================================
     ULTIMATE SUPER STACK!
  A Puzzle Game by Oren Bartal
================================
    Last update: 23/3/2000
================================

NOTE:
This game is a FREEWARE, which means that you can copy it to your friend, put it
on your internet site or mail it to your grandmother.
Ok, OK! You can also let your dog play it.
You can not, however, change the original package of the game with out asking 
the permission of the author - which is me (i.e. not you).

Due to much request, in this version the violence levels exceed the one's found 
in 'Bloody Vengeance 5: The search for more gore'; Thus making this game a PG70.


System Requirements:
====================
Minimum system (*):
 * Spectrum 64
 * 32 KByte memory

Typical system:
 * Pentium 2
 * 32 megabyte memory
 * Win95/98/NT/2000
 * Soundblaster compatible sound card

Optimal system (*):
 * HALL9000
 * 1.51 Gigawatts
 * 88 Mph

(*) The game will NOT work on this platform.

NOTE:
Under WinNT/2K the sound will not work, so you will have to activate the game 
with the '-nosound' switch.
(To do that while in windows, Right click the usstack.exe icon, choose
properties, the 'program' tab, and at the end of the 'Cmd line' write '-nosound')
Also, if the game gets stuck after you start it and see a star falling to the
center of the screen, or gets stuck somewhere after that - its probably the 
sound engine, so you should play with no sounds (-nosound).
I wouldn't worry though, the sound sucks.

Default Keys:
=============
Menus - Moving ......... Arrows/Numpad
        Selecting ...... Enter
        Returning ...... Esc

Game  - Moving (*) ............ Left/Right
        Fast Drop (*) ......... Down
        Rotate (*) ............ X
        Flip (*) .............. Up
        Exit .................. Esc
        Continue .............. Space
        Pause game ............ P
        Use IAJK Engine ....... Alt+Ctrl+F12; wait 3 seconds, release the Alt, 
                                press Backspace three times, then smile.

(*) You can change these game keys from the main menu

Menus:
======
There are tooltips to help you around the menu system, but here is a
small description of the three different game modes:

Level Clearing: You play in the 55 premade levels (7 tutorial, 16 easy,
                16 hard, 16 crazy), and try to clear them all!
                The goal in each level is to reduce the counter to zero
                (will be explained later).

High Score: You choose one of three levels of difficalty, each will let
            you play in a level with predefined properties, and try to
            break the high score for that level!

Fun game: Here you can define the properties for the level you will play!
          Everything from super easy level upto mega crazy ones can be
          created in no time!

Rules:
======
Hmm... Rules.
It is not so easy to explain the rules for this game without some demonstration,
So there are 7 tutorial levels to help with that.
But lets try anyways:

The object of the game is to decrease the counter (which is located above the
game wizard - at the bottom left of the screen) until it reaches zero - then you
win.

How?
Its a simple task: All you have to do, is to "trap" stars between objects -
each star trapped will decrease the counter by one.

Every turn, a block falls from the sky (Tetris like) and you mask rotate it and
move it to the place you want it to settle.
Unlike Tetris, the blocks are always made from two pieces, each piece is one of 
the seven different pieces of the game (the basic ones shall be explained later).
Also unlike Tetris, once one of the blocks pieces touches the ground, the other
pieces keeps on falling until it also reaches the ground (but you can't control
it).
Sounds confusing? It really isn't, look, lets say that our level looks like this:

########
#      #
#  AB  #
#      #
#      #
#      #
#   %  #
#   %  #
########

Once the block "AB" touches the "%", this will be the result:

########
#      #
#      #
#      #
#      #
#   B  #
#   %  #
#  A%  #
########

Not that hard, isn't it?
Good, now lets not forget our goal. Trapping stars.
Stars can be trapped both horizontal and vertical (not diagonal).
This is a very basic star trapping:

########
#      #
#      #  A = Object A
#      #  S = Star
#      #
#      #
#      #
# ASSA #
########

In this example, both stars are trapped by object A, So both stars AND both 
object A's will disappear, reducing 2 from the star counter (two stars where 
trapped).

Here is another example:

########
#      #
#      #  A = Object A
#      #  S = Star
# A    #
# S    #
# S    #
#SASA  #
########

Here, two stars are trapped vertically, and one is trapped horizontally, notice 
that the same object can cause two star trapping at the same time.
The leftmost star will be the only thing to remain after the rest of the objects 
disappear. (In this example the star counter will be reduced by 3)

Great! That's easy! Where is the catch?
Hmm...
Several things make star trapping harder.
First, There are three different kinds of objects, and you can only trap stars 
between the same objects.

########
#      #
#      #  A = Object A
#      #  B = Object B  
#      #  S = Star
#      #
#      #
# ASSB #
########

In this example nothing will happen - the stars are not between the same 
objects!

You don't have to trap stars in order to get rid of Non-star objects, you can 
also trap "nothing", and both objects will disappear:

########
#      #
#      #  A = Object A
#      #
#      #
#      #
# A    #
# AA   #
########

In this example all object will disappear since they are the same and they touch
each-other. But don't forget! Even though you have made some object disappear, 
the counter will not decrease because no stars where trapped!

Now, lets look at an interesting thing that might happen:

########
#      #
#      #  A = Object A
#      #  B = Object B
#      #  S = Star
#      #
#  B   #
# BASA #
########

Lets examine what will happen:
First, the star will disappear with both A's (and the counter will decrease by 
one).
But look!
After the A under the B disappeared, the B will fall down to fill the space up,
and then the board will look like this:

########
#      #
#      #  B = Object B
#      #
#      #
#      #
#      #
# BB   #
########

Both B's touch each-other, so they too disappear!
By doing this, we have created a chain-reaction!

Chain reactions are cool, because they give you Bonus stars!
What are bonus stars, you ask?

Bonus stars are special stars that fall from the sky (you can't control them), 
once they touch the ground they try to make new chain reactions, if they can't, 
they disappear, decreasing the counter for each bonus star!

This is a bit confusing, but once you play the game, I'm sure you'll understand 
how cool bonus stars are.

Here is a little info:
Bonus stars always land on the lowest columns, and come in the following numbers:

2 Bonus stars for the first chain-reaction
4 for the next one
6 (a whole row) for the next
12 (two rows) for the one after
and 18 (three whole rows) for the following chain-reactions.

One last thing...

You lose the level if one of the two middle columns reaches the top of the 
screen - So make sure they stay the lowest!

Basic tactics:
==============
Don't just match similar objects together! When normal objects disappear,
you don't get any stars stacked! - If you can't stack stars, try to chain
react some normal objects - you will get bonus stars that will be stacked.

This is the easiest way to chain react with normal objects,
Lets say this is our board:

########
#      #
#      #
#      #
#      #
#      #
#  A   #
#  B   #
########

And we get an "AB" block.
Sure, we can do this:

########
#      #
#      #
#      #
#      #
#      #
#  AA  #
#  BB  #
########

But we will get nothing!
We can do this:

########
#      #
#      #
#      #
#  B   #
#  A   #
#  A   #
#  B   #
########

Aaha!
Once the two A's will disappear, the top B will fall on the bottom B, creating a 
chain-reaction that will give us 2 Bonus stars! From no stars at all!

You get the idea. (I hope)

Credits:
========
Programming, Graphics, Levels and kinda Everything by Oren Bartal
 Catch me at oren-br@inter.net.il

Huge thanks to all the beta testers: Maoz, Nachch, Yasha and Teolicy.

Also,
Thanks for Angelo Mottola from Enhanced Creations for the DirectQB
engine. Its just plain great.

Believe it or not, this whole thing was created with QuickBasic 4.5 - The 
Programming language for REAL programmers ;)

Last words:
===========
"Relax! What could possibly go wrong?"

