-------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is Bricklayer for Windows ? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bricklayer for Windows is a port of Steve Chamberlin's popular fast-paced falling blocks game for the Macintosh. The Macintosh version was honorably mentioned in the 1993 MacUser Shareware Awards, and favorably reviewed in numerous books and magazines. Guaranteed to get you addicted, Bricklayer for Windows features beautiful 256-color artwork, an original music soundtrack, terrific sound effects, and more. Systems which are not 256-color or sound-capable are also supported. Version 1.5 adds a host of new features described at the end if this document. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents -------------------------------------------------------------------------- - System Requirements - Background Music - Comments, Suggestions, Bug Reports - Registration - Controls - New Features -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bricklayer has been beta tested on i386, i486, and Pentium systems with 4-8MB of memory. The memory requirements may be quite steep because Bricklayer needs to load close to 1MB of music files. To enjoy the background music and sound effects, you will need to have a sound card with wave playing ability supported by Windows (such as Microsoft Sound System, or Creative Labs Sound Blaster). * If you cannot make Bricklayer even start up, try creating a file called BRICKLYR.INI in your WINDOWS directory and putting the following lines there: [Settings] LoadMusic=0 This will force Bricklayer to ignore the music and sound settings and not load any music files. You will be able to play, but will have no music or sound effects. * Some users have encountered faults when Bricklayer displays its "Loading" window. Try running Bricklayer with the -F command-line option (bricklyr.exe -F) This will force Bricklater to skip the initialization screen on startup. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Background Music -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This version of Bricklayer, 1.50, uses the Microsoft WAVEMIX.DLL sound mixing library. You may notice that the background music has stopped playing after six or seven minutes (in rare instances, even less) of continuous music. If this occurs, press the key to restart the music. For those systems which are not sound capable, unselecting the "Load Music" check box in the preferences dialog will prevent Bricklayer from loading the music files and decrease load time. The music WAV files are Copyright Opinicus Microtechnologies, and may be freely distributed only as part of the Bricklayer for Windows game for use by the Bricklayer executable. See the distribution information for more details. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments, Suggestions, Bug Reports -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I look forward to hearing from you. If you encounter problems while playing Bricklayer, I would appreciate any information that you can provide, such as your system configuration and a detailed description of the problem. Suggestions for improvements are also welcome. Contact me at the address listed below, or send email to: yevg@aol.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registration -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bricklayer is $10 shareware (free for those people who've paid for previous versions). If you enjoy and play Bricklayer, PLEASE send in the $10 shareware fee. It is not very much compared to the cost of a commercial game, and it motivates me to keep improving Bricklayer as well as to work on new games. If you play, please pay. Upgrades to new versions of Bricklayer are always free for registered users. Those who register will also be kept informed of new version releases, as well as the releases of any new products. To register Bricklayer, please send a US$10 check payable to Yevgeny Gurevich to the address listed below. If you live outside of the U.S., please send an international money order (preferred) or cash, since checks drawn on foreign banks are sometimes difficult to clear. Site licenses are available - please contact me for more details. Yevgeny Gurevich Vanilla-Extract Software 129 Franklin Street #112 Cambridge, MA 02139 email: yevg@aol.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Controls -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keyboard control is customizable with the [Change Keys...] Options menu item. The numeric keypad keys are active as control keys in addition to any user-selectable settings. The default user-selectable keyboard settings are the 'j', 'k', and 'l' keys for left, rotate, and right motion, and the spacebar for the drop. The 'a' key controls the push. On the numeric keypad, the 4, 5, 6, and 0 act the same as the j, k, l, and space. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Features -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 1.50 of Bricklayer for Windows introduces event recording, a computer player feature, and support for external background modules. * Event recording allows you to record your own games for future playback. To record your game, check the [Record] Event Recording menu item. The games that you play will then be recorded. Only the last game played is stored in the event buffer. You can replay that game, using the [Replay] Event Recording menu item, or save it to disk for future loading and replay - using the [Save Event] and [Read Event] File menu items, respectively. * The computer player options in the file menu let the computer play a game on its own. The fast player thinks quickly but is not as good at playing the game as the slower and smarter player, which uses the Next Piece for lookahead. On fast systems like i486DX2-66's, the smart player is faster than the dumb player on an i486SX-33. For programmers: I may release a programming interface and guidelines to allow you to write your own Bricklayer players in the form of DLLs. Please write me if you are interested. * Alternate background modules may be used with Bricklayer for Windows - select New Graphics from the File menu. Select an appropriate .BLR file from the available choices. The unregistered distribution of Bricklayer comes only with the default (DEFAULT.BLR) backgrounds file. Registered users of Bricklayer can order a "goodies" disk with extra backgrounds.