                         DBTL game v1.02
                           -=======-
                       Skitso Productions

                        Contents:

                 1.......................General
                 2.......................The Office
                   2.1.....................The Map
                   2.2.....................The Phone
                 3.......................Results
                 4.......................Tips
                 5.......................About the game
                                         Credits and contact details




1. Welcome to the DBTL game!

Down By The Laituri is an annual music festival held in Turku. It consists
mainly of music and culture events scattered all around the city.

Now that DBTL has reached the respectable age of 10, it was decided to give
everyone a chance to try organizing the festival through this DBTL game.

The aim of the game is to organize a DBTL festival that is as well attended
and as profitable as possible. The player places performers at the venues
of their choice at the times of their choice. They also set the ticket
price for every event and take care of things like hiring stages and
advertising the festival. Once the player has finished organizing DBTL, the
game shows, one event at a time, how the festival went. The best players
get to write their names on the organizers' top 20 list.

System requirements:
 - Preferably a 486 66MHz or better computer with 4MB of free memory
 - VESA 1.2 compatible graphics card (most are)
 - DOS mode (playing under Windows is not recommended)
 - A mouse (although the game also works with the keyboard)






Also useful:
 - For sound, a Sound Blaster or Gravis Ultrasound sound card.
   (Sound card settings must be configured via sound.bat.
    GUS owners should also have ULTRINIT.EXE on their path)



2. The Office

The game is played in the office. In the office, and elsewhere in the game,
you control the on-screen cursor with the mouse or keyboard. The left mouse
button (Enter on the keyboard) selects the object under the cursor.
(The right mouse button is only used on the map of Turku; on the keyboard
it corresponds to the space bar)

Festival planning is mainly done on the map of Turku lying on the desk. The
office also has a phone, which you can use e.g. to check the weather and to
advertise. On the desk are also the band book and the venue book, which
contain all the information you need about the available performers and
venues. The budget on the desk shows the estimated costs of the events you
have arranged, and the DBTL lineup shows which events you have set up.
The door leads out of the office back to the main menu, which ends the game.
The office also has less important objects to fiddle with to pass the time.
If stress takes over, you can for example shake the bush or twirl the pen.
When you think the DBTL festival is ready, click the READY button.
After that you will see how your arrangements worked out.















2.1 The Map

Events are arranged on the map:
0. Choose the time slot.
The time slot being planned is shown at the top of the screen, e.g.
Wednesday night. You can change it with the arrow buttons next to it. Venues
are only open at certain times, so when you change the time slot some venues
disappear from the map and others appear.

1. Choose a performer. There are 51 performers in total on the right-hand
side of the screen. You can browse them with the buttons in the bottom right
corner. Select a performer by clicking the left mouse button on its logo.
The mouse cursor then turns into the performer's logo. If the logo comes
completely off the bar on the right, it means that the performer cannot
perform any more after this (it won't agree to do any more gigs).

2. Place the performer at a venue on the map. Move the performer's logo
over the slot of the chosen venue and click the left mouse button. The
performer then "drops" into the venue's slot and the cursor goes back to
normal.

3. Set the ticket price. The event's ticket price is shown in the top left
corner of the venue slot and you can change it by clicking the right mouse
button over the venue. On easy difficulty the ticket price is red when the
event is certain to lose money and blue when the event could in principle
make a profit. On hard difficulty the ticket price is always shown in blue.
The cheaper the ticket, the bigger the audience.

When you move the cursor over a venue/performer, a small box appears next
to it showing the name of the venue/performer and its star rating. You can
get even more information on performers with the right mouse button.

2.2 The Phone

The phone is used as usual. Note that 10 seconds after picking up the
receiver it is too late to start dialing a number; you then have to press
the hang-up button. If you can't be bothered to type numbers one digit at a
time, the phone also has small black speed-dial buttons.

Places you can call:
Weather station = See the weather forecasts for the festival days. The
better the weather, the bigger the audience. The weather especially affects
outdoor venues, and the meteorologist is so skilled that the forecasts are
quite accurate.

Advertising agency = Choose how much money to invest in advertising in the
various media. The more you invest, the bigger the audience, but
advertising is so expensive that it doesn't always pay off.

Sponsorship broker = Represents sponsoring companies and negotiates with you
on their behalf. Your job is to haggle - but not too much, as you can lose
the whole sum if you are too greedy.

Stage rental = Here you can rent stages for the whole of DBTL. After you
rent them, the stages appear on the map of Turku on the office desk and you
can arrange events on them. Stages suit events that draw large crowds.










3. Results

Once the player has finished arranging the events and clicked the READY
button, the results are shown.

First the results of the day's events are shown one by one on a special
results screen. The green bar and the crowd drawn above it show how many
people turned up. The blue bar shows the costs and the red bar the income.
The bars are drawn fairly slowly, so you can speed them up by pressing any
key while they are drawn. If the event is profitable, coins pile up on the
right side of the screen. One coin equals 300mk. Finally a short
explanation of how the event went appears at the bottom of the screen.
Unexpected extra costs can also come up during events; the text will tell
you about them. Pressing ESC jumps straight to the day's summary screen.

When the results of all the day's separate events have been shown, a
summary screen of that day's income and costs follows. After that, the next
day's individual event results continue...

Finally the overall result of the whole festival appears, showing e.g. the
total audience of all events, all income, costs and the final balance. If
the festival went well, you get to write your name on the Top 20 list. Your
placing is based on the points you score. The most important criterion is
the audience size, but a financial loss or profit also affects the points.

Then the game is over and you return to the main menu.

4. Tips

Here are a few tips for keen players
- It's worth getting stages before planning the events.
- The more events you arrange and the better performers you choose, the
  bigger the audience generally gets at (other) events too.
- The more events you arrange, the more it pays to invest in
  advertising.
- Don't arrange outdoor events in bad weather.
- Too expensive a ticket may drive away almost the entire audience,
  but too cheap a ticket makes the venue fill up too quickly
  and people are left outside the event.
- Popular, expensive performers should be put on big stages
  with a fairly low ticket price.
- Cheap performers, on the other hand, are best put in fairly small
  venues, so that income covers the costs.


5. About the game

The DBTL game is freeware, i.e. it may be distributed freely as long as no
related material, code or graphics is changed or removed.

Skitso Productions and Pro Laituri Ry accept no liability for any direct
or indirect damage the game may cause. In other words, you use the game at
your own risk.

             This game is the work of SKITSO PRODUCTIONS
                               i.e.
             ------------------------------------------
             Programming  Antti Haapakoski
                          
             Graphics     Teppo Lhtinen                          
             ------------------------------------------
             + Music by
             Olli Attila                          
             ------------------------------------------



             
             
             
             
