VIROCOP INSTRUCTIONS TYPED UP BY IGGY/HF

Hardware Requirements

To play Virocop you will need an Amiga with at least one Megabyte of RAM. The game will enhance itself by providing a RAM disk if you have more than one Megabyte of memory to reduce loading times. If you have an Amiga with the AGA chipset, e.g. an A1200 or an A4000, then the game will enhance itself further by displaying extra features. A second floppy disk drive is useful but not essential, as minimal disk swapping takes place.

Virocop AGA, reasonably enough, requires an Amiga with the AGA chipset, and will therefore currently only run on an A1200 or A4000. It also requires at least a 68020 CPU, as it takes advantage of some of the extra features provided. The AGA disks are amigaDOS disks, and the game is hard disk installable.
KIT SUPPLIED

This manual.

3 floppy disks: 1 program disk, and 2 data disks
Loading

Switch off your Amiga and remove any cartridges.

Insert the Virocop program disk into drive DF0: and switch on. (A1000 owners should insert their kickstart disk as normal first).

When prompted, please supply whichever of the two data disks is required. Please note that your own personal preferences, high score table, and name registration information may be saved onto your program disk, so the write protect tab must close the hole on the disk to allow this. Leave the write protect hole open if you do not wish to save these files to disk.

Alternatively, Virocop AGA only may be installed on your hard disk, if you have one. Simply drag the install icon from your Virocop: disk to where you wish the game to be installed, and then double-click this copy. The install program will automatically create a Virocop drawer and copy all the required files to this directory. Once installed, all you then have to do is double-click on the Virocop icon in your new Virocop drawer to start the game. All disk accesses will then be redirected to your hard disk.

In the unlikely event that your Virocop disks do not load then just download them again :)
Name Registration

After loading, you will be presented with the "owner registration" screen. You have 17 letters to specify your name as you would like it to appear on the title screen. Type your name and then press ENTER. The game will attempt to save your name to the program disk so that you do not need to enter it again on subsequent loading. It also personalises your password for restarting on any level you have played on the game. If y do not allow the game to save your name onto disk then you will have to input your name next time, and any passwords that you note down from this game session will be invalid on subsequent loads.

If you accidentally enter your name incorrectly and wish to change it, you can do so next time you load the game by holding the "help" key down just before the titles appear, and this will force the name registration to be done again from scratch.
Controls
Moving D.A.V.E about:
Keyboard

Many keys may be used, offering a wide choice of set-ups for left and right-handed players.

up  up                          up  up
Q   W   E   R   T   Y   U   I   O   P

down down                        DOWN DOWN
A    S    D   F   G   H   J   K   L   ;

left left right right          left left right right
Z    X    C     V    B    N    M    ,    .     /

The cursor arrow keys are also available. The ctrl, alt and both shift keys are used as fire buttons, and the space bar cycles through the available weapons.
Joystick

The joystick moves D.A.V.E. around the game environment, accelerating in the direction pushed. Pressing the button will fire the current weapon, indicated by the icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

Joysticks with an independent second button can cycle through the available weapons using this button. Joypads usually have at least two buttons. If no second button is available, press the space-bar. A CD32 game controller may be used. In this case the red button is the main fire button, the blue button cycles through the the available weapon slots.
Mouse. AGA version only

Push the mouse button in the required direction to move D.A.V.E. Press the left button to fire, and the right button to change weapons.
Player Options

Press any function key during the title sequence or demo game to bring up the options screen.
The following options are available

F1:    -  Cycle through game modes:
1.  1P -  one player, 3 lives.
2.  2P -  two player alternating, 3 lives each.
3. TEAM - Two player team mode. Player one controls the body, and player two
controls the head. Thus one person is responsible for movement, and the other
for firing. Brave solitary players may like to try controlling D.A.V.E. with
two joysticks at once.

F2: - Select player one control method, either joystick port 2, port 1 or
keyboard.
F3: - Select player two control method, either joystick port 2, port 1 or
keyboard.
F4: - In-game music ON or OFF.
F5: - Fast start password entry.

A cursor will appear under the 7-letter password at the bottom of the screen, initially set to `???????`. You may enter a password using your chosen input device to change each letter up or down, unless you are in keyboard mode. For convenience, the password may also be entered directly on the keyboard. Thus keyboard mode would be ambiguous. Once a password has been input, press fire or ENTER to start the game. If the password is valid, the game will start on the corresponding level, with the same weapons and battery. This password will remain in effect for subsequent game starts until another is entered. If the password is invalid you will return to the titles and the game will start from the beginning.

Note that your high score entries may be saved to the program disk if the write-protect hole is closed, along with your selections on F2, F3 and F4. So if you intend to always play with keyboard you need only to select this mode once, then get a high score, and save this to disk. Next time you load the game it will remember your selections.
Convenience Keys

Press the `Help` key during the game to pause. Press `Help` again or press fire to restart the game. During pause you may press the `Esc` key to quit the game and return to the titles sequence.

The Story So Far...

The controller shook her head in dismay. Another game zone had malfunctioned. This was the second one today. Worse, it was the fifth this week. She studied the map display. Several areas were flashing red, indicating that all was not well. Most of the zones affected were clustered together on the outskirts of the GameDisk. How was she going to explain to the clients that many of the game zones were not going to be operational...again? How was she going to explain it to the board? She had already had a grilling from Shacklehouse once this week and was more than anxious to avoid a repetition.

The game zones had been set up on the GameDisk some twelve years ago. The idea had been scoffed at by the press at the time. How would you ever convince people to but virtual time-share experiences in another place without actually having to go there? Of course, it had been tried before, but the equipment had been so large that people still had to leave their homes and reside in places called `video arcades` to experience the game zones. Now with some miniaturisation, the equipment could be used in the home, and people could experience the game zones without even getting out of bed in the morning.

The game zones had become so popular that holiday brochures were sold in newsagents on a monthly basis. Of course, other companies had set up similar ventures. Well, you know what they say about imitation, but the GameDisk still had the biggest and best game zones on offer. The media finally admitted that maybe this was a winner after all, and jumped joyfully on the bandwagon, organising competitions, special features and creating media celebrities out of holiday reviewers.

Special holiday shops and begun to appear, offering `The thrill of a lifetime a holiday in a box`. Shelves were stacked high and wide offering time-share holidays in the GameDisk's zones. New ones were being added every week. The sports zones and the shoot-em-up zones had recently been joined by the platform zones and military zones. The adventure zones were under construction. Chain stores and supermarkets also began to sell holidays, although it wasn't always possible to take a day trip before the two-week vacation.

Right now though it had all gone horribly wrong. Contact had been lost with many of the game zones. It was clear from the map display that something had broken into the GameDisk from...out there! And it was spreading fast. It was time to shut down the film-processing lab and commandeer the clients` holiday snaps to look for clues.

The controller took a deep breath and knocked on the boardroom door. She had been summoned to this emergency meeting and had an overwhelming desire to be just about everywhere else but here at this moment. At least she had some evidence of the cause of game zone failures. She carried the envelope of glossy 8 by 10 colour photos to the table and sat down. Many of the clients had unwittingly taken photographs of the cause of the disruption, thinking that it was just a new attraction in the zone. They had been the lucky ones. How many clients had apparently gone home early yesterday, over two dozen? Perhaps they hadn't gone home at all. Almost certainly they had strayed too close to these invading creatures, giant viruses, spreading out across the game zones. The viruses were tapping into the power and control systems causing mass disruption everywhere. They seemed to be feeding off the power and spreading rapidly throughout the GameDisk. The corporation couldn't risk letting more clients into the affected zones. No, it was time to send in the authorities. An elite policing authority had been set up for just such emergencies, the Virocops. At times like these though it is no good sending in just any Virocop. What you need in a situation like this is a Virocop with attitude, a Virocop who can take care of itself, a Virocop who doesn't take "Maybe" for an answer. What you need is D.A.V.E. - the Digital Armoured Virus Exterminator. (KOOOOOL!! :))
The Mission

D.A.V.E. needs to collect power balls in the combat zones to pay for new weapons. Power balls are produced by many enemies as they are despatched. They deteriorate rapidly so they should be picked up immediately. They come in three distinct colours, low power are blue, mid power are red, and high power are green. Collected power can be used to power up circuit lines to make new weapons available.

Beware that when D.A.V.E. is destroyed, all the power carried is lost. Power is automatically deposited at restart points for safekeeping.
Weaponry

D.A.V.E. can take three weapons to each combat zone. At least one of them must be an infinite shot weapon, which will be the primary weapon. The secondary and tertiary weapons may have limited shots. Additionally a fourth weapon slot exists for any weapon discovered in the combat zone as an orange box. After picking up such a box, the weapon may be viewed by selecting the last weapon slot using the second button or space bar. There are a number of special weapons dotted around, and each will have very limited number of shots, but they are powerful weapons. Use them wisely. Picking up a special weapon replaces any previous special weapon completely.

Before D.A.V.E. is sent to each combat zone, you have an opportunity to select the three weapons to take, and you may pay some of the collected power towards new, more powerful weapons. The weapon selection system consists of D.A.V.E.`s central processor connected to weapon boxes by circuit tracks. D.A.V.E.`s collected power is shown as a 3 digit LED display in the centre. You may spend this on any of the 12 weapons connected to the side or top of the chip. Rotate the purple pointer round the chip to the required pin using left and right. Left rotates the pointer clockwise, right rotates it anti-clockwise. Press fire and the display will move to show the box at the end of the track. If you wish to put power into the line then push up while pressing fire. You can change your mind and remove power just entered by pushing down and pressing fire. The cross-hair cursor at this point shows the maximum distance that can be covered on the current line. If you power the whole line the box is highlighted and the weapon may then be selected in one of the slots at the bottom. The weapon will now be available until the end of the game.

To put your desired weapons into D.A.V.E.`s three slots, rotate the purple pointer to one of the three pins at the bottom of the chip next to the EXIT pin. Press fire and push up or down to flip through all the available weapons Note that each weapon can only appear in one box at a time, and only the infinite-shot weapons can be selected for the primary slot on the left.

When you are satisfied with the weapon selections, rotate the purple pointer to the EXIT line and press fire.
Weapons available are

1) Single shell. Fast repeat but low damage. Default for slot 1
2) Mortar. Slow repeat lobbed weapon for mid damage. Default for slot 2.
3) Mine. Slow repeat dropped weapon. High damage area. Default for slot 3.
4) 3-way shell. Fast-repeat shells 22.5 degrees apart.
5) Plasma surround. All round close-range protective shot.
6) Missile spread. 8 high-damage short-range missiles.
7) Twin missile. High-damage slow-repeat missiles. Limited shots.
8) Homer. High-damage target-seeking single homing missile. Limited shots.
9) Twin Homer. High-damage target-seeking homing missile pair. Limited shots.
10) Small flame-thrower. Mid-range directable weapon.
11) Plasma. 3-way fast-repeat low-range plasma. 2 high, 1 low.
12) Large flame-thrower. Long-range directable weapon.
13) Twin bolt laser. 2 parallel bolts

Shots Remaining Bar

Certain weapons have unlimited shots. These are indicated by a solid blue bar beneath the weapon icon in the bottom right panel on the screen. Limited shot weapons have a graduated bar. The number of graduations indicates the number of shots remaining. These also change colour from green through to red as the number diminishes. 14 shots maximum are shown individually. If more shots remain from that, the rightmost graduation is wider.

Once a limited shot weapon is used, it will no longer be selectable in this zone. It will be replenished when you complete the zone. Firing will revert to your slot 1 weapon, which will always be an unlimited shot weapon.
Lives

D.A.V.E. starts each game with 3 lives. Bonus lives may be discovered within the game as small floating D.A.V.E.`s. Additionally, extra lives are awarded at 10,000, 40,000, 90,000, 160,000, and 250,000 points.

Your current battery and energy status are shown in the bottom left panel. There are 4 different battery sizes. As D.A.V.E. is damaged, the colour drains away until the battery is empty. The number of lives remaining is shown in the bar beneath the battery.
Viruses

There are a number of viruses within each game zone. This is shown next to your score at the top of the screen. The exit from the zone will not let you pass until all viruses in the zone are destroyed.

As each virus is despatched, a bonus letter is released. These letters form the password which will allow you fast access to the next zone on later plays as detailed in the next section. The complete password is shown to you after you successfully leave the zone.
Password System

Your passwords are personal to you. No-one else will have the same ones as you. As you complete each zone of the game, the full password is displayed on the screen. Write it down somewhere. You can restart the game at the beginning of the next zone with the battery and available weapons that you had. by typing in the password on the options screen, see "Player Options".

Note therefore that if you reach the same zone with different available weapons and/or a different battery then you will be given a different password.
Play Recommendations

Keep your eyes peeled for battery upgrades and extra lives and don't pick up energy that you can't use. If your battery is full, leave the energy for later - you might need it.

It is a good idea to commit all your power to weapon lines at the earliest opportunity as it will be lost if D.A.V.E. is destroyed on the next level.

Try to pick up a good balance of weapons for the 3 slots. At least one long range weapon is recommended, especially for the Urban Jungle end of level.

Search out all of the viruses on each level. Use the counter display to find out whether there are more remaining.

Play defensively if you are running out of energy, as losing a life will cost you all of the power balls that you are carrying.

Limited weapon shots are replenished only at the beginning of each new zone. Use them wisely.

Different weapons will have different effects on the various enemies encountered. Some weapons may appear slow and clumsy, but are very effective against big, slow or stationary targets that would take a lot of pounding from fast but weak weapons.

Keep well away from edges that drop into water or lava, or other less-than- solid substances. D.A.V.E. doesn't work very well in liquids.
Software Features

Stereo sound effects when the music is switched off. Effects are routed to the left or right channels depending on the position of the sound event on the screen.

A RAM disk is set up if sufficient memory permits to cache loaded data, speeding up subsequent loading times.

Extra chip memory will provide a smoother game flow as a better screen display is switched in.

Non-AGA version automatically detects AGA or enhanced CPU Amigas and upgrades some effects to AGA standard.