Vinculum
Vinculum was originally released into "the wild" on August 25th 2008 to take part in the third ShmupDev rapid prototyping session. All program, graphics and sound are copyright 2008 – this is version 1.0 of the program code. Download Vinculum (1.22Mb archive)
Controlling The Ship
Your ship is controlled either by a joystick or pad with controler ID 1 or using the cursor keys. Button 1 or Z fires the main weapon and button 2 or X activate the "bomb". During play, pressing the space bar will pause the action and the escape key will quit back to the title page; escape from the title page will exit Vinculum and return you to Windows.
Tips For Playing Vinculum
Although it’s perfectly viable to go in with the main guns blazing, this tactic will not earn you the "big bucks". When an attacker is destroyed, along with the very satisfying explosion it disgorges a parting shot in the form of a ring of bullets and, since these bullets are not only fatal to the player but to other enemies, these should be the weapon of choice for those aiming for the highest scores. Each enemy that isn’t destroyed by the player’s fair hand (or more accurately by their laser weapon) adds to the chain multiplier and its own bullet pyrotechnics can also contribute to the destruction of its comrades. Each shot fired by the player will decrease the chain multiplier by one and having to bring a reserve ship in after being destroyed will halve it.
The ship is also armed with four prototype "electromag pulse disruptors" but be warned that these "smart bombs" don’t kill or even disrupt the attackers; instead the burst of energy can be used in dire situations to push large swarms of bullets away from the ship. Using the disruptor has no adverse effect on the chain multiplier, but any enemy bullets that aren’t part of a "parting shot" (the ones directed at the player as enemies move down the screen) won’t destroy other enemies when repelled in this way.
Minimum System Requirements
Compatible with Windows 2000, XP or Vista
Reqires DirectX 9
1GHz AMD Duron or equivalent with upwards of 256Mb of RAM
GeForce 4 or better video card.
Please note: Vinculum hasn’t been fully tested on lower specification machines, it was developed on a PC equipped with a 1GHz AMD Duron with 512Mb of RAM and a 64Mb nVidia graphics card so whilst attempting to run it on a lower specification may well work we’re going to be cautious; similarly, it should run on just about any version of Windows from 98 Second Edition onwards as long as DirectX 7 or above is installed but for “safety” we’re going to say Windows 2000 onwards.
