YE OLDE OFFICIALE PONG KOMBATE FAQE verison 4.0. (stuphed edition) By Stefan Gagne Welcome. Inside, you'll find bug explanations (not fixes; it's freeware and four years old, WYSIWYG...), all three secret guides, and other fun stuff. Remember, a pong by any other name is still a game with two paddles and a ball. But there are spoilers ahead, so if you're the type of guy who just loves to find secret moves, don't read beyond the bit labelled STRATEGY GUIDES... Pong Kombat is basically static right now and no more games are being developed. (We still own the liscense, so no funny making your own sequel.) INDEX 1. Will there be a sequel to the game? 2. What about the planned version 2.0? 3. You're going to hell for skimping out on the 2.0 promise, you know. 4. Can I develop PK2 instead? 5. I'm getting bugs in the audio. The game crashes on sound effects. 6. I'm getting bugs in the game, where it crashes on a black screen or gives errors after killing white paddle. 7. Where is Kano? 8. I've mailed you a snail-mail letter, and not gotten a response. 9. Can I still mail you for the guides? 10. Who is 'Dave'? 11. Pong Trivia A. STRATEGY GUIDE - SECRET MOVES B. STRATEGY GUIDE - SECRET CHARACTERS C. STRATEGY GUIDE - DIP SWITCHES -=- 1. Will there be a sequel to the game? There is a .00001% chance of a sequel. IE, hell no, unless lightning strikes me or I go insane. See, no matter what the credits look like, this is actually the REAL "Gagne Software" staff... Art, Coding, Public Affairs, Music, Sound, Debugging, Playtesting - me. End of list. Now, don't get me wrong... my friends contributed to the project (Dave is a godsend), but on the whole I'm doing the majority of the work, and since I'm not working professionally I can't maintain a steady, assured product line, such as a highly budgeted team of developers could. It's freeware; you get what you pay for. 2. What about the planned version 2.0? See question one. 2.0 had so many enhancements planned that it was practically a sequel. No more versions are gonna be made. 3. You're going to hell for skimping out on the 2.0 promise, you know. Well, maybe. BUSINESS ANSWER : I'm not being paid, so you can't complain. REAL ANSWER : I'm sorry it had to be that way, but I do have a life; there's more to life than PONG, man! There's also Quake. 4. Can I develop PK2/3/4/etc. instead? I've gotten dozens of requests from aspiring programmers to do this. As of this printing (Oct. 98) there was a 'Pong Kombat 2' made, but I have since lost track of the developers. They were also freeware hobbyists like myself. No further permissions will be granted, except for ports to other platforms, if asked beforehand. Cash bribes are also acceptable. 5. I'm getting bugs in the audio. The game crashes on sound effects. Here's the full scoop, technical details and all. VERSION 1.0 used the SPX_SND library. This was the built-in library that came with the graphics routines used in Pong Kombat. Now, no offense to the author of SPX, but this TPU sucks majorly. (Okay, SOME offense.) Instead of DMA transfers, it relies on computer speed and clock altering to playback the sample. For some reason, many computers just can't handle this. So, I asked Dave to code up a new sound engine for 1.5... VERSION 1.5 uses Dave's Butt-Kicking Assembly Loaders (TM). Now, these provide cleaner sound, at the RIGHT pitch, with no clicks! On SOME machines! The problem is that the information files we obtained to write the assembly didn't take into account PS/2 archetecture with the DMA ports, or Soundblaster version 1.0s, or a few other things we still haven't found. As a result, 1.5's sound works on only 40% of all known computers. For now, the NOSPEECH parameter is recommended. There is no patch beyond 1.5... we considered a 1.8, but didn't have the time to do it, and now a 1.8 is out of the question. 7. I'm getting bugs in the game, where it crashes on a black screen or gives errors after killing white paddle. I'm not sure if this is a bug in SPX or a failure of mine to unload the sprites, but somehow the memory has a hole in it. Something's not getting cleaned out, and after a long time at play, BOOM, it goes down. ARGH. I've gone over the code and can't find the hole, so I'm assuming library- fault for now. (Lord knows I found quite a few of these, so it's not an impossibility.) I've included a new animation and a NOSPEW parameter for version 1.5, which may help. 8. Where is Kano? Play 40 games and you'll see him. (If you can keep it from crashing. :) Alternatively, you can rename KOMBAT.GRA to KOMBAT.PCX. The joke comes from the gag where in MK2, playing 250 rounds lets you play Pong. Now reverse the games. :) 9. I've mailed you a snail-mail letter, and not gotten a response. I got swamped with real mail just as I was with E-Mail. I can't respond to all of them as I had originally planned :( Responding to none of them, actually, which is really depressing because often it's little seven year olds with glass hearts who will be waiting by the mailbox for years. Dammit, I wish I never wrote that smegging registration clause... 10. Can I still mail you for the guides? NO! That's what the point of this FAQ is, to get you the guides without flooding my mailbox. :) 11. Who is 'Dave'? David Hunt, aka Dave, is a fellow ex-high school bud of mine who helped with coding and debugging. He knows far more about computers than I, so whenever anything goes wrong, I just say 'I'll ask Dave'. He also has the first name of a famous night show host. 12. Pong Trivia - I got an A on the project. Thanks go out to Mr. McCain. - I can't tell you the name of the girl in the credits of version 1.0, because she'd kill me. (As stated.) She is aware of the picture and only slightly tolerant of it. - Pong spelled backwards is Gnop. - The entire game was written in about four weeks. - I got the Gravis Ultrasound promised on the On Computers radio show. I never got it to work properly. Sold it to Nick for twenty bucks and he had it up and running in twenty minutes. There is no justice. - I lost track of the amount of e-mail I was getting after it passed 500. I'm guessing it's well into the thousands and thousands range now. No exaggeration; I can't USE that mailbox anymore, and this was back before the Web was invented and the 'net was popularized! Yow. - This game was not sponsored by McDonald's. -=- SPOILERS AHOY -=- A. STRATEGY GUIDE - SECRET MOVES PONG KOMBAT SEKRETS (Oooh, how scary.) STAGE FATALITIES On the Pit stage, hit DOWN-DOWN-DOWN-DOWN as your fatality to send the opponent flying. On the Toxic River stage, hit UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN as your fatality to dunk them in acid. SPAMALITIES Secret fatality move... BUTTON+BUTTON+BUTTON+UP. Turns your opponent into bratwurst. MUST have a flawless victory to execute. PADDLE ABILITIES Secret moves and fatalities for each paddle. RED PADDLE ZAPPER : Shadow Paddle (DUBB) [Flings a shadow paddle across screen] FATALITY : Rips victim in two, spew, spew. (DDDB) ENDING : Becomes a movie success, but is deformed horribly and now works as a supervillian. BLUE PADDLE ZAPPER : Phase Ball (BBBB) [A blue energy ball travels quickly to opponent] FATALITY : Opponent paddle spirals down to the center of the screen, then goes SPLUT! (UBUB) ENDING : Tries to market a PK computer game, but makes it requre too much power and goes bankrupt. (Semi-subtle Srigin slam) YELLOW PADDLE ZAPPER : Sine Wave (UDUD) [Squiggly line] FATALITY : Dig Dug air pump explosion (DUDU) ENDING : Drinks himself into oblivion. They can't ALL be happy endings. GREEN PADDLE ZAPPER : Arrow (UDUB) [Says it all. Very fast] FATALTY : Shoots an arrow which impales paddle on side of screen. Blood. (DUDB) ENDING : Retires and becomes an award-winning novelist who writes recursive books. PURPLE PADDLE ZAPPER : Spinning Razor (UUUB) [Razor blade slides slowly downscreen] FATALITY : Razor slides behind the paddle... paddle falls into two long slices. (BUUU) ENDING : Takes over the world and causes armageddon. B. STRATEGY GUIDE - SECRET CHARACTERS PONG KOMBAT SEKRETS (Oooh, how scary.) SECRET CHARACTERS There are two major secret characters in the game, Monolith, and Shifter. Shifter gives no clues like Monolith does. TO FIGHT MONOLITH He speaks of a few clues, but here's the whole story... every now and then on a missed ball, Nick Steele pops out and goes 'WHOOPSIE!'. If he does this on the Portal stage, press DOWN and your BUTTON. You must press these AFTER!!!! the speech clip finishes... there is a split second timing type thing. There will be an evil laugh, and Nick will vanish. At the end of the match, win or lose, the last person to down+button to Nick gets to fight Monolith. There is a one in ten chance of Nick showing on a lost ball. Monolith almost never misses a shot, and has large, fast-moving stars as weapons. He is relatively hard to kill. TO FIGHT SHIFTER On the Throne Room stage, execute a SPAMALITY. Spamalities are the sequence BUTTON, BUTTON, BUTTON, UP after the announcer yells 'FINISH HIM!'. There will not be a siren, but the screen will clear and your opponent is turned into two slabs of luncheon meat. Notice that the tablecloth is the same pattern as the toilet bowl water. (NOTE : Spamalities REQUIRE a flawless victory, or else nothing will happen.) Shifter blends into his background and NEVER misses a shot. His weapons are extremely hard to see, fly quite fast, and quite often. He is insanely hard to kill, but if you're good enough to get a spamality, you're probably close enough... C. STRATEGY GUIDE - DIP SWITCHES PONG KOMBAT SEKRETS (Oooh, how scary.) TO ACCESS DIP MODE Type 'pongkomb DIP' to start the game. If you have a frame-rate change already stacked on the parameter line, use 'pongkomb speed x DIP'. Alter the switches with up and down on the keypad. Left and right selects a switch, and space leaves the screen. Switch flips aren't saved after you quit Pong Kombat. DIP SWITCHES and what they do. 1-comic advert on/off (default : off) Turns on and off the ad for FWLS Komiks and short stories. I installed the feature back when it looked like Komik would be out before Pong Kombat. No release date is set due to a NASTY bug. 2-fatality check on/off (default : on) Turns the blood on or off, except for Purple's weapon, which is drawn-in. I had to install this to qualify Pong Kombat as a school project. Kids, violence is evil. Bad! Bad! Stomp out violence! Kill all violent people! Maim! Dest... umm. But I digress. 3-taunts on/off (default : on) Shut Monolith up by clicking this to OFF. He can be annoying. 4-extra credits on/off (default : off) Flipping this on adds some more scanned photos of the staff that worked on the game to the end of the credits. Credits are shown after White Paddle's demise. 5-white first on/off (default : off) Turning this switch on will fast-forward the tournament mode right to white paddle. I used this to test the ending sequence.