                         Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom

                A Visual Pinball Table of the Apocalypse by
         Eala Dubh Sidhe, First Horseman (EalaDubh@btopenworld.com)
                                    and 
           Joe Entropy, Fourth Horseman (joe_entropy@hotmail.com)
                         Release 1.0, July 4, 2002


Thanks for downloading our table and taking time to read the doc. It took
me over a month to write, so your attention is appreciated.

As usual, please don’t modify any of the files in this zip without the 
express permission of the authors. Violators will _not_ have a hand reach 
down and lift them away from Cosmic Doom.


Release 1 notes
To get help with game-specific keystrokes at any time while the game is 
running, press F1.

As usual, we're missing the real sounds (Voltan uses the Lost World vintage
of sounds), but we've made due with sounds from the next generation of 
Bally games, for which the sound is reasonably well emulated in VPM.

Most of the options for this game are goofy, such as linking lanes, so I 
didn't bother with them. However, I added a few options, which (as always) 
can be modified in the table's properties file in the User directory.

DoAttractMode - When true (the default), a non-period attract mode is 
used. When false, the extremely boring but authentic attract mode is used.

UseModifiedRules - When true (the default), the game uses an alternate set 
of rules that we (mostly Eala) made up to make the game more playable. Do 
they? You be the judge... the most significant change is getting ABCD a 
second time during a ball awards an extra ball, and getting it a third 
time awards a special. Also, a 5 ball game resets the Planet bonus (Super 
and Jumbo bonuses are held). When false, the games original rules are 
used.

ExtraBallThreshold - One of the more arbitrary features of the game is the 
center target extra ball, which is lit every so often based on a number of 
bumper/slingshot/spinner hits. We've kept this feature, but the default 
interval is the game's maximum of 25 hits.

UseAsteroidsBGSound - The background sound (not authentic) has two modes: 
When true (the default), the pace of the sound is based on your bonus, and 
resets when you clear the bonus... not unlike the titular video game. When 
false, the background sound is reset at the start of the ball, and 
increases as you get more bonuses... so the longer you play, the faster it 
goes.


As usual, the 1979 vintage Boy-Joe high score is included, which most 
players will be able to crush in a ball or two. In fairness, we should 
point out that this was early in his pinball career, and he kinda sucked.

VPM fans will want to keep an eye out for the emulated version, which 
should follow this one soon. We figured out the rules for the game by 
loading the roms, then poking at them to see how it worked.
