Solarian II User Manual
Contents
1. Solarian II User Manual Last modified September 20 2004 By Ben Haller Copyright 2004 Stick Software Solarian II is a vintage video game from circa 1990 that has been ported to OS X for the sake of nostalgia This manual assumes that you have already downloaded a copy of the latest version of Solarian II version 1 1 if not visit Solarian II s main page at http www sticksoftware com software Solarian html It also assumes that you know all the basics of using the Macintosh in Mac OS X including using the mouse menus and windows This manual is on the short side because there are not a lot of difficult complex issues to discuss It s just a video game after all gt But if there are issues you run into that are not addressed here please let us know Please send comments on this manual to us at support sticksoftware com Thanks Contents Installation amp Setup Where and how to install Solarian II Choosing a Display Solarian II s video compatibility Gameplay How to play how to win Immersion Why Solarian II takes over all your screens Performance How to get Solarian II to run quickly and smoothly OS X Compatibility For those on 10 0 10 2 x Solarian II on the old Mac OS For those still in the dark ages gt Registration Solarian II and the Shareware model Installation amp Setup Where and how to install Solarian II To install Solarian II simply copy it to your local hard drive It does not need to2. video mode must be chosen Solarian II can only run on the primary video monitor the one with the menu bar If you really really want to run it on a secondary monitor you have to make that secondary monitor be your primary monitor using the Displays panel in System Preferences Gameplay How to play how to win Actually we re not going to say much in this section To see the different bad guys and other game elements with descriptions of them there is a bestiary screen included in the game To get instructions on how things like challenge rounds and the bonus countdown work as well as descriptions of the different powerups for your ship there is an information screen included in the game And for some tips on how to play better and get better scores there you guessed it a tips and tricks screen included in the game All three of these screens can be accessed by pressing when on the main high score screen The only other thing we ll say is this hold your mouse button down to autofire except when you really want to time a shot exactly Clicking the mouse button all the time will not get you a higher fire rate and it will probably give you a repetitive motion injury for which we disclaim all legal responsibility gt Immersion Why Solarian II takes over all your screens When you run Solarian II after choosing your display configuration it blacks out all of your monitors and takes over your machine Some folks might pre
3. ail address with your payment in order to receive your registration code Once you have received your code you should click the Enter Code button in the Registration panel and enter your registration name and code You can request that your code be resent if you have lost it or never received it at http www sticksoftware com register lostcode html Comments on Solarian II suggestions for future products and other feedback are welcomed at support sticksoftware com Thanks for your support
4. be installed anywhere in particular you can put it wherever you like However Applications and Applications are standard folders for applications in Mac OS X which may be used where the symbol represents the current user s home directory Typically Applications contains applications that are installed system wide for all users of the machine while Applications contains applications private to the current user Drag Solarian II from the disk image it is distributed on into the folder where you wish to install it After it has been copied you may eject and throw away the distribution disk image It is recommended that you do not run Solarian II directly off of the disk image If you are unfamiliar with the use of disk images dmg files you can read more about disk images on Stick Software s web site at http www sticksoftware com register diskimages html To uninstall Solarian II simply drag Solarian II from your hard drive to the trash No further setup is required Once you ve got Solarian II copied to a standard location just double click it in the Finder to launch it Choosing a Display Solarian II s video compatibility The first thing you ll see when you launch Solarian II after the registration and version check panels perhaps is a panel requesting that you choose a display mode in which to play the game This may raise a few questions which we ll try to address here By default only video modes that are thousand
5. fer that it not do this they want to be able to switch to other apps see other applications windows on their secondary monitor etc This section explains why Solarian II does not support that sort of thing The main problem is that Solarian II uses the mouse as a non cursor oriented input device during game play That means that while you re playing you re moving the mouse all over the place even onto secondary monitors and clicking randomly everywhere you go You don t see that you re doing that because Solarian II hides the mouse cursor for you but that is what is happening behind the scenes If Solarian II didn t intercept those clicks by taking over your screens you would be clicking on other windows on the desktop and on everything else you had lying around At worst that could be damaging at best it would interfere with your enjoyment of the game Mac OS X provides no way to take over the mouse without also taking over the displays unfortunately The other problem is that most users playing Solarian II are going to want to switch display modes during play most people probably run at full resolution in millions of colors while working but when playing Solarian II they will switch to something like 640x480 or 800x512 in thousands of colors By taking over all of the displays Solarian II is able to keep other applications from getting confused by the temporary display mode change Other apps don t resize their windows to fit the new s
6. ions of colors The difference is not large but if you re seeing problems with lag and stutter in the animation particularly when many objects are moving onscreen at once you might make sure you are playing the game in thousands of colors mode Secondly since Mac OS X is a fully multitasking environment other applications running in the background can cause performance problems while playing Solarian II We notice for example that the automatic check for new email that our email client does every few minutes takes enough processor time that it causes a noticeable lag in the gameplay For this reason it is recommended that you quit all applications that might do things in the background while you are playing And this is not always obvious Photoshop Elements 2 0 for example uses a significant amount of processor time all the time on our machine here even though it is doing nothing at all and doesn t even have any windows open iTunes uses about 10 of the processor on our machine when we re listening to music in a more obvious example You can use Apple s Activity Monitor app in Applications Utilities to see which applications are hogging your processor at any given time Finally if your machine is really slow and you can t get Solarian II to run with decent performance at all try muting the sound in the game by pressing 0 when on the high scores screen the speaker icon in the upper left of the high scores screen should get a red
7. maller screen size and the Finder does not rearrange icons on the desktop to ensure their visibility and so forth Mac OS X provides no way to shield other apps from changes to a display s mode without taking over the display These are not completely insurmountable obstacles one can imagine that Solarian II could release the secondary monitors whenever the game was paused switch the main display back to its original mode whenever the user switched to a different app and so forth and some degree of interoperability would be achieved But it would be strange and clunky and confusing Switching display modes is a heavyweight operation it typically takes several seconds for the monitor to react to the change and the time in between is spent flashing and resynching So switching from Solarian II to another app would not be a lightweight switch the way it normally is in OS X and for that reason we re guessing it would be uncommon for users to really want to do it anyhow and the strangeness of it would be confusing to everybody else Sorry if you find it inconvenient Performance How to get Solarian II to run quickly and smoothly For users with relatively fast machines Solarian II will probably run smoothly at its maximum frame rate with no additional effort But for those on less powerful machines a few things are worth noting First of all as noted above Solarian II will probably run faster in thousands of colors mode than it does in mill
8. s of colors i e 16 bit color are shown unless no such modes exist This is because Solarian II runs fastest when in thousands of colors on most machines this speed difference is unimportant but if you re running on a relatively slow processor you may find that millions of colors sometimes noticeably lags when a lot of sounds are playing or there are many objects moving onscreen The difference in image quality between thousands and millions should not be noticeable since the graphics in Solarian II are not exactly photorealistic gt However if you really wish to choose a millions of colors mode check the Show all possible display modes checkbox near the bottom of the panel Similarly video modes that are stretched such that pixels onscreen are not square are not shown by default the game looks kind of funny when it s stretched out like that However if you really wish to choose a stretched mode check the Show all possible display modes checkbox near the bottom of the panel and they will be shown in the list 8 bit mode 256 colors is not supported by Solarian II on OS X Modes that are 8 bit color or other depths besides 16 bit and 32 bit color will not be shown in the list of eligible display modes even when the Show all possible display modes checkbox is checked since they are not supported If the display is currently in an unsupported mode the Don t Switch Modes button will be dimmed in that case a supported
9. slash through it This will allow the game to skip playing all the sound effects which will free up more processor time for doing video animation You will not of course have sound effects though which makes the game a lot less fun If you know the sounds well try making them yourself while you play Or upgrade your machine gt If your machine is fast enough none of this may present a problem nothing like trying it OS X Compatibility For those on 10 0 10 2 x This version of Solarian II requires OS X 10 3 to run We apologize to those still on earlier versions of OS X but this was not an arbitrary choice The main reason is that OS X 10 3 has a greatly improved internal graphics engine the Core Graphics component of the OS that allows our graphics code to run much faster with much less low level video hacking Obviously we could have made it work on earlier versions of OS X applications with much more demanding video requirements than Solarian II run fine on those systems as we are well aware But getting Solarian II to work with the older Core Graphics on older systems would have greatly complicated this port and it was deemed to be not worth the effort Sorry Solarian II on the old Mac OS For those still in the dark ages gt Those who are not yet on Mac OS X should still be able to run the old version of Solarian II For those users the old version is available in our software archive at http www sticksoftware com
10. software archive html Note that the old version does not run under Classic on Mac OS X however which is why this port was made in the first place Registration Solarian II and the Shareware model As a closing note we d like to remind our readers that Solarian II is a shareware product It is required that you pay the shareware fee if you use Solarian II beyond a trial usage Solarian II costs 10 Folks who paid for the old Classic version are not registered for this version of Solarian II Usually we provide free upgrades for registered users but this is not just a new version it s a complete port to what is effectively a new operating system The amount of effort expended seems to us to justify a new registration fee Additionally we don t have any payment records from the old version of Solarian II so we could not verify who had already paid We hope nobody is outraged by this please keep in mind you had more than a decade of playing paid for by your first 25 gt Information on how to pay and other registration details can be found at http www sticksoftware com software html or you can simply pay with a credit card or other methods with no further ado at https order kagi com 6ZD or by clicking one of the payment links in the registration panel Or if you wish you can mail a check or money order in US made out to Stick Software to Stick Software P O Box 610121 Redwood City CA 94061 0121 USA You must include a valid em
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