BLADE THRUST TACTICS 0.90 Readme File October 2009 Developer - Edy Kajang Website - www.bladethrusttactics.com Contact - edykajang@bladethrusttactics.com TABLE OF CONTENT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is Blade Thrust Tactics? Training, Campaign or Scenario Game Target Audience System Requirement Please Read This If You Can't Run The Game Playing The Game Keyboard Shortcut Read The Freaking Manual ( RTFM ) Shareware Game Game Performance Game Difficulty Interesting Dialogue Lines Unfinished Features Buggy Game? Technical Problem Mod-Friendly Game Legal Stuff Last Words Frequently Asked Question ( FAQ ) WHAT IS BLADE TRUST TACTICS? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blade Thrust Tactics is an isometric squad based tactical combat game with role-playing elements. The game allows you the chance to play the role of squad leader for Blade Thrust, a special operative squad working for the Alliance as part of their campaign to get rid the Idea Empire. The world of Core is a dangerous place to live. The Idea Empire had invaded the whole world several years ago creating a global autocratic police state empire. Since then, the people has lived in oppressive condition fearing for the Empire who mobilizes it own massive army throughout the world. Something must be done about it and that is why the Alliance, an underground paramilitary organization has been formed to fight the giant empire. Unfortunately, the Alliance lacks resources so it adopts unconventional warfare called guerilla warfare to fight the empire. This basically mean several small squads has been formed with the mission to attack soldiers throughout towns bit by bit until the soldiers give up. The good news is you are in charge of one of the squads and some of the best fighters will fight with you. The bad news is you'll start with weak weapon, supply and armour and you need money to persuade these fighters to work with you. You and your squad will have to fight the way to get rid hundreds of enemy in several towns that stands between you and the victory. It is not going to be easy. TRAINING, CAMPAIGN OR SCENARIO GAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are 3 game modes - training, campaign and scenario game. When you first playing the game, choose training game mode as it gives you step by step instruction on how to play the game. Follow the instruction until you have managed to kill your first enemy. Then, you can continue the mission or choose to play campaign game. Campaign game is the primary game mode for the game. You'll carry out 18 non-linear missions. Your squad has a complete freedom to go to any valid sector within town to carry out mission. In line with the concept of guerilla warfare, if any sector proves too hard for your squad, you can retreat and recontinue the mission later. Campaign game can only be played in solo (single player). Player can save the game at any time. For a much shorter gameplay and you want to have some serious challenges, scenario game allows you to carry out a mission taken from campaign game. You must finish it and you can't save the game. Currently scenario game can only be played in solo. There could be possibility to play scenario game through multiplayer LAN or Internet in the future. TARGET AUDIENCE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I specifically make this game for any player who has played isometric squad based tactical combat game such as Jagged Alliance 2 or Fallout Tactics. This game might also interest any player who has played isometric party based role-playing game with plenty of combat such as Fallout 1 - 2 or Icewind Dale 1 - 2. I've decided to use real time combat instead of turn based combat. This provide a new set of challenges for squad based game. This is possible and has already been implemented effectively in recent squad based games such as UFO series by ALTAR. My purpose for developing this game is to get as many target audience to play the game. That's why I choose to use real time combat which makes it much easier for player who aren't used to turn based combat. But this does not necessarily mean I neglected turn based combat. Convince to me why you think turn based combat is good to be included in this game. Who knows I might integrate turn based combat in upcoming release or patch. Anything is possible! SYSTEM REQUIREMENT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any recent Windows version can run the game from Windows 98 all the way to Windows Vista. The game requires different amount of memory based on game version or colour quality. The total memory limit has been set to 88 MB of your PC memory. This is how much memory the game is allowed to use. It will try to use any available video memory on video card before it switches to using system memory. So having plenty of video memory will make the game run smoother. PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU CAN'T RUN THE GAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q : I just install this game and it won't even starts when I try to run it. It gives error message and suggest me to reinstall the game. What gives? A : The most likely explanation is your computer does not have a specific file called msvcr90.dll. The game requires this file in order to run so if it can't found the file, the game won't start and gives error message. If you can't start the game, download Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package ( vcredist_x86.exe ) from this website. Once you have downloaded it, double click the application to install necessary file. Once you've done it, try to run the game again. It should be able to run right now. Fortunately with the release of version 0.90, the game no longer needed msvcr90.dll file so make sure to download the latest game version or patch from the game website. Q : I just install this game and it runs. But all I see is brown box with some texts on it. Then the game exit to Windows. What gives? A : The brown box with some texts on it shows that the game can't find the files it is supposed to run. If the game can't find the files, it automatically exits to Windows. Normally this happen if you install the game to non root directory such as c:\Program Files\BladeThrust. The game must be installed to any root directory ( c:\ to z:\ ) so it can find the files necessary to run the game. The solution is simple. Uninstall the game and then reinstall it to default directory ( c:\BladeThrust ) or any other root directory such as d:\BladeThrust. Then the problem will simply gone. By the way, did you still keep the installation file? Q : OK, I have that dll thingie on my computer. I couldn't be able to run Blade Thrust DD but Blade Thrust GDI runs OK. How to make Blade Thrust DD to run? A : This can happen if you download earlier version of the game such as version 0.86 or 0.87 and you have 24 bit graphics card. Fortunately this problem is simple to solve. If you have 24 bit colour graphics card and want to run Blade Thrust DD, you must at first run Blade Thrust GDI and set the game to run at 16 bit colour in Option Panel. Quit Blade Thrust GDI and then start Blade Thrust DD. Now you can run Blade Thrust DD in 16 bit colour. Realizing this problem, from version 0.88, the game will try to run at 16 bit colour for the first time so any PC with 24 bit colour graphics card will be able to run Blade Thrust DD for the first time. In the future, there could be option to run Blade Thrust DD in 24 bit colour. Q : Dude, this game crash way too much!!! A : This can happen if you run earlier version of Blade Thrust DD such as version 0.86 which you can download it from CNet Download or WareSeeker website. Fortunately, you can run Blade Thrust GDI which is much more stable than Blade Thrust DD. The catch is Blade Thrust GDI is much slower than Blade Thrust DD. There are ways to speed up Blade Thrust GDI which will be explained in later part of this FAQ. The other solution is to patch your version to recent version. Recent version fix many annoying crash problem found on earlier version and introduce many gameplay improvement that enhance the gaming experience. You can download the patch from the game website. Q : What is the difference between Blade Thrust DD or Blade Thrust GDI? Blade Thrust DD make use of Microsoft DirectX technology to draw graphics or play sounds on your computer. It's the prefered method of running the game as it make use of your computer graphics and sound hardware. Because of this, the game can run as fast your computer can allow it. However if your computer are having problem while running Blade Thrust DD, you can choose to run Blade Thrust GDI as the game use Windows code to draw graphics or play sounds on your computer. So it does not make use of your computer graphics and sound hardware. This in turns will affect the game performance. Generally speaking, Blade Thrust GDI is 2 times much slower than Blade Thrust DD. This is not as bad as it looks because Blade Thrust GDI is much more stable than Blade Thrust DD. If you have earlier version of Blade Thrust DD such as version 0.86 or 0.87, expect for the game to crash in certain condition. None of these crash happen in Blade Thrust GDI. Asides from game performance and the ability for Blade Thrust DD to run in full screen, both versions are almost identical in terms of gameplay. You can even simulate the effect of full screen in Blade Thrust GDI if you set your monitor to 800 X 600 resolution and you set the task bar to auto hide. Both version share the same save files so any campaign game you save in Blade Thrust GDI will be able to load in Blade Thrust DD without a problem or vice versa. Q : The game run too slow in Blade Thrust GDI. How to make it run fast? A : Blade Thrust GDI might runs slow if you set your PC to run in 24 or 32 bit colour. You can improve game performance by running the game in 16 bit colour at the expense of colour quality. The game might look grainy but the game runs much faster. In Blade Thrust GDI, click Option Button to bring up Option Panel. Click 16 bit colour radio button and click OK Button. You need to quit the game. Right click on desktop to bring up Display Properties. Click Setting tab to change colour quality. Choose Medium( 16 bit ) and restart the game. PLAYING THE GAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This info is important so read carefully. This is a mouse driven point and click game so you can click any button, object or creature in the game to interact with it. If you have play 2D strategy or role playing game before, you will be able to figure out how to play the game in short amount of time. You move the cursor, you click and stuff moves. On some occasion, you can also right click to execute alternative action. For instance, in the game world, you can right click any creature you see multiple times to cycle available action you can do to the creature such as talk, exchange place or give item. Aside from using mouse, you can also use keyboard shortcut to move your character ( use cursor key ). Although moving creature by keyboard looks cumbersome, it gives you the most precise control of where the character can go. Learning to effectively move creature by keyboard gives you an advantage especially in melee combat of which you can attack from behind. Take note that you can't execute click and drag action in this game. So you can't click and drag your mouse on the game world to form rectangle box to select multiple units. Sorry, that neat thing doesn't work in this game yet. You might be asking how to control multiple units if you can't select them. Although you can't select multiple units, you can set one of your squad member as a leader and the rest as follower. Whenever the leader moves to certain destination, the follower will try to follow the leader based on formation rule. Tactically this is a much better solution as it provide better cover fire. This setup only work in single player game. On that matter, you can't also click and drag item to move it. Instead, you need to click the item to highlight it and then click any slot to move it. At first, this is a little bit odd but once you get used it, you can move item VERY VERY fast. KEYBOARD SHORTCUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is now possible to control most aspect of the game with keyboard shortcut especially when interacting within the game world. All Panel/Screen ESC Exit the game. You'll go to End Screen. Press again Escape key to confirm your decision or Space bar if you change your mind. This is the game safety net if you accidently press Escape key. For multiplayer game, it terminate the multiplayer session and downgraded your game to single player session. Main View Panel UP Move selected squad member forward a tile LEFT Turn selected squad member left 45 degree RIGHT Turn selected squad member right 45 degree NUMPAD 8 Scroll up game world NUMPAD 4 Scroll left game world NUMPAD 6 Scroll right game world NUMPAD 2 Scroll down game world CONTROL Bring up cursor in front of chosen squad member SHIFT Cycle the next available cursor ( similar to right click on cursor ) ENTER Execute any action pointed related to the cursor F1 to F6 Select squad member ( only works in single player session ) HOME Access Main Menu Panel ( only works in single player session ) I Access Inventory Panel T Access Tactics Panel ( only works in single player session ) Q Access Squad Panel ( only works in single player session ) M Access Town Map Panel ( only works in campaign game ) O Access Option Panel ( only works in single player session ) SPACE Toggle pause the game ( only works in single player session ) X Centre view on selected squad member L Toggle accelerate time ( only works if there's no enemy in the sector ) + ( Numpad ) Toggle view object/creature behind wall 0 to 9 Send predefined message to other squad member ( only makes sense in multiplayer ) DELETE Activate chat input. Type the text and then press ENTER once finished. Main Menu Panel DOWN Next game tips, please! End Screen ESC Really exit the game. SPACE Go back to Main Menu Panel. READ THE FREAKING MANUAL ( RTFM ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although the game does have training/tutorial game mode, it does not cover the whole gameplay in the game. The training is good for newbie to get used to the game but if you want to take full advantage of the game, I'm afraid you have to read the manual. This is a little bit involved game so for your own sake, please read the manual ( bladeThrust.pdf ) found on the game folder. This isn't a run of the mill manual. It's the training manual for squad leader like you! It contains chock full of precious info on how to play the game effectively. While reading the training manual, you'll feel that you are a squad leader ready to initiate a war against your enemy, not an ordinary gamer playing the game in front of computer. This is my motto- read it then experience it. SHAREWARE GAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blade Thrust Tactics is a shareware game with no time limit on it. By default, the game is set to free version of which you can play 7 game levels of which all of them are carried out at Valour town. To play more game levels, you need to upgrade to full version. It is as simple as getting the activation key from me. If you are interested to upgrade to full version, check out the upgrade page on Start menu. The free version represent 33% of the game content of full version. There is no irritating time lock feature so you can play as many hours as possible. In addition, the game has high replayability factor because there's plenty of operatives to be played. Of course there is hidden Easter Eggs built into the game. I'm creating this stuff just to amuse myself during that tedious development time. If you can discover it, there's plenty of funny reference to several computer games, TV series and even anime! It also contain some interesting facts about the game itself. GAME PERFORMANCE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While playing the game, you'll notice 3 different numbers that change over time on the bottom right of Main View panel. The first and second number are y and x coordinate of the game level of which the cursor points to. This info is quite handy to determine the distance between your operative and the target. The third one refer to the theoritical max frame rate the game can render what's shown on the screen. The game doesn't actually render the max frame rate as the game has been locked to render at most 30 frame per second but the max frame rate number gives you an idea how many frame rate the game can render if it were given the chance. The number can fluctuate drastically depending on what shown on the screen. If the screen shows a lot of open space, the number can be very high. On the other hand, if the screen shows a lot of tight space with plenty of walls, the number can be low. It can even get very low especially if the screen takes place in higher elevation such as roof top or first floor. The number can tell you how fast your computer can run the game at certain colour quality. You can either run the game in 16 bit, 24 or 32 bit colour. If the number shows less than 30 frame rate when the screen shows a lot of tight space, the computer might not be good enough to run the game at that color quality. Switching to lower colour quality might improve the game performance. Generally speaking, you'll gain almost double performance if you switch from 32 bit to 16 bit colour quality. GAME DIFFICULTY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For a start, try Easy Game first to familiarize yourself with the interface and gameplay in the game. After playing the game for a while, then you could try Normal Game. Depending on your gaming style, this game could provide countless nightmare or give you sufficient challanges you've been looking for. On the good side, most aspect of this game is heavily documented. So if you find yourself bogged down by the complexity of the game, don't just give up! The solution is at your finger tips! Throughout your time playing the game, you might need to refer to: 1) The game now feature training mode of which basic stuff is explained in step by step approach. This is good when playing the game for the first time. 2) The game manual contain necessary information to play the game effectively. The combat section will give you an in-depth understanding of how the combat in the game works. 3) Tactics 101 on Main Menu Panel contains additional tactics details which can't be found in the game manual. It also gives you some idea of tactical options you never thought before. 4) The website. Operatives Section contain background files of all special operatives that you can hire. Mission Section contain recon details about target sectors of which mission is carried out. 5) Your patience. Sometimes this game can test your patience to the limit especially if your ops easily get butchered by soldiers. Just take a deep breath... Easy Game 1) Enemy suffer 25% penalty for all their skill. 2) Enemy have 25% chance to fire burst shots if the gun has the capability. 3) Enemy reaction time is 3 seconds. 4) Most item status or quantity has been set to around 90%. 5) Training cost for a new guerilla recruit is 500 Money (campaign game only). 6) New guerilla recruit starts with Rank 7 ( campaign game only ). 7) Both soldier and war machine only have 25% chance against guerilla attack ( campaign game only ). Normal Game 1) Enemy don't suffer any penalty for all their skill. 2) Enemy have 50% chance to fire burst shots if the gun has the capability. 3) Enemy reaction time is 2 seconds. 4) Most item status or quantity has been set to around 80%. 5) Training cost for a new guerilla recruit is 1000 Money (campaign game only). 6) New guerilla recruit starts with Rank 5 ( campaign game only ). 7) Both soldier and war machine have 50% chance against guerilla attack ( campaign game only ). Hard Game 1) Enemy gain 25% bonus for all their skill. 2) Enemy have 75% chance to fire burst shots if the gun has the capability. 3) Enemy reaction time is 1 second. 4) Most item status or quantity has been set to around 70%. 5) Training cost for a new guerilla recruit is 2000 Money (campaign game only). 6) New guerilla recruit starts with Rank 3 ( campaign game only ). 7) Both soldier and war machine have staggering 75% chance against guerilla attack ( campaign game only ). Since version 0.89, tactical combat has become significantly easier when playing early part of the game as enemy carry less powerful weapon that doesn't inflict too much of damage to your operative. As you progress through the game, enemy will use more powerful weapon to keep tactical combat more challenging. Keep an eye for burst fire from enemy. A successful burst fire from enemy can take major portion of your ops health especially on later part of the game. To make matter worse, enemy attack in group which mean a single ops can easily be killed by 2 enemies firing in burst in a single second. You have been warned! If you want to survive playing this game, the best idea is not to get seen by enemy. Remember this golden rule - if they can't see you then they can't do harm to you. Use isometric view to your advantage because once you see enemy, you can instantly see which direction the enemy is facing which defines their line of sight. So always try to stay behind their line of sight ALL THE TIME. If you keep following this tips, you'll finish the mission with minimum ops casualty. INTERESTING DIALOGUE LINES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Asides from detailed tactical combat experience, this game also features plenty of dialogue lines that you can read of which most of them can very interesting and sometimes funny. Unfortunately, most of these dialogue lines can be hidden from you if you play scenario game only, you keep using the same operatives from mission to mission and you just blasted enemies when you see them. If you get close enough to enemy, they can insult, intimidate, distract or even plead for their lives. If you have the chance, just stay close to them and listen to what they said. You never know what you can discover... Every enemy in the game ( excluding war machines ) have their own unique dialogue line which add certain atmosphere to the game. Most of what they said can very interesting, funny and sometimes annoying to read. You'll hear their confidence on early part of the game as they try to insult and intimidate you but as you progress through the game ( you have to upgrade to full version ), you will notice their low self-esteem as they try to distract or plead for their lives. UNFINISHED FEATURES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are some game features that I plan to include in the game but I couldn't be able to do it either because my lack of skill or I didin't find it too much of priority to implement at at this point. There's so much of thing I can only do so I hope you can understand. I definitely will try to implement these features in the future and release it as game patch. So don't forget to regularly check the website. 1) Multiplayer. This is one of the biggest game feature that I didn't implement it because I couldn't be able to figure out how to do it. I'm focusing too much of my effort on refining single player feature. I have written some multiplayer code for the game but there's plenty of design and implementation issues that need to be resolved. For multi player game, up to 6 players can participate in cooperative scenario game over LAN or Internet of which they will need to work as a team to eliminate computer enemy and completing other mission objectives. Any player who host the session carry the burden of squad leader. He can choose mission to carry out, game difficulty, mission time, entry point and can even choose items to equip to his squad members. Before mission starts, all players in the session can send chat text to each others to discuss some strategy to carry out the mission. Since squad leader holds decision on many aspect of the game, any player who join can send text chat to influence squad leader to change some of his decision. Once the game starts, if squad leader get killed, the whole session automatically terminated ( just like solo game ) including any players who join the session. So every player in the game has the responsibility to protect squad leader at any cost. To communicate with each other, player can send predefined text chat to all players in the squad. All this talk about multiplayer game sounds fun but it's too bad you can't play it right now. 2) The ability to attack enemy in different elevation. Currently your operatives can only attack enemy on the same elevation. Same thing for the enemy. This makes the game a litle bit easier as you don't have to worry about sniper on roof top pointing his gun towards your operatives. 3) Enemy don't have the ability to perform any throwing. 4) Item repair does not work both by your operative or trader so clicking on fix button on Talk Panel for trader does not work. But since weapon are abundant, this should not pose a big problem. So make a habit to loot the dead enemy. The only repair feature that work is when your operative try to fix broken jeep. BUGGY GAME? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The game was designed with the ultimate purpose to give you the feel of how to play the role of squad leader fighting guerilla warfare style against a strong opponent. This game is about how to make the best of little resources you have to achieve your purpose of eliminating your enemy. I called it micro-management to the extreme! To achieve this purpose, I have designed many gameplay elements that contribute to the purpose such as the ability to hire ops, collecting stuff from dead guy, selling items you've found on the battlefield, the concept of energy, the true portrayal of health, the effect of morale and most important could be true line of sight ( LOS ). These gameplay elements requires extensive programming code to achieve so it's natural that you'll find some bugs ( not the biological bug but code error/ flaw ) in the game. I don't want to give excuse for churning out sloppy game but with close to 62000 lines of codes to look at, bugs eventually slips ( they are so tiny even a misspell can screw lot of thing ). I will try my best to get rid of these bugs from time to time. My highest priority must be to fix the bug that crash the game. The benefits of putting more gameplay elements farly outweight the consequences of the bugs from the gameplay elements. If I didn't put these gameplay elements, then I believe the game might be flawed in its purpose. By the way, be sure to read bugList.txt file included on the game folder to find out bugs in the game that I've already solved. If you find yourself a bug that doesn't get listed in the file, report the bug to me through my e-mail. TECHNICAL PROBLEMS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you face technical problems while running the game, go to the Technical Support Section on the game website to read solutions to many technical problems found on the game. If you can't find the solution, then e-mail me your problem so I will try my best to solve it. MOD-FRIENDLY GAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm working on this game project myself for several years. Because of that, there's plenty of rough spot or imperfection throughout this game. I'm alone can't fix all of them so I've decided to make the game having the ability to be modified. You will able to modify certain objects in the game to make this game much better. There's plenty of other reasons why you want to modify this game. Probably you find the game too tough to handle so you want to modify the game to make it easier. You might also find that certain dialogue in the game are too offensive to read so you want to change it to more appropriate tone. You might also want to personalize this game to higher level by including your portrait or voice on the game. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To make the game mod-friendly, I intentionally make all the data, arts and sound files open content. Open content means you can do whatever you want with the files such as modifying it or even incorporating it to your works without asking for my permission as long as you make sure any works derived from the files are also open content. This usually mean you are not allowed to lock the file or claim the files belong to you ( proprietary ). If you can't follow the setup, then you have no right to make use of the files. If you're up for a challange, check out Mod Workshop Section on the game website. The section contain lots of info and tips on how you can modify certain objects in the game. The most important info could be details on the content of data files to make it easier for you to modify it. The section is also a great place to study how certain elements in the game works. If you want some exposure for your mod work, don't forget to send me e-mail to notify on your effort. I would like to see your mod work. If it's good, I would add a link to your website on the game website. This is good for both of us. You get your exposure and I can make the game more versatile. LEGAL STUFF -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blade Thrust Tactics is a shareware game with no time limit on it. By default, the game is set to free version of which you can play certain game levels. To play more game levels, you need to upgrade to full version. Details can be found on Upgrade page. If you agree to install this game, you are held responsible for any damages that might arises from playing this game. But rest assured I have taken my very best to ensure the game run the way it supposed to be. The game has been designed to run as a standalone application and it does not at all collect any information about your computer ( spyware ). Feel free to distribute this game on website or any other mean necessary. I would like to see this game gets into as many hands as possible. The more people playing this game, more feedback I will get which in turn really helps me to improve this game. This game is a copyrighted work with some right reserved. I reserve all rights for binary executables and PDF game manual of the game while making all data ( dat and map files ), art ( bmp files ) and sounds ( wav files ) open content. You are NOT ALLOWED to reverse engineer the executables in the game. This usually mean you CANNOT perform some sort of crack to the game which bypass registration system. Don't do this kind of stuff. Support indie developer community! On the other hand you can do whatever you want with all data, art and sound files in the game. You can modify it and even incorporate it into your work ( website, games or whatever ) without asking permission from me as long as you make sure any works derived from the files are also made open content. This usually mean you are not allowed to lock the file or claim the files belong to you ( proprietary ). If you can't follow the setup, then you have no right to make use of the files. LAST WORDS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you'll enjoy playing the game. If you like it, then you would do me a good favour by telling your friend about it. If you don't like it, e-mail me what feature you don't like about the game and your suggestion on how to improve it. Precious input from player like you will help me to improve this game over time. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION ( FAQ ) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q : Man, it's so easy for my ops getting killed! Why can't I save the game in scenario game? This thing keep bugging me... A : Yup, this is definitely the top question with regard to this game. If you're newbie to this kind of game, then seeing your ops easily getting killed over and over again can be a very frustating experience! I hope you're not giving up playing this game just for this challenge. If you play scenario game, it's OK for some of your ops getting injured or killed as long as the squad leader is still intact in one piece. Don't worry - they're spawnable. If they get killed in a mission, their service can be used in another mission. Just focus your attention on completing mission objectives. Don't get distracted by squad casualty. Scenario game is some sort of training tool for you to practice your tactical combat skill. By disabling save game feature, the game will force you to be smart in handling enemy. If your squad constantly being butchered by the soldiers, maybe you need to take a class in combat tactics. Just by carefully reading combat section of the game manual will reveal some of your weaknesses. Learning is fundamental to your success in this game! A good squad leader is a smart squad leader. You can't be smart if you don't learn something. If you can grasp this concept, you'll start enjoying this game a little bit better. No one will want to tell you this but I will - snipe, snipe and snipe. Shoot enemy from afar. Open the window from outside and start sniping. Even better if you can shoot them from behind their back. You'll start with a less powerful weapon, hunting rifle. This is a good enough weapon to do some sniping because it has good effective range. Q : One moment I see enemy then he suddenly disappear. Are they performing a magic trick? Why can't I see him? A : No, just because you can't see him doesn't necessarily mean he vanished. He is still there. The game use line of sight ( LOS ) calculation to determine whether creature can see certain creature or not. LOS calculation also take into consideration light factor. Your squad member can only see the enemy if the enemy falls within his/her LOS and the tile the enemy stands is not dark ( greater than 0.3 ). If the condition is met, the game will show the enemy to visualize the enemy fall within your squad memebr LOS. So it is possible for you to see anemy walking for awhile than he disappear! This is because the enemy is moving from the bright area to dark area. You can see this situation a lot during night mission or in underground level. A quick fix for this is if you put on night vision goggle on face slot which allow you to see any creature that hides in the dark spot. On the side note, you might need to use night vision google when you want to buy or sell item from certain trader in underground level. Otherwise, you can't see him which mean you can't trade with him which mean NO MONEY to you! Q : The enemy moves next to a wall. Now I can't see him! What to do? A : Yes, as this game use isometric view, it's quite normal for certain big object such as wall to overlapped other object or creature. So you'll quite often see wall to overlap creature. If you can't see creature that sits behind wall, press + on numpad keyboard will reveal the creature. Of course this is only work if the creature fall within your squad member line of sight ( LOS ). If the creature don't fall within your squad member LOS, pressing + didn't make the enemy appear. Q : I shoot this enemy 5 times. All of them missed. What gives? A : Maybe you've run out of luck. OK, that's a joke. Seriously speaking, whenever you fire a shot, the game will calculate your chance to hit ( CTH ). Then this CTH will be compared with a number that will be selected from chance list. If your CTH exceeds this number, then the shot can hit the enemy. The best thing you can do is manually calculate your CTH. Details can be found on game manual. If your CTH exceeds 88%, then the shot is guarenteed to hit no matter how far you are from the enemy. Most of the time you will never get this very high CTH especially during night mission. One more thing, if you get really close to enemy ( less than 4 tiles ), your shot will always hit the enemy. So you might want to sneak behind enemy and finish him/her off. Q : My attack didn't bring any damage to the enemy. Is this a bug? A : No, it is not a bug. It is possible for your attack not to bring any damage if you use weapon with low damage and the enemy wears strong armour. But the attack isn't that useless. Whenever you successfully hit enemy, your attack will definitely tear off enemy armour no matter how low the damage is. If you keep hitting enemy, then the armour will eventually break off. Then you can start seeing some damage. The exception to this is rock. It has such a very low damage that it never hurt enemy. Every weapon has its own damage value. In Inventory Panel, right click the weapon to view the weapon details. The damage number you see is the damage caused by the weapon WITHOUT taking into consideration enemy armour. Most of the time, the weapon cause less damage in battlefield as most enemies wear armour. But as you keep hitting the same enemy, you'll see the damage will become greater. So rifle fired on wounded enemy will bring more damage than if it is fired on healthy enemy. So don't be surprised to find out pistol can dish out more damage on critical enemy than rifle targeted on healthy enemy. Even punch can be deadly for any critical enemy. Q : My operatives keep butchered on this tricky area no matter how I try it. Any suggestion? A : Yes, there are some tricky area that might gives you a lot of trouble if you're not be careful. The area usually can only be accessed by door and there's plenty of enemy waiting to ambush your operatives if you open the door. If the area has window, you can open the window from outside and snipe the enemy. If you can't access the window especially if the area sits on first floor, you might need to blow part of the wall with TNT to distract the enemy. Q : I go to this sector and once my squad arrives at this sector, those damn war machines keep firing on my squad killing the squad leader. Then the mission ends. Can this game be that hard? A : Dude, sorry to hear your frustation. It is possible to face this eventual death if you are not being careful. Remember this is a tactical game so you must know beforehand the sector before you can carry out the mission. You can visit the game website to read recon details on the sector. Once you read the recon details, you can figure out which entry point is safe for your squad. The game has been designed in such a way that there must be at least one safe entry point for every sector. So, if you don't want to face the eventual death, choose the safe entry point for your squad. If you kind of lazy to read the recon details, you can do some trial and error. This might need you to keep playing the sector a few times before you get it right. Whenever your squad face eventual death, remember the entry point. The next time you play the sector, choose another entry point. As long as you don't quit the game, the game remember your last entry point so this is just a matter of clicking another entry point. Q : I want to open a door but the operative giving that crap he don't know where to go. Is there any solution to this problem? A : Of course there is a solution. If the operative is giving you that crap, he means he couldn't find the way to go to the tile next to the door. Let just call the tile as active tile. The path between him and the active tile is blocked by something. In this case, it could be the door itself. All you have to do is move the operative next to the door. This can be done by moving the cursor to the tile next to the door and left clicking the cursor. Once the operative stands next to the door, then there should no be problem to open it. Of course, this is assuming that the door is unlocked! You can apply this solution to any interactive object ( wall, window, cabinet, desk, ladder, stairs and even creature ). If the operative gives you crap, just move him next to object will solve most of the problem. Q : When I play campaign game, at some point the Alliance going broke so they couldn't pay for my credits. Because of that, I don't have enough credits to hire new operative. What can I do? A : Ah, don't you love this kind of challenge? It is possible to face this kind of situation. That's why you need to carry out mission that gives money to the Alliance much earlier - raid and supply line assault mission. If you do this, the Alliance will have some money to pay you on time. So it's a good idea to take a look at Mission Details Panel before you carry out any mission. Generally speaking, completing raid mission gives Alliance between 35000 to 45000 money. Completing supply line assault mission gives Alliance around 2000 Money every day for 60 days. Alternatively, you can use coin machine found at the Alliance base to deposit silver or gold coin your squad have into your account. You can get loads of coins by selling loots you've found on battlefield to trader at the Alliance base. Q : I finished killing all enemies in certain sector. When I want to go the base by clicking Map button, the Alliance told me that I need to dispose all bodies. I think I already dispose all the bodies I've seen. What gives? A : Are you sure you dispose all the bodies in the sector? Since the game use line of sight calculation, the body will only be shown if at least one of your squad member can see the body. It is possible to miss the body if you didn't pay attention to where each of enemy fall. Sometimes it is possible for injured enemy to flee to the edge of the game level and die of bleeding but due to the game quirkness, you can't access the body. There could be an option to delegate the body dispose job to Lady Junk men but you have to pay about 50 coins per body. Quite expensive huh? Q : I go to the Alliance base but I couldn't find any trader. What happen to them? A : They probably sleeping perhaps. If you go the Alliance base during night ( 1900 onwards ), you would not be able to find any trader because they leave the base during night. Just like real person, they also want some time to get rest, be with their family and hanging out at the bar. They can't just sit there at the base waiting for you all the time :) If you want to do some business with them, do it during daylight ( starts at 0700 ). Q : I heard cigarette can be found in this game but I couldn't be able to find it. Is it a just a game rumour? A : Cigarette has been tagged as rare item because it is considered banned substance ( along with meth pill ) in the game world as it is sold in black market. So you might find cigarette on some gangsters. Gangsters can only be found in the middle part of the game which mean you need to upgrade to full version to be able to find it. This is not some cheap ploy to encourage you to upgrade because although cigarette can improve morale, there are other substance such as anti depressant which can do the trick. Unfortunately, anti depressant also has been tagged as rare item. At least, doctor at the Alliance base do keep a few stock of them. So don't forget to check it out. Q : Who is this Gatekeeper in this game? What is the Link? A : Oh yes, you're very perceptive person. Gatekeeper is the connection between you and the game. He grants you access to the game session and monitor your progress in the game. If you want to pause, accelerate the game or some other special request ( cheat? ), the Gatekeeper will do it for you. So he has some power. Don't mess up with him. He can just kick you out of the game just like that. The Link is simply the game which in the nutshell is the connection to the game world called Core. While you're playing the game, you're creating the connection to the game world. If your character ( squad leader ) getting killed during the game, the connection is automatically terminated by Gatekeeper. That's why you can't see your character fall to the ground when he dies although you can see your operative getting killed. Yup, it's kind of like The Matrix.