4.0 How to use menus and what does everything mean
in the menus?
The menus in TOU are actually quite easy to understand and
use. If you have played many games before TOU, you don't have
to read this except for the players-menu
and this section.
To change the values in menus:
- Just click: Most of the switches and togglers work if
you just click them with left or right mouse button. Left
button changes the item values in to other direction than
right button.
- Drag: Some menu items have a value
that would take ages to click from 100 % to 0 % for example.
These menus have to be dragged. Just press the left mouse
button and hold it down.Then start to move your mouse
to left and right, and the values will change.
My mouse doesn't work in the menus
Well, that's really weird! But you can always use keyboard.
Arrow keys to move cursor, right ctrl corresponds to left
mouse button and right shift corresponds to right mouse button.
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Not much to explain here. The game begins :)
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Change the level amount by dragging,
use scrollbar to see all the levels.
Level options
- X-Flip: X-Flip="yes", means that 50%
of the levels are mirrored by y-axis.
- GG amount: The amount of generated levels when
you click the randomize levels-button. If you don't
like the random levels, set this to 0 %.
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Select the correct player and human player amount from the
top of this menu screen. By clicking the stars under the computer-column,
you can only change the computers' skill levels.
Columns:
- Plr: This is just the player's number.
- Color: Click the topic (color) and
select one of the options provided there. If you want to
select colors manually, click the correct color, hold the
mouse button down and drag.
- Team: You can select the teams manually
by clicking the team number you want. But to make it easy,
click the topic (team) and select the way you want
the teams to be.
- Ship: Click the topic (ship) for
another pop-up-menu to easily select the ships. You can
select ships manually just by clicking their icons. By pressing
key 'B' while mouse cursor is on top of a ship icon,
you can ban ships so that they you won't see them anymore.
By pressing key 'R' while mouse cursor is on top
of a ship icon, you can select so that ships will be random
on each level. For more info on different ships, check
out this page.
- Visible: This tells if your screen is visible
in the game. 4 visible screens is the maximum. Click the
topic (visible) and select the visibility easily
for all players (for example: only human players are visible,
computers are invisible).
- Computer: Click the topic (computer)
to select the skill for every computer. Once again, click
the stars to change the skills manually.
Weapons menu
You probably don't want to change anything here manually!
There are so many weapons in TOU.
To make things easy, click the topic (weaponry) and
the pop-up-window will tell you what to do.
Clicking a weapon icon with mouse will select / unselect
this weapon.
- Blue background means that the weapon is selected
- Grey background means that it is not selected
- White background means that it's
the player's default weapon. By pressing the key 'D'
on top of a weapon icon, you can change the default weapon.
- Red background means that the weapon is banned,
i.e. totally out of usage if you dislike the weapon. By
pressing the key 'B' on top of a weapon icon, you
can ban / unban weapons.
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Only the unclear options are explained here.
If you change anything in the audio menu, you can't
hear the effect until the music changes (i.e. you start
the game).
- Allow MP3 / WMA music: Playing MP3
or WMA music requires a fast processor, so if you
have an old machine, you may want to turn this to
"no".
- Output type: Even I'm not sure what
all these mean, but "Direct Sound" should
work fine with everyone. If you change this value,
you'll have to exit TOU and restart it.
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- Resolution: If you have an old computer,
use 640 x 400 or lower resolution. Fast computers
are able to view 1024 x 768 with no problem.
- Player screen sizes: "Full"
means that the player screens always try to cover
the whole screen. "Square" means that player
screens are square-shaped. "1/4 screen"
means the classic style. "Full" is preferable,
of course.
- Parallax background: This doesn't
affect the game's speed very much. If parallax is
"no", the level loading times are lower
(unless you use swap files).
- Running water: Running water makes
the game quite slow, so turn it off if you feel so.
- Line of sight (LOS)
- Style:
- Normal: you can see the walls
but not what's behind the walls
- Opaque: you can't see behind
walls at all.
- Transparent: you can see transparently
behind walls but you can't see the ships etc.
flying there.
- Detail: How sharp the LOS is. "bad"
is preferred if you want speed.
- Refresh rate: How often LOS is updated.
"ok" is preferred.
- Wavy: Does LOS have waves?
- Color: Select the color you want.
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If you don't want to touch all the options in TOU,
just use this menu screen (well, details
& visuals should be checked once)
- Game style: This is a global switch
that will affect to many of the settings when Team
Deathmatch game starts, if not set to "custom".
Read more on game styles under team
deathmatch topic.
- Starting weapon: "Last"
means you'll have the last weapon you had in usage,
when the level changes. Both "Last" and
"Default" will start the tournament with
the player's default weapon.
"Random" will have random starting weapon
for every level.
- Lives: How many times can you reborn.
- Shared lives: If this is "yes",
all the players in one team have shared lives. Meaning
that if one dies, everyone in that team loses a life.
- Base holding: This is a game style,
where you must protect a base. All the players have
infinite lives, but when the base building destroys,
everyone in the same team will destroy also.
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This menu screen may be a bit confusing. But this should
help:
- Must go to repair at end: Does the
last team alive have to go to repair place after they've
won the round.
- If you must go to repair at end, timer before
explodes: You may not want to see some dumb
pilots flying around too long after you have died.
- Death Timer: This is a timer that
starts from the beginning of the round. When this
goes to zero, something bad happens (see below). You
can also select "no timer" if you don't
want to be in a hurry.
- Happens when timer runs to zero: This
tells what exactly happens when Death Timer runs to
zero.
- Leading team wins. The team that has maximum total
energy when timer runs to zero, wins. If more than
one team have the same energy, then everybody dies.
Isn't that fair?
- Everybody dies. Kaboom!
- Energies go near zero. That's right. Your energies
go near zero and stay there even if you repair.
- Heavy bombing starts. My personal favourite.
- Energies->nearly zero + bombing! This is a
combination of the two options above. Really deadly,
should finish any match quickly!
- Players reborn after death: This tells
the time after which you will reborn to the game (if
you have lives left).
- Must wait
for reborn: If this is "no", you
can reborn whenever you want by pressing your menu
button . If this is "yes", you'll have
to wait the reborn-timer (see above) so there's a
small extra punishment for dying.
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- Civilians: these civilians teleport
in the level all the time but they don't hurt anyone.
- Random troopers at start: these troopers
will attack everyone.
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- Rapidfire: Do you have to rapidly
hit your finger to fire key to shoot basic bullets?
If you have more than 2 players, I suggest you put
"no" to rapidfire because of keyboard jamming.
Otherwise, use "yes".
- Loading times: How long does it take
a weapon to reload. If this is 0 %, you can shoot
60 bullets / second all the time, no matter what weapon
you are using!
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- Destructable land: Do you want to
destroy land? I suggest you put "yes" on
this one.
- What can destroy a repair place?
If "only digger" can destroy a repair
place, you can use digger to attack your enemy's base
and dig his repair place away!
- Particle & decoration amount:
I strongly suggest: Don't change these! But if you
have a super computer you might want to see what it
looks like when particle & decoration amounts
are set to "very much".
- Picture outside players' screens:
You normally don't even see any picture there, if
you use "full" from the details &
visuals / screen sizes.
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If you don't like one specific special weapon, you
can ban it so that you don't have to see it ever again.
Maybe the easiest way to ban weapons is to go to players
/ weapons-menu and press the 'B'-key on top
of a weapon you want to ban.
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Click a control you want to change and then press a
key from keyboard.
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