Playing Repton.

Repton is a puzzle game, linked to an action game. You need some quick fingers at times - at others, a quick brain!
Firstly, when you load up Repton you'll be presented with the splash screen - press '2nd' to pass it. Now, The main home screen will appear:

Pressing 'Alpha' will cycle through all the installed levels on your calculator (if the home screen doesn't appear, you'll need to install some levels!) Pressing '2nd' will load the currently selected level and drop you into the game. (Clear will quit).

You control the little lizard-like creature through the levels. Your job is to pick up all the diamonds in the level, without getting crushed and/or eaten by monsters - you only have three lives to do this in! The following keys will allow you to control your game:

The game certainly sounds simple enough... but is it? You must travel around the levels in a certain order sometimes, otherwise tumbling rocks will fall and block your exit. Each of the sections below should help to explain most of the different parts of the game...

Rocks are the main obstacle in the game. You can push them over edges, they will roll off rounded blocks, they can even crush you... There are plenty of these in any level to play with!

Monsters are a real pain! They appear in the form of eggs which, when pushed, can break open to expose the beastie. These will chase you around the level (they cannot eat through dirt, thankfully- only where you have gone before!) and when they touch you, they kill you - don't worry, as a rock on their head kills them, and they are really stupid - you can easily lose them in the levels! Eggs move around in the same way as rocks, and will kill you if they hit you on the head- if they kill you that way, then the monster isn't released!

Keys (odd ring-shaped objects) are needed to unlock safes. These are squarish boxes that block your way and keep you from completing a level. The way to get past them is to pick up a key - at which point, all the safes become diamonds.

The best way to work out how the game goes is to play it! Move around the game and try to solve the levels I have included. If you complete them all, check my website or ticalc.org for more levels... or you could even design your own (see the bottom of this page).

If you end up in a tricky situation, pressing 'Del' will 'commit suicide'. You will lose a life and start at the beginning of the level - but any changes in rock position, any awoken monsters and any eaten diamonds will remain! To completely quit, pressing Clear will take you back to the main screen (Press 'Clear' here to quit fully).

You can adjust the graphics settings in the game. Press 'Graph':

Pressing 0,2,4 or 6 will change the interrupt frequency - 0 is the best quality (but slowest gameplay) and 6 has the most flickery graphics (but the smoothest gameplay). Pressing +/- will change the contrast - useful in a greyscale game! I play the game on either 4 or 6.

Editing Repton.

Because I'm nice, I have included a level editor for you to create your own Repton levels with! It is easy to use. It is called (unsurprisingly) 'Level Editor.exe' If it doesn't run when you double-click it, then you need the VB6 runtime DLLs. Most people have these anyway, but if not, you can download them from the internet (try any old search engine).

You will be presented with the following screen when you start up:

The black rectangle is the 'Starting View' - this is how much of the world will be seen when you start your level. You must have Repton inside this, with at least 2 tiles to his left/right/above/below. (Position it by clicking the 'Set Initial View' button). If you click one of the tiles in the toolbox, then click inside the map, you will place the current tile. If you like, you can click File.Open, and open an existing level. File.New will clear the map, and File.Save will save the map. There are a few things to note, however:

• Important: do NOT put in more than 8 eggs! Firstly, that would make the game quite hard. More importantly is that the cache for the positions of the bad guys in the game is only 16 bytes long... you wouldn't want to overfill it, would you?
• Do not assemble 'unstable' levels. For example, a completely empty level with a single column of rocks! The game keeps a fair speed by only running its own brand of 'physics' on rocks withing a certain are of Repton. Make your levels, then test them in VTI before releasing. If they do odd things, adapt your level so that it works better!