DUEL: Shadow of the Darksiders Ver. C Personal Version 1.1 FAQ By Aaron Teplitsky Version 1.0 - 5/22/2006 This FAQ was written to basically be a be-all, end-all guide to DUEL. I've tried to cover absolutely every detail and nuance of the game (and despite its simple-looking appearance, there are many). There is already a lot of information in the ReadMe file included with the game (how to play, strategies, etc.), but I do want this FAQ to be as complete as possible. So you can pretty much refer to this for everything. As I am the game's creator, this document WILL list everything...there are no additional secrets or details not covered here, with the exception of strategies you may discover on your own. If you find some, or just have enjoyed your time with DUEL, I'd love to hear from you. You can e-mail me using the link on my Web site at www.hiaaron.com. TABLE OF CONTENTS (you can use the Search feature in your text viewer to jump to your section of choice) ----- 001. Secrets & Glitches 002. How To Play 003. Basic Strategy 004. Special Powers and Advanced Strategies 005. Details of the Single-Player Game 006. Details of the Game System 007. Everything Else Section 001. SECRETS & GLITCHES ----- BATTLE MOSIBERG In a single-player game, you will face the secret mid-boss Mosiberg instead of Dementia on Stage 7 if you have won at least 4 perfect matches (take 0 damage) up to that point. Mosiberg's special ability is to cripple you instantly, and she's not afraid to use it. If used on you, your vitality will be reduced to 0 and you'll be unable to move. You won't actually lose the round until you take one more hit, though...which means you can use Life Up to shake it off and keep fighting. There are other ways to beat Mosiberg; they mostly revolve around beating her quickly--as in, before the ability charges--and saving your ability for when you truly need it. Good luck. HIDDEN CHARACTERS The hidden characters will automatically and permanently be added to the Player Select list and be freely selectable after the following amounts of play time have elapsed: Multi-Plex: after 5 hours of play time Dementia: after 10 hours of play time Darkman: after 15 hours of play time You can check the current amount of play time in the Test Menu. Only time actually spent playing by at least one human player will be counted. -OR- You can enter the following codes at the Player Select screen to choose the hidden characters. This will not permanently unlock these characters; you must use the code each time you play. Multi-Plex: Special x 3, Up, Special Dementia: Special x 5, Down, Special Darkman: Special x 14, Up, Special WHAT'S NOT THERE...AT ALL - There is no way to extend the number of credits for a single-player game beyond 4. - There is no way to extend the time limit beyond 99 seconds. There is no "infinite time" setting. - The secret mid-boss character Mosiberg is NOT playable. GLITCHES - Shots may occasionally leave artifacts on the screen. - The CPU is much stronger on the right side than it is on the left. - SHOT SPEEDUP apparently gives the OPPONENT a 20% damage penalty instead of the user, as was intended. This gives the user a huge, unfair advantage... Section 002. HOW TO PLAY ----- Controls for left player: E = Up, X = Down, Z = Start/Fire, A = Special. Controls for right player: 8 = Up, 2 = Down, 1 = Start/Fire, 4 = Special. To exit, press ESC. You may play DUEL solo or against another player. DUEL works just like an arcade game; one player begins the game and a second player can enter the game at any time. In a two-player match, the winner stays in the game, and the loser is out. DUEL will keep track of a player's current winning streak. Press Start/Fire to begin a game. You will first see the Player Select screen, where you may choose a character. The characters differ in name, color and most importantly, their special ability. The abilities are described below. Use the Up and Down keys to browse the available characters and press Start/Fire to choose. The match begins! Slide your tank up and down with the Up and Down keys (duh!), and press Start/Fire to fire shots. - Shot Cancel: Your tank may have one shot on the screen at a time. If you fire a second shot before the first reaches the other side, you will "cancel" the first shot and immediately fire a new shot. This is useful for correcting your mistakes as well as faking out opponents. The computer can use this technique as well, so watch out! If a tank is struck, it will take damage. A tank will take more damage if hit in the center; if hit on the sides, it will take less. Damage decreases the green life bar at the top of the screen. When the life bar is fully depleted, the round is over. If the defeated tank still has at least one life bar remaining, it will fill, and a new round begins. - The winning player's life bar does NOT refill for the new round. This is similar to the fighting game Killer Instinct. - A player's final life bar is yellow instead of green, as a warning. You will notice the border of your life bar will slowly turn from solid white to a multi-color flash. This represents your character's energy, which is separate from the character's life. Energy enables you to use your special ability! You receive energy when: * You are standing still. * Your opponent fires at you. When your energy is full (the entire border of your life bar is flashing), your status at the bottom of the screen will change from "Normal" to "Energy Max." Then, you may use the Ability key to use your special ability! Here is a list of the characters, their abilities, and what they do: Saki: Shot SpeedUp - Increases the flying speed of his shots. Jack: Homing Shot - Shots have limited homing ability but are a bit slower. Wyland: Double Armor - The next two hits cause him no damage. Steven: Enemy SpdDown - The speed of his enemy's shots decreases. Nika: Enemy Jammer - Some of her enemy's shots will not fire. Decimator: Shot PowerUp - Increases the damage caused by his shots. Phobia: Life Up - Recovers some lost life. Takes effect immediately. Horseman: Defense Up - Decreases the damage suffered by enemy fire. Prankster: Steal - Steals the ability currently being used by the enemy. Psycho: Power Drain - Slowly steals life from the enemy. Multi-Plex: Random - A random ability is chosen. Dementia: Her ability is selected based on the opponent (see below). Darkman: Regeneration - Life will slowly recover (2x the rate of Power Drain). Abilities remain in effect until used up or the round is over. For example, Shot SpeedUp lasts until the next round. Double Armor lasts until either the round is over or the user takes two hits, whichever comes first. - You can not begin charging energy for the next use of your ability until your current ability is no longer in effect. If a tank's last life bar is emptied, it's a KO and the match is over. Bonus points are awarded to the victor for amount of time remaining and amount of life left. An extra bonus is added to the life bonus if one or more life bars were completely full. If time runs out, the tank with more remaining life (including life bars in reserve) is the winner. If both tanks have the same amount of remaining life, 10 seconds are placed on the clock and Sudden Death begins, where one hit will destroy either tank and end the match. If the 10 seconds expire and there is STILL no winner: - In a one-player game, the computer wins. - In a two-player game, the player that joined the game first wins. If you get a high score, a long winning streak or complete the game quickly, you will be asked to enter your initials. Use Up and Down to change and Start/Fire to register each initial. If you lose against the computer, you may continue the game up to three times. If you lose a fourth time you must start over. Section 003. BASIC STRATEGY ----- First things first: your number one priority is to avoid getting hit. If you avoid taking damage, you are guaranteed not to lose--even one successful hit on the opponent is then enough to guarantee victory. (This assumes no use of Power Drain, but in most cases, there won't be any use of Power Drain.) A good general strategy is to fire as much as possible, sticking in the general vicinity of the opponent while avoiding their shots. This is also the basic strategy the CPU will use. If you're winning or feel more confident, actively try to predict their movement and time your shots to attempt to hit them. Also use Shot Cancel to confuse the opponent. The CPU will only see shots currently fired, so it's effective against the CPU as well as a human opponent. Hits to the center of a tank will do more damage than hits on the sides. A direct hit can do as much as double the damage as a hit along the edge. Be careful about when you use your special ability. For most abilities, the worst time to activate is generally when you're about to lose a round, but not the match. Any ability--yours or your opponent's--will be disabled the moment the round ends. If you're about to lose the match, then go right ahead; after all, you've got nothing to lose. Also note that when your energy is at its peak, you get a 10% damage bonus--so if you need just a bit more oomph, you might want to wait on using the Special. Section 004. SPECIAL POWERS AND ADVANCED STRATEGY ----- To charge your energy faster, move only when necessary. You charge more quickly while standing still. Of course, this puts you at risk of being hit! SHOT SPEEDUP USED BY: Saki EFFECT: User's shots will move 40% faster than normal. There is a 20% damage penalty on these faster shots. WHEN TO USE: As early as possible. There is NO disadvantage to having faster shots, so take advantage of it as early and as often as possible. Avoid use right before the end of a round. TIPS: Use it to end rounds quickly. Don't stop firing, and use Shot Cancel if necessary to fool the enemy into making a mistake. TIPS VS SHOT SPEEDUP: Stay away from the enemy! Use your own shots to keep them from chasing you. You can also use Enemy Jammer to block some of the shots. Sped up shots are weaker than regular shots, so using Defense Up will reduce your damage even further. HOMING SHOT USED BY: Jack EFFECT: User's shots will track the opponent and move vertically towards them as they fly. 1 pixel of vertical movement may take place for every 5 pixels of horizontal movement. On the whole, they don't home THAT much, but they can cover a much bigger area than regular shots can. There is a 20% speed penalty on Homing Shots. WHEN TO USE: You should generally use it as early as possible, and not at the end of a round. But if your opponent's power is Enemy Spddown, be careful. Against this, try to only use Homing Shot when your opponent's power is charging. Speed penalties are ADDED, and if your Homing Shots are affected by Enemy Spddown, the total speed penalty is a crippling 60%. TIPS: Fire even if you think you'll miss, as these shots can blunder into a nearby enemy. It's easy to make a mistake against Homing Shots! TIPS VS HOMING SHOT: Homing Shot already has a speed penalty; using Enemy SpdDown will slow Homing Shots to a crawl. Otherwise, attempt to keep a distance from Homing Shots while continuously returning fire. Sneak in and attack between their attacks; you will automatically have a speed advantage. DOUBLE ARMOR USED BY: Wyland EFFECT: The next TWO times the user is hit, no damage will occur. After one hit, status will change from "Double Armor" to "Armor." The second hit will change status back to normal. WHEN TO USE: The best time to use it is the beginning of a round, when there are plenty of opportunities to get hit. There are no disadvantages or penalties with this ability, so use it when you can. TIPS: Don't use it when your opponent's life is low, or you might lose it when the round ends. Great against Shot PowerUp, since it completely eliminates that advantage. TIPS VS DOUBLE ARMOR: Use Shot SpeedUp to get rid of Armor quickly. Power Drain will always cause damage, even when shots cannot. ENEMY SPDDOWN USED BY: Steven EFFECT: Enemy shots will move 40% more slowly. There is no effect on the user (although maybe there should have been). WHEN TO USE: Because your main priority is to avoid enemy shots, and this will dramatically reduce the difficulty of that priority, you should take advantage of it as soon as possible. Try to use it when it will last the longest, such as at the beginning of a final round. TIPS: Pay extra close attention to the slower enemy fire, and it will barely have any chance of hitting you. TIPS VS ENEMY SPDDOWN: Use Shot SpeedUp to cancel the effect, Power Drain to cause guaranteed damage or Double Armor/Defense Up for a little insurance. ENEMY JAMMER USED BY: Nika EFFECT: When the user's opponent fires, there is a 30% chance that their shot will be cancelled. WHEN TO USE: The best time to use it is the beginning of a round, when there are plenty of opportunities to get shot at. There are no disadvantages or penalties with Enemy Jammer, so use it when it will last the longest. TIPS: Useful in practically any situation, the Jammer is great for throwing overconfident opponents off-guard, and reducing the dangers posed by powers like Shot SpeedUp and Shot PowerUp. TIPS VS ENEMY JAMMER: Use guaranteed powers that don't rely on your own shots, like Life Up, Double Armor and Power Drain. SHOT POWERUP USED BY: Decimator EFFECT: User's shots cause 30% more damage. WHEN TO USE: The beginning of a round is the best opportunity to use it. Try to get in as much damage as possible! TIPS: Use when your opponent's life is full for the maximum effect. Try to hit the opponent in the center for truly great damage! TIPS VS SHOT POWERUP: Defense Up will cancel the effect. Double Armor is also a good choice. Enemy Jammer will save you now and again. LIFE UP USED BY: Phobia EFFECT: Instantly restores 24 life points out of a maximum possible 128 (about 20%). WHEN TO USE: Immediately, if you've taken any damage at all. TIPS: This power is instantaneous: it can begin charging up again immediately after you use it. So do not hesitate! Use it as often as possible! You can also use it in a 1P game to earn more Perfect rounds (do you really want to do that?). TIPS VS LIFE UP: Use Shot SpeedUp to bury them before they have a chance to use it, or Defense Up to force them into being more aggressive and prone to mistakes. DEFENSE UP USED BY: Horseman EFFECT: Shots fired by the user's opponent will cause 30% less damage. WHEN TO USE: You could use it when in trouble...but if used at the beginning of a round, it'll be tough to bring you down. TIPS: Great against pesky Shot SpeedUp users and against opponents using Enemy attacks. TIPS VS DEFENSE UP: Cancel it with Shot PowerUp. Power Drain will cause guaranteed damage and Defense Up will not protect against it. Or, use Shot SpeedUp to get more hits in. STEAL USED BY: Prankster EFFECT: The user's opponent will immediately lose their active Special power--which will then be transferred to the user. If the user's opponent has no Special active, Steal will have no effect. WHEN TO USE: When your opponent has an active Special. TIPS: Remember that it's useless unless the opponent currently has a power active. If you use it when the opponent is "Normal" it will have no effect. TIPS VS STEAL: Because Life Up is used immediately, it cannot be stolen. Try to use other abilities when your enemy won't have a chance to quickly Steal, or at the end of a round when the enemy may not want to Steal. POWER DRAIN USED BY: Psycho EFFECT: The user will slowly regenerate life. As this happens, the user's opponent will lose life at the same rate. WHEN TO USE: Try to use it when it will be active for the longest period of time possible. TIPS: This is the only player ability that can cause damage without using shots. Use it to end rounds when the enemy is hanging by a thread, or at the beginning of a round to cause the most impact. TIPS VS POWER DRAIN: Power Drain works slowly. Life Up will offset it, and abilities like Shot PowerUp will help you end a round before Power Drain can cause severe damage. RANDOM USED BY: Multi-Plex EFFECT: A special power will be chosen randomly and immediately become active. WHEN TO USE: Try to use it at the beginning of a round or when a Special would be active for a while, since most of the Special abilities work best this way. TIPS: Uh, have fun. TIPS VS RANDOM: Be ready for anything, including Steal! ????? USED BY: Dementia EFFECT: A special power will be chosen based on the user's opponent. Here is the list of who causes what: Saki/Jack: Enemy Spddown Steven/Wyland/Darkman: Shot SpeedUp Phobia/Horseman/Psycho: Shot PowerUp Nika/Prankster/Dementia/Multi-Plex: Steal Decimator: Double Armor Mosiberg: ...it's a secret. =) WHEN TO USE: Generally, the time to use these is in reaction to your opponent's use of their Special. But nothing says you have to wait. =) TIPS: A great idea is to use your Special while theirs is still charging. Then, they'll have to cancel YOURS out...not the other way around. TIPS VS ?????: Since most of these simply cancel out your power, the best thing to do is concentrate on not being hit. REGENERATION USED BY: Darkman EFFECT: The user will regenerate life. The rate is double the rate of recovery for Power Drain. However, there is no effect on the user's opponent. WHEN TO USE: Use it as soon as you've taken damage for the maximum benefit. TIPS: If you can manage to stay away from your opponent's shots for a little while, you'll find this power will keep you alive! TIPS VS REGENERATION: Use Shot SpeedUp to bury Darkman before he recovers, or PowerUp to cause extra damage. If Power Drain is used against Regeneration, both players will recover life at the same rate. Section 005. DETAILS OF THE SINGLE-PLAYER GAME ----- The characters are separated into two teams of five: the team of Rogues, consisting of Decimator, Phobia, Prankster, Headless Horseman and Psycho; and the team fighting against them, made up of Saki, Jack, Wyland, Steven and Nika. (See above for info on the three playable hidden characters.) If playing alone, you will play an eight-stage game against the computer. The first five stages will be against the members of the opposite team, selected in a random order. The sixth will be against a rival on your own team (see below). The seventh will be against mid-boss Dementia, and the eighth will be against boss Darkman. Character Rival --------- ----- Saki Wyland Jack Steven Steven Jack Wyland Nika Nika Saki Decimator Prankster Phobia Decimator Horseman Phobia Prankster Psycho Psycho Horseman Dementia Prankster Darkman Decimator Multi-Plex Decimator If you reach Stage 7 and have won at least 4 perfect matches up to that point, you will battle Mosiberg instead of Dementia. Good luck... Section 006. DETAILS OF THE GAME SYSTEM ----- Here we go... although I'm almost positive nobody will ever read this. (If you do, e-mail me at yyr57695@aol.com and I'll get a real kick out of it.) A player's tank can be in ten different distinct vertical positions. When you press UP or DOWN, you're telling the tank to move up or down one position. The tank accelerates until it's halfway to its target, then slows down as it approaches the target position and then stops. If you change the target position during movement by pressing UP or DOWN again, the tank will simply correct its motion, accelerating until it's halfway to the NEW target position, then slowing down, etc. A tank lifebar consists of 128 HP. The amount of damage caused by shots greatly varies, depending on the conditions when a tank is hit. If the shot is right smack in the middle of the tank, the base damage is 32. This usually only happens if both tanks are in the same vertical position and sitting still. If the shot is within 4 pixels of the middle of the tank, the base damage is 24. Otherwise, the base damage is 16. The base damage is then modified in the following ways, in this exact order: - If the shooter's energy is maxed out ("ENERGY MAX"), the damage is then multiplied by 1.1. - If the shooter is using SHOT POWERUP, the damage is then multiplied by 1.3. - If the target is using DEFENSE UP, the damage is then multiplied by 0.7. - If the shooter is using SHOT SPEEDUP, the damage is then multiplied by 0.8. ***** This is the way it's SUPPOSED to work; see Glitches, above. The damage amount then becomes final. Fractions are allowed. Score for the hit is determined this way: (damage * 100) + (target speed * 200) Target speed is defined as the difference, in pixels, from the target position of the tank being hit to its actual position at the time it was hit. Any decimals are truncated. Finishing an opponent's lifebar is worth 10,000 points. Stage bonus is calculated this way: Time bonus: number of seconds remaining * 1,000 points. Vitality bonus: undamaged lifebars are worth 50,000 each. damaged lifebars are worth (HP left * 200). The framerate of the game is 18.20678518 x 6, or approximately 109.25. Here's how bullet speed is determined, in this order: The base movement speed for a bullet, per frame, is 5 pixels. If the shooter is using SHOT SPEEDUP, add 2. If the opponent is using ENEMY SPDDOWN, subtract 2. IF the shooter is using HOMING SHOT, subtract 1. Here's how energy charges. On each frame, if the difference between a tank's target and actual positions is less than one frame, the player receives 0.1 energy points. When the player's opponent fires a shot, the player receives 2 energy points. The maximum possible amount of energy is 130 points. Other notes: - Life Up adds 24 points to the player's lifebar. - Homing shots will "home in" by one pixel every five frames. - I can't believe I typed all of this. Section 007. EVERYTHING ELSE ----- Go to the end of this section for additional notes on other things I mention in the next few paragraphs. The original version of DUEL--the first "real" game I ever programmed, apart from simple Commodore 64 math games and creations made with GameMaker--was programmed during my time at Mahopac High School and became somewhat of a short-lived pastime among my small "geek clique." The main differences were the text-based graphics (mode 0, 25 lines...very basic) and the fact that there were no special powers. Bullets moved extremely fast, so there was little avoidance and lots of attacking. I also had added Fatality-like finishing moves...ok, only one. It was funny-looking, exploding the victim into a mass of ASCII garbage. (I'd planned to add more.) In the end, DUEL was the pinnacle of our crappy little games, usually the butt of an inside joke also containing the word "pong." It was forever overshadowed by what was by far the most popular of my MHS creations: MHSChat. I did the second version during my time on CoRE at SUNY-Binghamton, and it was the first game in my PodArcade series, which ran freely in the Pseudopod public computer facility during open hours for several years: 1) DUEL: Shadow of the Darksiders Ver.B 2) Reverse 3) Nibbles2 4) Nibbles2 Gold Edition 5) MegaClick-3 The second version added special powers and had a lot more characters than the other two versions. Most of them, however, were pointless. =) The special powers in this version came in three different levels, as well. The problem: level 1 and 2 powers were mostly useless, and the winner of each round was usually the player that activated their level 3 power first. On the graphical side, it looked mostly the same as the first version, but the interface was a bit cleaner. Last, but not least, there were profiles and ending stories for each character. The final version, which I started while on CoRE but finished the year after I graduated, is more balanced (except for the Speedup damage glitch, of course) and looks a whole lot better. I removed all bits of story from the game, though, because the game just didn't do the characters justice IMHO. Overall, I'm happy with the final version of DUEL... my first game. I created a Pseudopod version, but it never reached the Pseudopod, which sadly no longer exists. ----- MHSChat: Hoo boy, this one raised some eyebrows and got me into some potential trouble. Mahopac High School ran Novell NetWare on top of DOS while I was there, from fall 1993 to spring 1997. I don't know what kind of hardware our server had, but the workstations were mostly 386s, with a bunch of "brand-new" 486SX/25 IBM diskless machines being the best we had. (Pentium upgrades came around the time I graduated. P90s, I think.) The "geek clique" knew how to drop out of the IBM shell to DOS. Someone figured it out and then it spread like wildfire. I forget the method, but it was something easy, like CTRL+BREAK at the right time. Really, the shell seemed to be nothing more than a collection of small programs and batch files. We all had our user accounts. I was Teplitska. They forgot the "y," and I didn't really care. My user directory was H:\TEPLITSK.A_\. Everybody had one, whether they realized it or not, and we all had full access rights to it, including the right to assign rights to other users. You could only play with this stuff from a DOS prompt, so nobody really knew or cared about this but us. But we played, oh yes we did. One of my little experiments was to create a chat program that used a small file in one of our user directories for communication. The language was QBASIC, of course. The method was simple: all users had read/write access to a particular user directory. If you type something and press ENTER, it writes it to a small text file in that directory (replacing whatever was there before). All the while, all connected clients are occasionally reading that same text file. If the contents of the file change, the latest text string is added to the "conversation" on the screen. That was it. Now I'm sure this sounds lame nowadays, but back then, the Internet was brand-new to most people. Online chat was something most of us had never seen. So, it was the coolest thing ever. Entire classes "tried" it. It was soon banned. Yes, it was that amazing. OK, it wasn't without its problems. The method was crude and didn't allow for much of anything else besides basic chat. Plus, if a computer tried to write to the text file while another was reading from it, the program would crash. It would also seem to crash at random times for no reason. =) But it was MHSChat, and I was on top of the world for a few weeks because of it. I'd started version 2.0, which had multiple room support and a few other additions, but it was never finished. A couple years after I graduated, NetWare was dumped in favor of Windows NT, and MHSChat was ancient history. --- PodArcade: I had a lot of fun in college, but some of the most fun I had was in creating games for others to play. Nothing describes the feeling I get when I see somebody else enjoying a creation of mine, whether it's DDR steps, something I wrote, or a game I wrote from scratch. I ran each of these for one semester on the Pseudopod's old Hewlett-Packard 486DX-2/66, with the exception of MegaClick-3, which ran for two years! 1) DUEL: Shadow of the Darksiders Ver.B - The second version of DUEL, described above. 2) Reverse - The concept of this game was to type groups of letters "in reverse" as quickly as possible. For example, abc = zyx, ydv = bwe. It started with single letters and plenty of time, and got harder later in the game. It only really caught on with one person (Andrew Cohen...thanks Andrew), and was easily the least popular of the games I created down there. 3) Nibbles2 - The first game I put in the Pseudopod that was actually really successful was Nibbles2. I would tell you about it here, but you can just go ahead and download it from my games section, so... uh, do that. 4) Nibbles2 Gold Edition - Nibbles2 Gold added several improvements: survival mode for one player, battle mode for two players, the ability to play the regular single-player levels cooperatively with someone else, and the ability to import levels created on the "home version" of Nibbles2 (nobody ever used that). 5) MegaClick-3 - I can't say anything about this that I haven't already. Go download the new one for Windows and enjoy. -end-