2017-02-17 19:30:09 (edited by Dakonna 2017-02-18 18:12:50)

Wellcome pilot! If you're reading this, you've passed your final flight exams and have graduated the accademy. However, there is still a lot to learn and master out there in the voide. This document should help you get started, and eliminate any questions you may have.
++1: What is this?
Death match project alpha is not actually an fps between four players who must go after their math professor because of getting bad grades on a team project. It is a fully audio top down space simmulation game. Roleplay is not enforced, at this time, there in fact is no story of any kind to base any roleplay off of.
++2: Ground basics.
**2.1: Movement.
DMPA has a top down style system of ground movement. You move your character with the arrow keys, and there is no turning of any kind. The space movement system is full on 3 d with headings to turn to. The x and y heading simply known as heading, is your traditional 360 degrees turning system. The mark, which is your z heading, controls if you're going up or down, and thus can also enter negatives. Spacestations, ships, planets, and just about everything else you can walk around in is divided into rooms which maybe enterable through doors or elevators. Elevators are a mode of transport that allows you to go to different floors or decks within a building. To use one, open the door and go inside. Then use the elevator controls and select a floor. The elevator will move for a few seconds, after which it will stop allowing you to open the door again and exit onto your new level. The elevator can't be used with the door open.
++3: Getting started.
You've created your character, now what? First thing you'll want to do is get your hands on a ship. Different ship specs are located further down, so you can check these out at any time, though they are also available in the game itself. You start at soul station's main hub, which is a pretty small area. You also start with 5000 credits on hand. A description of the different planets and spacestations in the game can also be found further down, so we will not cover it here. The shipyard door is located at -1, 10, 20. To propperly activate doors, you must be within one coordinate of the door. Go through, and the shipyard terminal wil be accessible at -4, 14, 20. You'll want to go for the ares class fraighter (Strange name for a cargo ship since ares was a war god...), which will set you back 3000 credits which I must say is a real bargan considering how many credits you will probably earn per run. Please note that as of the latest update of this guide , there is no way to repair your ship so don't get it too damaged while doing activities. When you buy your ship, you'll be moved onto it and it will already be undocked.
++4: Ship basics.
To operate ships, press enter on the flight computer. From here, you will be presented with different menus to control it.
**4.1; Navigation. All that has to do with getting your ship from place to place.
a: Change engine speed. Setting this to anything above 0 will send your ship going in the direction of the currently set headings as long as it can. To stop the ship, simply set this back to 0.
b: Change ship heading. This allows you to change your ship headings manually. The format you must use is as follows:
x/y_heading mark. Here are some examples:
0 0. Completely straight north.
45 -50: Moderate dive downwards in a northeast direction.
273 10: Almost do west with a gentle ascent.
And this is basically how it works.
c: Autopilot. You can set autopilot destinations either by selecting from different spacial objects from a scan menu, or manually entering coordinates. To finish setting an autopilot destination, you must toggle it to on. It will disable itself as soon as you reach your destination.
d: Sensor scan. Scans the area for different spacial bodies, and then presents you a menu from which you can select found items to get more information about them. Here are the different objects that it can find.
1: Planets. Rock planets, usually held in place by, and orbiting, a nearby star. They have an atmosphere and are largely terraformed by humans to be habitable.
2: Spacestations. Large, man made spacial constructs usually orbiting a star or another planet. They are large enough to cumfortably hold large numbers of starships and have fasillities on board to enable living and business on them. Soul's main spacestation is soul station, where all new players start out. As their life support is generated from within the station, they do not have an atmosphere to speak of.
3: Ships. Spacefairing vehicles available for piloting by correctly quallified people known as pilots. Their uses are many, from transportation and shipping to combat and recon. The readout from these can be different based on what type of ship is scanned.
4: Debris fields. Large fields of drifting space junk, debris and other small pieces of wreckage or space rocks, usually pulled into field or clouds do to nearby gravitational disturbances. These are often the targets for new captains wanting to get on their feat quickly. It can be salvaged and brought to spacestations and planets for refining, recycling, and whatever else it can be used for for a small credit reward.
5: Asteroids. Large, mineral rich rocks drifting through the void either by themselves or in clusters known as belts, these are saught out and mined both by large skale mining companies and single captains looking for profit. As they usually simply float through space and do not have an orbit of any kind, they don't have an atmosphere in most cases and thus are inhabitable.
e: Dock/undock from another spacecraft. This is the easy way to get your ship onto another celestial body. Simply activate one of these controls and the computer will do the rest.
f: Landing/launching controls. As these are planetary controls, and there are no planets publically available for players to visit yet, I don't yet know how this is supposed to work.
g: Fusion jump controls. Fusion jumps don't seam to be added yet, as pressing enter on either of the options for fusion jumps does nothing.
**4.2: Status. Here you can get different types of information on your ship.
a: Navigation. This tells you what your ships' coordinates are, its current, maximum, and desired speeds, and its current heading.
b: Damage report. This tells you how much hull strength the ship has remaining. If this falls to 0, your ship is destroyed and your character dies.
c: Cargo. This tells you which cargo bays your ship has, how much is currently in them and how much they can hold.
**4.3: misc. Depending on the ship you are in, these controls may contain different things.
a: Transfer cargo, available on ares class fraighter. This transfers cargo you have from the ship to the current celestial body you are docked or landed at and gives you the reward for the cargo's value. For some reason, this must be done multiple times to transfer everything.
**4.4: Tractor beam. This is only available if your ship has a tractor beam installed. All ares class fraighters come with this by default, and it is used in debris salvaging.
++5: Activity list.
Currently, there is one activity you are able to do in the game.
**5.1: Debris salvaging.
This is most likely the first activity you'll do, and its not a very difficult one for the rewards you get though it may take a little getting used to for the first two tries or so. You will need:
A ship with a tractor beam.
How to:
1: Undock your ship and scan for a debris field. Odds are high there is one near your position.
2: Instruct your auto pilot to take you to it. Turn it on, set your engine's speed to the max, and enjoy the ride.
3: Once you're there, go into your tractor beam menu and select "Lock onto debris."
4: You will hear the beam in the background as well as a beeping noise which will begin to pan off to the left or right. To successfully tractor in the debris, you must keep this beeping noise in the center. To do this, press the arrow key corresponding to where you here the beeping. Its pretty fast, so you'd do well to hold the key down. Note that sometimes the debris changes direction, so you'll need to be quick in changing your arrow keys or you might not make it. Strangely, when you are doing this, the sounds of your ship start panning around as well, and I asoom this to just be a bug, but its a little fun fact for you guys anyway. If you've done it right, the debris will be tractored into your cargo bay. If not, it will collide with your ship causing damage. Do this until your cargo bay is full or you've had enough of pulling in space junk.
5: Fly to any celestial body accepting debris, dock, and transfer your goods as many times as you can for money.
Typical payout for this activity is around 4000 credits.
++6: Celestial body refference guide.
This contains a layout description of all the different celestial bodies you can find.
**6.1: Soul station.
Soul station is currently the only celestial body accessible to everyone. It contains the main hub, where new players spawn and start their game. At coordinates 10 -1 0 is an elevator which can bring you down to the docking area if required. At coordinates -1 10 20 is the door to the shipyard, and within that, is the shipyard terminal at -4 14 20 to buy ships from. The docking area is basically a long, wide corridor with diferent docking corridors for ships usually aranged along the -1 x axis with 10 units of space between each. At coordinates 20 10 0 is a room called "starship supplies" which currently contains nothing.
++7: Ship refference guide.
This contains status specs and layout descriptions for the different starships in game.
**7.1: ares cargo hauler:
Price: 3000 credits.
top speed: 8000.
sensor range: 12000.
fusion jump range: 12000.
hull strength: 1000.
This ship is a small afaire, and has one smallish cargo bay. It has no weapons of any kind, but it comes with a preinstalled tractor beam. It is fast enough to keep the travel times from the station out to the local debris fields short.
Layout: When entering, you'll be located in the cockpit of the ship. The flight computer is at 5 5 0, and the door at 10 5 0 leads to the cargo bay.
++8: Key refference.
Walk: up, down, left and right arrows, hold shift to run.
Interact: Enter.
Activate help system: f1.
Check players online: f2.
Check health: h.
Check credits: z.
Check location; c.
View items near you: v.
Activate tractor beam module if you have one: Shift+t.
Cycle between weapons: tab and shift+tab.
Fire current weapon: space.
Throw grenade: g.
Open inventory: i.
Open options: o.
Open chat: /. From here, you can type a message for the other players to read, or use one of these commands:
/fixship: If your ship seams bugged, this command will attempt to fix it.
/pm person=message: Sends a private message. I have no clue why there needs to be an equals sign but anyway.
Move through message buffer: left and right bracket.
Jump to beginning or end of message buffer: shift+left or right bracket.
++9: Closing.
Well pilot, We hope this document has helped you in finding out what you need to know to be successfull. Updates are continuusly being made by the galactic editorial team, so do check back often!

I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.

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