Tennis Elbow Mac
by
Manu TOO

Summary:

I. Introduction
II. The Shareware
III. Menus
IV. Game
V. Conclusion

Tennis Elbow is a tennis game running in 640x480 resolution, with a realistic & fun gameplay.
To configure the controllers, open the "Preferences" panel from the "Tennis Elbow" menu.
This game needs at least a G3-300, 64 MB of RAM, and Mac OS X 10.2.

Characteristics:

Animation:

• very smooth rendering
• realistic crowd animations: members of the crowd turn their heads to track the ball, and will applaud during gameplay
• line judges show the faults and the balls on the lines

Tournament:

• 95 tournaments
• Davis Cup
• 250 players
• Full ranking system (like the entry one from ATP)
• Activity of the past year

Misc:

• 5 grounds, with different rebounds
• 2 players with changing colors (skin, hair, T-shirt, ...)
• Single, Dirty, Double
• 5 difficulty levels

Tennis Elbow is a game published in shareware. You can play it and test it before to order it, but you have these limitations:

• 1 ground out of 5
• 1 set per match
• 1 character choice out of 2
• "World Tour" unavailable

Moreover, after 21 days, the game will not start anymore, and if you still want to play it, you will have to register your version to enjoy the totality of the game. Once paid (by check, paypal, credit card, etc...), a key (a small file) will be sent to you by email, allowing you to unblock the game.

Order the full version now!

You can have a copy of this version on your hard drive or removable media for test only. You can't sell this version, but you can copy it freely to everybody, as long as you don't modify it.

If you regularly use this version, you should pay the authors to encourage them to continue to do quality products.

In the menus:

You control the little rotating ball with the controller you chose (Joystick/Keyboard/Mouse); bring the ball on any icon and click on the button 1 to activate the icon; when the ball is on an icon, its description appears in the bottom box.

Anywhere in the menus, just press these combination of keys to adjust the volume:

• shift + F5: sounds softer
• shift + F6: sounds louder
• shift + F7: music softer
• shift + F8: music louder

Default icons:

• Back: go to the previous menu (same as clicking on the button 2 or a press on the backspace key)
• Quit: exit to Windows (same as pressing 'Esc' key)

"Main" menu:

• Quick Play: play quickly games as you wish
• World Tour: participate to the world tournaments and get ranked
• Credits: information

"Quick Play" menu:

• Play: choose between warm-up and match, then launch the game with the current options
• Characters info: configure the characters
• Play Option: choose the ground, the number of sets, the number of players and if ends change during the match or not

"Character" menu:

• click on the characteristics to change them
• click on the personage to change his colors
• click on the personage's left hand to swap from right hander to left hander.
• statistics: show the statistics of the player career
• human/CPU: toggle between human control and CPU control
• defender/puncher/varied/volleyer: set the play style
• load/save: load and save a game or a player

"World Tour" menu:

• Play next match: play the next match, or choose the next tournament if none selected.
• Character info: show your player, or start a new game (by clicking on the player name).
• Tournament info: show the global ranking, the tournament boards, Davis Cup draw and your results on the 52 past weeks.
• Change of ends / No change of ends: toggle the change of ends during the match.

Available strikes during the game:
(b1 = button n°1; b2 = button n°2)

• b1 = normal strike
• b2 = safe strike
• b1+b2 = acceleration
• b1 + up = short ball
• b2 + up = slice
• b1 + down = lift
• b2 + down = defensive lob
• b1+b2+up = drop shot
• b1+b2+down = aggressive lob

Up and down are inverted when your player is on the top of screen.

You have a limited number of accelerations per point, which depends of your form percentage. Once you used them all, you'll only do a weak shot when you try to do an acceleration.

How to play ?

Moves and shots:

When you press no button, push the joystick (or the arrow keys) in the direction you want to run.
When you press the buttons, your player moves slowly to the ideal position, and the more you push the Joystick on the left (or the right), the more the ball will go to the left (or the right).
==>> You must keep the button(s) pressed when you hit the ball <<==
When you don't give any special direction, the ball goes to the center of the opposite ground.
At the net, when the ball is too far away of your player, press the button to make him jump toward the ball.

To do a crosscourt shot in the opposite direction of your run, stop to run before to prepare your shot.
It means that you have to stop to press the button (or the stick) which make you run, before you press the button (or the buttons) which commands the shot.

Service:

The service is executed with the same method than the other shots, with a slight difference: whatever the buttons combination, a push-up causes a slice and a push-down causes a lift. You can move your player to the left or to the right to find a special angle for your service. The faster the ball leaves your racket, the bigger your imprecision will be:
- at 175 km/h: the imprecision is negligible
- at 195 km/h: the imprecision is of 15 cm
- at 215 km/h: the imprecision is of 30 cm

Score:

The player 1's score is written in the upper slots of the score blackboard, and the player 2's score is written in the bottom slots. If the little ball is in the upper slot, then it's the player 1 who serves, else it's the player 2.

Ball Trace:

In the Very Easy, Easy and Medium difficulties, during the service, the ball's impact mark is shown early to help you.
In the Very Easy and Easy difficulties, during rallies, the ball's impact mark is shown early to help you.

During the game:

• Esc: exit to menus
• P: pause; press P again to return to game
• Apple + Enter : switch between full screen mode and windowed mode
• Apple + Tab : go to windowed mode, if the game is running in fullscreen
• F1: switch to the Replay mode;
  • in this mode, there are 9 different speeds, you have to push on the keys from 1 to 9 to select them:
    • 1 - Quick Rewind
    • 2 - Rewind
    • 3 - Slow Rewind
    • 4 - Slowest Rewind
    • 5 - Step by Step
    • 6 - Very Slow Motion
    • 7 - Slow Motion
    • 8 - Normal Speed
    • 9 - Speed * 2
    • Home - Beginning of the Replay
    • End - End of the Replay
  • In Step by Step mode, '-' of the numerical keyboard does a rewind, and '+' does a normal play.
    • with the Joystick, a push and a release:
      • to left: go to previous speed; if the 1st speed is currently selected, then go to the beginning of the replay
      • to right: go to next speed; if the 9th speed is currently selected, then go to the end of the replay
    • In Step by Step mode:
      • Button 1: advance of 1 image
      • Button 2: rewind of 1 image
  • To leave the Replay, push on the 2 buttons at the same time, or press 'Esc'.
• F2: change of ends after the current point
• F3: toggle the service speed between Km/h and in Mph
• F5: display the player 1 statistics
• F6: display the player 2 statistics
• F7: display the player 3 statistics
• F8: display the player 4 statistics
• F9: adjust the graphic detail level:
  • low: the crowd applauds
  • medium: show the R during replays, animate the judges
  • high: the crowd turns the head to follow the ball

Characteristics' Influence:

- Forehand, Backhand, Forehand Volley, Backhand Volley and Smash:

     .more the player has a high percentage, more he strikes strongly

- Service:

- The more the percentage in "Form" is high, the more:

• the player will run quickly
• the player will start quickly his run
• the player will jump far at the volley
• the player can do:

- Player style:

• Defender: unlimited fighting lobs, and 1 extra acceleration
• Puncher: 2 extra accelerations
• Varied: 1 extra acceleration, and medium jumps at the net
• Volleyer: big jumps at the net

- Skill & Preview

• for human players:
  • all: all ball impacts appear early
  • service: ball impacts appear early on the service
  • none: no ball impact appear early
• for CPU players: set the global computer strength

Statistics screen:

This screen shows the shots strength of a player, and the number of stroked balls, the number of balls in, and his success percentage; there're also the number of aces, the double faults, and the run distance.
The player ranking appears only in tournament mode. Actually, the skill percentage on the right of "Second Service" indicates the form of the player.
If you look at this screen during a warm-up or a match, the statistics displayed concern only the current game; if you access it by the player menu, the statistics are for the whole player career.

Double:

During a double, the player n°1 will be with the player n°3, and the player n°2 will be with the player n°4.

Tournament mode:

- Ranking:

The total number of points for the ranking is the sum of 14 best results in tournaments during the 52 past weeks.

- Training:

Before each tournament, the Training screen will pop up; this screen allows you to distribute the training points you won during your previous matches; for each available day between 2 tournaments, you can redistribute 6 training points.
For each match won, you earn about 10 training points; for each match lost, you earn 25 training points, because defeats teach more than victories..!
But take care, every week, you lose a few points in your characteristics: if you don't practise, you'll regress inexorably. The higher a characteristic is, the faster it'll drop.

Note : if you win a tournament, it's always on sunday. And if you start a new tournament the following week, usually it'll be on monday : you won't have any free day for training, so that's why you'll see 0 training point available in the training screen. But you always can see how much training points you have in the character menu.

- Number of sets:

- The Masters:

You'll automatically participate in Masters if you are in the 8 best players when this tournament begins. If not, you won't play it.
Its planning is a bit special. There is 2 groups of 4 players, and every player plays 3 matches. The 2 best players of each group will play semifinals, after the 2 semifinal winners will meet in final.

- Change the World Tour's players:

With the Finder, go into the "Data" subdirectory, then double-click on "Players.ini". It's a plain text file that you can edit like you wish.

- Change the difficulty :

You can change the number of points allocated to the skills when beginning a new game, and the speed of the skills diminution over the time, from the "Tennis.ini" file. To open it, simply double-click on it.

Have fun with Tennis Elbow Mac !

Credits:

- Code, Design, Sound: ManuTOO
- Graphisms: Eric Rivoire

Copyright Emmanuel Rivoire - ©1996-2009