 |  | |||||
 |  | | ||||
|
Introduction & Features Welcome to Evolites, a simple life simulation where you indirectly control the fates of a countless number of tiny, unique creatures, known as Evolites. As the Evolites evolve naturally, various tools are at your disposal to save, destroy, create, and interact with them. You may let things run their course, or you may directly intervene, and make sure that only your chosen strain of Evolites survives! Partially inspired by the opening sequence of the upcoming game Spore, and partially a pet project that just seemed fun to make, Evolites was created to interest, entertain, and relax all types of gamers, casual and up. The game features a mouse-only control setup, and large, colorful graphics. Online functionality via the Reflect Acocunt System is also built-in, and a handful of options put you at full control of how you want to play the game. Controls Controlling the game is simple, especially if you have a wheel mouse. If you do not use a wheel mouse, the up and down arrows may be substituted at the necessary times. LEFT MOUSE - Click to open menu boxes, press buttons, select Evolites, and activate selected tools. Click and drag Evolites from the catalog to copy them, save them, or upload them RIGHT MOUSE - Click to deselect Evolites or delete Evolites from the catalog MOUSE WHEEL / UP & DOWN ARROW KEYS - Interact with variable buttons or attract the selected Evolite to the current mouse location F4 - Toggle between windowed and fullscreen modes Gameplay Information When you start up Evolites, you'll be met with a music loading screen, which should only appear for a second, and then the word "Evolites" displayed in front of a peaceful water backdrop. Click the title, and the main menu will appear! From here, you can get started playing a game, or set up the game to play the way you want it to. We'll go over the options first, and then make quick run through the game! 1. Play Evolites - This will start out your game with 12 randomly generated Evolites. The play area always starts from scratch when you start the game, but you can destroy all the current Evolites and load your own from your catalog if you like. 2. Web Site - Clicking this button will being you to the main Evolites web site. From there, you can access the tutorial (this document), the online catalog, download links, and links to the author's web sites. 3. Game Options - Access all of the options that tell the game how you want to play. In this menu you have access to the following options:
4. Web Config - From the web config dialog you can link the Reflect Games website to create a Reflect Account, or you can validate an existing account. To validate your account, make sure your internet is connected, type in your Reflect Account username and password, and click Authenticate. If your account is valid, you will be authenticated, and will be able to access the online features of Evolites. Evolites will save your account information upon a successful authentication. 5. Quit - Exits the game. Once you get your options set the way you like them, click "Play Evolites" to start the game. You will be brought to the main play area, where you will see 12 randomly generated Evolites begin swimming in all different directions. Welcome to the game! Before you do much else, try left clicking on one of your Evolites. You'll see that a small info panel will appear in the upper left portion of the screen, with info about what family your selected Evolite is, it's age, and more. You may also notice a box below the info panel that allows you to add this Evolite to your catalog. If you would like to save this Evolite for later, click this box. An Evolite will not be able to be added to the catalog again until it undergoes a change that makes it different from the copy you originally added to the catalog. Once you're done checking out the info panel, right click to deselect the Evolite. Move the cursor to the bottom portion of the screen and your tool bar will appear. From this menu, you may access various tools and status monitors, as described below. 1. Rate of Food - By rolling the mouse wheel while the mouse is hovering over this button (or using the up and down arrow keys) you may adjust the rate at which food appears in the play area. More food means the Evolites will compete less to survive. 2. Rate of Mutation Causing Beams of Light - Using the same method as described above, you may also adjust the rate at which mutation causing beams of light appear in the play area. 3. Random Evolite - Allows you create a random Evolite with the click of your mouse. 4. Food - Works the same way as the Evolite creation tool. Just point and click, and food will be created. 5. Radiation - Creates areas of radiation that will increase the mutation of any Evolite with which it comes into contact. 6. Nautical Mine - When you click anywhere in the play area, a nautical mine will be dropped on that area, and will destroy any Evolite or predator it comes into contact with. 7. Healing - A glowing ball of healing light will be created where you click your mouse. Any Evolite which comes into contact with it will become healthy, and lose all fatigue and hunger it may have. 8. Go To - When the Go To tool is selected, all Evolites will move toward the cursor's position when you click the mouse in the play area. The colored buttons on the right side of the menu bar represent more advanced options for the game. Each of these buttons will drop their own menu down, and can be closed by pressing the corresponding button again, or swapped by pressing a different button. Note that you cannot select a menu item when you have a tool selected, and vice versa. Right click to deselect any tool you may have selected before attemping to open one of the colored button menu items. 9. Session Statistics - Click this button to open up the session statistics screen. This screen will show you various information pertaining to the game since you started it last, and will show you your total playtime as well. The buttons below the graph will toggle the information shown on it. 10. Evolites Catalog - Opens the catalog where all your Evolites are stored. When you select an Evolite and click the button that appears below it's info box, it will be added to your catalog. Onc ethere, you may click and drag it from the catalog and into the play area to create a copy of it, or right click to permanently remove it. You can also drag the Evolite to the disk button at the top of the catalog to save it as a file, or (if you have the game configured to use the internet) to the upload icon to send the Evolite to the online catalog, where it can be downloaded as a file by others, or imported automatically as a predator by the game. The game will follow up your upload with a thumbs up or thumbs down icon in the upper left corner of the screen, depending on whether or not the transaction was successful. An unsuccessful transaction may occur if the Evolite already exists in the online catalog, or if the send action fails altogether. The catalog is your way of saving your work in Evolites, and it will retain all the Evolites you add to it between games. 11. Game Options - Access all of the options that tell the game how you want to play. In this menu you have access to the following options (much of this information was already writetn above for the title menu, but since it also appears in the in-game menu it's relevant to repeat):
12. Exit Evolites - Click to open the exit menu, which allows you to either cancel and continue playing, or confirm and exit to the main menu. To be continued... | ||||||
 |  |