4.0 How to use menus and what does everything mean in the menus?

4.1 Basic menu usage

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.


4.2 Start a new game

Not much to explain here. The game begins :)


4.3 Levels

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 %.

4.4 Players

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.

 


4.5 Options

Only the unclear options are explained here.

4.5.1 Audio

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.

4.5.2 Details & Visuals

  • 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.

4.5.3 Main Rules

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.

4.5.4 Misc Rules

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.

4.5.5 Event

  • 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.

4.5.6 Misc

  • 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!

4.5.7 More Misc

  • 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.

4.5.8 Ban Weapons

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.


4.5.9 Controls

Click a control you want to change and then press a key from keyboard.


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