
    * PINBALL CONSTRUCTION SET *

INTRODUCTION:

  Pinball Construction Set gives you
complete control over the game of
pinball. You can quickly and easily
move parts around, change the scores
and sounds for all the targets, create
bonuses to shoot for, decide how heavy
to make the ball and how fast and
lively to make the game, even reshape
and repaint the board and the parts.
  There are 5 complete, ready to play
ideas about how to build good pinball games of your own.
  You build games by using a joystick
controlled hand. You use it to drag
parts from the parts box on to the
board and to board and to point to and
turn on the other powers at your
command.

BUILDING GAMES:

  The hand-which shows up in the upper
left hand corner of the screen whenever
you first turn your PCS on is one of
the most powerful game changing and
constructing tools under your PCS
command. You control the hand with your
joystick. Go ahead. Try it. Move the
hand around the screen to get a feel
for how to make it go where you want.
  Now move the hand over so that the
index finger touches one of the pinball
machine parts pictured just to the
right of the empty game board one of
the flippers maybe, in the top row, or
one of the round bumpers in the third
one. Next hold the button down on your
joystick and while you're holding it
down, "drag" the part out onto the
board with your computer hand. When you
want to let go, just release the
button. If you change your mind about a
part just drag it off the board and let
go.
  When yre ready to put the ball in
play, move your hand to the
ball-and-flipper picture in the middle
of the column on the far right the
display and press the joystick button
once (don't hold it down this time).
  Practice with your flippers and with
moving back and forth between "play"
and "contruct".

LOADING AND PLAYING A DEMO GAME:

  The pictures the right hand column of
the display are called icons. Move the
hand down now till it touches the disk
icon (it's on the bottom and press the
joystick button. When the new display
is in place, move the hand to the word
LOAD and press the button again. type
either DEMO1,2,3,4 or 5 (don't leave a
space between DEMO and the number) and
press Return. When the words INSERT
YOUR GAME DISK appear, press RETURN
again. Once the game has finished
loading, put the hand on PLAY GAME,
press the joystick button and play to
your heart's content - or at least
until your ready to load a different
game or try out some of the other PCS
commands. Then press SELECT and either
repeat the loading steps or read on for
more wonder still.

CHOOSING COLORS:

  Activate the paintbrush (5th from the
top) then move it down to one of the
colors just beneath it and press the
joystick button again. Now move the
paintbrush into the black area in DEMO1
and press the button once more. Presto.
Instant border color change and you can
change the color in the other two green
shapes just as easily. Simply move the
paintbrush inside each of them and
press the button again.
  If you try using the paintbrush to
change the color of the two slingshots
you'll discover that it doesn't work
there. In fact, except for polygons
(the parts on line 2 of the parts box),
the paintbrush icon has no effect on
readymade parts. But watch what happens
if you drag one of the slingshots
slowly across the board. See it
alternate between two colors? Thanks to
some oddness about high resolution
graphics on your computer, you can
choose between those two colors by
deciding where to put the piece.
  And what if you want a third color
for a ready made part? For that you
need the power in the magnifier icon,
described in the next section.

PAINTING DETAILS

  Activate the magnifier icon (it's
just below  "play" one) and your hand
will turn into a paintbrush. Now take
the brush up, and using it like a hand,
grab the small square in the upper left
hand corner of the board and drag it
around. Pull it across one of the
bumpers near the top of the DEMO1 while
watching the large square to the right
of the board.
  The image in the square is 7 times
the size of the one in the small
square. And whatever you do to the
image in the large square is
immediately reflected in the image in
the small one. Try it. First place the
small square on top of one of the
bumpers. (There are three ways to move
the square around: drag it; move the
paintbrush to where you'd like the
square to be and press the joystick
button; put the paintbrush on an edge
or corner of the large square, then
press the joystick button and hold it
down.)
  Now place the paintbrush on one of
the white rectangles in the large
square and press the joystick button.
Press it again to bring back the
rectangle you just erased. Press it
once more and this time hold it down
and move the paintbrush around in the
large square, erasing rectangles as you
go. Now take the paintbrush down, use
the joystick button to pick up a new
color, go back into the large square
and paint with the new color by holding
down the joystick button as you move
the paintbrush around.
  If you don't like your new design you
can always drag the bumper off the
board, erase the leftover paint smudge
with the magnifier paintbrush, then
drag a new bumper on in its place. (Use
QUIT to get the parts box back. To
learn how to take unusual advantage of
paint "smudges", see Special Effects).
  Because the high resolution graphics
in your computer are a bit strange you
will often be surprised at first by
what happens when you try to draw new
designs and erase old ones. Just be
patient and you can usually solve the
problem to your satisfaction. Sometimes
the grid(just the left of "quit") can
be helpful. To turn it on, touch it
with the paintbrush and press the
joystick button. Do the same to turn it
off. (the black and white symbol-for
use when you don't have a color
monitor-turns on and off in this same
way.)
  The magnifier can also be used to
paint in the area above the large
square, to the right of the
board-a-perfect place to use a fancy
script to give your pinball games
names. (It's like the real pinball
machine-the part called the "back
glass"-where the score kept.) For ideas
about how to decorate your boards and
created fancy back glass designs, study
the other Demo games on your PCSdisk,
especially the higher numbered ones.

CREATING NEW SHAPES:

  One of the most powerful and
spectacular PCS command sets makes use
of the arrow, scissors and hammer icons
near the top of the icon column, and
the polygons. Use the hand to drag the
square polygon onto the board.(you'll
notice that only the corners of the
square actually come out onto the
playing surface.) Now get the regular
paintbrush, pick up a color with it,
place it in the center of the square
and press the joystick button. Presto,
a solid square.
you can use the arrow, hammer and
scissors to reshape your square into
more interesting and useful forms. For
instance, activate the arrow and then
use it to drag one of the corners of
your square to a new location. Don't
like that shape? Drag another corner
somewhere else.(you can also reshape
your game border by dragging around the
"corners" that show up in it when you
activate the arrow. Don't be afraid of
mistakes. You can always go back to the
disk icon and reload the game.)
  Tired of working with a shape with 4
corners? Go get the scissors, touch
them to a corner and press the joick
button to create an instant triangle.
Want more corners so you can make a
shape with some curve to it? Go get the
hammer,put it between two "corners" and
press the joystick button. Repeat the
process until you have enough "corners"
to make the shape you're interested
in. (For fast shaping, use the hammer
to move "corners" as well as to add
them.)
  There's really only one rule: don't
overlap or twist shapes. Doing so makes
the ball interact strangely with the
shape and may interfere with the wiring
tools described in the Setting Sound
and Score Values section. Otherwise
your imagination's your only limit. And
remember, if things should get out of
hand, not to worry. Just drag the mess
off the board with the hand and start
over with a new square.
  The straight vertical lines and
jagged diagonal ones next to the square
in the parts box are also polygons,
just very skinny ones. Stretching one
out to make something like the long
ball chute on DEMO1 can be very tricky
if you forget that the line is a
polygon, easy if you remember.
Sometimes it's easiest if you draw the
line you want with the first corner you
move. You can then move the second
corner out to the side as if you were
making a fatter shape, bring it up till
it's level with its mate, and finally
move it back till the line's back to
its original width.

SETTING GRAVITY, BOUNCE, KICK & SPEED:

  Activating the world icon (just below
the magnifier) causes the parts box to
be replaced with four gauges, each with
its own marker. Using the hand to drag
markers up and down decreases and
increases the force or condition the
scale represents. Try it. Move the
gravity marker to the botton of its
scale then select QUIT and go back and
try out a ball. Too heavy, activate the
world icon, decrease gravity a notch,
then try again.
  Gravity determines how heavy a ball
is; speed, how fast it moves; kick, how
strong the bumpers are and elasticity
how "bouncy" the sides, flippers and
any shapes you've fashioned are.

SETTING SOUND AND SCORE VALUES:

  The AND gate icon is located just
above the disk icon. To a computer
designer, an AND gate is an arrangement
of swithces that will let electricity
flow through only if all the switchs in
the gate are on. In your PCS, the AND
gate icon lets you hook targets
together so that a bonus is awarded
only after all the targets have been
hit and turned on. It also lets you
change the sound and score for each
individual target, bumper, etc. on 
game board.
  Activate the AND gate icon with DEMO1
loaded. Move the hand out onto the new
display, touch one of the bumpers and
press the joystick button. The sound
you hear (so
par no. 1, as the white
square in the note list shows) is made
each timee ball hits the bumper. And,
as the score list shows, each ball
strike scores 10 points.
  To change either score or so
nd just
point to the value you want and press
the joystick button. If you want no
score and/or no sound, hold the
joystick button down and slide the
marker off the bottom of the list. To
find out what the default values for
the other targets are and to change
them if you like, touch each in turn
and press the joystick button.
("Default value" is a useful computer
term which means "what the value is
unless you do something to change it.)
  Bonuses are created by turning on AND
gates with the hand and using the
scrwdriver and pliers to connect and
disconnect wires between targets and
the AND gate symbols.(As many as three
targets can be attached to each
symbol.) Move the hand up now to the
top AND gate symbol in DEMO1 and press
the joystick button. The wiring diagram
you now see on the display means "each
time you turn on both of the bottom
rollover targets, you get a bonus of
10,000 points". To change matters so
you get the bonus just for turning on
the left rollover, go get the pliers,
touch them to the right target and
press the joystick button. To reconnect
the wire, go get the screwdriver, touch
the right target and press the joystick
button again.
  None of the other AND gate symbols in
DEMO1 come wired to any targets. For
some practice and a look at how bonus
changes affect the scores you get, try
wiring one or two of them and playing a
little.
  When you wire targets to an AND gate,
they visibly turn on when hit and stay
on until their fellow targets are hit
as well, or until the game ends. In a
multi-player game, each player's bonus
target status is kept separately, so no
one gets to luck out by hitting the
last target afte you had worked so hard
to hit the first 2. And BonusX goes
back to 1 at the end of every ball. (It
never goes higher than 5 for every
ball.)

SAVING AND LOADING YOUR WORK:

  Activating the disk icon(on the
bottom) gives you power to load and
play the five Demo games that come on
your PCS disk. It also lets you use one
of your own disks to save games you're
working on and games you've finished.
And finally it lets you use a "Make
Game" command to create game disks your
friends or enemies can use even if they
don't have a PCS disk.
  To load or save a game, activate the
disk icon, point to the command you
want and press the joystick button, use
your keyboard to type in the game's
name, then press Return. If you're
loading a DEMO game, ignore the INSERT
YOUR GAME DISK message and press Return
again. Otherwise do as the message says
first.(Note:Don't forget the blank
disks must be initialized-by following
the instructions that came with your
drive)
  If you want to play the game you
made, activate the "Play Game" command,
reinsert the PCS disk when the prompt
tells you to and press Return once
more. If instead you want to work on
the game, use Select to get the parts
box back.
  Games saved with the "Save" command
take up very little space on your
disk-you can get more than 40 to a
side. On the other hand, games saved
with "Make Game" take up more then 10
times as much room because of the
program instructions.

That's the bulk of the instructions,
enjoy playing this fantastic
game.....PHIL 1/31/85

