| Manual for Cobra Gunship
Copyright © 1997-98 Elysium Digital, L.L.C. |
Last revised 30 January 1998 Created 13 October 1997 |
For current contact information, go to http://www.elys.com/about.html. |
| Required | Recommended | |
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| Mac |
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If you have trouble unzipping the file, try getting the latest version of PKUNZIP from:
http://www.pkware.com/pkz204g.html
Click on NEW GAME. From the window that appears, select the desired difficulty level. On the right side of the screen, the stats for your new game will appear. If desired, you may EQUIP your chopper with fancier gear. Now, click on MISSIONS. This takes you to the Mission Tree. Click on MISSION 0, and read the Mission Briefing that pops up. Click ACCEPT to start playing the mission.
How you control your Cobra during a mission depends on your settings. If you have a mouse, then the default settings are to use the mouse for control. Move the mouse crosshairs to where you want the Cobra to fly, and your chopper will accelerate towards the cursor. The further you move the cursor away from your Cobra, the faster it pursues it.
If you have no mouse or have turned off mouse control, you can use the keyboard to control your Cobra. The default settings have you use the arrow keys to move the Cobra up, down, left and right.
Regardless of how you move the chopper, you will also need to flip which way it is facing, select weapons and fire. The default keys for these are:
| Flip Direction: | E |
| Select Primary: | S |
| Select Secondary: | F |
| Fire Primary: | [SPACE] |
| Fire Secondary: | D |
You can also use keys { 1, 2, 3, 4 } to select a particular primary weapon, and keys {5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, - } to select a particular secondary. NOTE: Your chopper can hold more than one kind of primary and secondary weapon at a time. You may switch between purchased weapons by using the weapon selection keys.
To play all 31 levels, be able to load external map files and buy all weapons, you need to purchase a serial number by registering. You may order by one of the following ways:
EMania.Com
c/o Agile Systems, Inc.
P.O. Box 221
Raritan, NJ 08869-0221
(908) 369-1317 FAX
(888) 369-0047 (U.S. only, 9am-5pm Eastern Time)
or(908) 369-0084 (International, 9am-5pm US Eastern Time)
NOTE: Both your name and your serial number must be entered EXACTLY as they are listed. If you make a mistake entering one or the other, the game will tell you which one is incorrect. Just correct your typo and hit OK.
That's it! Once that is done your purchase is complete. The entire game will be available to you.
In the Main Menu:
| On the right side of the screen, there is a description of you current status: how your chopper is equipped, how much money you have, and which missions you have completed. |
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On the left side of the screen, you will see the vertical row
of buttons that makes up the menu.
You can navigate the menus in the game using the mouse or the keyboard. Click on one of the buttons to proceed: |
| New Game | Abandon your current game and restart at level 0. When you select this button, you will be able to choose your preferred level of difficulty from one of three settings: Easy, Normal, or Hard. | |||||||
| Load Game |
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| Save Game | Save your current game in one of the 10 slots
Selecting this button pops up a window with 10 save
game slots. Select the slot that you want to use to
save your status. The game will then let you edit the
name of that save slot. When you are satisfied with the
name, press You should save your game after you successfully complete a mission. It will not be saved automatically. |
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| Options |
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| Register | If you have purchased a serial number to register the game, select this to enter the number. | |||||||
| Quit | Exits the game. | |||||||
| Equip | Here is where you spend money to soup up you chopper. This area is described in detail in the Equipping the Chopper section. | |||||||
| Missions |
Select the mission button to go to the mission briefing. A briefing window will pop up, describing the mission. You may then Accept or Decline the mission. You might decline the mission for a number of reasons - perhaps you want to play a different mission first, perhaps you need to equip your chopper better first, perhaps you want to save your game first. Selecting the Decline button takes you back to the Mission Tree, from which you can press Escape to return to the Main Menu. Selecting Accept commits to to play the mission. The mission loads, and once you select Go, it is under way. |
On the top of the screen are your currently selected primary weapon (on the left), how much cash you have (in the middle) and your currently selected secondary weapon (on the right). Your chopper can hold more than one kind of primary and secondary weapon at a time. You may select any of your purchased weapons by using the weapon selection keys.
Below the weapon selection indicators is the radar screen, which shows all of the vehicles in the level. Note that a radar jammer can distort this display.
On the bottom of the screen, you have your armor meter on the left (this
tells you how close you are to dying.) The figures in the center tell you
how many foot soldiers (saboteurs) you have on board. On the right, you
can see how much ammunition you have for your currently selected secondary
weapon. Note that primary weapons have unlimited ammo.
What you do depends on what you were told in the mission briefing, but it will usually involve wasting bad guys. Destroying enemy vehicles sometimes yields cash, which you can collect and later use to buy more stuff for your chopper. You also get money for finishing each level.
When you successfully complete a level, you should save your game. You need to save your games explicitly from the Main Menu. Your game is not automatically saved after you successfully complete a mission. After all, you might discover that you really should have collected more cash on Mission 16. When you fail a mission, you then load your previously saved game to resume where you left off.
We are not going to tell you about all of the bad guys and what they can do, because discovering them is part of the fun of the game. (We will say that there are twice as many enemies as you see in the first dozen missions...the international intrigue isn't as straightforward as it seems...)
However, we are going to tell you about structures. There are:
| Friendly Buildings: | ||
| Landing Pad | There is one per level. You mission starts and ends on it. It cannot be destroyed | |
| Haven | This looks like a hospital. You can rescue troops by dropping them off near it. Enemy saboteurs can blow it up. |
| Enemy Buildings: | ||
| Base | This is the enemy equivalent to your Haven. Enemy troops and vehicles that enter it are considered "rescued". Your saboteurs can blow it up. | |
| Bunker | A defensive structure that launches rockets. Your saboteurs can blow it up. | |
| War Factory | This building generates enemy vehicles. Your saboteurs can blow it up. | |
| Bridge | Your saboteurs can take this thing out, too. Once they do, no vehicles can cross it. | |
| Fuel Depot | Cannon fodder. Your saboteurs will ignore them. You can take them out with your weapons. |
Your team does have ground troops, usually in the form of saboteurs. These little guys will board your chopper if you land near them. If you land close to a Haven, they will run into the Haven, after which they are considered "rescued". If you drop them off near an enemy structure, they will plant a bomb against it and blow it up. Enemy vehicles will run them over, though, so guard your little guys from danger.
The enemy has saboteurs too....
Go to the OPTIONS menu and click on VIDEO. Turn on the checkbox marked DRAW FRAME RATE. Then start a NEW GAME, go to MISSIONS, and play MISSION 0. Fly past the convoy to the left and see what your lowest frame rate is. (Note: The frame rate is controlled to stay down around 30 frames per second, no matter how fast your system is.)
| LOWEST FRAME RATE | ACTION | |
| 29+ | You are done! Your settings are fine. play and enjoy. | |
| 26 - 28 | You are getting there, you just need a little more.
Try one of the following:
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| 25- | You need to get a major burst of speed.
Try one of the following:
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If you can't reliably reach 30 frames per second, try turning off all of the available drawing options and turning down all the available audio options. If the game is still too slow, let us know. It is still quite playable, but a little easier.
In some very heavily populated missions your frame rate may drop below 30 frames per second on slower machines.
| Video: Here you control the game's graphical settings. |
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| Don't Use Menu Animation | Disables the cascading menus. |
| Draw Every Other Frame | Draws only every other frame of graphics. Use this feature on computers that cannot update the graphics fast enough. |
| Use Interlace Mode | Draws only every other line during gameplay. Use this feature on computers that cannot update the graphics fast enough. |
| Don't Use Translucency | Disables the translucent feature of the radar and the status display to reduce graphics load. |
| Don't Draw Background | Disables drawing the background to reduce graphics load. |
| Don't Draw Tree Layer | Disables drawing the layer that contains the trees and rocks to reduce graphics load. |
| Draw Debugging Info | Displays memory and sprite information. |
| Draw Frame Rate | Displays how many frames per second the game is displaying. This is useful for determining what options to enable or disable. |
| Explosion Debris | This slide bar sets how much debris thrown from explosions can be on screen at one time. |
| Maximum Particles | This slide bar sets how many particles (animated pixels) can be on screen at one time. |
| Audio: These are the controls for our cutting-edge audio system. |
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| Use 16-Bit Audio | Enables 16-bit audio on supported cards. |
| Use Stereo Audio | Enables stereo sound on supported cards. The game makes good use of stereo, since you can hear enemies approaching from the speaker corresponding to the side they are on. |
| Reverse Left/Right | Switches the speakers if they are backwards. (If you are using stereo audio, make sure you have this set correctly, or else sounds will pan in from the wrong side.) |
| Mixing Rate | This slider lets you set the audio mixing rate from 11 to 44 kHz. The higher it is set, the more clear will be the audio, while the amount of time spent mixing will increase. |
| Audio Channels | This slider lets you determine how many simultaneous sounds can be played. If your system can support it, you want this value to be set to 8 or higher. This will let you still hear engine noise behind gunfire and explosions. |
| Control: Determines how you will control your chopper during gameplay. You can toggle the checkboxes to enable/disable the Joystick, Mouse and Keyboard. Note that Joystick and Mouse conflict with each other during gameplay, so use one or the other. We recommend the Mouse. Select the configure button next to the devices you choose for control: |
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Engines:
Your first engine is very sluggish. Buying a
better one gets you snappier response and faster
flying.
You do not need to upgrade your engine in order.
You could hold out until you can afford the fastest engine if you
so desire.
Armor:
Hey, even the best pilots take hits from time to
time. This stuff makes sure you can survive the
occasional mating with a heat-seeking missile.
As with the
engines, you do not need to upgrade your armor in order. You can
skip the second and third levels of armor and upgrade straight to
the fourth (if you can afford it).
Utilities:
| Armor Ranking | shows you how much armor your opponents have left |
| Critical Ranking | Shows you which vehicles are critical to your mission. Marks items that needs to be destroyed, protected or rescued. |
| Radar De-Jammer | Counter enemy radar jammers. |
| Repair Crew | Repairs your chopper slowly during a mission. |
Primary Weapon:
This is your main gun. It has unlimited
ammo. It is your staple weapon. You start
out with a dinky machine gun. Get a bigger
weapon to wreck more opponents in less time.
Your helicopter can carry multiple primary weapons simultaneously. When you purchase a new weapon, you still have the old weapon. Use the weapon selection keys while flying to choose which of your available primary weapons to activate. You can have one primary and one secondary weapon active at a time.
| Machine Gun | Pretty much an annoying pea-shooter. It actually does do damage to your enemies, if you're patient enough. |
| Vulcan Cannon | A very satisfying upgrade from the machine gun. Destroy your enemies faster than ever! |
| Lasers | These do yet more damage, and have the useful side-effect of burning right through everything they hit. This lets a single laser blast hurt multiple opponents. The down side is that the laser beams are fairly narrow, making it a little harder to hit your target. |
| Flame Thrower | Carnage central. Demolishes your enemies in a billowing burst of flame. This does even more damage than lasers! |
Secondary Weapon:
These are your special weapons. They have
limited ammo, so they have to be restocked.
Your helicopter can carry multiple secondary weapons and ammunition simultaneously. When you purchase a new weapon, you still have the old weapon. Use the weapon selection keys while flying to choose which of your available secondary weapons to activate. You can have one primary and one secondary weapon active at a time.
You start out with a bomb launcher and a few bombs. From this menu, you can buy and refill:
| Bombs | Plain and simple. They drop and explode on impact. |
| Rockets | Regular forward-firing rockets. |
| Floaters | Fall towards the ground. Once they near the surface, an air cushion kicks in, so that they float just above the ground, moving at the same speed at which they were dropped. |
| Droprockets | When you depress the Fire key, a rocket drops out of the bottom of the chopper. When you release the key, the rocket's engine fires, and the rocket flies horizontally from that point on. Each packs a powerful punch. |
| Scatterbombs | When you depress the Fire key, a canister drops out of the chopper. When you release the key, the canister releases several explosive pellets. These are great for taking on groups of vehicles, troops or choppers. |
| Heatseekers | Automatically homes in on the closest enemy. Ideal for holding enemy aircraft at bay while attacking ground targets. |
| Napalm | For ground targets only. This is a large canister that spreads devastating flames across the ground. It has the highest destructive capability of all the secondary weapons. |
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Terms: "Program" shall refer to the game "Cobra Gunship", with all associated files. The "Trademarks" consists of "Elysium Digital, L.L.C.", any Elysium Digital, L.L.C. logo, "Cobra Gunship" name, and any associated labels and trademarks.
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