Used to move between octants & sectors. The sector selection screen gives brief information about known systems and the available database gives more details of trading opportunities available. The option of [ENGINES] or [Database] appears after you select a sector. The database records planets visited and traded with and displays certain details about bases scanned or probed. The faster you fly the quicker you arrive but the more fuel you use. if your engines are damaged during combat your fuel consumption will be badly affected. The engines screen shows the available energy as a writhing blue column. As you increase warp speed the total energy required for a journey is displayed in a similar manner. The glowing engage button [E] will illuminate when your selected speed and fuel consumption are within bounds.

The back button is functional but grayed out during warping. It's not a good idea to drop out of warp without knowing where you will be.
While in flight the display gives a countdown to show flight duration. Remember that you can reduce the duration by going faster but this uses more fuel. Keeping your engines in good repair ensures the best fuel economy.

When you arrive in a new sector your ship stops well back from the sun & any planets to give you a good view. The 'heads up' display gives location info about your ship, planets, bases & ships in the sector.

	The HUD on the top left of the display gives your location including your height above or below the planetary plane.

	The HUD at top right shows planets & ships. Turn on the HUD by tapping the button to see the layout of the system. Planets are shown in blue and ships show green if above you or red if below.

Moons are not shown on the HUD but you will see them orbiting planets. Planets can have up to 2 moons. Using the onscreen 5-way control or the D-Pad you can maneuver your ship to orbit a planet or dock with a base.
In normal impulse mode your ship can move forwards & backwards, up & down & rotate left & right (yaw). To the left of the 5 way controls are up/down jet toggle buttons which switch the central button between up & down movement.

To select a planet or base just fly close to it. The orbit button will activate. Tap this button and you will be lined up with the planet ready to find a safe place to stop. If you wish you can turn on the auto-orbit feature [the brown button below the hud on/off] and simply select a planet from the row of planets shown. Note that your energy will still decrease as if you had flown to the planet.

During the orbit maneuver you have access to pitch and roll control via the extra toggle button which switches the 5 way control's functions between basic movement & advanced. In the advanced mode it's easy to get lost so just tap the central button to re-align your ship.
to orbit the chosen planet approach the orbit rings or space dock offered. Only advanced civilizations have space docks. The orbit rings are generated by your ship's computer to guide you to a safe orbit where docks don't exist. They incorporate red (port) and green (starboard) lights. Simply fly up to the rings/dock & enter keeping your alignment straight. The HUD readouts help you on your approach. There are 4 numbers representing your orientation in relation to the rings/dock. The bottom number is distance. The other three are angles. You should aim to have all 4 numbers at or close to zero. As the orbit rings can be above, below, left or right of the planet you will find that some maneuvers are easier than others.

Docking with a base is simply a matter of approaching the base & tapping the orbit/dock button when it activates.

If you scan a planetary system before using impulse you can identify suitable planets to visit in advance.

If you fly too close to the system's sun your shields will start to drain rapidly so keep your distance.

orbit rings

a space dock

Inhabited planets offer both buying & selling opportunities. Uninhabited planets offer mining and gas collection opportunities. At bases you can sell goods and buy upgrades & weapons for your ship. A word about money: If you are lucky enough to have useful goods to sell then you can accumulate funds to use for further trade and upgrades but if you find that you cannot trade and need funds you can get a one-time only loan from one of the four space trading guilds. Guild membership can be really useful in other ways so join up now with the guild of your choice.

: Cargo Pods
Before you can trade you need to understand your ship's cargo pods. Each pod contains 6 holds each of which can contain 10 items of the same type. You can add cargo pods up to your ship type's maximum at bases. You can view your cargo using the holds button within trading or from the main screen. Tapping the pods button cycles through your available pods.

Ejecting Cargo
You may from time to time need to jettison cargo to make room for more valuable trade goods. When you tap on an item of cargo within a pod the KEEP / EJECT buttons appear. Tap EJECT to 'distribute' your cargo throughout space. Very messy but it's got to be done.

Trading & equipping at bases
Bases offer similar selling opportunities to inhabited planets but instead of offering goods for you to buy they offer weapons, ship repairs, upgrades and energy (fuel). Each base will offer some of the available items.

Weapons Bays
Before you can buy weapons you need to understand weapons bays. A bay is a complex piece of automated equipment which is attached to you ship and integrated with it's energy systems. Once you have a free bay you can add any weapon available.

Weapons
Most weapons are energy pulse based. ie: They use up energy every time you fire. The missiles are the exception to this. Both the bruise missile and the twin missiles, 'les mizerables' have their own energy packs so do not consume your ships energy. An addition the missiles offer far greater destructive power than the energy weapons but cost more to buy and run out. You only get 2 bruise missiles or 10 les mizerables with each purchase. The various energy weapons have different fire rates, recharge rates and destructive power and of course different costs.

Upgrades and Repairs

Energy
The most essential commodity. You need to keep you fuel tanks at or near fuel to ensure a trouble free life.
Shields: You can repair your shields after combat or upgrade the power of your shield generator.

Armour
Choose from two types of armour plating, DUTRON or ABLATIVE. Dutron armour is the cheapest of the two but of course the more expensive ablative armour offers better protection.

Engines
Repair your engines following combat or boost your warp speed with an engine upgrade. (engines are more likely to get damaged if your ship is poorly protected. If you do sustain engine damage you will have a lower maximum warp speed & excessive fuel consumption.

Probes
Probes provide an useful 'long range' scanning function. From your current sector you can probe all the surrounding sectors for planets & bases. This saves you flying around the galaxy randomly looking for life.

Weapons Bay
If you want to mount an additional weapon then get a weapons bay fitted.

Cargo Pods
Extend you cargo carrying capability with a cargo pod (allows you to carry up to 60 more trade items (6 holds x 10 items) )

:

You can enter tactical from the main screen however you may find yourself in combat at any time while within the main screen or impulse should a belligerent alien vessel decide that it can take you on. Keeping your shields in good repair & fitting armour is a good way to limit this. When you enter tactical you can select each alien ship in turn using the left & right arrows to see it's name, race, type, shield strength and firepower. The on-screen bar chart shows Shields, Armour & Firepower as [SAF].

Select [ATTACK] to begin combat. When a fight begins you are in control of your ship's weapons & the ship's computer handles the ship movement to bring the alien vessel into range. Select a weapon from the list on the left of the screen. Your weapons can be moved and fired in one of 3 ways:- 1. By tapping the viewscreen. This will aim the weapon and if the auto-fire button is on also fire the weapon until you lift the stylus. 2. By moving using the D-Pad and firing with the fire button. 3. By using the 'soft' controls in the lower area of the screen. The central button fires the weapon. For methods 2 & 3 the up/down keys can be swapped by tapping the toggle button to the right of the auto-fire button. The bruise missile is a long range weapon & 'les mizerables' are short range.

Your statistics are on the left of the main view screen. The alien vessel's are on the right. Shields/Armour & Firepower are shown. Firepower changes dependant on the selected weapon. When your ship is hit you will see/hear the explosion and the screen shows HIT above your on-screen stats. Any damage which occurs will cause an on-screen message. When you hit the alien ship the message HIT appears on the right above the alien's stats.

When you destroy an alien ship the vessel will dive off-screen accompanied by an explosion.
Should you allow your ship to be destroyed the game will end (if you are not a guild member) however if you are a guild member you can choose to be resurrected or to end the game. There are no penalties to resurrection at this time.

Remember if you are doing badly it's time to run away & warp off to a base for repairs. Don't ignore warning messages.

If you are playing as a Fighter ship your score in combat will be enhanced.

Menu
The game menu offers the options:-
About
The 'about' screen shows game Version number, registration status & thanks.

New Game
Start a completely new game (set your game options first). All planetary systems, bases and ships, prices for trade goods and names are re-created. Note: Clicking this button immediately begins a new game so don't click if you have a game in progress.

Load Game
Loads a saved game file from the game folder by name. If you have more than 10 save game files in the game's installation folder only ten will be shown and a message tells you how many files there are in total.

Save Game

Saves the game using the filename entered via the on-screen keyboard ( up to 16 characters only) or via one of three quick save buttons which save as save1.sav save2.sav and save3.sav If a save file name already exists you will be prompted to overwrite or enter a new name.   Save game files are stored in the game's installation folder (by default this is /program files/Space Treker). They are saved as 'savename'.sav and are around 700Kb each. if you need to delete save files go to the game install folder using the file explorer and delete unwanted files.

Sounds

Sound on/off & volume for effects & music plus choice of a sound track from one of 3. Note: The .mod files included with the game are free samples. I have not charged for them within the registration price nor have I paid anything for them.  The game obeys the PocketPC's master volume settings so no sounds will be heard if you have sounds turned off on your PPC. You can place any .mod file of similar size to the default ones in the game directory (rename the samples & name your file the same as the original sample tune name, spacetune1.mod 2 & 3)

Game Options

The 'PERFORMANCE' slider is used to reduce or increase the number of active particles in explosions. If you have a fast PocketPC move this to the right for more particles. If your PocketPC seems to run slowly during the tactical fighting sequences then move this to the left. The Easy, Normal and Hard radio buttons determine how difficult your opponents will be plus many other factors in the game. The four buttons either side of your PocketPC's D-pad (the central 5-way control button) can be re-mapped to suit your own style of play. Tap your stylus on the chosen radio button and then press the key you want to perform the function. You must make all 4 keys unique. Should your key selections prove un-workable come back here and choose reset keys to return to the default values.

Game Manual

A brief game manual consisting of 9 pages of information on how to play and the controls used. The left & right arrows move between the pages. This in-game manual includes a getting started section.

Registration
Allows you to enter your registration code to open up all the features of the game. One registration code is issued to each registered user for that person's personal use on their PocketPC. If you change PocketPC and find that your registration code does not work contact SundialSoft for help. New codes will be issued to all registered users. Please retain your registration email as proof of purchase. Registration codes may not be copied, transferred or otherwise supplied to other persons or used on more than one PocketPC at a time. The registration code is generated from the PocketPC owner name which you are required to enter when you buy the game. The name entered must exactly match that of the PocketPC. See 'Start, Settings, Owner Information on your device. If your name is longer than 10 letters then the first 5 and last 5 characters are used. If your registration fails then you should ensure that you have entered the correct code and also check that the owner name in the PocketPC matches the one supplied to the site where you purchased the game. If your code is not accepted please contact SundialSoft giving as much detail as possible to allow the problem to be fixed quickly.

Resume Game
Returns to the active game from the menu.

Exit Game
Does what it says but gives you the option to return to the game if tapped in error.

Stats

You need to know how your ship is holding together and STATS gives you an at-a-glance roundup of your vital statistics. Your engines, shields, energy and armour are shown graphically on the top part of the screen & other information appears in text below including ship name, weapons, money etc.

Acknowledgements
The 3D in the game is mostly the work of graphics artist Aron Kerr or FOOP CGI. Aron, I thank you. It has been a pleasure to work with you.

This game would not exist without the game creation toolkits PocketFrog and PocketGL. My thanks and gratitude to Thierry & Pierre for their software.

The sound system used in the game is Hekkus by Thomas Maniero. Thanks go to Thomas.

Learning C++ was not an easy process but it would have been much harder without the wonderful people on the PocketMatrix forums. So many people helped that it's wrong to single people out but even so I want to give special thanks to Dan East (both for his technical knowledge and also for his patience with an old school beginner) .