                         "Tiler Tex Two" - PC Version V3.10

    This maze-type game requires an 80486-50 PC minimum.  An 80486-66, Pentium
computer or better is recommended.  It will run in Windows XP, but does so
very slowly.

    This game will *not* work with Windows NT.  Sorry.


                                 Instructions

    Well, the instructions are already in the game itself, but here's a run-
down:

    There are 16 levels to complete.  To pass a level, lay down tiles on every
square of the level.  Before you can lay down the tiles though, you have to
sweep the floor.  You have two helpers.  One has the broom and the other
carries the tiles.

    Touch the broom-like helper to get the broom, and the box to get the
tiles.  If you have tiles and touch the helper with the broom, you will
automatically switch to the broom.

    With a broom, when you move, you will clear the floor of loose debris.
Each swept square can then be covered with a tile when you touch the helper
that carries the tiles.

    There are also diamonds in the rooms that will give you extra points (your
score is in money).

    Yes, there is a way to die.  The lady who hired you forgot to deactivate
the security alarm.  A small, blinking square will move toward you.  This is
the sights of the security system, so it isn't stopped by walls.  The game's
original author has purposely made it hard to see to add difficulty to the
game.

    If the security alarm sights ever pass over you, you will be shot by a
phaser.  You only have 3 lives, but you can earn more by passing a level
without "dieing".  Note that if you have the Bonus Man option turned off, the
extra lives will not be awarded.

    To move to other rooms, sweep, tile, and get all the diamonds for that
room.

    The game also lets you make your own levels using TILER2ED, which should
be included with TILER2.EXE.  To run the levels you make, start up TILER2, and
press the [Tab] key at the title screen.

    If there are levels you've made that you'd like me to see, send them to:
Newson@37.com


                                  Game hints

1.  The blinking box can't hurt you when it's moving, so if you time it right,
    you can move right through it!  Watch the demo of Level 16 to see how.
    The strategy worked in the original game, too, as a bug.  I left this in
    here because the game is hard enough even *with* the bug!
2.  On higher levels, you'll need to let the Broom and the Tilebox overlap
    each other.  Let them chase you around, and eventually they'll separate.
3.  Every character in the game can't stop moving (or change direction) until
    they've completely moved one square.  Use this to your advantage!


                                    History

    Tiler Tex Two was originally made for an 8-bit computer from the 1980s
called the Tandy Color Computer, a.k.a. the TRS-80C.  The machine was
nicknamed the "CoCo".

    The "CoCo" version was written in 1988 by Mike Snyder, and released on T&D
Issue #82 in 1989.  The game used a 256x192 screen resolution in four colors
(blue, orange, white, and black).  All of the game's characters moved one
square at a time, rather than one pixel at time.  I had Mike Snyder's consent
to use his code to port the game to the PC.

    You can find the CoCo version at WWW.PROWLER-PRO.COM in .DSK format.


                                  Development

    I knew when I started making the port that I - even with 16 colors and a
higher resolution - could not duplicate the feel of the original game on the
PC.  I instead decided to make the game easier to play (giving it more smooth
action), make it more arcade-style (much like a mid-1980s Williams arcade
game), give it four self-running demos, and put a level editor in.

    After two or three months of work, I got tired of the project and moved on
to other things.  Every once in a while, I'd go back to running the unfinished
port and hate myself for not completing it.  I eventually got back to
finishing the program, and Version 1.00 of Tiler Two PC was completed and
released about a year after I started working on it.  That was without the
level editor, which the public wouldn't see until Version 2.0.

    Now it's version 3.10, with every feature I want except sound card
support.  Less than a year has gone by since I released Version 1.00, but it
seems much longer than that.  Every time it seems I won't update the game for
a few months, something happens and I'm improving it all over again.  Now,
Version 1.00 seems like ages ago, and I don't think I could go back to using
it even if I tried.


                             Version information

Version 1.00: Original version.  No level editor or Custom Levels support.
              Should run full speed on an 80486-100.

Version 2.00: Massive code changes.  The Level editor "Ed" (TILER2ED) was
              released with TILER2 V2.00, and Custom Level support was added.

Tiler2 V2.00 - The program's code was generally improved, and lots of code
               repetition was deleted.  Also replaced two occurences of
               PLAY"P64" with two commands to wait for Vertical Retrace.
               Minor screen-swapping bugs are fixed, and the Bonus Man
               option is now disabled when the player is beyond Level One.
               Changed copyright year from 1988 to 1989, its publish date.
               Due to code improvements, the game runs closer to full speed
               on slower machines.  Should run full speed on an 80486-80.

"Ed" V1.01:  Simple bugfix to the Level Editor.  One variable-related command
             was inserted, and the version number was changed.  The rest of
             of the code remains unaltered.

Tiler2 V3.00 - On slower computers, the speed in which the score is updated
               has been increased by storing the font of the numbers into an
               array for a PUT command (I can't believe it took me six
               months to come up with this idea!).  Now the program overlaps
               the image of the old score with the new score, rather than
               erasing the numbers and re-drawing them.  I fixed a bug with
               the sound so that the sound effects involving the Tile-laying
               and "diamond grabbing" weren't meshed together.  The game's
               absence of screen flashing on some video cards has been
               fixed.  The fading of the "dollar-sign border" is fixed.  The
               key scanning is now "Nintendo-like" using a Public Domain ML
               routine by the late Milo Sedlacek.  The message at the bottom
               of the title screen has "continue" changed to "play" when the
               game is on Level One.  A bug is fixed where the number of Men
               displayed overlapped the background when the amount of men was
               over nine.  The in-game code was moved closer to the beginning
               of the program to increase the speed on slower computers.  The
               game now runs full speed on an 80486-66 machine!  Yes!

"Ed" V2.00 - All game-related changes in Tiler Tex Two are also put into this
             code.

Tiler2 V3.10 - When holding down more than one arrow key at a time, the game
               will now allow Tex to move vertically as well as horizontally.
               Also worked around a really stupid bug in Windows 98 that kept
               having half the tiles in Tiler2 display without its gray
               border.

"Ed" V2.10 - Made the fix for vertical movement mentioned above, and enabled
             the loading and saving of individual levels, written to
             DUMMY.FIL.  Bug is fixed where you were dropped to Level One if
             you "died" in Test Mode.  "Ed" didn't have the Windows 98 bug
             that Tiler2 had, since it never dropped out of SCREEN 9 after
             loading the graphics (Tiler2 uses SCREEN 12 for the title
             screen).

Plans for future versions:

Add sound card support, hopefully with four sets of background music (Level 5
will play the music for Level 1, Level 6 will play the music from Level 2,
etc.).  I *might* add joystick support, but if enough people E-Mail a request
for this support, I'll change the "might" to a "will".  :-)

- Richard "Newson" Kelly.
