NETHER EARTH MANUAL

NETHER EARTH REMAKE

by

Santi Ontañón

1.- Introduction

Nether Earth was the first real-time strategy game in the history. And has almost all the tipical components of modern strategy games: combat units, resources, war bases, a map that has to be explored and an enemy to fight with. In the screenshot below you can see the main screen of Nether Earth:

The screen in divided in 3 parts:
    - The game screen.
    - The radar screen.
    - The menu screen.

    The game screen is the top-left part. There you can see a 3d view of what is happening in the game. At the begining of the game, you can see 3 main things there: The terrain, the buildings and the control ship. The terrain is very important, the grass is the best terrain, your combat units will move very fast through grass. But there are other type of terrains: rocks, that slow down the movement of your units, and holes, that can only be passed by flying over them.
    The control ship is what you can command by using your keyboard. The control ship is undestructible, and you can freely move it through the map.
    Another important this are the buildings. There are several kind of buildings: walls, factories and warbases. The walls are simply that: obstacles. The factories are the buildings where the basic assembly pieces for building your combat units are build. It is important to capture as many factories as possible. The factories are easily identificable because they have a "C" shape. But the most important buildings of all are the warbases. The warbases are huge buildings with a big "H" over them. In the factories is where the combat units are assembled. To build a combat unit land your control ship over the big H.

    The radar screen is the bottom-left part of the screen, and gives you a tactical view of the map.You can see there a schematic view including terrain types, buildings and combat units.

    The menu screen is on the rightmost part, and is where all the extra information is displayed.You can see there the time, statistics of the game etc.

2.- The goal

    As in most strategy games, your goal is to kill the enemy. The enemy starts at the oposite side of the map, and will start building combat units to send against you from the very first moment.

3.- The robots

    When you land over a warbase with you control ship, you enter the robot construction screen, shown below:

    In the robot construction screen you can choose the pieces that will be assembled to build a new combat unit, i.e. a ROBOT. The most exciting pat of Nether Earth is that it allows you to design you own robots. Each piece costs some resource points. You must have enough resource points to build your robot. Ah! and remember that the entrance of your warbase has to be empty in order to build a robot!

    You can build robots by using the following construction pieces:
    Traction pieces:
    - BIPOD: The simplest traction piece. It's very slow, but very resistent, and will give to your robot some extra shield points.
    - TRACKS: A fast traction piece, it's not as expensive as the antigravitational device, but is quite fast.
    - ANTIGRAVITATIONAL DEVICE: The fastest traction piece. But also expensive.

    Weapons:
    - CANNONS: The cheapest weapon, and of course the less powerful.
    - MISSILES: A great weapon, more powerful than cannons.
    - PHASERS: The most effective weapon.
    - NUCLEAR BOMB: The most destructive weapon. Once fired, it will destroy all the robots and buildings near the robot that has the bomb (including it).

    Special:
    - ELECTRONIC BRAIN: This piece enhances the intelligence of the robots, allowing them to perform your orders more effectively.

    As more pieces you put to your robot, more shield points will it have, so it's important that if you have enough money, put as many weapons as you can into your robots!

5.- The game

    The most important thing that you have to take car of in Nether Earth is your resource points. As more resource points you have, you will be able to build stronger robots. There are two type of resource points: general resource points and specialized resource points. General resource points can be spend in any kind of piece for your robots, but specialized resource points can only be spend on certain types of pieces. There are 6 types of specialized resource points: electronics points, nuclear points, phaser points, missile points, cannon points and chassis points.Electronic points can only be spend on electronic brains, nuclear points only in nuclear bombs, phaser points in phasers, missile points in missiles, cannon points in cannons and finally chassis points can be spend in any kind of traction piece.

    To gain resource points you have to capture factories and warbases. Each factory or warbase can have a blue or red flag over it. A blue flag means that the factory belongs to you, and a red flag means that the factory belongs to the enemy. Each time a day passes (you can see the time in the top part of the menu screen), your buildings produce new resource points. Each warbase give you 5 "general" resource points per day. And each factory produces 2 "specialized" resource points per day.

    Once you have built some robots, you have to give orders to them. To give orders to a combat unit, just land over it. Then, the robot menu will appear. In the robot menu, you can directly control your robot (using the keyboard). You can give orders to a robot, or enter in the combat mode.
    The direct control mode allows you to move your robot through the map. In the combat mode you will be able to move your robot and also to fire the weapons of your robot. But the most usual way to control a robot is to give orders to it. By giving orders to a robot, you can assign a task to your robots, and they will try to perform it automatically. You can assign several tasks to a robot:
    - STOP & DEFEND: The robot will stand, and if an enemy robot aproaches it will try to destroy it.
    - ADVANCE ?? MILES: The robot will advance as many miles as you tell it.
    - RETREAT ?? MILES: The same as before, but retreating.
    - SEARCH AND CAPTURE: You can instruct your robots to seek for factories or warbases and capture them for you.
    - SEARCH AND DESTROY: The same, but instead of capturing the factories or warbases, the robot will try to destruct them (you can also tell a robot to search and destroy enemy robots!). Note that to be able to destroy a building, a robot needs a nuclear bomb!
    Before giving orders to a robot, you must have in mind that if a robot does not have an electronic brain, its behaviour will not be very optimal!


6.- The remake

    In this remake, I've tried to make a game the most similar possible to the original one. Just tell me if there is something that you don't like, or if you have some ideas to improve the remake! Thank you for playing my game!!!