The universe needs YOU (tonight at 8pm)

As some of you might have known, for the past century or so, I've been working on an online game, which given another century or two is going to make me filthy rich. Recently, Alex has joined me on this project, and together we've made some decent progress.

I'm happy to announce that the game is NOT yet finished :) - had you going there for a second, huh? The game is however ready for some simple online tests. We've already successfully tested it with several people, and were hoping to increase the number of players in the test. If you guys/gals are interested in participating, your (unpaid!) help would be greatly appreciated ;) and you might even enjoy it. Keep in mind, that the feature-set of this version is very limited - we haven't finished implementing all the cool stuff yet. So this is not the final product - hence you forfeit all rights to criticize the game, myself, or any of the cheesy sound effects. For every criticism you have to put a penny in the criticism jar. I'll make sure and collect.

With all this in mind, and if you're still actually reading this email, go to:
http://www.solarisgame.com

And click on the download link. You should be prompted for a username and password. Enter "solaris" as the user, and "trial" as the password, and download away. Then run the downloaded file to install the game.

Tonight at 8pm EST, myself, Alex and a few other people who've been helping us out (namely Dmitry & Mike) will be in the game, testing it out, and generally shooting everything in sight (Unless the server crashes and then noone will be shooting anything). Feel free to connect at this time (or at any other time, if you wish) and try it out. Attack us if you dare - you will be crushed. Stay away from us, and you will be crushed regardless :) If you do a little dance, sing a little song (you know the routine) and generally manage to be amusing you'll... probably still be crushed. But remember, every time you are crushed, destroyed and otherwise humiliated, we learn an invaluable lesson that helps us make the game even better!

Since there is no help-file and no tutorial, I feel it necessary to include a few notes on the game itself:

The game is called Solaris. To start it you launch the game, and wait while it loads (duh). Then you'll be presented by a simple game menu. Its pretty self explanatory - just select "Online", enter a screen name and click start. You can start the game in Offline mode as well to practice and to see that the basics are working - but when offline, you obviously won't have anybody else to play with - and as this game is meant to be played against other people, there'll be nothing to do.

If you can't connect to the game, you'll see a green message on top that tells you that there was an error. This might happen if you are running a firewall of some sort. You may need to open port 31660 on your firewall in order to connect. Your firewall might also just ask you if you want to let "Solaris" communicate on the internet - you should answer yes to this. If you successfully connect, you should not see any messages, and should see your ship in the middle of the screen, not far from a large round thing - this is where you "spawn".

The game is a top-down view space-shooter. In English, this means that you will be in control of a ship, in space. You will see all the action in 2D, viewed from "above". The screen will always be centered on your ship. You can fly around, by applying thrust in the direction the ship is pointing, or in reverse. You can rotate the ship, and you can also apply thrust sideways. You can shoot two different types of weapons. The game has a realistic physics model, which means that Sir Isaac Newton is king here. If you apply thrust in some direction, you will keep flying in that direction forever, unless you manage to apply thrust in the opposite direction to stop yourself. This is a bit tricky at first, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it soon enough.

Here are the controls:

MOVEMENT

Up-Arrow: Apply Thrust Forward
down-Arrow: Apply Thrust In Reverse
Left-Arrow: Rotate Ship counter clockwise
Right-Arrow: Rotate Ship Clockwise
Z-Key: Apply Thrust to the Left
X-Key: Apply Thrust to the Right

WEAPONS
Left Ctrl Key: Fire Primary Weapon (Guns)
Space Bar Key: Fire Secondary Weapon (Bomb)

For now, there are no objectives, and no missions. The only thing you can really do is shoot other players that are (hopefully) flying around next to you. If you damage them enough, they will explode and die. Then they will re-spawn not far from the big round thing. The same will happen to you if you take too much damage. Your health is indicated by the big round meter in the upper left corner of the screen. The two smaller indicators next to it, are your weapon indicators. The round thing on the bottom right of the screen is the radar, which will show you other ships in the universe around you as small white dots. Thats about it!

Good luck and thanks for helping out!