Dandy Documentation

DANDY

DOCUMENTATION

DANDY is a 26 level dungeon adventure in which cooperation among players, rather than competition, is the key to success.  You and up to three more players must get past denizens of varying danger; you lose strength each time a monster rams you, and you must constantly stock up on food and then remember to replenish your strength by consuming food units when your health deteriorates.  Should you lose all strength, you wind up in limbo, but another player can revive you by shooting an arrow into one of the many hearts scattered throughout the dungeon.  If you are playing DANDY in the single player mode and your strength drops to zero---YOU ARE DEAD!!  Smartbombs can be picked up along the way and dropped at strategic times to wipe out all monsters in the area.  You will also need to pick up keys to unlock secured areas of each maze.  Once you explore a level, wiping out monsters and picking up all the money, you head for the "D" letter in the maze to be warped to the next level.

PLAYER STATUS DISPLAY

HEALTH:  A players health starts out at 90%, which is the maximum you can attain.  Being hit by monsters reduces your health by a percentage equal to the type of monster encountered.

FOOD:  A player may carry up to nine boxes of food.  Players start a game with no food.

BOMBS:  A player may carry up to nine smartbombs.  Players start a game with no smartbombs.

KEYS:  A player may carry up to nine keys.  Players start a game with no keys.

SCORE:  Each player has a six digit score on the right end of the status line.  Gathering treasure or killing monsters adds to this score.


While playing the game, the screen shows the section of the dungeon your team is currently exploring.  Each level is three screens high and three screens wide.  Stick together!  If one of your party wanders off the screen, nothing happens to him.  The off screen member just can't fire or see where he is going, until he rejoins the main group.

PLAY CHARACTERISTICS

Each player is represented on the screen by a little figure wearing a number.  Player one is a "1", player two is a "2" etc.

Arrows are fired with the joystick button and are used to kill the many monsters you will run into.  They do no harm to other members of your party.

To pick up objects, just move your player across them.

To maintain your health level you must eat food.  To do this, just press the number key on the keyboard that represents your on screen figure.  If you have any food, the number of food packages indicated on the status line for your figure will decrease by one, and your health level will increase to 90%.  NOTE: your health level will only decrease if you get rammed by a monster.

Smartbombs destroy all monsters and spawners visible on the screen.  At times, smartbombs are your only defense to keep from being overwhelmed by monsters.  To explode a smartbomb that is on the screen, just shoot it with an arrow.  To explode a smartbomb that you have picked up previously in your travels, hold down the SHIFT key and press your player number on the keyboard.  A little awkward, but you will get the hang of it.

Keys are needed to open locks, represented by keyholes. Pick up as many keys as you can find, and use them wisely. You can not get through a locked area without a key.

Pressing the SPACE BAR pauses the game.  To start again, just press the SPACE BAR once more.

THINGS YOU WILL ENCOUNTER

FOOD: will look like a box covered in a checkerboard pattern.

KEYS: look just like a key.

SMARTBOMBS: look like a miniature bomb.

EASY MONSTERS: look like a little marshmallow man. Can be killed with one shot.

MEDIUM MONSTERS: look like the dreaded happy face. These take two shots to kill. The first shot turns them into a marshmallow man. The second shot kills the marshmallow man.

HARD MONSTERS: look like a white box with a synical smile. Three shots are needed to kill these. First shot turns them into a happy face. Second shot turns happy face to marshmallow man. Third shot bumps him offs

SPAWNERS: the worst you will encounter because they actually create the other monsters, sometimes almost faster than you can kill them off.  SPAWNERS can be killed, thus preventing them from creating more monsters, but it's not easy.

SMALL SPAWNERS: look like a miniature skull and crossbones. They create the marshmallow men. One shot kills the small spawner.

MEDIUM SPAWNERS: are a little larger skull and crossbones. They create the happy faces. Shooting the medium spawner creates a small spawner. Hitting the small spawner will destroy it.

LARGE SPAWNERS: are the worst and hardest to kill. One reason is that they create the white smiling boxes, and they do it fast. Large spawners when hit turn into medium spawners. Hit the medium spawners and they turn into small spawners that can be killed with one further shot.

Spawners on a screen are a real problem. They continue to create monsters as long as they are on the screen. If you can scroll the screen so that they are out of sight, they quit making monsters.  Sometimes spawners and monsters can become so thick all at once that the only way to save yourself is with a smartbomb.  Use the smartbombs wisely, and then only as a last defense.

CREATING YOUR OWN DUNGEON

Boot up Dandy as far as the Copywright screen.  Remove the Dandy disk and place in the drive a blank formatted disk.  Press the space bar to get to the game menu.  At the game menu, press SELECT key until dungeon editor displays, and then press START.

Move the joystick around the screen.  You will see the character currently under the cursor displayed in the "indicated character" spot designated by the " "<---" " at the top of the screen.  To chose that character for placement in your new dungeon level, just press that character on the keyboard.  Then use your fire button on the joystick to place it where desired on the screen.

Dandy uses the current level to read or write a level design.  The "Level" indicator at eh bottom line tells you which level is the current one.  The "-" key moves you toward level "A" while the "=" moves you toward "Z".  Pressing "W" will write your new level to disk.  Pressing "R" reads a level from disk.  If level is not on disk, Dandy will create a blank level with just an up and down passage for you to edit.

PRINTING HARD COPY

Included on the disk is a Basic program called PRINTLEV.BAS.  This will print dungeon levels to your printer.

After running this file with your dungeon levels disk in the drive, the screen will prompt you asking which level you wish printed.  The "*" will print all levels.

Just type the level that you wish printed.  The program will read in that level and prompt you to ready your printer.  Press return and the printer begins.

LEVEL FORMAT

A dungeon level consists of 30 lines of 60 squares each.  Each character can be any one of sixteen items, so each byte of data in the file can represent two dungeon squares.

Have fun and experiment with this great game.  It can be as easy or challenging as you chose to make it.