This section describes how the GUI and menus work. Since programming advanced GUIs with Allegro is not so easy - standard C programming definitely lacks flexibility -, and also since it's somewhat hard for me to figure out what is user-friendly and what's not, Liquid War's menus are not always self-explanatory. I'll just try and do something better next time!
The map menu allows you to choose the map you are going to play on. A map is defined by 3 things:
In the middle of the screen, there is a preview of the level. In this menu, the values of the parameters can be independently changed by:
On each side of the preview, sliders allow you to choose the two textures. There is also a preview of each texture. Below this preview there are 128 little buttons which allow you to choose single colored textures.
This menu allows you to choose the teams which are going to play. There are 6 square zones in this menu. Each of them is associated to a team.
To activate a team, that is to say to add this team to the list of the teams which are playing, you have to click on one of the 12 colored buttons of this team. Then the zone representing the team should be colored whith the color you just clicked on.
To disable a team, just click on the dark button which is on the left of the 12 colored buttons.
You can toggle the "Human/Cpu" mode by clicking one the button which displays this info. If you read "Human", it means that the team will be controled by a player, but if you read "Cpu", it means that the computer will handle this team. And he will do it poorly, so remember that Liquid War is basically a multiplayer game, and that this cpu control is dedicated tobeginnersonly.
Below the 12 colored buttons, there are four buttons which allow you to choose your keys. Click on one of these buttons and then press the key you want to define. Joystick movements and buttons are considered as keys. You can disable the joystick with the button which is at the bottom left of the menu. Mouse input is also possible, and mouse movements are considered as keys too. To define mouse control, click on the button associated to the direction you want to control, and then move the mouse. Then the button should display something like "M->". Mouse sensibility can be set with the little slider at the bottom right of the menu.
Here you can choose the graphic options of the game.
The "Brightness" slider allows you to set the brightness of the game.
The "Menu res" slider allows you to set the resolution used by the menus. There are currently 5 possible values:
I personnaly think the menus look best with the 640x480 resolution, but some may prefer higher resolutions. Lower resolutions should only be used if you have problems using SVGA video modes.
The "Game res" slider allows you to set the resolution used during the game. The allowed values are the same than those for the menus. I recommend that you don't use resolution higher than 400x300, unless you have a 80786 running a 1GHz.
The "Fps limit" slider allows you to limit the number of frames per second. If this slider is set on the left, there won't be any limit, so Liquid War will repaint your screen each time the fighters move. But this can be a weird behaviour if your machine is really fast, for no one cares about 100 fps per second, one can not even see them... So this paramters limits the refreshment rate, so that there can be several logical moves of the fichters for only one screen refreshing. If it is set on its right, the display is limite to 10 fps, so you'll have to find your setting. I personnally set it right in the middle, and get 40 fps. If you press "F5", you'll get the number of frames per second, and if you press "F6", you'll get the number of logical moves per second. You can also press "F7" or "F8", and you will get the percentage of time your computer spends on calculating or displaying the level.
Page flipping can be toggled. It is up to you to decide wether you keep this option or not. The main disavantage of turning page flipping off is that the info bar and the battlefield can look rahter ugly if they overlap. But if you turn page flipping on you will not easily reach the 166 frames per second I sometimes get on small levels with my K6-225. I personnaly always turn page flipping off.
The viewport size defines how much of your screen will be used by the battlefield.
This section allows you to set the sound volumes. There are 4 sliders, which are:
This menu is the one where you can change the rules of the game.
The "Cursor speed" slider controls the speed of your cursor.
The "Army size" slider controls the amount of fighters there will be on the battlefield. The position of the slider reflects the amount of fighters of all the teams together. If there are 4 teams, then each player will have half as many fighters than if there had only been 2 teams.
The "Time" slider controls the time limit. The game will stop after this time is elapsed. You can pause the game by pressing the "F3" key.
By the way, an info bar can display the time left while you are playing. This info bar can be toggled during the game by pressing the "F1" key, and you can change its location by pressing the "F2" key. It also displays how many fighters there are in each team.
This is where the wave parameters are set. The waves are just a graphic effect, which is not really usefull. I don't often use waves, but I still think they can sometimes look nice. Change these parameters if you really mean to do it, but if you don't understand what they mean, it is really OK...
There are 4 different types of waves, each of them being defined by:
If you want to undestand what the "WX", "HY", "WY", and "HX" codes mean, try to pay with only one type of wave, the "Ampli" parameter of the 3 other types of wave being set to 0 (that is to say the slider is on its left position), and sea how it looks like.
The wave effects can be toggled during the game by pressing the "F4" key.
This menu allows the user to change the behaviour of the fighters.
The "Attack" slider sets the agressivity of the fighters. If it is set on the right, fighters eat each other very fast. If it is set on the left, it takes ages to fighters to change teams.
The "Defense" slider sets the capacity that the fighters have to regenerate themselves. The more it is on the right, the faster fighters regenerate.
The "New health" slider sets the health of the fighters which have just changed teams. The more it is on the left, the weaker these fighters will be.
The "Winner help" slider controls a parameter which causes fighters to attack with various strength depending on how many fighters belong to their team. Not very clear... Let's just say that:
The "Cpu strength" parameter never makes the computer more intelligent than a monkey. But if you set it on the right, it advantages the machine outrageously and fighters controlled by the cpu will be really strong. So to get rid of them you'll definitely need to be clever. Again and again, don't forget that Liquid War was conceived as a multiplayer game and that playing against the computer is not really an interesting thing to do.