INTRODUCTION Centre court, high noon. The crowd murmurs politely. Ball boys patrol the perimeter as you take your place at the serving line. Your hand clenches the racquet as you jam an optic yellow tennis ball into the pocket of your white shorts. Over there, across the net, your opponent paces back and forth in silent concentration. A few minutes ago in the locker room, he looked normal - almost friendly. Now you see him for exactly what he is: a tennis juggernaut with graphite nerves, a savage backhand, and the cook determination to pound you into the hard court. Welcome to SERVE & VOLLEY. GETTING STARTED * Connect your joystick in port 2. For a two-person game, connect the second joystick in port 1. * Remove any cartridges, then turn on your Commodore 64/128, and your disk drive. * Insert the disk into the drive, label side up. * Type LOAD"*",8,1 * The title screen appears in a moment. SET UP GAME Press the fire button twice to reach the Game Selection menus. As each menus appears, move the joystick to highlight the option you want, the press the fire button to select the option. Type of competition Match: Standard match mode. Tournament: Create and play a single-elimination tournament. Resume Match: Resume the last match saved on the disk. Resume Tournament: Resume the last tournament saved on the disk. Difficulty Easy: Beginner-level play. Medium: Faster play. Hard: Faster play, greater accuracy required. Instruct: Training option - teaches you to set up shots. Demo: Auto-play demostration. Set per Match A set consists of between six and 13 games. It's not over until one player wins six games. 1: One set only. 2/3: Best two out of three sets (international women's standard). 3/5: Best three out of five sets (international men's standard). Surface Hard Court: Fastest, highest bounce. Grass: Slower, longe bounce. Clay: Longer bounce, faster than grass, but with less mobility. Court Centre Court: Complete with fans. Seaside: With spectators. Country Club: Private poolside practice court. SELECT YOUR PLAYERS After you've set up the game, the Player Selection screen automatically appears. The top half of the screen shows the seed list of current players by rank. Choosing players * Move the joystick to highlight a player's name. (Some players have the letter C in front of their names; They can only be controlled by the computer.) * Press the fire button to select the player. * At the prompt, use the joystick and fire button to assign the selected player to one of the joystick ports (or to the computer). * Repeat the above steps to choose the second player. (You can even choose the same player again and play him against himself.) * If you're setting up a tournament, keep entering players until the entire tournament charts is filled. Press F3 to view the chart, and the fire button to return to the seed list. * After you choose the final player, a prompt asks you if you wish to make changes. If you're satisfied with your choice, answer NO and the game screen appears. Player Statistics Performance characteristics for highlighted players appear at the bottom of the screen. Statistics show their Win vs. Loss record, Winning percentage and percentage of successful first serves. Three bar displays tell you more about the player strengths and weakness, i.e. their speed vs. endurance, forehand vs. backhand and power vs. accuracy. Just like in real life, player performance improves with practices. Every time a player performs, the computer factors the new performance into his permanent statistics. Create new players Slots 11 and 12 on the player seed list are empty, giving you room to create your own players; * Select an open slot and enter the new player's name at the prompt. * Move the joystick to set the speed vs. endurance slide bar where you want it. Press the fire button. * Set the next two sliders the same way. After the third slider, press the fire button, and your new player appears on the seed list. To create a new player when all slots are full, select slot 11 or 12 and follow the same instructions. The new player you create replaces the old player on the roster. Move up the seed list A player automatically moves up the seed list by beating a player with a higher seed number. Players who don't advance may eventuallt be bumped off the list. To get them back, re-create them as new players, and set up a challenge match against an established player. FUNCTION KEYS The following function keys are available during play: [RESTORE] - Restart game (available at any time) [F3] - During selection of tournament players, views tournament chart [F3] - During tournament play, saves tournament [F3] - During match play, saves match [F5] - View recap screen (of last shot missed) [RUN/STOP] - Pause game (available any time) [Q] - Leave a tournament game between two computer-controlled player. THE CONTROL BOXS The box appears over your side of the court during the play. It's the place where you call the shots: * To learn how to use the box, select instruct and follow the onscreen instructions. * Press [RUN/STOP] to continue the game after every set of instructions. You can practice each instruction before moving on to the next one. How to hit your shots The server always makes the first move, from the Serving Aim Screen, which includes a map of the court (on which you postition yourself and aim your shots) and a selection bar (that enables you to select the type of serve you want to hit). * Press the Fire button and use the joystick to position the yellow box on the opponent's service box. This aims your shot. * As you aim, a gray selection bar rises at the left, parallel to a bar containing the letters F, S and T. - Press the fire button as the bar passes F to hit a flat shot. - Press the fire button as the bar passes S to hit a slice (sidepsin) shot. - Press the fire button as the bar passes T to hit a topspin shot. If you don't select any of these options, the computer automatically selects a flat shot (F). * After you select your shot, the Serve screen appears, and a gray bar comes down. This is the performance bar, on which you determine the accuracy of your shot. Notice the green rectangle in the column, and the numbers in the Difficulty Level Window. The computer takes your shot information and calculates the range within which the shot can be successful. If the green rectangle and number are small, you've set up a tricky shot and therefore it won't be easy for your opponent to return the ball. * To hit the ball, press the fire button when the descending bar is as close to the centre line of the green rectangle as possible. A close-up Strobe-O-Stroke TM view of your shot appears in the Control Box window. The error margin on your shot appears in the Difficulty Level window. * After you serve, a new screen titled Run To Where? appears in the Control box. Use the joystick to move the yellow block to the area of your court where you expect your opponent to return the shot. Press the fire button to set your position. * When your opponennt hits his shot, the Aim Screen appears in the Control box. Move the small yellow block to aim your next shot on your opponent's court, then press the fire button. This is a major tactical decision - try to aim your shot so that he really has to sweat to reach it. * As you take your aim, the gray Selection Bar rises: - Press the fire button as the bar passes F/B for a forehand or backhand shot. - Press the fire button as the bar passes L for a flob. - Press the fire button as the bar passes V/S for a volley or a smash. If you don't choose a shot, the computer will automatically select F/B. * Once again, as the Performance Bar descends, press the fire button as it passes through the green rectangle. SCORING * Tennis uses a simple scoring system: Starting score - 0 (also called Love) First point scored - 15 Second point scored - 30 Third point scored - 40 * The winning player must score one point beyond 40, and at least two more than the loser. For example, if the score is 30-40, the leader must score another point to win. * A score 40-40 is called deuce. If the server wins the next point, the score is ad-in. If the non serving player wins it, it is ad-out. If both players get one more point over deuce -thus evening the score - it's back to deuce again. SERVING Stand on the baseline to serve. You have two chances to get the ball over the net, and into play. The serve must land in your opponent's service court (the box in the front half of his court that is diagonal from your position at the line). If your first serve lands anywhere beside your opponent's service court, the referee calls it a fault, and you get a second serve. If the second serve also misses, it's called a double fault. Your opponent is awarded the point and you move to the other end of your baseline to make the next serve. The statistics that reads "% of first serves in" tells you how well your player serves. FATIGUE The Fatigue Bar in the Control box lets you know how tired your player is getting. As exhaustion increases, strength, accuracy, and speed tend to decrease. TOURNAMENT PLAY * Select Tournament from the "type of competition" menu at the beginning of the program. * Set other game options just as you would for a two-player match. * At the Player Selection stage, press F# to view the tournament chart. Press the fire button to return to the seed list and select the eight players necessary for the tournament, as explained in "SELECT PLAYERS". You can play in all games, some of them or let the computer play all the games. Once all eight slots are filled, the menu at the bottom of the screen offers a variety of options, depending on who controls the players: - View Match: watch a match against two computer-directed players. (Press Q to leave a viewed match.) - See match results: The two computer-directed players play a match off screen (this takes just a few seconds) and the score and winner will automatically appear. Press the fire button to return to the tournament roster. - Press the fire button to start a match in which you control one player. CASSETTE VERSION The Cassette version does not feature any of the save options available in the disk version, i.e. - You cannot "Save or Resume Match" and "Save or Resume Tournament". - The statistics on the player performances are not updated after every match. - The strengths and weakness of each player can only be obtained by the three performance bars. Apart from the above, the cassette version is identical to the disk version. Please refer to the disk manual for further instructions.