Manual
Overview
As mentioned here, SolarTransporter is a free 3D-game for Google Android based on OpenGL ES. If you use the game the first time, it is recommended to go to the settings and calibrate the accelerometer.
Settings
You can access the settings from the main menu or also during the game. All settings are saved immediately. So you do not need to modify the settings each time you start SolarTransporter.
Sound
The sound is turned on by default. There are a lot of sound effects to provide a good user feedback. Use the volume keys on your android device to adjust the volume.
Vibrator
The vibrator is turned on by default. If you collide with an object and lose power, the vibrator will be turned on for a short period of time.
Online Highscore Settings
You must register to use the online highscore. Therefor you have to choose a unique nickname and a password. The maximum length of each is 18 signs and not all signs are allowed (e.g. a space is not allowed!). All allowed signs are cited at the register form. Please use a strong password. A strong password is a password that contains characters, numbers and special characters. The minimum password length is 4 signs.
If you have already registered you are able to login with your nickname and your password. You can check the "Remember me"-checkbox if you do not want to login every time you use the online highscore. You have to check the "Remember me"-checkbox to use some functionality when viewing the online highscore.
At the settings menu you are also able to log out and to change your password.
Some important notes: For using the online highscore there must be a connection to the internet! Maybe you must pay some fees to your provider when using the online highscore. If you use a wireless local area network (WLAN) be sure that the connection is encrypted!
Local Highscore Settings
You can specify a nickname for the local highscore and clear the whole local highscore. So all local highscore entries will be deleted! If you specify a nickname you need not enter your nickname every time while inserting a highscore.
Calibrating the Accelerometer
First you can specify if tilting the phone towards you is accelerating or braking the transporter. You must hold your Android device in landscape orientation to specify the thresholds, because otherwise the thresholds would be wrong. The thresholds specify the minimum orientation in a certain direction of the phone to accelerate, brake, turn left or turn right. You have to touch the particular field to set the threshold. If you tilt your phone left the transporter will turn left. If you tilt your phone right the transporter will turn right. If the "Acceleration / Brake tilting" checkbox is checked the acceleration threshold must be greater than the brake threshold, otherwise the acceleration threshold must be lesser than the brake threshold. The threshold for turning right must be always greater than the threshold for turning left. The displayed values are in m/s^2 and measure the acceleration applied to the phone minus the force of gravity.
With the help of the "Right = -Left"-field you are able to set the threshold for turning right to the threshold of turning left multiplied by -1. So these thresholds are balanced to the position with no tilting to the left or to the right.
For better explanation we give you an example: The threshold for turning left is -3.0 and the threshold for turning right is 3.0, which are the default values. If you do not tilt the phone to the left or to the right (that is equal to value 0.0) you will fly straight. If you tilt the phone to the left, sometime the threshold will be reached and the transporter will turn left.
With the help of the last field you can reset the thresholds to the default values.
The game
After starting the game the countdown is displayed. After this you can see your transporter which already flys around in the aerospace. Look in front of you to be sure that you will not collide with an asteroid in the near future. Then you have to search your first passenger, pick him up and transport him to his favoured destination. There is only one passenger at a time. If you want to pick up a passenger you must touch down on the landing area by decreasing your velocity. The landing area is visualized with the help of a green circle and ascending green rectangles. If you touch down beyond the landing area, you will lose a life! It is always a good idea to touch down in the middle of the landing area, because the closer you touch down to the middle of the landing area the more points you will get. But if you want to pick up a passenger be sure not to collide with the passenger! Because otherwise you kill your passenger. If you kill a passenger your score will be decreased. If you do not have enough score, your power will be decreased. After touching down you have to decrease your velocity once more. Suddenly the passenger and the landing area will disappear, which means that the passenger has just entered your transporter. So do not fritter away time! Accelerate to ascend and transport the passenger to his favoured destination which is visualized by the landing area.
The game would be very easy if there were no other objects. But as mentioned before there exist a lot of objects which are described at the Objects section. If you collide with a certain kind of object you will lose power. If you do not have power anymore, you will lose a life.
The aerospace is not infinite. So if you pass the borders of the aerospace, you will be beamed to the opposite side of the aerospace. When you see few or no stars you know that you are near a border of the aerospace.
Levels
There are 7 levels and 7 bonus levels at all. At each level you must transport a certain number of passengers in 3 minutes. If the time is up, you will lose a life. If you have transported all passengers, you will be beamed into the next level shortly after transporting the last passenger. The degree of difficulty is increased with each level, which means for example that there are more and even faster asteroids, more geyser bullets, particularly more passengers to transport and the distance between each passenger is greater. It is also important how long you need to transport all passengers, because after each level you get a time bonus which depands on the duration for the level.
After each level there is a bonus level. At the bonus levels you should pick up bananas to increase your score. Therefor you have only 30 seconds. There are no other objects. If you touch down during a bonus level, the bonus level is finished but you do not lose a life. The number of bananas increases with each bonus level.
If you lose a life, the game will resume at the current level, but if you do not have a life anymore the game is over and you may insert your score into one of the two highscores. Therefor look at the highscore section to get further information!
Objects
 Transporter |
This is your space ship! |
|---|---|
 Passenger |
This is the passenger you have to transport! Be careful not to kill him! |
Terrorist |
The terrorist looks like the ordinary passenger. So you cannot distinguish between a passenger and a terrorist. The terrorist appears by chance during the flight. He leaves a bomb in your transporter and jumps out of it. You have to find him and kill him by colliding with him. Because if he touches down, he will detonate the bomb and you will lose a life. If you kill him you will get a time bonus and must pick up the next passenger. But we have also a good news for you: The terrorist only appears at levels 5 to 7. |
 Asteroid |
An asteroid flys around in the aerospace, but it never changes the height level. The velocity of each asteroid is different. It is able to fly even faster than you at each height level. If the transporter collides with an asteroid, you will lose power. If it collides with an other asteroid or a geyser bullet, both objects will be destroyed. If it collides with a packet, the packet will be destroyed. |
 Geyser Bullet |
The geyser bullet is slightly similar to an asteroid. It appears by chance at any location at the deepest height level in the aerospace and ascends until it reaches the topest height level. There it is burned up. If the transporter collides with a geyser bullet, you will lose power. If it collides with an asteroid, both objects will be destroyed. If it collides with a packet, the packet will be destroyed. |
 Packet |
The transporter can pick up a packet. The content of the packet is a big surprise. Maybe it is good for you and maybe not. The content of the packet could be one of the
following:
|
 Banana |
The banana appears only at the bonus levels. If you pick it up, you will get some points *slurp*. |
Steering
During the game you must hold your Android phone in landscape orientation!
- Accelerate: Tilt your Android device towards you or if the "Acceleration / Brake tilting" checkbox is not checked tilt it off you!
- Brake: Tilt your Android device off you or if the "Acceleration / Brake tilting" checkbox is not checked tilt it towards you!
- Turn left: Tilt your Android device left!
- Turn right: Tilt your Android device right!
- Ascension: Accelerate!
- Descend: Brake!
Notes: There are 7 discrete height levels. You must accelerate to ascend and brake to descend. So for instance if you accelerate and have reached a certain threshold, you will ascend. The height levels are visualized at the tachometer on the HUD. You are not able to turn left or right at the deepest height level.
HUD
You can see very useful information on the HUD. At the top of the display there is from left to right: The remaining time, the current level, your score and the power bar. Whereas at the bottom of the display there is the tachometer and the frame counter on the left. And on the right side there is the number of passengers to transport above the number of remaining lives. On the tachometer you can see the tachometer needle, which visualizes the velocity of the transporter. Behind the tachometer needle there is a chart which visualizes the velocity interval for each of the 7 height levels. The arrow in the middle of the tachometer points at the next passenger or at the destination of the passenger in your transporter. If a terrorist attack occurs, the arrow will point at the terrorist. At the bottom of the tachometer you can see a rectangle. This rectangle is green when there is not a passenger in the transporter or red if there is a passenger in the transporter. While accelerating the transporter there is a green triangle next to the tachometer. While braking the transporter there is a red triangle next to the tachometer. Furthermore different messages like "Collision with an asteroid" are displayed in the middle of the HUD.
Options during the game
You can access all options with the help of the menu button on your Android device. So you have the possibility to pause the game, access and modify the settings during the game and quit the game. If the game is already paused, you will have the possibility to resume the game.
Highscore
You are able to insert your score into the local highscore, into the online highscore or into both regardless if you won the game or not. Your rank at the highscore depends only on your score. So it is possible that more users are tied with you.
There are some small differences between the two highscores. You must register and login before you are eligible for inserting your score into the online highscore. You need not login from the settings, but if you do that and check the "Remember Me"-checkbox you need not login each time. If you are not logged in, you will be asked to login or register before inserting your score. Only your best highscore is displayed at the online highscore.
At the local highscore you can see all your entries. Similar to the online highscore you have to specify a nickname before inserting your score. Of course you need not specify the nickname at the settings, but if you do not want to specify your nickname each time, you may enter your nickname at the settings.
After inserting your highscore into the local or online highscore a brief overview of your result is shown, which means that the first three ranks, the two ranks better and worse than your result ignoring ex aequo ranks are displayed. At every highscore view you can access the highscore details by touching a line in the listview.
The local and online highscore can be accessed through the main menu. Ten highscore entries per page are displayed. To navigate through the highscore you may use the two buttons at the bottom of the display. At the online highscore there are some further functions which you can access with the help of the menu button. These functions are refreshing the highscore, show an overview of your result and go to your result. The last two functions require to login in and check the "Remember me"-checkbox!
Some important notes: For using the online highscore there must be a connection to the internet! Maybe you must pay some fees to your provider when using the online highscore. If you use a wireless local area network (WLAN) be sure that the connection is encrypted! If you use the online highscore, your nickname, your password hash, the date and time of the insertion, the time you played for that highscore, the transported passengers, the killed passengers, the killed terrorists, the picked bananas, if you won the game or not, the last level, the score and some information to verify the validity of your highscore are submitted to a webserver and saved there. These information except your password hash and the information to verify the validity of the highscore can be seen on your Android device and on the SolarTransporter's website. But only your best highscore is stored on the webserver, which means that the new highscore overwrites the old highscore.
Trouble Shooting
Wherever it is possible meaningful error messages are displayed. Here we want to give you further information for some error messages. If some kind of exception occurs please contact us!
There is no connection to the required webserver. Please try again!
Either you have no connection to the internet or the webserver is down.
An error occured. Please try again!
Please check if you have a connection to the internet. This message can occur if you have to login into a proxy to use the internet. If there is a connection to the internet please contact us, because maybe there is something wrong with the webserver.
There is no connection to the required database. Please try again!
There is an issue with the database on the webserver. Please try again later! If this error occurs permantly please contact us!
Your highscore was invalid! OR: Your input was invalid! Please try again!
This error occurs if you cheat or if there was something wrong during submission. Please try again once more. If this does not help and you have not cheated, please contact us!
Your highscore could not be inserted!
There was something wrong with your submission or there is a problem with the webserver. If this error occurs permantly please contact us!
An error occured during xml-parsing. Please try again!
Maybe there was an error during the transmission of the highscore or the highscore is corrupted. If this error occurs permantly please contact us!
SolarTransporter could not be loaded, because OpenGL ES does not fulfill the minimum requirements or some extensions are missing!
Please verify if your Android device fulfills the system requirements to play SolarTransporter!