Space Pirates Demo Crime Patrol Demo (C) Copyright 1994 American Laser Games 1. Introduction American Laser Games thanks you for your interest in Space Pirates and Crime Patrol. The demos that are provided here are a VERY small sampling of the hours of fast action entertainment that these two games provide. Each demo is an actual working segment of the game. Therefore, you are able to shoot the bad guys and save the good guys, just as you would in the real game. This README file contains information on getting the demos installed and running on your computer. It also has instructions on how the demos are played. Note that the demos support only double-speed CDROM drives. If you have a only a single-speed drive, but you have 20M of free space on your hard drive, you can still run the game by copying "sp.lib" from the CD to your SPDEMO directory on your hard drive. Then edit "alg\spdemo\game.cfg" to indicate that sp.lib is now found on your hard drive. Similar steps apply to running Crime Patrol, but replace "sp" with "cp" in the preceding instructions. The demos do NOT support the original 8-bit SoundBlaster. 1.1. Space Pirates In Space Pirates, you are a Star Ranger in the year 3030. The Galactic Council has commissioned you and other Rangers like you to protect the Galaxy from the marauding privateers that plague the outer reaches of the Galaxy. These evil doers are constantly attacking colony ships in search of booty. While enroute to a routine check of a new colony in the distant Eastern Arm of the Galaxy, you receive a desperate transmission from Ursula Sky, the captain of Colonial Star 1. She is under attach from the Black Dragon, captained by the most evil and dreaded pirate in all the Galaxy, Captain Talon. Talon and his crew have seized control of the great Star Splitter Cannon. With this cannon, they can conquer the Galaxy. You are the only Star Ranger in the Sector. It is up to you and you alone to save us all from total destruction. Good Luck, Star Ranger... 1.2. Crime Patrol In Crime Patrol, you're part of various law enforcement teams, ridding the world of various dens of criminals. In the full game, you start as a rookie cop, and progress to Undercover, SWAT, and ultimately, Delta Force. The fight scenes become more difficult as you advance to the higher levels, with more criminals who pop out more quickly. 2. Installing The Demos Each demo must be installed individually on your hard disk. Install programs are provided on this CD. First, make the CD ROM drive the current drive. Then switch to the appropriate directory. To change to the directory that contains the Space Pirates demo, type CD \ALG\SPDEMO at the DOS prompt. To go to the directory that contains the Crime Patrol demo, type CD \ALG\CPDEMO at the DOS prompt. In either directory, simply typing INSTALL at the DOS prompt will install the demo. 3.Running The Space Pirates Demo 3.1. Starting The Demo To start the demo, make sure you are at the DOS prompt, which usually looks something like this: C:\> If you are at the DOS prompt, simply type: CD \ALG\SPDEMO then type: SPDEMO The demo should begin. 3.2. Starting The Game Sequence The demo starts with a brief video explaining the setting of the game. This short segment will play repeatedly. To actually begin playing the game sequence, position your mouse over the MENU button in the lower left corner of the screen. You will know your cursor is over the menu button because it will change to the skull and crossbones Space Pirates logo. With the mouse cursor on the MENU button, click the left mouse button. Whatever video is currently playing will be replaced by a menu. The menu choices are: NEW - Starts a new game (in this case, it starts the demo sequence) LOAD - Loads the last game that was saved. SAVE - Saves the current game. CONTINUE - Press this after you load or save, so that you can exit the menu. QUIT - I'll give you one guess what this does. The other menu choices set the difficulty level. These have been disabled in the demo. 3.3. Shooting And Reloading Your Gun To shoot your gun, aim the crosshair at a target and click the LEFT mouse button. You will be allowed to shoot at two types of targets, pirates and innocent bystanders. You are able to shoot pirates only when they threaten you directly, i.e. point a gun at you. If you hit a pirate the game continues. If you miss, or don't shoot fast enough, they'll shoot you. As you might expect, this results in you losing a life. An innocent bystander can be shot almost anytime. Of course, the Galactic Council and your boss back at Star Ranger HQ generally frown on this sort of thing. Consequently, you lose a life for shooting the innocent. You are given 10 phaser blasts to shoot with. When those are gone, you need to reload. This can be accomplished by moving your mouse cursor to the RELOAD button in the lower right corner of the screen. You know that you are in the reload area when your cursor changes to a downward-pointing blaster pistol. If your cursor is in the reload area, clicking the RIGHT mouse button will fully recharge your blaster. 3.4. It's Finished! You get 3 lives to defeat the evil crew of the Black Dragon. These pirates are armed to the teeth, so be careful! The number of lives you have left is displayed down the right side of the screen. When you die (my condolences), the demo automatically returns to playing the introduction for the game. If you want to try the demo again, you must use the NEW button in the main menu. 4.Running The Crime Patrol Demo 4.1. Starting The Demo As with the Space Pirates demo, make sure you are at the DOS prompt, then enter: CD \ALG\CPDEMO and type: CPDEMO This will start the game in a mode which shows various scenes from the game. 4.2 Starting the game sequence To play the game, follow the instructions for Space Pirates. Note that the difficulty buttons are operational for Crime Patrol, although, since the scenario included with this demo version is one of the rookie scenes, it's still pretty easy to get through on the toughest level.