BONESAW: The Game
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0.) Version Info
1.) About
2.) Story
3.) Controls
4.) Play Tips / FAQ
5.) Contact
6.) Got Lag?
7.) Save Files
8.) Other Notes
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** You might want to turn wordwrap on to properly view this document. **

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0.) Version Info
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Release 1.0 (Feb 14 2008):

Known Issues:

* You may experience a crash when leaving a level by touching the finish flag.  If it crashes, all hope   is not lost, because the game may have been able to save your data before the crash.

--

Please report any bugs to pulverk@gmail.com

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1.) About
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Bonesaw: The Game is a game about the Clarkson University Golden Knight's hockey team. Well, sort of.  It all started when the student section at these games started doing what is now called "The Bonesaw" which is an intimidating action that is used whenever the Knights scored a goal on the opposing team.

You may know this gesture from a certain movie, in which Macho Man Randy Savage is a "feature role" as Bonesaw McGraw.  The original Bonesaw Brigade believed that the power of Randy Savage would help get the crowd at hockey games pumped up, and so far it's working.

This exploded throughout the arena, and students began to bring their own bonesaws to the games crafted out of tinfoil, cardboard, styrofoam, and other materials.  The hockey team itself is even known to perform a sawing motion with their arms and hockey stick after scoring a goal.

The website http://www.bonesaw.org was formed, and the bonesaw was taken to the next level.  soon, this "Bonesaw Brigade" crafted T-shirts (designed by the very same author of this game.) and were sold to the general public.  To this day, about 1,000 bonesaw shirts have been sold, and the proceeds go to charity.

So after all of this, I thought "How could I take this to the next level?"  Well, make a video game obviously.  I've always been into making games for fun, but I usually never got far because I ran out of inspiration... so the Bonesaw is a perfect subject for a game.

Thus, on January 18th 2007 the Bonesaw game concept was born and began production.  Now its 2008 and the game is finally released!  It spans 35 levels, 9 bosses, and a lot of enemies.  It took a year of work, but it was well worth it.

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2.) Story
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In a far off land, the Golden Knights hockey team is preparing for a big game against their rivals the St. Lawrence Saints.  They've been training for days, and now they are ready to head home.

Suddenly out of nowhere, the evil head Ref has appeared.  Using some sort of mysterious power, he traps the Golden Knights in a different dimension.  The ref claims that he is tired of the endless harassment he recieves from the Golden Knight fans in their home ice.

But one Golden Knight had remained, as he was out retrieving Pulled Pork Sandwiches for the head coach of the Knights.  Upon returning, he realizes that his team has gone missing.  The Coach tells him what happened, and gives the lone Golden Knight the task of tracking down this Ref, no matter where it may take him.

You, the lone Golden Knight are the only hope!  How will you ever pull this off?  If there was only some sort of legendary weapon you could summon forth in your time of need...

Bonesaw is Ready!

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3.) Controls
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Keyboard:
Z - Jump
X - Attack
Spacebar - Activate Bonesaw
Enter - Drop Weapon
Esc - Pause
Q - Exit Level from Pause Menu

Pressing Ctrl+Y will also allow you to change your controls for Jump, Attack, Bonesaw, and Drop Weapon.

Using a joypad:
The only way to use a Joypad in Bonesaw: The Game is to use a program called Joy2Key.  You can use this software to configure your joypad of choice to be mapped to keyboard keys.  Unfortunately the game is programmed with the keyboard as the primary input, so Joy2Key is the best way to go about using a Joypad.

http://www.electracode.com/4/joy2key/JoyToKey%20English%20Version.htm

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4.) Play Tips / FAQ
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- "What the hell, those SLUzer hockey players always get me!"
The sluzers will attack immediately after being hit, so you have to be quick and knock them in the air!  A good idea for attacking any enemy is leading in with a running attack (such as the running kick) and then immediately following up with a combo.  This will give them minimal time to retaliate and you will score a lot of damage.

- "This damn ball is impossible to move around, I quit this game."
Hey, you can't quit!  This is BONESAW!  The best way to move the ball is with the jump spin kick.  Time it so you hit it on it's way up to launch it upward, or to move it foward just hit it on it's way down.  Normal punches can also nudge it left and right.  Oh, and you probably want to avoid using the cutter on the ball puzzles.

- "The freakin' enemies hit me too much."
To avoid enemies hitting you, combo them as fast as possible.  As soon as they can, they will attack!  After all, if you were getting punched in the face wouldn't you immediately fight back?

- "I always jump full strength."
If you hold the down key and hit jump at the same time, you'll perform a small jump instead of a full one, but the most control over jumps is how fast you hit the jump key.

- "These bosses are impossible!"
Well, you could use the bonesaw, but you wont get a golden puck from the boss.  Each boss plays a little differently, but each can be defeated if you figure out their patterns and their weaknesses.

- "Enemies have too much health as the stages go on."
You can fix this by collecting some of those Golden Pucks in the stages.  They grant you access to the bonus stages, which can actually power up your attack strength when you complete them.

- "What's with the obsession of Pulled Pork, and what is Smokehouse BBQ?"
It's a Clarkson thing.  Yeah, inside joke, sorry.  You can probably find out more at Bonesaw.org...

- "What the hell am I eating?  Twinkies?  Burritos?"
Okay, okay.  What those are supposed to be are Chicken Cheese Steaks.  Chicken Cheese Steaks are a famous item at Clarkson's Cheel Arena, mainly served by an individual named Eddie.  Eddie was given the "Hero of Cheel" award last year by the Bonesaw Brigade for his excellence in cooking these Chicken Cheese Steaks.  But when you try to squeeze the image of a chicken cheese steak into a 12 x 8 pixel area, it gets a little cramped, so at this point feel free to call it whatever you want.

- "So... what do the Golden Pucks do, exactly?"
A lot of things.  There are 3 in every level, getting all 3 of them marks the map with a bright flag.  Golden Pucks are also factored into how fast your bonesaw charges, so if you have a lot you should notice that you get Bonesaw maxed out a lot faster.  Another thing is that the Pucks grant you access to some of the Challenge levels, and when you complete those you can also get powered up.

- "Why dont I keep my pucks when exiting a level?"
You can only keep the pucks by bringing them to the finish flag, only then are they actually added to your inventory.  However, weapons can be brought out of levels without having to finish them (so hitting Q on the pause menu will not get rid of your weapon.

- "I can't advance on this part in the forest where I have to pick up a hockey stick because I already have one."
Enter is the key you want here.  It will drop your weapon.  Or, if you have the bonesaw it will expire and you can grab the stick then.

- "How do I get 1-UPs?"
Every time you kill your 25th enemy, you'll automatically be granted a 1-up.  Nifty, huh?

- "The boss's health bar isn't moving..."
If you've ever played the Final Fight, or Streets of Rage games, you might notice the health bar system is inspired by those types of games.  Basically when an enemy's health is above a certain value, the bar changes to a solid color and progresses through a cycle of colors based on the health.  It goes from yellow and shifts to green, to blue, purple, and more.  So you only have a general idea of how much life a strong enemy has left until you knock him down low enough.

- "The bonesaw is overpowered."
Shut up.

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5.) Contact
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Bonesaw the game was created by Kyle Pulver, and is a freeware title.  It should not be distributed in any game packs.

The soundtrack was composed by Josh Whelchel, and he can be found at http://josh.syntesis.org/ (He's awesome!)

Bonesaw can be found on http://www.kylepulver.com/bonesaw and http://www.bonesaw.org

Kyle can be reached at pulverk@gmail.com

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6.) Got Lag?
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* To view your frame rate in the game, press 0 on the numpad to make a counter appear in the upper right corner of the screen.  The max should hover around 47-50 for smooth gameplay.

Right now, the game is powered by Multimedia Fusion's software renderer.  This may result in some lag for some older computers out there, as the game gets pretty intense by Fusion's standards at time.

You can significantly reduce lag by not choosing to play in the 2x Windowed mode, as this is the biggest source of lag.  If you play full screen on a monitor that can properly support 320 x 240, then you shouldn't have a problem.  If all else fails, you might have to try 1x mode.

Reducing the color count to 256 can help speed the game up a little, but it may also reduce the quality of the effects you're seeing on screen.  If you dont really care about all that, then go for it.

Make sure that you dont have any intensive programs on in the background while playing the game either, as that can cause some drops in the frame rate.

If you're still lagging, a hardware accelerated version of Bonesaw: The Game will be made available once I can get it working.

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7.) Save Files
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The game keeps your main save data in two files in the "bin" directory.  These files are appropriately named "save" and "data."  If you wish to back up these files, simply place them in a secure location outside of the bin folder.  You can then start a new game and the game will create a new set of Save and Data files.

However, do not leave one or the other in the bin folder, as this can produce some unwanted results.  No seriously, just dont do it.

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8.) Other Notes
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- If you participated in the production of the game, and I left your name off the credits, please contact me ASAP!

- The name 'Xerus' is my online alias, and actually its not pronounced "zerus,"  It's "x-erus."  Remember that!

- Shoutout to my crews at smileygames.net, tigsource.com, the daily click, and the clickteam forums! ;D

- Let's go Tech!  Take the 07-08 championship while you're at it.