

OK, first a slight warning.  This was my first real game on the pc. It was
written as I learnt things about the system and so it has a wide variety of
different methods for doing eveything.  This makes for a rather messy
programming job so don't be too surprised if odd things happen.

Sound in 'Pedes was implemented in a way I shouldn't really have done.
If you are using Windows, OS/2 or something similar then the only sounds
you will have available are PC Speaker beeps.  If you are running under dos
then you will get sampled sounds through the soundblaster.  If you lack a
SoundBlaster then it will play samples through the PC speaker.  If you have
a parallel port dac then you can run 'Pedes with the switch /lpt1 or /lpt2
which will use the dac.
Playing sampled sounds requires a faster PC.  If you are running on a 386 or
are finding the game a bit jerkey then try using the /PCSPEAKER switch.

If you are running dos you can force which sound devise us use by using these
switches

    /LPT1        ;play sound through parallel port dac on lpt1
    /LPT2        ;play sound through parallel port dac on lpt2
    /PCSAMPLES   ;play sampled sound through  PC Speaker
    /PCSPEAKER   ;Play Beeps through PC Speaker.


'Pedes allocates Upper Memory Blcks  (UMBs) if available.  If you are having
problems running 'Pedes try the switch /NOUMB

If 'Pedes detects a TSENG-ET4000 based video card (the same as mine :-) then
It will try and support it.  Again, if you are having problems you can force
it to use standard VGA for everythin by adding the /VGA switch.
If 'Pedes does not detect the ET4000 then it will revert to standard VGA.

so running 'Pedes with the line

   PEDES /VGA /NOUMB /LPT2

will run pedes using standard vga without Upper Memory Blocks and playing
sampled sound through a dac pluged into lpt2.


Making 'Pedes Levels.
--------------------

You can make your own levels.  There are 20 levels supplied with 'Pedes and 49
level files.  The level files repeat the levels.  You can edit levels to make
your own using any text editor like DOSes EDIT command.

Levels consist of a 40x25 map of characters where a * represents a wall and a .
represents a floor.

           *   wall
           .   foor
           T   laser Turret
           v   vertical laser beam
           h   horizontal laser beam
           b   safe square (as in it can't be a laser if there's a b here)
              vertical fading wall (starts present)
           |   vertical fading wall (starts absent)
              horizontal fading wall (starts present)
           -   horizontal fading wall (starts absent)

There is also other information in a level file much of can be best understood
by looking at existing levels.
The note that each level may not contain punctuation or spaces.  If you wish
to have a space in the note, use an underscore like_this.


The desription of a pede is

colour length xpos ypos speed direction

for example

Blue 5 12 8 fast up
Green 4 3 15 8 slow down

The firt pede in the list is the human player.


Level files end with an

END

There is no checking done on level files so if you make an illegal level odd
things may happen.




