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Instructions

Prologue

The year is 3002. In 2999 the Earth comes under attack from a powerful alien force; The Imperial Alliance. The Earth's defence forces are helpless against the onlaught and only the prototype space battleship; X-Bomber stands in the way of Earth's annihalation. The Alliance was narrowly defeated and X-Bomber leaves Earth in search of F-01; a legendary power capable of destroying the Alliance for good.

F-01 was discovered and the Alliance's space fortress was finally destroyed but not before terrible damage was wrought upon the Earth.

The Alliance's retreat from Earth's solar system and surrounding territories liberated several of Earth's neighbours. In recent months, Earth has developed peaceful relations with a planet called Simetra, left barren by after countless years of Alliance tyranny.

The process of rebuilding what the Alliance destroyed is underway.

6 hours ago, Earth's newly established Alpha Proxima Base reported an approaching Alliance Fleet then contact was lost. The Alliance has returned for revenge. X-Bomber, fully overhauled after its year-long mission, escorting 3 transport cruisers to Simetra, is the only warship within range to deal with the threat.

and it is here that our story begins...

X-Bomber the Game follows on where the TV series left off as X-Bomber's refit is completed and her crew are brought back together after their early 'retirement' to deal with the resurging Alliance threat. Your job is to pilot X-Bomber, destroying waves of enemy ships, on a frantic quest to save the Galaxy once more, grabbing Power-ups, dishing out excessive firepower and, of course, making lots and lots of things explode.

System Requirements

Operating System

Windows 2000, XP or later (64 or 32-bit)

DirectX

9 (9.0c is already included in XP SP2 onwards)

CPU

2 GHz AMD Athlon 64, equivalent or faster

RAM

1 GB

Graphics Card

DirectX 9-capable; ATI Radeon 9800 XT, equivalent or faster

Hard Disk Space

500 MB

The game can try and run on DirectX 8 so it should also work on Windows 95, 98 and ME.
If neither DirectX 8 or 9 are available, it runs in 'software mode' using only the CPU. In this case, the game will only run very slowly.
The lower-left corner of the game's menu indicates whether hardware acceleration is running and whether DirectX 8 or 9 is being used.

Installation

1. Click here to download the latest version of X-Bomber.
2. Click "Open" when your browser asks you. If the file doesn't open, double-click the file in your browser's download list when it finishes downloading.
3. Drag the folder from inside the zip file onto the desktop or into another folder.
4. To run X-Bomber, double-click on the folder then double-click the "xb2-.exe" Application.
5. Click "Run" if Windows gives you a Security Warning.

To uninstall, just delete the X-Bomber folder.

Troubleshooting

If X-Bomber fails to run or does not perform as expected, try the following:

1. Download the latest version of X-Bomber and open it to overwrite and repair X-Bomber's files.
2. Set the Windows Power Scheme to "Home/Office Desk" in XP or "Balanced" in Vista/7. You can find this in Control Panel > Power Options.
3. Download and install DirectX 9.0c from Microsoft's website.
4. Update your drivers; especially your graphics card drivers. AMD | Nvidia
5. Update Windows fully and install Microsoft .NET Framework, using Windows Update.
6. Check for viruses and spyware, using a good antivirus/antispyware.
7. Close any other programs and background processes. uTorrent and other file-sharing programs impair X-Bomber's performance when their windows are open. If you close your antivirus, reopen it after running X-Bomber.
8. Windows 95/98 - End "rundll32.exe", using Task Manager [Ctrl + Shift + Esc].

If you have trouble running X-Bomber, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Main Menu

In any menu, use the arrow keys or the mouse pointer to highlight an option. Press Enter or click on an item to select it.
Press Esc to return to the main menu.

The Main Menu has seven options:

Briefing Screen

Scroll through the Mission Briefing by pressing the Left and Right Arrow keys then press Fire [Z] or [Enter] to start the mission.
Press [Esc] or click "Shut Down" (top-right) to return to the Main Menu.

Controls

Assignable

You can assign the following controls to keyboard keys or game controller buttons via the options screen.

System

Instruments

Counter-clockwise from top-left:

Ship Status

Shields

The shields protect the ship's armour and, as the shield energy diminishes, the armour becomes more vulnerable.
In tight situations, you can activate the shields' blocking mode while holding down C. In this mode, your shields and armour take no damage from collisions but the shield energy drains rapidly.
The shield energy is topped up by collecting shield power-ups. The shields also recharge at a rate of 1% per second.
If your shields are already at 100%, the energy used to recharge them is diverted and your weapons energy recharges at twice the normal rate.
Equally, your shields recharge at twice the normal rate when your weapons energy is full.

Armour

When the Armour reaches zero, your ship is destroyed.
The armour does not repair automatically but can be repaired by collecting armour power-ups.

Weapons

Energy

Energy weapons consume this while firing. When the Weapons energy reaches zero, these weapons will struggle to fire.

X-Impulse

Shows the number and type of available X-Impulse blasts.

Select

- Shows the selected main weapon.
- Shows the onboard Special Weapon and how much ammunition it has. (Illuminates when the Special Weapon is selected)

Tactical

Objective

This typically shows how much more damage your target can sustain.

Distance

This shows your distance from the end of Mission Boss.

Other

Messages

shows notifications from the crew and other characters.

Score

increases when enemies are destroyed and when escape capsules are recovered.

Objectives

1. Avoid hazards such as weapons fire, enemy ships, asteroids and other obstacles.
2. Use your weapons to destroy the enemy.
3. Collect power-ups to replenish your resources.

To complete a Mission, you must survive to the end of the level and destroy the end-of-level Boss enemy.
If your ship is destroyed, the game is over and you have to start the Mission over from the beginning or from the latest CheckPoint.
Missions may have other objectives, which are set out in the Mission Briefing.

• Red markers highlight targets recommended by the ship's targetting computer. These may be targets whose destruction is critical to the mission or high-value targets that will cost you points if allowed to escape.
• Blue markers highlight your destination. Fly your ship to this location.
• Green markers highlight resources that either you must protect for the mission to succeed or that will cost you points if allowed to be destroyed.

Other enemies can be destroyed at your discretion. Destroying too few can leave you overwhelmed and destroying too many can deplete your resources.

More important than destroying the enemy, is keeping your ship intact.

Your ship can collide with enemy ships and their weapons fire, along with other hazards such as asteroids and mines. It can also suffer damage from radiation and nearby explosions.

Hints

• Glance at your instruments often but don't stare at them for too long. You can change the position of the HUD or hide it altogether for an extra challenge using the options screen.
• Don't forget to switch ships if yours is damaged or runs out of weapons energy. For example, launch fighters or use Dai-X if X-Bomber is badly damaged.
  Bear in mind that your ships re-arm and repair themselves in the background when not being used.
• Your ships are normally (!) fully repaired and recharged at the end of every level.
  Your special weapons and their ammunition are carried over to the next mission.

Weapons

• Use the right weapon. Spreadfire weapons are effective for crowd-controlling swarms of small enemies but often slow at downing stronger individual enemies; like bosses.
• Remember to use of your secondary weapons (press X). It's better to use an X-Impulse blast or two to get out of a snag than get the ship heavily damaged or blown up.
• You can use slower weapons to 'lead' your targets by flying ahead of them, matching their direction and letting them fly into your path of fire. Leading the target makes it very difficult for them to hit you in return.

Damage

• Explosions can cause damage to you and to the enemy. Detonating one enemy can damage or destroy other nearby ones.
• You can't collide with allied ships or with any ground targets such as tanks or buildings.
• You can't damage allies with your weapons directly and they cannot harm you with theirs. It is possible to damage your allies with the splash damage from your missiles if one happens to explode near to them. By the same
• Avoid use missiles on close-quarters targets for extended periods. The splash damage can gradually wear you down.
• Objects with over 50% damage trail smoke and those with over 75% shower sparks. Keep an eye out for damaged enemies and take them out first to clear the screen faster.

Movement

• Make use of the whole screen and keep moving into open spaces. This gets you out of the way of lots of bullets fired directly at you without you having to actively avoid them.
• Don't worry about getting hit by smaller bullets if it means avoiding enemy ships and more dangerous enemy weapon fire. Your ships can take a fair amount of damage.
• Sometimes it helps to stop firing and concentrate on dodging when you're in a pinch.

• Relax. Take a break and think up a different approach if you're tired or stuck. You can adjust the difficulty in the options screen. The game is meant to be hectic.

Power-ups and Resources

Power-ups can be found floating in space or they can be left behind when certain enemies are destroyed.
Special Weapon Power-ups are released when your score reaches a multiple of 20,000.

To collect a Power-up, fly your ship into it.

System Power-ups

Three Power-ups can be used by any player ship. Each comes in three versions; Silver, Gold and Platinum, giving 25%, 50% and 100% boosts respectively:

Repairs your ship's Armour

Recharges your ship's Shield energy

Recharges your ship's Weapons energy

When you collect a Shield Power-up, any surplus Shield energy is transferred to Weapons and vice-versa.
If both the Shields and Weapons energy gauges are full, surplus Shield or Weapons energy is used to activate the Invincibility and AfterBurners respectively for up to 10 seconds. Excess Armour is converted into Points.

You can transfer power between shields and weapons manually by pressing [S] and [W] (default), however, the transfer is only 50% efficient.
Your ship's shields and weapons energy recharge themselves at a rate of 1% per second at Normal difficulty but your armour does not repair itself.
Any of your ships that are not in use will repair themselves and recharge their Shields and Weapons energy more quickly.
Your ships' shields, weapons energy and armour are replenished after every mission.

Secondary Weapon Power-ups

X-Bomber: X-Impulse

Fighters: Ammo

Dai-X: Missiles

Your energy/ammunition for secondary weapons is carried over between missions.

Special Weapons Power-ups

... are earned every 20,000, 30,000 and 45,000 points in Chapters I, II and III respectively.
They come in 10 colours, each giving a different Special Weapon that is compatible with X-Bomber and Dai-X.

Your special weapon and its remaining ammunition are carried over between missions.

Other Features

Customisable Controls

If you'd like to use the game with an Xbox controller, here's a layout I can suggest:

Customisable Music

The game's music is stored in the "mp3" folder. You can supplement or replace these files with your own music.
X-Bomber indexes the files in this folder and plays them back at random in the game's levels.
You can press F5 to make the game select another track.

The game supports MP3, OGG, MIDI files and anything else that your PC's codecs allow Windows Media Player to play.
It also detects and skips files that it cannot play.

Night Mode

Night mode creates a night-time darkness effect in planet levels (3, 8, 9 and 11).
When starting a planet level, there is a 25% probability of night mode being activated and the effect varies every time it activates.
There isn't a way to disable night mode or to force it on all the time but if the effect is not desired, you can press F7, which will generate the level again, this time without night mode.

Screenshots

You can take a screenshot at any time during a level by pressing F12. The game gives the file a unique filename and places it in X-Bomber's screenshots folder.

The game also captures screenshots automatically to display as previews of the levels in the game's menu.
These are kept in the screenshots folder too and named "Mission __.png".
Deleting these files will prevent the game from displaying previews in the menu until the game creates new preview screenshots.

Information

video: 800x600 resolution, 16.7 million colours
Nominal framerate: 50 frames/second
Application Type: Clickteam Fusion 2.5 32-bit DirectX 9 hardware-accelerated Windows executable
Sound: Wave samples with lossless compression and 32-channel mixing
Music: MP3 128kbps (replaceable)

Help Menu

Instructions
X-Project Player Ships
Extra Player Ships
Special Weapons
Allies
Enemies