1. Game Overview

Welcome to Sky Ranger training. This will take you through the basics of how to fly the Sky Ranger ship; what to do and, more importantly, what you have to avoid.

Here are the most important points:
You have been equipped with an Image Enhancer to allow you to see the enemies. It also allows you to see the state of any of the buildings in the city by their colour. However, it can make negotiating the buildings deep in the city more difficult.

Once inside the city, your height is restricted to keep you below the eye of the enemy command post. Once you have destroyed all the enemies within the city the command post will no longer be able to detect you and you will be located and lifted out. Your altimeter shows you the maximum height you can attain before the safety mechanisms will restrict any more lift.

Try not to destroy the buildings instead of the enemy.

Clear up the enemy before they destroy the city...


1.1 Flying the ship

There are two types of control methods that can be used to fly the ship; Modern and Old School. Modern controls allow you to control the heading and pitch of the ship and then accelerate (or reverse) in the direction you are facing. There are limits to the amount of pitch you can give the ship which you will have to deal with; even a Sky Ranger helicopter will not loop-the-loop, despite what you may have seen in the movies.

Old School controls represent the way the older Sky Ranger units worked when the Watchers went out of control all those years ago. The Torque allows you to control the speed of your ascend or descend and you can then accelerate or decelerate in the direction you are facing.

Auto-pilot - This will take control of the ship to get you under vision of the enemy command post when entering the rear of the city. If you should collide with a building the Auto-pilot will take control of the ship to slow down the ship to a halt. Once a city has been cleared, then your ship will be located and the Auto-pilot will fly you out.

1.2 Taking care of the Enemy

The enemy you are facing has required the tech boys to build the most destructive gun they could develop. Its required to penetrate the enemies hide and an accurate shot will send them straight to hell. However, it also does no favours to anything else it hits, so try and avoid hitting the buildings. The closer they are to you, the quicker this weapon will heat them to the point of collapse.

The range of the weapon allows you to take out any of the enemy that are shown on your radar.

The state of any building can be determined by the colour as shown through the image enhancer. Buildings get lighter as they are struck by the enemies. The buildings hit by the Sky Ranger's weapon will show the current heat that the building is sustaining; the brighter it is, the closer it is to collapsing.

1.3 Taking care of the Sky Ranger ship

Don't ram any buildings, they will hurt the ship far more than the ship will hurt the building, especially if you're going quickly. The auto-pilot will kick in to reset the ship to a controllable state if you collide with one. The damage indicator shows how much of a beating the ship can take - if that indicator goes into the red and reaches the top, its Goodnight Vienna.

Try and avoid getting too close to the enemies. Even though your ship has been armoured to negate the effect of their touch, if you manage to collide then, depending on their speed and yours at the time, they could do you some serious damage.

1.4 Fuelling the Sky Ranger ship

There's only so much the ship can carry, so keep an eye on your fuel. You can land on buildings, but it doesn't stop the rotors going round, so there will still be some consumption. While you are zooming around the city, you will use more fuel the faster you fly.

We will set up a fuel depot on the lowest building in the city before you arrive. This is the least likely to get destroyed by the enemies. If it does, or you end up destroying it yourself, you had better hope you clear up the enemy before your ship runs dry. The Sky Ranger HUD has a red arrow around the target reticule showing you the direction to the fuel depot. You can see the depot building by the four spinning red markers on the roof.

1.5 Landing the Sky Ranger ship

The boys will refill the Sky Ranger as soon as you land on the fuel depot roof. In order to land keep the following in mind:

For modern controls, come in at a low pitch and slow speed. If you come in too fast you'll bounce off damaging the ship. As soon as you land on the depot, you'll be filled up again.
For the Old School controls, drop the ship to the roof, but not too fast.

1.6 Your objective

Clear the city before the enemies destroy it.


2. Screen Overview



3. Game Details

3.1 Gameplay

3.1.1 HUD

The HUD displays the following:
NameDescription
Target ReticuleAnything in the centre of the reticule will be hit by the ships weapons if its close enough
Fuel Depot LocatorShows the direction to the Fuel Depot to allow the ship to refuel
LivesIndicators showing the number of lives left
Enemies LeftIndicators showing the number of enemies left
AltimeterShows the current height of the ship and the maximum and minimum heights allowed
RadarShows the enemies around the ship that are close enough to be destroyed
Direction RingIndicates the direction the ship is facing
SpeedShows the current speed; clockwise for forward and anti-clockwise for reverse
PitchShows the current Pitch of the ship
FuelCurrent fuel amount - lowers as fuel is used
DamageDamage taken - rises as damage occurs to the ship

3.1.2 Building Damage

The buildings will reflect the damage being done to them in two distinct ways. Any damage inflicted by an enemy will cause the building to lighten until it reaches white, whereupon it will collapse.

If the ship weapon hits the building, it will reflect the heat damage caused. Once it reaches bright red, the building will collapse. The farther you are from a building the less damage you will do.

3.1.3 Enemies

The enemies will fly at various speeds, but will get quicker as each city progresses. The size to which an enemy grows and shrinks will also diminish as the cities are cleared. Enemies can attach themselves to a building causing maximum damage, so if you are trying to locate an enemy off the radar, look for buildings getting lighter.

Remember that the distance off the Sky Ranger's weapon is shown by the radar, if you can see an enemy, it does not necessarily mean you are close enough to shoot it.

3.1.4 Scoring

The scoring will reflect a lack of accuracy and delay as well as reward for destroying enemies and clearing the city. Your score will have points deducted for hitting buildings with the Sky Ranger weapon and more so if you destroy it; how large a building it is will also be reflected. Each building that the enemies destroy before you clear them up will also reduce your score. Points are awarded for destroying the enemies (the quicker the enemy moves, the more points you are awarded) and a bonus given for clearing the city.

3.1.5 Rating

The game will keep track of how you are doing and give a rating after a city has been cleared. They might not be very grateful of getting rid of the enemies if half the city has been destroyed in the process...

After the game has ended, your overall rating will be given.

3.1.6 High Scores

If you have gone above and beyond and accumulated a High Score, then you can enter your initials to be stored on the High Score table along with the number of cities you've cleared and your overall rating.

3.2 Control Methods

3.2.1 Keyboard

There are two control schemes for keyboard control; Modern and Old School. The default keys for the ship are as follows:
KeyModernOld School*
LeftTurn Left
RightTurn Right
UpPitch ForwardTorque Increase
DownPitch BackTorque Decrease
Page UpAccelerate
Page DownDecelerate
EndStop
SpaceFire


The keys can be defined to your personal preference. You can also select the sensitivity of the controls to determine how quickly you would like the ship to turn - see below for more details.

Acceleration increases your speed and will remain constant until you decelerate the ship or hit the 'Stop' key to come to an immediate halt. If you collide with a building the ship's Auto-pilot will bring the ship to a halt. Decelerating from a stop position will put the ship into reverse.

Old School specifics
The 'Torque Increase' lifts your ship and visa-versa and is only active while the key is held down, once you let go the key, the torque will shift back to hover.

'Accelerate' with Old School controls will pitch your ship forward and the 'Decelerate' will pitch the ship back. This can be used to help shoot enemies above or below the ship, but this would have to be considered an advanced technique and is tricky to master.

3.2.2 Mouse

The use of a mouse can be selected from the Controls menu; this will allow you to control the ship with one hand.
MouseModernOld School*
LeftTurn Left
RightTurn Right
ForwardPitch ForwardTorque Increase
BackPitch BackTorque Decrease
Left ButtonFire
Right ButtonAccelerate


The controls have been modified to allow the ship to be controlled using a mouse with no keyboard interaction. The main difference is with the 'Accelerate' control.

The ship will accelerate for as long as you hold down the Right Mouse button and will decelerate when it is let go.

You can also select the sensitivity of the controls to determine how quickly you would like the ship to turn - see below for more details.


3.3 Game Options

3.3.1 Difficulty

There are three different difficulty settings. This will control the initial difficulty of the game and how quickly the difficuly rises after each city is cleared. It affects the speed and sizing of the enemies, fuel consumption and damage that is taken both by yourself and the buildings.

NOTE: If you are playing on Hard, then hitting a building wipes out the ship as in the original game.

3.3.2 Number of Lives

You can elect to play the game with 3, 4 or 5 lives available.

3.3.3 Classic Game Mode

The game can be made to play akin to the original Sky Ranger by selecting 'Classic Mode' (as opposed to 'Modern') from the Options menu. This entails that you will have to track down one enemy at a time as opposed to taking them all on at the same time.

3.3.4 System

There are two options to choose depending on the type of PC you are running on. The High Speed PC runs the game at 800x600 resolution, while the Low Speed PC runs the game at 640x480. This will affect how quickly the game runs.

3.3.5 Sensitivity

The sensitivity of the controls in the game can be adjusted for preference. The settings are Normal, Fine or Coarse.

Keyboard
This adjusts the granularity of the heading shift; ie. turning Left or Right. Fine control is slower, but allows for more accurate long distance firing; whereas Coarse moves quicker but can create issues with firin into the distance.

Mouse
When using a mouse, the sensitivity simply controls the speed of movement in either heading or pitch.

4. Miscellaneous Settings

4.1 Configuration file

All of the settings within the game will be saved upon exiting. This includes the menu settings and the user defined keys. There are also other options which can be changed directly in the file - with care - that are documented below.

4.1.1 Frames Per Second (FPS)

Due to the large differentials between PCs, the maximum Frames Per Second can be set from within the Configuration file. It is initially set to 30fps which is the speed the game is meant to run at, but you can raise or lower this to affect the overall speed of the game to your liking.

The FPS can also be displayed on the screen by either pressing 'Shift+F2' or setting the 'ShowFPS' option to '1' (one) in the configuration file.

NOTE: On one (and only one) PC tried, the fps topped out at 22fps when the library was set to 30fps; and when raised to 40fps in the configuration file the game ran at 33fps. Just in case the game is running too slowly on your machine, try raising the fps value in the configuration file.

4.1.2 Mouse movement

The mouse movement in the game can be adjusted through the 'Mouse Ratio' setting. The value can be increased for an overall slower movement, or decreased to speed up the movement.

5. Summary

This game is a remake of Sky Ranger from Microsphere and it originally appeared on the ZX Spectrum 48K in 1986. The game can be found at:
Original Sky Ranger game on World of Spectrum
This remake has been written in C using the Allegro library. The 3d graphics have been created using software rendering with the Allegro 3d maths library. The building blocks are from a base library built for the game to create and explode rectangles, quads, pyramids and control a camera; it could be released for general consumption if anybody actually wants to use it.

Sky Ranger has been written for the Retro Remakes 2006 competition.


Thanks for reading,
Roddy McNeill