 ________________________________________________________________________
  
   P H O E N I X   -   The ultimate (?) shoot-em-up for TI-85 and TI-86
  
                  Version 0.10 - Released September 5, 2000

        This program is in the public domain.  There is no warranty.
  
       E-Mail - pad@calc.org          Web Page - http://pad.calc.org/
 ________________________________________________________________________


 _____________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS

 1. Introduction ..................................................... 24  
 2. System requirements .............................................. 47
 3. Legal stuff ...................................................... 59  
 4. Instructions ..................................................... 80   
 5. Shop Items ...................................................... 108
 6. Contacting the Programmer ....................................... 149
 7. Version History ................................................. 181
 8. The Future ...................................................... 188

 _____________________________________ INTRODUCTION

Phoenix is a free/open source shoot-em-up style game for the TI-85 and
TI-86 calculators.  This game was written completely in Z80 assembly language
to fully take advantage of the calculator's capabilities.

Note that this is a early version of the game, so some of the planned
features are not yet present, and this version has far fewer levels than are
planned for the finished game.

If you want to obtain other calculator programs or learn more about TI
calculators, I would suggest visiting the web sites listed below.  They all
have large archives as well as help sections.  If you don't know how to
transfer programs to your calculator, or how to run them once you've
transferred them, you need to read their help pages to learn these things.

    http://www.ticalc.org/       ticalc.org
    http://www.calc.org/         Dimension-TI

Modification of this program is encouraged.  To facilitate this, I have
placed the program in public domain, and supplied another document,
'INTERNAL.TXT', which describes the internal workings of the program.

 _____________________________________ SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 

 For TI-85 users:
    * Usgard 1.5 (or above) must be installed
    * 6K of memory is needed to store the game

 For TI-86 users:
    * 6K of memory is needed to store the game
    * Works with ROM versions 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.6
      (There might be a problem with ROM 1.5; please contact me if you have
       this ROM version).

 _____________________________________ LEGAL STUFF

Since you did not pay me anything for the right to use this software, there
is no warranty of any kind.  This software has been tested, and at the time
of release the author was not aware of any serious problems with it.
However, there is still a possibility of unforeseen problems.  If you do
encounter any problems with this program, please inform me as soon as
possible (of course, I cannot guarantee that I will fix such problems).

This software is in the public domain, which means that it is not copyrighted
at all.  Thus you may use, copy, or modify it any way you want.

However, I would appreciate if you at least do the following if you are
making a modified version:

 - Don't restrict distribution of it
 - Supply source code
 - Give me a reasonable amount of credit
 - Make your version also public domain, or copyrighted under a license that
   still allows users to distibute modified versions freely 

 _____________________________________ INSTRUCTIONS

When you first run Phoenix, you will see the title screen.  This screen just
identifies the game, and gives you a small menu.  As you can probably tell,
F2 and F3 display additional information screens, and F1 starts the game.

When you press F1 to start the game, you next see the difficulty level
selection screen.  Press one of the indicated keys to choose a difficulty
level.  The main difference between difficulty levels is that you will get
less money to upgrade your ship with on harder levels.

After selecting a difficulty level, the game play will begin almost
immediately.  Your ship (an object which vaguely resembles the Greek letter
sigma (summation symbol) on its side) can be controlled by the cursor pad.
Normally, the ship has solid lines, but these will be changed to dotted lines
if your ship is nearly destroyed.

You can fire your weapon by pressing the 2nd key.  When you start the game,
you do not have auto-fire capability, so you must repeatedly press the 2nd
key to shoot multiple shots.  However, you can purchase a weapon upgrade that
gives you auto-fire capabilitiy; then, you only need to hold down the 2nd
key to fire rapidly (see the next section for more on purchasing upgrades).

You can select from among the available weapons with the function keys.
When you start the game, only the F1 weapon is available, but you can buy
additional weapons that are more powerful during the game.

At any time, you can press the EXIT key to quit immediately.  Pressing the
MORE key will save your current position in the game and then exit.  Gameplay
will resume immediately where you left off the next time your run Phoenix.

If you complete the entire game, the game will simply restart.

 _____________________________________ SHOP ITEMS

At certain points in the game, you will have the oppurtunity to enter the
Phoenix Shop where you can purchase various useful items.  You will only
enter the shop if you have some money.  You can collect money while
playing the game by moving your ship over it (the money is represented by $
and $$ symbols).  When you collect money, it is automatically teleported to
the First Intergalactic Bank so that you can easily spend it anywhere in the
universe.  You will not be allowed to purchase weapons you already have, or
buy extra shield when your shields are already full, so you don't need to
worry about wasting money by accidentally buying such things.

The following items are available at the Phoenix shop:

Price   Item                Description

 $100   Extra shield        This increases your shield strength by 1 step if
                            it has been damaged.

 $300   Weapon (F2)         Gives you the (F2) weapon, which fires two shots
                            at once.  These shots are equally destructive as
                            the default weapon, but move faster.

 $500   Weapon (F3)         Gives you the (F3) weapon, which fires three
                            shots at once.  The ones fired left and right are
                            1.5 times as destructive as the default weapon,
                            and the shot fired straight ahead is twice as
                            destructive as the default weapon

 $750   Weapon Upgrade      Gives you auto-fire capability, and upgrades the
                            standard (F1) weapon to double its power.

$1000   Weapon (F4)         Gives you the (F4) weapon.  This fires two shots
                            at a time, at angles moving sligtly left and
                            right, alternating between firing from the left
                            and right sides of your ship.  Each shot is 4
                            times as destructive as the default weapon.

$2000   Companion Ship      This gives you a companion ship.  This ship
                            will automatically follow your ship, and fire
                            its weapon against your enemies.  The shields of
                            the companion ship can't be recharged; they start
                            with the same power of the shields on your ship.
                            If the companion is damaged, you can replace it
                            with a new one by buying it again.  Its weapon is
                            5 times as powerful as your default weapon, and
                            fires about 4 times per second.

$3000   Weapon (F5)         Not yet implemented.

 _____________________________________ CONTACTING THE PROGRAMMER

If you find any bugs in this game or have suggestions or comments about it,
please tell me in E-Mail!  If you are writing to report a bug, please be
sure to tell me exactly what the problem is and describe exactly what you
did before the problem occured.  If you don't do so, it will be very hard
for me to tell what is going wrong!  You should also tell me which version
of Phoenix you have and which calulator you use in any mail you send me.
My main E-Mail address is:

        pad@calc.org

I will usually answer my E-Mail within a week.  If I don't, you can try to
write to one of my other addresses below.  I will not be replying from that
address, so if your E-Mail is set up to block all messages except those from
certain addressses, you'll have to send it to one of the other addresses and
un-block that address.  This sort of blocking has caused trouble for me
before since some people didn't even un-block the address they sent to.
The other addresses at which you can E-Mail me are:

        pad@ocf.berkeley.edu
        luezma@netscape.net
        ariwsi@rocketmail.com

You can always get the latest version of this game, as well as other
programs of mine, from my web page.  The addresses are:

        http://pad.calc.org/
        http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~pad/
        http://www.calweb.com/~kwdavids/patrick/
        http://surf.to/eeulplek/

 _____________________________________ VERSION HISTORY

 Version  Date       Bytes  Lines  Description

    0.01  28-Aug-00   4012   2926  First release
                                   Nine levels

    0.02  31-Aug-00   4202   3093  Implemented game saving
                                   Began to write internal documentation
                                   Circle/bar enemies shoot diagonally
                                   Fixed enemy movement bug
                                   Fixed TI-86 menu annoyance
                                   Fixed TI-86 down + left bug
                                   Added 3 levels
                                   Decreased amount of money dropped

    0.10   5-Sep-00   5627   4156  Optimized and improved collision detection
                                   TI-86 keyboard input more precise
                                   Now restores scrolling on TI-86
                                   Reduced auto-fire rate
                                   Decreased speed to 29 frames per second
                                   Implemented weapon 4
                                   Increased maximum player bullets to 16
                                   Implemented companion ship
                                   Implemented bouncing enemies
                                   Added 3 levels for them
                                   Implemented difficulty levels

 ______________________________________ THE FUTURE

As you can probably guess, there is quite a lot of work remaining to be
done for this game.  Version 1.00 of this game is expected to be somewhere
around 9000 bytes in size.  Features to be added for it should include:

- Implementing the last weapon
- Many new levels (total of about 30) with new enemy types
- High score table 

In addition to Phoenix, I do plan to develop several new games for both the
Z80 and 68K-based calculators.
