Differences between 1.0 and 1.1
IMPORTANT! A few datafiles have been changed since 1.0! Do NOT copy your old 1.0 settings.dat or 1.0 stats.dat to the 1.1-directory! This will cause Bollen to crash! However, you MAY copy any demos you've recorded in 1.0. Move them from your old 1.0 BOLLEN\DEMOS-directory to the 1.1 BOLLEN\DEMOS-directory. Also you should NOT copy anything in your UNLOCK-directory from your 1.0 version of Bollen. You have been warned!
Table of Contents
Differences between 1.0 and 1.1
Introduction
Bollen is the latest crazy game from the swedish underground developer Monokey (http://www.daikenkai.com/monokey/). We focus on creating simple 2D-games with arcade-action elements that are easy to pick up.
The goal of Bollen (means 'the ball' in swedish) is to control a purple ball and to move it from one side of a stage to a red flag. The difficulty is increased for each stage and it takes a lot of skill and practice to beat all 23 of them. If you manage to do good you will also get to play the hidden bonus-stages with ridicilous difficulty.
Bollen was created using Microsoft Visual C++, the Allegro gamelibrary and FMOD.
Game Modes
On the Extras-submenu you can listen to the music/sound effects, view various statistics, view the beginner's help and find out who actually put together this game!
Settings
To change the a few basic settings, enter the SETTINGS-menu from the mainmenu.
Controlling the Action
You can play Bollen with your keyboard or your gamepad.
| Action | Keyboard | Gamepad |
| Move Left/Right | Left/Right key | Left/Right button |
| ACCEPT (in menus) | ENTER | Button 1 |
| CANCEL (in menus) | ESCAPE | Button 2 |
| RECORD DEMO (in traningmode) | F2 | Button 3 |
| Demo-replay speed (when replaying a demo) | F1-F4 | - |
| Camera Lock/Scroll | Enter-key(+direction) | Button 1(+direction) |
| Pause | SPACE | - |
If your gamepad simply does only have two buttons you will have to use the keyboard to record demos. Live with it. Also some playstation-gamepads which uses an adapter (like PSX-USB) to work on a PC can have trouble with the game. For example my ROCKFIRE PSX-USB BRIDGE works just fine but a popular converter called EMS2 DUAL SHOOTER does NOT seem to work.
If your gamepad still doesn't work even though you have a generic PC-gamepad or a working PSX-converter, make sure you connect it to your PC BEFORE you start Bollen.
The Good/Bad Guys
Bollen
This is Bollen, the ball you are controlling.
Mr. Happy
This is one of the good guys, if you use him correctly. When Bollen touches Mr.Happy he will send Bollen flying into the air to get over cliffs, holes, bad guys etc.
Mr. Evil
This one is bad. If you touch him you will die and you will lose one of your precious lives! Watch out!
The Other Ball
This one will try to push you around. You won't die simply by touching it but make sure to stay clear of it when there're holes around!
Goldcoin
When you have collected 25 of these you will gain an extra life!
Golden Cup
There is one hidden (or sometimes not so hidden) on each stage. You don't HAVE to pick it up but if you do pick it up on all the stages in the game you will be granted access to the last 5 superhard stages. If you want to truly beat the game you must get these!
Jumpblock
Just like Mr.Happy, this one will send you flying into the air. Some of them will send you very high and some will barely move you at all. You don't even have to touch them right from above. They will still bounce you if you touch them on the side. Remember this.
Trees, Bushes, etc.
These are not dangerous nor are they obstacles for Bollen. They're just part of the scenery to make the magical world a bit more alive. These can also take shapes of candy, snowmen etc. Don't be afraid.
Rocks
Stay clear of them. If you fall down on them you will die!
Flag
The End-of-the-level Flag. Touch it to clear the stage!
Teleporter
Touch it and you will be transported to another part of the stage.
DEMO RECORDING
To record a demo to share with your friends (to impress them on how good you are at Bollen) simply enter the trainingmode. Select the stage you want to play and enter it. Now press F2 or gamepad button 3 to start the recording. (The stage will be reset when you start your recording session.) When you die or finish the stage you will be asked if you want to save your demo. Press ESCAPE if you want to discard your recording, or enter a name for it (20 letters maximum) and then press ENTER, to save it. All the demos you create will be placed in the BOLLEN\DEMOS-folder. To delete a demo, simply navigate to that directory and delete them manually. (If you delete the whole DEMOS-folder you won't be able to create any more demos until you recreate the folder.). To replay a demo that you, or any other, has created, select DEMO REPLAY from the mainmenu. Here you can also view some stats of your demos.
MAPNAME is the name of the map that the demo refers to.
CLEAR TIME is the total time it took to finish the stage. If it says "-" then it means the stage is never finished. Also, if the CLEAR TIME says "(100%)" after the timedata it means that the stage is 100 completed with all items picked up. The GOLDEN CUP-icon is also displayed under the CLEAR TIME-string to indicate that the golden cup was picked up.
Press ESCAPE to return to the mainmenu from here.
F.A.Q
Making a PC-game is hard because no PC out there is as same as another. Here're some things you can try if Bollen won't run on your PC.
What's the difference between the two rendering methods?
You can google this for a more techniqual answer, but using Pageflip rendering (also known as tripplebuffering) will most likely (if your computer and graphics card can handle it) result in a lot smoother screen update. The screen update will also be locked to 60 FPS (in fullscreen) so don't be alarmed when your FPS-counter shows ~500 FPS in Doublebuffer mode and only 60 in Pageflip mode.
Bollen won't start at all
When you launch BOLLEN.EXE you will have a variety of graphic options to choose from. If you got an older computer and Bollen runs in a very unsmooth framerate (you can turn on the frames-per-second timer in the SETTINGS), try running the game in 320x240 instead of the default 640x480. You can also try to select 8 bit color instead of 16. The game will look the same but 16 bit is included for certain graphiccards that doesn't like that you change the colordepth all suddenly. Also running the game in fullscreen will most likely result in a higher FPS and an overall greater game experience.
If it still doesn't work try to mail us the BOLLEN.LOG-file from your BOLLEN-directory and maybe we can figure out a way to solve the problem. The BOLLEN.LOG-file is created when you run BOLLEN and contains data of what was loaded/not loaded etc.
The game is SO hard!
yes it is hard. If you think it's too hard you can simply move back to World of Warcraft or Solitarie.
Is it possible to get the cup on every stage without losing a life??
At least on the 'official' stages that are shipped with the game. Every item in the game can be picked up without losing a single life. Sometimes the cup is well-hidden though.
How do you unlock the secret extra stages?
Clear the game from the beginning in GAME-mode and get the cup on every level as you progress! This will unlock four special stages.
Why don't the enemies intersect with each other?
They were, early in the development, but later on we found it more interesting if they didn't. We could create a lot more interesting levels this way. Maybe they will intersect with each other in Bollen 2.0? Who knows.
I miss [insert feature] in Bollen! Can you please add it?
If there's a good feature we could probably add it. We already got tons of plans for Bollen 2, like moving platforms, buttons to press etc. However we don't yet know if there even WILL be a Bollen 2. It all depends on how people will like THIS game.
Bollen crashes on exit!!
This has been reported and we found it weird. Mail us your BOLLEN.LOG-file and we will check it out!
mapEditor and Development
If you want to create your own levelpack for Bollen you can download the development tools from the official BOLLEN-website.. There's also a large helpfile there with instructions on how to get you started.
MORE MONOKEY?
If you like Bollen you can try some of our other games. Our last smash-hit LOVELESS, a vertical shoot'em up, was released in 2004. Right now we are also working on a sort of semi-sequel to LOVELESS named GODLESS. Maybe it's finished when you read this? Check our website: http://www.daikenkai.com/monokey/
Bollen Credits
(c)2006 Monokey
Programming: fsFreak
Graphics: Junkboy
Music: Surasshu
SFX: DJ Assh*le
Manual: fsFreak
Level Design: fsFreak, Thorning