


Make my day ...

ZONE OF THUNDER (ZOTH) is a GladiatorActionGame for two RemoteControl-
Pilots, whose fascination is unparalleled by other multimedia games.
It features fascinating graphics, bombastic sound and paralyzing action.
Each pilot has a FightBike wherewith he is cruising in a fighting arena.
The task is to pick up weapons which lie around, to attack the opponent
and to turn him into a pile of dust.
The fight takes place in a futuristic 2D arena, filled with surrealistic
wall objects, and framed by DisplacerGates which beam you from one side
of the field to the other. As soon as a weapon is shot empty you have to
pick up further ammunition or replace it by another. If you don't want
to be killed by the first hit, you have also to collect ProtectionShields.
Unfortunately, with each hit, one shield is destroyed again.
Luckily enough, new weapons, ammunition or shields appear everywhere,
so you have always enough material to continue your fight.
The RealitySound provides the very cool MadMaxFeeling that makes
you sweat. Whoever's frightened by the use of Machineguns,
Cruise Missiles, Pump Guns, Rocket Launchers, Light Swords
or Bazookas should better play Tic-Tac-Toe...

But, whoever felt the Force of Action and triumphated in a
hard fight, shalt be addicted.


                       Contents
                       ========

             System requirements        (1)
             Installation               (2)
             GameDefiner                (3)
             Fighting Arena             (4)
             FightBike Throttle         (5)
             FightBike Equipment        (6)
             FightBike Usage of Weapons (7)
             GladiatorDream:
                 Set, Point and Match   (8)
             FightDetails               (9)
             ArenaDetails              (10)
             StrategyDetails           (11)
             TerminatorDetails         (12)
             ConfigurationDetails      (13)
             Memory Optimization       (14)
             Miscellaneous             (15)


(1) System Requirements
=======================

   What Hardware do you need to run the game?

      Minimum for novices:

         486 DX2/66 with 4 MB RAM
         8 Bit Soundcard
         2 analogue Joysticks and 2 Gameports to connect them
         2 Speaker boxes

      Recommended hardware for intense players:

         486 DX2/66 or Pentium with 16 MB RAM
         Soundcard for 32 kHz stereo Sound, e.g. SoundBlaster 16

      Only use Joysticks with 2 axes and 2 buttons, no "Flightsticks"
      (3 axes, 4 buttons)!

   Required Software:

      Windows 3.1
      Windows Sound driver
      Joystick driver (also provided in this package)

   8 MB of hard drive space are required.

   In the minimum configuration, severe losses in Sound Quality
   and/or speed must be accepted.

   With 8 MB or less or memory the system should have enough
   Swap-Space (on hard drive).

(2) Installation
================

   Installing the Internet package(s):

      Select a target directory on your hard drive. Uncompress there
      the ZOTH packages which you've downloaded or copied.

      Make sure pathnames are preserved while uncompressing!

      For example, with PKUNZIP V 2.04g for DOS, the command
      would be:  PKUNZIP -d packagename.ZIP

   After the installation, the following directories should
   exist in your target directory:

      ZOTH         containing the main program(s), manuals etc.
      ZOTH\SND     containing the sound files
      ZOTH\GFX     containing the graphics data
      ZOTH\DOC     containing the documentation

   Perform a sound-check; to do so, start the Sound-settings in
   Windows' system settings and try to play the Windows-Sounds. If
   nothing's audible, check the sound driver and (re)install it if
   necessary. The sound driver was delivered with your Sound card
   or with Windows. Read the sound card's manual or the
   Windows-documentation for details.

   If the joystick driver is missing, install it this way:

   - copy IBMJOY.DRV and JOYSTICK.CPL from your targetdirectory\ZOTH
     into the Windows\System directory. For example, if both ZOTH
     and Windows are installed on drive C:, the following commands must
     be typed:

       copy c:\ZOTH\ibmjoy.drv c:\windows\system
       copy c:\ZOTH\joystick.cpl c:\windows\system

   - now go into the Windows directory and edit the file SYSTEM.INI
     with this command:

        edit system.ini

   - In the opened file, add the following line in the [drivers]
     section:

        joystick=ibmjoy.drv

   Now, the joystick driver is installed. Start Windows.

   In Windows, start the joystick calibration program. To do so,
   search the joystick symbol in the main group's system settings.
   Calibrate as described by moving the stick into the four
   corners of the joystick's foot. Calibrate as exact as possible!
   The joysticks have trimmers to adjust the X- and Y-centering.
   After changing the centering, the calibration should be repeated.
   Maybe the joystick calibration must also be repeated after every
   restart of Windows (depends upon the joystick driver used).

   If the joysticks can't be calibrated, the reason for this
   might be that you didn't select 2-dimensional joysticks in
   "System Settings/Drivers/Game adapter". Furthermore the
   game ports or the adapters on which they reside might be
   badly configured (depends on your PC hardware).

   If anything's set, start Window's file manager, go to your
   target directory and double-click on ZOTH.exe .


(3) GameDefiner
===============

   You see a grey screen with blue shiny letters. If not,
   your Windows-System is probably overloaded (e.g. with an
   alternative desktop, tools or unnecessary extensions in
   CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT). It may suffice to reduce the
   system (see also Memory Optimization), or in the worst case
   Windows must be reinstalled; in that case the game should
   usually work.

   The first ZOTH sound is heard and pushes the heart
   beat... If no Sound is audible, either the speaker boxes are
   turned off or the Windows sound driver doesn't work. If it's the
   sound driver, the sound check wasn't done correctly (see
   Installation; the title music is played with 11 kHz 8 bit mono
   quality.)
   In that case, leave the program with the ESCAPE key, go back to
   Installation and install your Windows Sound correctly.

   In the GameDefiner, playing parameters are adjusted.
   The parameters are changed by pressing those keys that are
   framed by a box. These settings are available:

   HUMAN PLAYERS
      Number of RemoteControlPilots.
      Select '0' to watch two terminators fighting each other.
      Select '1' to fight a terminator (one joystick required).
      Select '2' for the real combat against another person
                 (two joysticks required).

   TERMINATORS
      As it says.

   TERMINATOR POWER
      If you're a novice, select 0 percent, or life in the
      zone of thunder will become short and violent.

   JOYSTICK SWAP
      With this you may swap the joystick(s).

   WEAK SUPPORT
      With this, the weaker of the pilots may get
      additional shields. The number of shields is determined
      automatically during the game. You can also pre-select certain
      values, e.g. 0:3 means that pilot 2 gets 3 additional shields
      from the start (shields are explained later).

   MUSIC FX
      If you can't bear the music effects played during the
      game, switch 'em off with this.

   STEREO SOUND
      If you're using a mono sound card, the program
      should select mono sound automatically as soon as the fighting
      arena appears. Just in case it doesn't, select 'NO' here.

   LOAD 32 KHZ, 22 KHZ, 11 KHZ, oder NO SOUND
      ZOTH is capable of playing 32 kHz Sound, the best sound ever
      heard with an action game on the PC. If your sound card doesn't
      support this or if you're low on memory, you have to select a
      lower quality.
      22 kHz should be supported by nearly every sound card; the memory
      usage is reduced by 1/3. With 11 kHz, again 1/3 less memory is
      needed, and that's also the way it sounds then. NO SOUND starts
      the game without sound. This is usually used to quickly check
      the calibration of the joysticks, before one returns to the
      GameDefiner and then loads the sound.

   SWAP PIXCOLOR
      If you see blue(!) explosions during the game (which may happen
      with certain graphic boards in TrueColor-Mode), change this option.
      On pressing the key, check patterns appear at the left border:
      the first line must appear completely in red (with some white),
      the 2nd green and the 3rd blue.

   TIMING SPEED
      Depending on your Systems's performance, the game
      might be sped up with this. If the game runs permanently with a
      varying speed this value may be selected too large, or the
      systems suffers from a performance overload in other ways (e.g.
      by intense memory swapping to the hard drive, which may happen
      especially in Win-OS/2 sessions).

   When all settings done, press the SPACE bar. In endlessly-seeming
   seconds the graphics data are preprocessed and the ultimate
   ZOTH sounds are loaded. Off we go-o!! Off we go-o!!


(4) Fighting Arena
==================

   The Fighting Arena appears, with a blue floor and
   some surrealistic architecture, which is nice to watch
   but not to TOUCH. To the left and right of the arena's
   middle you see two remote-controlled FightBikes:
   triangular-armoured units, ready for action.

   The FightInfos below the arena are for both pilots. The left
   half belongs to the green, the right one to the red bike.

   The following infos are displayed:

   1:/2  FightInfo section for pilot 1 or 2
   SHD   number of ProtectionShields
   PTS   achieved Points
   S     achieved Sets
   M     matches won so far

   Furthermore, the Protectionshields are also displayed graphical
   as a blue bar, and below that, you find a line for infos
   and status messages.

   Besides, the FightInfos display a list of weapons that were
   collected so far. Initially this list is empty.

   The action starts as soon as both RemoteControlPilots move their
   joystick or press button 1. Every joystick has two buttons;
   which one is button 1 or 2 depends upon the model used.


(5) FightBike Throttle
======================

   The bikes accelerate by pressing the joystick as far as possible
   into a direction. Check this for all directions! If there's no
   acceleration in one or more directions, the joystick is badly
   calibrated (Bad luck: in that case, recalibration of the sticks
   in Window's system settings is necessary). The bikes decellerate
   if you elongate the joystick less.

   If no sound is audible on acceleration, there was probably a
   too high selected value in the GameDefiner's LOAD SOUND option.
   In that case you'll have to leave the arena, back to the
   GameDefiner with ESCAPE, then select 22 or 11 kHz and go back
   again to the arena with SPACE.


(6) FightBike Equipment
=======================

   In the fighting arena, weapons appear at random places.
   To collect them, bump them. The weapon is ready for action
   immediately and can be fired using button 1. By default, every
   bike has a simple pistol with 30 bullets.

The following weapons may be collected:

Weapon   Symbol Description                            Usage in
                                          Attack            Defense

MACHINE  red/   To straightly shoot the direct:  shoot the   Against Cruise
  GUN    blue   opponent.  The nearer   other bike.          Missiles and
         MG     the target laser lies   indirect:  shoot     Rockets, provided
                on him, the better.     uncollected weapons  of course one has
                                        that lie around the  enough time and
                                        other bike.          distance to aim.

  PUMP   green  To "blow away" the      direct:  blow the    Against Cruise
  GUN    gun    other, in literal       other into the next  Missiles
                sense.  The impacts     wall.  indirect:     and Rockets.
                create pressure waves   blow up uncollected
                which do not harm the   weapons lying around
                opponent in any way,    the other bike.
                except that they make
                him fly.

 LIGHT   sword  Near distance           Strike.  The re-     Not usable in
 SWORD          weapon.                 pulsion of a hit     defense (espe-
                                        slows down the       cially not
                                        attacking bike.      against
                                        This gives the       Cruise
                                        victim a better      Missiles).
                                        chance to escape.

BAZOOKA   ba-   Straight flying         direct:  Not easy,   The rubbish piles
         zooka  warhead which ex-       but possible:  a     left by the
                plodes at the first     precisely aimed      explosion provide
                obstacle or on reach    Bazooka that ex-     a good coverage,
                of the joystick-        plodes on the other  especially
                selected flying         one's feet may cost  against MG.
                distance. The explo-    him several
                sion leaves a pile      shields. indirect:
                of rubbish.             If the other one's
                                        moving nearby an
                                        obstacle, shoot it.

CRUISE   mis-   Self-guiding missiles   Fire and forget. The firing
MISSILES sile   that follow the oppo-   direction should lead into
                nent if he's in sight.  open space.

ROCKET   two    Straight flying rockets Aim into the right direction and fire.
LAUNCHER tubes  with heavy impact.      The stronger the rockets are, the more
                No distance selection.  walls are broken through.

Besides these weapons the FightBikes may collect Ammunition,
ProtectionShields and Reinforcements:

Extra       Symbol Description

AMMUNITION  Ammo   Nearly every weapon may be reloaded with this.  For every
            Box    type of weapon, one Ammo Box counts different,
                   e.g. for MG 30 shoots, for the Pump Gun only 3.

PROTECTION  Blue   Every unit is a single ProtectionShield. Whenever a bike is
SHIELDS     round  hit or it drives through an obstacle (with exception of the
            shield arena border), is looses one shield.  By default, every
            with   bike has five shields.  Shields are very valuable; if none
            four   are left, an alarm sound is played and the whole cockpit
            spikes blinks in red.  The single task of the pilot is now to
                   collect shields, because the next hit or collision will
                   crash his bike.

WEAPON      round  Strenghtens the effect of the current weapon.  If the
REINFORCE-  yellow weapon already reached it's maximum effect, only the
MENT        '+'    pistols's ammunition (if there's any) is reinforced.


(7) FightBike Weapon Usage
==========================

"Aim"

   Pistols and Rockets:

      just move the stick into the desired direction. Aim slowly when
      using rockets, rapid changes of direction usually don't hit the
      target.

   MG and Pump Gun:

      With these, the distance of the impact must be selected
      additionally. To do so, these weapons have a target laser. The
      more the joystick is elongated in a direction, the more the
      laser's end point (the only thing visible) moves away.
      Exception: if there's an obstacle in the chosen direction, the
      laser will stay on it.

      Pressing the fire button will always lead to a detonation at the
      selected target point.

      When using the MG, theroretically it would suffice to elongate
      the joystick maximally into the opponent's direction and fire.
      Practically one hits this way only sometimes, because you can't
      select the shooting direction that precise and thus miss the
      other bike by one or two degrees.

   Bazooka:

      The more the joystick is pressed, the farer the bazooka will
      fly. Basically it's the same as with MG, but you have no target
      laser. Usually it's very effective to elongate the stick just a
      little and to throw the bazooka right in front of the other
      one's bike.

      The maximum distance of MG, Pump Gun, Rockets and Bazooka is 2/3
      of the arena's width.

"Fire"

   A bike may collect an unlimited number of weapons, but only the
   two frontmost, i.e. latest-collected, are usable at the moment.
   As soon as these are empty, the ones behind that were collected
   earlier move up. Button 1 fires the frontmost, button 2 the
   second-frontmost weapon. Only the frontmost weapon could be
   reinforced or reloaded.

"Switch"

   If you have lots of weapons on board you may change their
   sequence by driving through one of the violet arrow-ring shaped
   switches which are found in the arena. If you have more than 5
   weapons, only the 5 frontmost ones could be cycled.

"Reload"

   Weapon           Reinforcement '+':        Ammunition Box:

   Machine Gun      Creates more horrible     30 bullets
                    dust in the target area.
   Pump Gun         Opponent flies longer.    3 bullets
   Light Sword      Longer and more inert.    50 energy units
   Bazooka          Larger rubbish piles.     nothing (pistol is loaded)
   Cruise Missiles  Larger impact radius.     one missile
   Rocket Launcher  Breaks more walls.        three rockets


(8) GladiatorDream: Point, Set and Match
========================================

   If a FightBike explodes, the opponent may carve a Point into his
   joystick. Exception: both explode. He who first gets 4 points
   and has a lead of at least 2 points wins a Set. The one winning
   3 Sets leaves the arena as the winner.


(9) FightDetails
================

   Shield-loss-timing:

      After the loss of a shield it takes at least 250 milliseconds
      (with Weak Support even longer) until the next shield could be
      destroyed. This avoids for example that driving into a wall in an
      unlucky angle costs 10 shields in one instant.

      After the loss of the last shield the bike is protected one
      Second against destruction. Therefore the last shield is the
      most important! It guarantees a second of life even under
      hardest fire. Whoever has no shield left must collect at
      least one.

   Bike-explosion-timing:

      The explosion process of a bike takes several seconds. The other
      bike must survive this time to get the point.

   The Jedi Convention for Grandmasters:

      "He who thinks he's unfailable may try to terminate his
      opponent, as soon as he lost all his shields,
      with the Light Sword only."


(10) ArenaDetails
=================

   DisplacerGates

      At the arena's top and bottom, you find two vertical, static
      Displacergates, and at the left and right border a single,
      moving one. By driving through such a gate, you reach the
      opposite side of the arena.

   Change the Target Laser's shape:

      Press 'T' during the game to select 1 out of 8 shapes.

   Clock display:

      Press 'C' during the game to select one of these displays:
      - no clock
      - short format  with time, round time,  session time in minutes
      - long format with the same infos plus date.

      After pressing the key, wait a second until it's displayed.

   Hiding the mouse cursor:

      In Window's Program Manager, create a program symbol with
      File/New/Program, to start the game with.
      As the working directory select the directory in which
      zoth.exe resides.

   Saving the current score

      Press F7 during the game or in the GameDefiner.
      This will save your current score.
      You can leave the game then and, for example,
      re-calibrate your joysticks.

      If the score cannot be saved, check your harddisk
      if write access is allowed and if there is any free
      space available.

   Loading the score

      Press F5 in the GameDefiner.
      This will load your score;
      enter the Fighting Arena then and continue your match.

(11) StrategyDetails
====================

   The "most popular" errors of novice pilots are these:

   Aimless collecting. The rule is: Quality before Quantity. For
   example, one MG with 3 plus and 100 shoots of ammunition is much
   more useful then five weak MG's with 30 shoots each.

   Inadequate Distance. For example, holding a MG under the
   opponent's nose though the opponent has a Light Sword is as
   brave as insane, and usually results in sudden death (of the MG
   owner).


(12) TerminatorDetails
======================

   - the TERMINATOR POWER value you select in the GameDefiner
     is only an initial value which is incremented step by step
     during the game. The step size is 1/20 of the initial value,
     that is, with 0 or 10 percent initial value, there is no increment.

   - the more CPU power, the more Terminator power.

   - the terminator is not damaged if he walks through a wall,
     but he avoids this if possible. He can be damaged by walls,
     however, if he's PUMPED through. Try this, but watch out!
     If you get in his scope he will IMMEDIATELY run an optimized
     termination algorithm...


(13) ConfigurationDetails
=========================

   Settings which are selected by hand at every start of ZOTH
   should be entered in the configuration file zoth.ini. To do
   so, load this file from the ZOTH directory with a text
   editor, e.g. the Notepad of Windows (but not with a word
   processor). Before changing the file, first create a backup
   copy! Each line contains a keyword with a single value (both
   separated by blanks), and remarks beginning with ";" and lasting
   'til the end of the line. Remarks are ignored by ZOTH and
   just serve better understandability.

   The following keywords are recognized:

   Keyword        Description                    Possible values

   humans         number of human players        0,1,2
   robots         number of robot players        0 to 5
   swapsticks     swap joysticks                 0 = no, 1 = yes
   weaksupport    automatic force balancing      0 = no, 1 = yes
   music          music effects                  0 = off, 1 = on
   stereo         Stereo Sound                   0 = off, 1 = on
   khz            sound quality in kHz           0 (no Sound), 11, 22, 32
   clock          clock display                  0 (none), 1 (min), 2 (max)
   width          playfield width limit          640, 800, 1024, 1280, ...
   height         playfield height limit         480, 600, 768, 1024, ...
   yshift         vertical picture shift to
                  top of screen                  0 to ca. 20
   swappixcol     see GameDefiner description    0 = no, 1 = yes
   usepalette     use palette (is the default)   0 = no, 1 = yes
   tlasershape    target laser shape             0 to 7

   colback1
   colback2       change background colors       12-Bit RGB-value
   colback3       (only for freaks)              from 0x000 to 0xfff

   coltlaser1
   coltlaser2     change color of target lasers  like colback
   coltlaser3     of player 1, 2 and others


(14) Memory Optimization
========================

   With 8 and especially 4 MB of RAM it is highly recommended to
   remove all superfluous memory-eating extensions (e.g.
   SmartDrive) from the system files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

   A maximum-reduced CONFIG.SYS may look this way:

      DEVICE = C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
      DOS = HIGH

   The meanings of these entries can be looked up in your DOS- or
   Windows manual.

   The recommended screen resolution for playing is 800 x 600
   pixels, and 256 colors.

   The program uses at least 1 MB of additional memory in
   resolutions higher than 1024 x 768.

   Playing in Hi- or Truecolor mode takes lots more memory
   than in 256 color mode.


(15) Miscellaneous
==================

   Picture quality

      In 256 color mode, the obstacles will not be displayed
      with the same brilliant colors as in Hi- or Truecolor mode.

   11 kHz tradeoffs

      Even if the sound files supplied with this package only have
      11 kHz quality, I recommend you select at least 22 kHz playback
      quality in the GameDefiner, as otherwise the sounds may be chopped
      during playback. With only 4 MB of RAM, however, it may be
      necessary to select 11 kHz playback quality, though.

   Further keys in the GameDefiner (1)

      Press F12 and a digit of the keyboard's top digit row
      to (in)activate creation of distinct weapon types:

      digit  disables or re-enables

        0    bazooka
        1    extra charge (reinforcement)
        2    ammunition
        3    light sword
        4    machine gun
        5    pump gun
        6    additional shields
        7    cruise missiles
        8    rocket launcher

   Further keys in the GameDefiner (2)

        C    enables mouse cursor while playing
        N    plays setbike music always on start of round
        I    reduce Terminator power increment

   Further keys while playing

        P    Performance monitor on/off
        V    Terminator visual debugging mode on/off
        Z    (after a bike crashed) undisplay explosion
             to get a clear view of the impact craters

