Here's the manual for Heywire. It's a freeby, but that doesn't mean it
won't get better with time and effort.
Heywire
by
PionEar Games
++1: the story
It's time for the party, and everything is set but the music. You've got the
best sound system you could buy, (which isn't that great really--but it's
yours,) which has four speakers. You put your favorite CD in the player and
press the shuffle button. The song is ready and playing, and it sounds good.
Now all that is left is to put the speakers where they should go.
++2 game play
+Keyboard-specific controls
The game play is straightforward and simple, even if the controls are a bit
tricky to learn at first. Simply put the speakers where they go--that's it.
Use the e, d, s and f keys to move the left speakers, and the i, k, j, and l
keys to move the right speakers. The front speakers are selected by default.
To select the rear speakers, press enter. To attempt locking them down in
the correct order, press the space bar. Each attempt takes points from your
total score, and if the placing isn't at it's total best, that takes from
the score too. To lock them down temporarily, press the t key, ad press it
again to unlock them. (Note: since this is early beta, the scoring system
has not yet been implemented.) Press a, semicolon, z, and slash to hear an
audio trace of the wires that go to the front left, front right, rear left
and rear right speakers respectively. Press g, h, b, and n to mute the front
left, front right, right, rear left and rear right speakers respectively.
+Mouse-specific controls
To move a speaker up, left, down or right, simply move the mouse in that
direction.
To select the left speakers, click the left mouse button once.
To select the right speakers, click the right mouse button once.
To attempt to lock down the speakers, double click either mouse button. You
will still need to use enter to select front and rear speakers in this
version.
++Other Game Elements
+The Wires
The wires may be the most important clue you have to where the speakers are,
especially in later levels. You can press a, semicolon, z, and slash to
trace the speaker wires from your head to the front left, front right, rear
left, and rear right speakers respectively. The longer the sparking sound
continues, the further away the speaker in question is. The higher the level
you attain, the further the speakers may be placed.
+drift
One of the challenges you face as you complete this task is that the sounds
drift, and as you reach higher and higher levels, the sounds of the speakers
will drift more and more. Oh come on now, if the game was totally realistic
it wouldn't be very fun to play! You will need to compensate for this drift
by constantly working with the speakers until you have them precisely where
you want them before locking them down. Again, the higher the level, the
further the speakers may drift.
+Lockdown
Each axis of the speakers can be locked down separately. In this version,
since the scoring system is not yet developed, you can feel free to
experiment as much as you wish with it. You will be told which axis of which
speakers was locked down.
For example, if you hear, "Front Left x axis locked," then you know that the
speaker is positioned correctly on that axis--not too far left of your head,
but not over it either.
++Putting in your own songs
This process is a bit tricky, since you have to split it into its left nd
right channels. Open your song with Goldwave or another sound editor, and
delete the right channel. Then save the file as left1.wav (or whatever you
are replacing,) as you see in the sounds folder. Then open the song again
and delete the left channel. Make sure its length is exactly the same as the
length of the left channel, and save it as right1.wav
++Plans for later Versions
So far, there is only one winning configuration that the computer
recognizes, but I will probably add others in, including the possibility to
reverse the rear speakers, which might give interesting stereophonic
results. The moving up and down of speakers might be implementd, as well as
having to stop the rotation of the listener so the music doesn't whirl
around you. I also plan to add the scoring system, refine the way the game
works, and add more songs. Any other ideas are welcome. Send them to
kenwdow...@neo.rr.com
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