To activate a team, that is to say to add this team to the list of the teams which are playing, you have to click on one of the 12 colored buttons of this team. Then the zone representing the team should be colored whith the color you just clicked on.
To disable a team, just click on the dark button which is on the left of the 12 colored buttons.
You can toggle the Human/Cpu mode by clicking one the button which displays this info. If you read Human, it means that the team will be controled by a player, but if you read Cpu, it means that the computer will handle this team. And he will do it poorly, so remember that Liquid War is basically a multiplayer game, and that this cpu control is dedicated to beginners only.
Below the 12 colored buttons, there are four buttons which allow you to choose your keys. Click on one of these buttons and then press the key you want to define. Joystick movements and buttons are considered as keys. You can disable the joystick with the button which is at the bottom left of the menu. Mouse input is also possible, and mouse movements are considered as keys too. To define mouse control, click on the button associated to the direction you want to control, and then move the mouse. Then the button should display something like M->. Mouse sensibility can be set with the little slider at the bottom right of the menu.
The Brightness slider allows you to set the brightness of the game.
The Menu res slider allows you to set the resolution used by the menus. There are currently 5 possible values:
The Game res slider allows you to set the resolution used during the game. The allowed values are the same than those for the menus. I recommend that you don't use resolution higher than 400x300, unless you have a 80786 running a 1GHz.
The Fps limit slider allows you to limit the number of frames per second.
If this slider is set on the left, there won't be any limit, so Liquid War
will repaint your screen each time the fighters move.
But this can be a weird behaviour if your machine is really fast,
for no one cares about 100 fps per second, one can not even see them...
So this paramters limits the refreshment rate, so that there can be
several logical moves of the fichters for only one screen refreshing.
If it is set on its right, the display is limite to 10 fps,
so you'll have to find your setting.
I personnally set it right in the middle, and get 40 fps.
If you press
Page flipping can be toggled. It is up to you to decide wether you keep this option or not. The main disavantage of turning page flipping off is that the info bar and the battlefield can look rahter ugly if they overlap. But if you turn page flipping on you will not easily reach the 166 frames per second I sometimes get on small levels with my K6-225. I personnaly always turn page flipping off.
The viewport size defines how much of your screen will be used by the battlefield.
There are 4 different types of waves, each of them being defined by:
The wave effects can be toggled during the game by pressing the
The Cursor speed slider controls the speed of your cursor.
The Army size slider controls the amount of fighters there will be on the battlefield. The position of the slider reflects the amount of fighters of all the teams together. If there are 4 teams, then each player will have half as many fighters than if there had only been 2 teams.
The Time slider controls the time limit.
The game will stop after this time is elapsed.
You can pause the game by pressing the
By the way, an info bar can display the time left while you are playing.
This info bar can be toggled during the game by pressing
the
The Attack slider sets the agressivity of the fighters. If it is set on the right, fighters eat each other very fast. If it is set on the left, it takes ages to fighters to change teams.
The Defense slider sets the capacity that the fighters have to regenerate themselves. The more it is on the right, the faster fighters regenerate.
The New health slider sets the health of the fighters which have just changed teams. The more it is on the left, the weaker these fighters will be.
The Winner help slider controls a parameter which causes fighters to attack with various strength depending on how many fighters belong to their team. Not very clear... Let's just say that:
The Cpu strength parameter never makes the computer more intelligent than a monkey. But if you set it on the right, it advantages the machine outrageously and fighters controlled by the cpu will be really strong. So to get rid of them you'll definitely need to be clever. Again and again, don't forget that Liquid War was conceived as a multiplayer game and that playing against the computer is not really an interesting thing to do.