MAX Rally - Fortress © 1998
---------------------------


Getting Started
---------------

MAX Rally can be loaded by simply inserting disk one into any
drive, and rebooting your Amiga. After a while, you will be
asked for disk two. Replace the first disk with the second and
you will then be able to play MAX Rally.

If you have a hard-drive, and at least 3 Meg of memory, you can
install MAX Rally by double-clicking on the 'HD-Install' icon
on disk 1. To play the installed version of MAX Rally, simply
make sure there are no MAX Rally disks inserted into any disk-
drives, and double click on the 'MAX' icon in the directory to
which you installed it.


The Main Menu's
---------------

When you start MAX Rally, after you have gone through the title
screens, you will be greeted with a list of options. The first
one, 'Championship', enables you to play a one-player
Championship against computer controlled opponents. The second,
'Multi-Player', allows between two and four players to play
against each other, either in a link-up and/or split-screen
race, or a full-screen battle, depending on the option set in
the options menu.

The fourth selection on the main menu takes you to the options
menu. Here, you can change whether music is played or just
sound effects, whether or not turbos are enabled, or whether
multi-player games are races or battles. You can also configure
individual character names. In the fifth, misc menu, you can
view pre-recorded demos, or establish a link-up connection to
another Amiga, for multi-player.


Championship
------------

After selecting the 'Championship' option from the main menu,
you will be asked to press accelerate. This is to inform MAX
Rally of which control method you wish to use (see below for
allowable control methods). After this, you will be given the
opportunity to select the driver with which you wish to race.
The names for these drivers can be customised in the options
menu. When you have selected your driver, three other drivers
will be automatically selected for you to race against.

After this, you will be given a list of the available levels.
The tracks and levels can be raced on in any order. Select
which level on which you wish to race and you will be taken to
the track selection screen. Here you can select one of the five
tracks to race on. As you move the flashing selector over each
track, an overview of the track will be shown, together with
the current lap record for the track, and the difficulty,
represented by a number of stars - the more stars, the more
difficult the track is.

After selecting a track, you can then race. In Championship,
the human player always takes control of the blue car. Your aim
is to simply finish first after 12 laps. If you fail to do
this, you will lose one of your continues, and will have to re-
attempt the track. You do not have to re-attempt the same track
right away, but you can race another track first and then re-
attempt it later. If you manage to finish first, you will not
be able to race on that track again. When all tracks have been
completed, you have completed the MAX Rally Championship. If
you lose all five continues before completing all tracks, then
you will have to re-attempt the whole of Championship from the
beginning.

One of the levels in Championship is the Max Challenge. On
these five tracks, the screen moves independently of the car,
scrolling continuously. For this level, you are the only car on
the track, and your aim is to complete three laps without
either falling off the edge of the track, or disappearing off
the side of the screen. In some cases, there are moving
platforms that will transport your car across an area of space.
Also, there are several flashing red pads scattered across the
track. When these are driven over, they are switched off, and
stop flashing. When you reach the end of the lap, or the lap
half-way point where the screen reverses direction, you will
find a blue pad. If this is not lit, you have not switched off
all the red pads, and will have to do an extra lap each time
this happens. If you have managed to turn off all the red pads,
the blue lap pad will be lit, and this must be switched off,
again by driving over it, in order to complete the lap. When
this is done, all the red pads are lit up again, and must be
switched off in order to complete another lap. If you manage to
do the whole track in the minimum three laps, in other words,
without missing a pad, you will gain an extra continue.


Multi-Player Battle
-------------------

If the Race/Battle option is set to Battle in the options menu,
then you will be able to play MAX Rally Battle against up to
three other players. The idea of this is to race ahead of your
opponents far enough so that they disappear off the screen.
When a player disappears off the screen, he is temporarily out
of the race. When there is only one player left, he wins a
point, and all other players are placed back on the track. The
first player to win five points wins the battle.

The players are assigned to the cars in the following way:-
    Player 1    -   Blue car
    Player 2    -   Yellow car
    Player 3    -   Green car
    Player 4    -   White car


Multi-Player Race
-----------------

This is basically a race to the finish line. The number of laps
depends on the settings in the options menu. If you only have
one Amiga, or one copy of MAX Rally, you will only be able to
play two player split screen. However, if you have a seperate
copy of MAX Rally running on another Amiga, and a null-modem
link-up cable between the two serial ports, you can choose to
play link-up races by selecting 'Linkup' in the options menu.
After you have done this, and link-up has been established, you
will be given two-player link up and four-player link-up split-
screen options in the multi-player menu (providing that 'Race'
mode is selected in the options menu).


Time-Trials
-----------

Time trials can be raced either with one player, against
previously set records, or up to four-players, against each
other. Only one player races at a time, and therefore only one
controller is used. However, each racer can still have his own
driver. The aim is to race over however many laps are set in
the options menu, and make a new lap record, ie., complete at
least one of the laps in less time than any of the other
players, or in less time than any previously set record.


Control methods
---------------

There are six allowable control methods available in MAX Rally.
There are the four joysticks and two set's of keys. To be able
to use all four joysticks, you will need a four-player joystick
adapter in the parallel port. The two sets of keys are as
follows:-
                    Keyboard(1)             Keyboard(2)
Up/Accelerate       Cursor Up               Left Ctrl
Down/Brake          Cursor Down             Left Shift
Right               Cursor Right            Left Amiga
Left                Cursor Left             Left Alt
Select/Turbo        Enter                   Space


Other Info
----------

On each race, each player is given a single turbo. This boosts
the speed and acceleration for a short period of time and is
best used when your car is almost at a complete standstill. The
turbo is activated by pressing either the Select key on the
keyboard (see above) or up on the joystick.

When jumping, sometimes it is possible to turn the car round
almost a full 360 degrees in the air. When carried out
correctly, this allows the car to skid round a bend after the
jump at a greater speed than would otherwise be possible, and
so you can gain over your oppenents. Use this with care though,
as turning too much during a jump will cause you car to spin
into a over-steer power-slide, which could be potentially
fatal.

Also during a jump, it is possible to tilt the nose of your car
downwards, by holding down the brake button (brake cannot be
activated in the air). This causes your car to land out of a
jump quicker, and is useful on badly taken jumps, and on sharp
bends.

On the Cosmic tracks, sometimes it is possible for your car to
fall over the edge. In time-trials, you are simply placed back
on the track and allowed to continue. In Championship and
Multi-Player however, once you fall off, you are not placed
back on the track. In Championship, the race is lost, as is the
case in Multi-Player race mode. In Multi-Player Battle mode,
falling over the edge causes your car to be taken out of the
race until the next point is won.

On the Championship tracks, if you manage to lap all of the
other cars by the time the race is over, you will gain an extra
continue.

In the misc menu, it is possible to load and save lap records
to disk, or to hard-drive. This is useful for merging your
friends fastest lap records with yours, so that you can attempt
to beat them. For example, if you have a good record on a
certain track, and your friend has a good record on another
track, you can save his records out, and load them into your
version of MAX Rally. This will replace all the track records
that he was better on, and keep the ones where you have a
better lap record.


Troubleshooting
---------------

Q. The selection bar in the options menu seems to be moving
   around on it's own, or I cannot move it properly with the
   joystick.

A. Make sure you are not using the joystick plugged into the
   mouse port. This has been disabled until the 'Press
   Accelerate' screen to solve problems caused when the mouse
   is plugged in. Also, make sure that you don't have any input
   devices plugged into the parallel port, such as a sound
   sampler, as MAX Rally may confuse it for a four-player
   adapter.


Q. I cannot run the hard-drive installed version of MAX-Rally,
   but it runs fine from disk.

A. This may be because Workbench, and any other applications
   you may have running, are taking up chip Ram. Try closing
   all other programs before loading Max Rally. If that doesn't
   work, then you may be using a high-resolution screen, taking
   up memory that MAX Rally needs. If you really want the added
   speed of running MAX Rally from the hard drive then try
   this. Reboot your Amiga, and hold down both mouse buttons.
   Now select 'Boot with no startup-sequence', making sure
   there are no floppy disks in any of the drives. A grey
   screen with a large window should soon appear. Type in the
   following:-
      cd "MAX-Rally-directory/"
      execute "MAX Rally"
   pressing the enter key after each line. Replace the
   'MAX-Rally-directory' with the full pathname where you
   installed MAX Rally to.


If you are having problems with MAX Rally, and cannot solve it
from what is mentioned here, then get in contact with us. For
the quickest response, the best method of contacting us is by
e-mail. Our address is at the end of this ReadMe file. Please
remember to state your problem clearly, and give details of
what hardware you have installed, and which Amiga you are
using.


Credits
-------

Programmer:-
    Mark Williams

Graphic Artist:-
    John Kearney

Musician:-
    Matthew Byrne


Fortress can be contacted as follows:-

E-Mail      -   fortress@allcomm.co.uk
Snail-Mail  -   63 Thorneycroft Lane
                Fallings Park
                Wolverhampton
                WV10 0NF
AnswerPhone -   (01902) 654053

Visit our website at:-
    http://www.allcomm.co.uk/~fortress


Fortress (C) 1998