Beam Tron Readme

BeamTron is a classic action game based on the lightcycle racing from the movie Tron. You’ll find it completely customizable and better than ever. The game runs on any Macintosh computer. A Power Macintosh or better is recommended for some of the more processor-intensive modes of play, but it works fine on most older computers too. Likewise, thousands of colors or better are recommended, but it certainly works in 256 and even black and white. This game is SHAREWARE, try before you buy. Registration information is in the game. Information: There are 4 players, each of which controls a “laser” that appears as a beam of light on the screen. These beams move at a constant speed and leave a trail behind them. They explode on collision with barriers such as the trail of any beam, even their own. The beams all begin at different locations in a sort of arena, the grid. The grid can be enclosed, meaning that touching the edges brings death, or it can wrap around, meaning touching an edge teleports a beam to the other side of the grid. Because the lasers leave a trail behind and must continue to move forward, the amount of space left on the grid decreases as the game continues. Your goal in controlling one of these lasers is to keep as much of that decreasing space to yourself as possible, while trying to force the other beams into colliding. When only one laser is left alive the winner receives points that determine who will eventually win the game and the beams all recharge to continue fighting on a new grid. At the start of each round, each laser and its name, type and/or key set will be displayed at its starting position, then the grid will be generated and the lasers will begin moving across it. At this point the game is going, so do your best to avoid collision. If you find it too easy or too difficult, you can change the speed to be faster or slower, or you can change any other settings you want to. In fact, there are so many different options that it would be a pain to abort the game, change a setting, then start a new game just to see what each option does. For this reason, you can begin a Practice Round during which options can be changed and the game will adjust so you can instantly see what the options do. If you want to, you can also set all but one laser to Inactive and practice maneuvering as the only laser on the grid. Controls: The four players that control the lasers can be either human or computer. A player can also be -1- inactive, or nonexistent. You can change who controls a laser with the “Players” menu. If a player is human, that player controls his/her laser with keys on the keyboard. The true fun of a game of Tron is being able to play against other people at a computer. Note that only player one may be a human-controlled player until you register. What exactly are the keyboard controls? There are 6 different key sets, each covering a part of the keyboard. Player 1’s contro…