
                                  FUNBALL

             Copyright 1995, Jeffrey Belt  All rights reserved.
                         Published by Impulse Games

Welcome to Funball!

Funball contains a complete online help system, as well as an extensive help 
  balloon system, both in several languages. Help balloons are turned on
  automatically the first time you run the game. Once you know your way
  around, you can disable them in the Control panel.

That's really all you need to know to get started. To get help within the
  game, simply press a Help button (with a large H on it), or press H or F1 on
  your keyboard. The rest of this documentation is mainly trouble-shooting.



                               WELCOME SCREEN

HOW TO GET HELP

You can press a "Help" button (the one with a large H), or press F1 or H on
your keyboard, anytime.

To exit a help page, press the button at the top right. It's an "Exit" or
"Cancel" button.


HELP BALLOONS give a short description of whatever the mouse arrow points at.
You can turn them off in the Control Panel.

Hint: even when they're off, you can display them by pointing at something and
clicking the right mouse button.


TO PLAY THE GAME, click on "Start a new game" (or press <ENTER> on your
keyboard).


HOW TO QUIT FUNBALL

Click on the "Exit" button until the game asks you if you really want to quit,
and click Yes.



                              STARTUP SCREEN

Choose the board on which the game will be played. You can choose either a
built-in board, or one you create using the Board Editor.

Choose which color you want to play - either red or green. You can play
against a human or robot (computer) opponent of varying difficulty.

Don't be afraid to say "Yes" for the spider. It won't bite.

Then press the button with a ball (bottom middle) to start playing!



                                GAME RULES

OBJECTIVE: reach the enemy base (or destroy all the enemy balls).

THE BASIC IDEA

The balls are of different sizes, the bigger the better. When one ball jumps
on another one, both balls usually merge into one. Its color is determined by
the bigger ball.

Hint: hold down the Shift key to display ball sizes.

Detailed rules are as follows:

JUMPING: Balls jump from base to base. To move a ball, you pick it up with the
mouse, and click on the destination base.

MERGING: Jumping on a friendly ball merges the two balls. If the resulting
ball is too big, it will split in two, and bounce back if it reaches the edge.

ATTACKING: Jumping on a smaller enemy ball absorbs it, and your ball gets
bigger! If it becomes too big, it can overflow.

DEFECTING: Jumping on a bigger enemy ball is suicide! It makes the enemy ball
bigger. Unless it makes it grow until it explodes!

CANCELING: Finally, two enemy balls of identical size simply cancel each other
out.


Some bases have special powers. Use them to your advantage!

PUMP: The gold base pumps balls full of energy. A ball leaving keeps on
bouncing until it reaches something other than a normal empty base.

ARMOR: Here your ball is safe. The enemy cannot attack it.

TELEPORTER: A ball landing there is transported to the next empty teleporter
towards the colored enemy goal.

SLIDE: The slide sends your ball slamming into the next slot, pushing whatever
is there out of the way.

SMALL: A small base can only hold balls up to a certain size. Big balls will
shrink to fit.

DRAIN: The drain is very dangerous. A ball landing there flows into it and 
disappears!

SPRING: The spring makes your ball bounce off to the next slot, and normal 
merging rules apply.

SOAP: This transforms your ball into a very fragile bubble which can float 
very far. But the slightest contact with anything other than a smooth, empty 
base makes it burst.

MAGNET: A ball on a magnet slot cannot be attacked by the enemy, and can merge 
with friends. But the magnet attracts it so strongly that half of it will stay 
when you try to leave it.

CANNON: With the cannon, you can destroy any kind of base, except armored 
bases. The bigger the ball, the longer the barrel, and the longer the range.

MINE: Be careful! They blow up so violently, all surrounding balls shrink a 
little, except those on armored bases. Watch out for chain reactions!


SPIDER
The spider goes around the board, laying small eggs. Landing on an egg makes
your ball bigger!



                                HOW TO PLAY

The mouse arrow is either red or green, depending on whose turn it is. Click
on a ball to select it, and on the target base to move it.

If you change your mind, click again on the ball you selected. You will then
be able to choose another one.


ROBOT

There are four different robots. The dumbest would get lost in a corridor, and
the most intelligent is almost impossible to beat.

Pressing any key or mouse button while a robot is thinking stops it and brings
the player back to human.


OVERVIEW

There is an overview of the game board in the lower left corder of the game
screen (you can press <O> to jump directly to it).

Clicking somewhere on the reduced board will bring you to the same spot on the
main board.


OTHER BUTTONS

You can surrender, or exit back to the title screen, where you can for
instance save your game.

You can also undo your last move, and access the Control Panel.



                               CONTROL PANEL

ANIMATION BETWEEN TURNS

If scrolling is jerky, turn down the number of animations between turns. The 
slower your computer, the less animations it can support and still scroll 
smoothly.


SOUND EFFECTS

If you have a SoundBlaster compatible card and can't hear sound effects on it,
and it isn't something obvious like the volume being turned all the way down,
then Funball doesn't detect it properly. Type under DOS:

SET BLASTER=AXXX IX

AXXX is the port (usually A220), and IX the interrupt (usually I7). Then run 
Funball again.



                                HOW TO SAVE

Click on the small button next to a saved game slot. You can overwrite a
previously saved game, or save in an empty slot.

Next, type the name under which you wish the game to be saved (for instance:
"The red are winning!" OR "Let's go to the beach"), and press <ENTER>.

That's it!



                                HOW TO LOAD

Just click on the small button next to the name of the game you want to
restore.



                                BOARD EDITOR

You can customize up to nine game boards, which you will then be able to 
choose from the Startup screen.


MODIFYING A BOARD

Select the ball or base you want to put on the board, and click on the 
corresponding slot(s). Little digits tell you how big balls are.


MIRROR IMAGE

This function divides the board according to the diagonal that does not
include the red and green bases.

It then copies the upper left half into the lower right, inverting the ball 
colors.



                            SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Required:
  - 286 or better processor.
  - VGA compatible display card.
  - Microsoft(TM) compatible mouse (the driver must be loaded).
  - 640 KB conventional RAM, with at least 550 KB free from the DOS prompt.

Highly recommended:
  - SoundBlaster(TM) or compatible sound card.
  - The game will be significantly faster if you have one of the following:
        + more than 1.5 MB free XMS memory, or
        + more than 1.5 MB free EMS memory, or
        + disk cache such as SMARTDRV.EXE (see below).


                           COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS

If Funball doesn't work properly on your system, you can try using one or both
  of the following switches:

FUNBALL /NOMUSIC prevents Funball from trying to play music.

FUNBALL /NOXMS prevents Funball from loading data in EMS or XMS memory.


                             WHAT'S A DISK CACHE?

A disk cache is a resident program that can remember the latest information
  read from the disk, and which holds it in memory. If that same information
  is needed at a later time, it is simply read from memory instead of being
  loaded from the disk again. Disk caches usually do more than this but that's
  the basic idea.

Funball needs huge amounts of memory and barely fits into the low 640 KB. It
  does so by forgetting information as soon as it is not needed. The drawback
  is that it may often refer to the same information over and over again, so
  may need to load it multiple times. This is where the disk cache comes in.

A typical example of disk cache is SMARTDRV.EXE. Usually your AUTOEXEC.BAT
  file contains a line with the name SMARTDRV on it. If it doesn't, then try
  inserting in your AUTOEXEC.BAT:

LH SMARTDRV A B C (and more drive letters if needed).

This will activate the disk cache every time your computer reboots. Note that 
  it will be used by all your programs (and not just Funball), so it will make 
  life much easier for your hard disk. However, disk caches can sometimes 
  (though rarely if used in read-only as shown here) lead to problems with 
  disk tools such as PC Tools Compress, or Microsoft Windows. Please refer to
  the other programs' documentation for more information.


                                   SOUND BITS

Funball can play background music and digitized sound on your SoundBlaster
  compatible card. If your sound card is not compatible with the original 
  SoundBlaster, then you won't hear any sounds at all.

Funball will play digitized sounds only if it can detect your card properly.  
  In most cases it will, but sometimes it might not, depending on your system
  configuration.

If you cannot enable digitized sounds in the control panel, then you have to 
  tell Funball where your sound card is. Type at the DOS prompt (or even
  better, include in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file) a statement similar to the
  following:

SET BLASTER=A220 I7

A220 is the port address (220 is hexadecimal), possible values are A210, A220,
  A230, A240, A250 and A260. I7 is the interrupt (IRQ), possible values are
  I3, I4, I5 and I7. A220 I7 is the default factory value of the standard
  SoundBlaster. Funball assumes the card is a standard SoundBlaster on DMA 1.


SoundBlaster is a trademark of Creative Labs, Inc.
Other trademarks mentioned in this documentation or in Funball appear for
identification or illustration purposes only and are the property of their
respective owners.
