(I know paragon has a thread on this, I've seen it but it does not really tell you what to do. Pardon me, but I've used the search function and have not seen any guides yet, just how people get their highscores) Asteroids 2 is a game where you can keep playing for hours if you have the stamina and the technique. For those who do not know the controls (I've checked the highscores and somebody said he did not know you could shoot) Up key- Accelerate forward (Move forward) Left Key- Turn left Right Key- Turn right Spacebar- Shoot Shift- Teleport (Definately not guarenteed to teleport into an empty space) And the all important key, P for pause. Shooting There is not much about shooting, but there are many ways you can go about it. First, you may only fire when there are less than 5 bullets that you fired on the screen. This can be troublesome if your aim is bad, you cannot keep spamming bullets. When shooting, you can either keep tapping the spacebar or hold it down. Here are some differences between tapping the spacebar and holding it down Tapping: -Need not worry about halting bullet fire Disadvantage -Tires hand out (but you need stamina, so this should not really hinder you) -Slow tapping will not match up to holding down the space bar Holding: -After firing first bullet, firing becomes very fast Disadvantage -Have to let go and hold down again when tapping another key, else bullets will not fire If you compare tapping and holding, tapping is better. Tapping allows you to change direction any time and fire 5 bullets almost immediately, instead of holding, which tends to inaccurate since it is harder to turn and keep shooting and hit an asteroid. You can turn while holding, but when you want to start turning again, you have to rehold the spacebar. Asteroids There are 3 types of asteroids. -First stage asteroids, very big. Splits into 2 second stage asteroids upon being shot -Second stage asteroids, medium size. Splits into 2 third stage asteroids upon being shot -Third stage asteroids, small. Disappears upon being hit by any type of bullet Note: If you smash into an asteroid, the asteroid does not consider itself hit. But if an alien smashes into it, it will treat it as a bullet and break up and disappear if third stage Alien ships There are roughly two types of alien ships Big alien ships: -Easier to hit -Randomly fires -Tends to move towards you and try to smash into you Small alien ships: -Harder to hit -Aims at you all the time, but not 100% accurate Alien ships are generally dangerous, and you should try to destroy them. There are some ways of destroying small alien ships, which are hard to destroy due to their size, but that will come in later. General guide Before you dream of getting a good highscore (my best is 320k+, listen to me), learn to move your ship around. Make sure you are comfortable with moving your ship around. There are a maneuvere which you can try. I tend to use it a lot. These techniques are useful for dodging asteroids. Now, learn the range of your shots. How far can you shoot. Remember roughly how far it is. This is useful for learning when not to shoot an out-of-range target, saving your bullets so you can destroy closer targets. Remember, if you hit the bullet limit of 5, you will not be able to fire any bullets at all. Aiming is important. Small asteroids are hard to hit. If you cannot aim well, chose targets that are easier to hit or shoot in a straight line until the target is hit. Try to improve your aiming until you can kill any asteroid you wish to kill with ease. You can choose for your ship to float around or stay stationary to shoot. Either way is okay, but you must know how to be able to aim and avoid while in both forms. If you float around, do not hit asteroids, and if you stay stationary, do not let asteroids smash into you. Learn where you respawn. If you get the rough idea you can react if you die and respawn at a dangerous moment. Predict the next moment. Know if an asteroid or a bullet is going to hit you. Try to see and avoid. Do not sit there and wait to get hit. Destroy or evade. Focus on asteroids coming towards you. If you stay stationary, destroy them quickly before they hit you. If you float around, you may choose to destroy them or evade. Try not to let too many asteroids float around. It is harder to dodge more asteroids. The worst case is many asteroids which all fly at a very high speed. If there are many asteroids, destroy them. If you cannot aim well, destroy those coming directly at you. Shooting at stage 1 asteroids constantly will result in it breaking up, the stage 2 asteroids getting destroyed and stage 3 asteroids getting destroyed also (but not all of the time). This is a useful way of quickly getting points and reducing the number asteroids on the field. There are roughly 24-32 directions which you can shoot at. If you hate alien ships, destroy some stage 1 and stage 2 asteroids and let the stage 2/3 asteroids float around. But do not let too many float around. These asteroids can serve as a shield and weapon against alien ships. When they float around, the alien ships either destroy them or smash into them. This lightens your workload of destroying objects. Finally, the level will not be considered complete until the last object is destroyed and no other object comes in right after the last object is destroyed. What I doWhen the level starts, I immediately aim at the nearest asteroid and keep shooting until there is either one of the stage 3 asteroids or none left. I then aim at the next stage 1 asteroid and repeat. If there are too many asteroids, I will destroy many stage 3 asteroids until I am comfortable with the amount of the screen. Usually, I will not permit more than 15 stage 3 asteroids on the screen. If there are not too many asteroids, I will keep destroying asteroids. Top priority are asteroids headed towards me and those which move fast enough to hit me in 1 sec. Because I let asteroids float around me, aliens get different priority depending on the situation. Small aliens are usually top priority. These aliens will attempt to shoot you down, and they can easily kill you twice if they shoot you, then shoot you again when you respawn. I usually do not attempt to go head on with a small alien, because my aiming is not too good to hit it 100% of the time. If the field has quite a lot of asteroids. I will keep moving. I then either try to shoot the alien or just weave in and out of the asteroids and use the asteroids as a shield. However, if there are not many asteroids left (1 or no stage 1 asteroids, less than 8 stage 2/3 asteroids) then I will attempt to use the mobius shot, or I will engage head a head-on fight using move shot to kill it. Big aliens are usually top priority if they wander close enough to me to be able to hit me if they shoot. Big aliens may not seem threatening, but they will always tend to go closer to you. And they will tend to hit you if you ignore them, either by crashing or shooting. If one is within your shooting range, engage it if no asteroid is threatening to hit you immediately. My overall advise for aliens is to kill them quickly. They can kill you if you do not. I repeat this loop (sounds like programming, but I do not use bots) until I die. Techniques which I have named Mobius shot Shooting towards the edge of the screen to hit the object on the other edge of the screen. Bullets will go out of the screen and appear on the opposite edge heading away from the edge. This technique is what I use to combat small alien ships. Small alien ships are unable to use the mobius shot, so it is generally safe to try kill the small alien ship by using this. However, big alien ships can use this as well. You need to be able to aim well to use this technique. Swirl Keep accelerating before turning 180 degrees and slowing down drastically or changing direction. This technique is used to change your positioning and then stop quickly. If you are cramped due to too many asteroids, this move can come in handy if you can and know how to use it. Move shot As the name suggest, you shoot while moving. Simple technique, I recommend you use it if you fight small aliens head on. Just make sure you do not crash. Tips When three stage 1 asteroids are heading towards you. Do NOT try to destroy them all. Instead, move away. Why? Because if you try to destroy 3 stage 1 asteroids, they will reach you first. There are just too many of them to destroy, and you would just lose a life instead. Try not to die. Stock up on lives. Paragon did not hit above 5 lives I think. If you can get 7 or 8 lives, you should have enough spare lives to last the game. Top priority is always anything that threatens to kill you in the next second. Aliens are always top priority if they are close to you, and asteroids heading towards and are sure to crash into you are also top priority. NEVER ever let 20+ asteroids roam the screen. If you do that you are pretty dead if they spread out. Do not get bothered if you lose a life. You will have to die sometime. But do NOT be careless and smash into asteroids bullets and ships alike. Do not waste lives.
That's a great guide bro. Won't be making much out of it though, because the scores will take me a forever amount of time to overcome. ^^ Hope someone makes a Tetris guide, I can't figure out who those dudes from youtube do so well. Good job.
You forgot two buttons and their functions. P = pause the game. Shift = teleport. Good to use when you got nothing to loose. Also, you made it sound like it's a good thing when UFOs destroy asteroids or gets destroyed by asteroids. It's NOT! The game is not about reaching the next level, its about scoring. You don't get anything from completing levels, and UFOs are the main income, the small UFOs gives about 1000 points! The asteroids that UFOs destroy does NOT give you points, neither does the suicidal UFOs. It's all about destroying the UFOs before they end up in a rock, denying you its points.
I didn't say that you should concentrate on killing either. I said that you should not let UFOs waste themselves, and that you should use the shift button when you've got nothing to loose. Great guide tho.
