Joust VGA

Your mission is to stay alive and 'joust' as many gladiators as possible. This is done by 'flapping' to get your lance higher than theirs.

---------- Joust VGA ----------

Dave Sharpless

4/18/90

Thank you for downloading Joust VGA. Better yet, thank you for

reading the doc file! This doc file includes : how to play, game

background info, and how to register.

I. How to play

Joust will run on virtually any computer with VGA support.

Just enter JOUST at dos prompt and if everything's o.k. the title

screen will come up.

Press any key to move on to the high score table (at this

point JOUST.HIS will be read from/created on your disk).

On this screen you can do the following :

Q : quit and go back to DOS

P : Select one or two(registered) player mode.

F : Change player 2 flap key.

space : begin play

Player one has the keyboard assignments of ALT (flap), Z (left)

and X (right), Player 2 has CAPS (or CTRL) (flap), 1 (left)

and 2 (right). The reason Player 2 may change its flap key is due

to variation of keyboard layouts. On MY keyboard the CAPS is

right next to the 1/2 keys on the numeric keypad. On some other

keyboards such as Omni Key, there is a CTRL key in the same place.

Pick the key best suits player 2.

Game play :

Your mission is to stay alive and 'joust' as many gladiators

as possible. This is done by 'flapping' to get your lance higher

than theirs. The faster your press flap, the faster your ostrich

with move up the screen. After you joust a gladiator he will mutate

into an egg, all you have to do now is finish the job by touching

the egg, you get points by performing the joust itself and by

picking up the egg. Warning! if you let an egg sit too long it

will hatch into another gladiator! (usually a meaner one).

Survival waves :

Every 5 waves (starting at wave 2) you come across a

survival wave, these waves have the extra incentive of staying

alive the entire wave to pick up an bonus of 3000 points.

Pterodactyl waves :

Sometimes called the screaming demon this evil looking bird

constantly tries to hunt you down. You cannot joust him like

you would another gladiator, killing a pterodactyl is done by

position your lance perfectly inside its mouth (not easily done

but yes, it is possible). 2000 points are given for killing

a pterodactyl.

Egg waves :

Every 5 waves (starting at wave 5) you will come across an Egg

wave. This wave is a type of bonus screen all you have to do is

run around and pick up the eggs but HURRY it can turn into much

more than that, after some time, the eggs will hatch and if you

do not move fast enough it can turn into a very hard wave.

Other waves :

Wave 3 : A fire from the lava catches the lower island on fire

and burns out most of it, creating another threat of

accidently falling into the lava.

Wave 4 : Don't get too close to the lava! Now you have a

'lava troll' to worry about. A hand will come out

of the lava, grab your ostrich by the legs and try

to yank you and your ostrich into the lava.

Higher waves : As you progress onto higher waves things begin

to get tougher. The lava troll begins to reach

higher and pull harder, eggs hatch sooner,

different color gladiators with more skill

come to join the fight, the total

number of gladiators on the screen at one time

will also increase.

You will notice on may waves (starting at wave 6) that some

of the islands will vanish. This is to make the game more

interesting.

II. Game background

I began working on Joust VGA about 10 months ago (starting with

my own graphics/image makers) Joust was a lot of fun to program,

however it did take some patience! I give credit to Ron Sharpless

for drawing all the graphics.

Game play on joust is pretty good on a 12 MHz AT, it has

been tested on 8008's and 80386's. With an XT, the game is still

very playable, your ostrich just becomes a little less responsive.

With a 386, your ostrich becomes VERY responsive and game play is

a little more difficult, but it's still fun...

III. Registering information

Please remember that Joust VGA is Shareware, not just free software.

Like all Shareware you are expected to purchase it after you've given

it a reasonable trial.

I hope you enjoy Joust VGA, if you would like to have a

SIMULTANEOUS TWO PLAYER MODE(registered) version of Joust VGA,

send $10.00 to my address below. I have found two player mode

to be very fun in joust, you and your partner can work as a

team or as enemies.

Most shareware authors request $5-$15 for simple games that

took somewhere from a weekend to a week to write. Joust VGA took

me almost a year to write and I'm asking for $10 which seems

quite reasonable.

Even if you're not registering Joust VGA, write and

tell me what you think about it!

Dave Sharpless

11643 Vermilion Rd.

Oberlin, OH 44074