—HOW TO PLAY
Preamble
These instructions are intended to give you an overview of the features and how to play. If you are familiar with the original QBasic Gorilas.bas then you already know how to lob a banana - but there is lots of new stuff, explained in some detail below, enough to give you the jist at least.
GAME PLAY
Take turns throwing explosive bananas across the city. Destroy the opposing gorilla to win the round. Win the selected number of rounds to win the match.
On your turn, type an ANGLE and press ENTER, then type a VELOCITY and press ENTER to fire.
Wind changes the banana's flight. Buildings can also shelter bananas from the wind when WIND SHADOW is enabled.
Rain slightly changes banana flight and makes rooftops slippery. A shallow impact on a wet roof may skid along the surface instead of exploding immediately.
Wet rooftops remain slippery for a short time after the rain stops.
BONUS ROUNDS
Optional bonus rounds may appear between normal rounds. Individual bonus types can be enabled or disabled in the game settings.
FALLING SAXES — Defend your VIP gorillas by shooting down falling saxophones. This uses fast free-fire controls rather than normal alternating turns.
BREACH THE WALL — Blast a passage through the central wall. The first player to create a complete opening wins the bonus round.
GRAVITY — Planets create powerful gravity wells which bend banana trajectories. Use them to curve or slingshot shots around the battlefield.
CHAT BOX
During an online game the chat box can be used for normal messages and game commands.
If OPPONENT AIM → CHAT is enabled by the host, the opponent's angle and velocity are shown in chat after each shot.
CHAT COMMANDS:
#help #lightning on #lightning off #lightning toggle #safety on #safety off #safety toggle aliases: #friendly #ff #blitz on #blitz off #blitz toggle #sax mute #sax unmute #sax toggle #sax vol 0..1 #sax freq 10s 25s #bonus sax #bonus breach #bonus gravity #bonus end #bonusrate 0..1 #bonuscooldown#bonusmax #bonusweights #bonuson #bonusoff #play #skip #music mute #music unmute #music toggle #music vol
Some commands are host-controlled or only apply to online games.
NETWORK PLAY
HOST GAME creates an online lobby. Other players can find the lobby and request to join. The host accepts or rejects incoming requests.
Online games use two players. The host controls Player 1 and the joining player controls Player 2.
The host controls the authoritative game world, including buildings, weather and bonus-round state.
Lobby status is maintained while waiting for another player and the lobby closes when the match is finished or abandoned.
WEATHER CONTROLS
WIND — Changes banana trajectory. Strong wind can create dramatically different shots.
WIND SHADOW — Tall buildings reduce the effect of wind on the sheltered side of the building.
RAIN — Slightly increases downward banana movement and makes rooftops slippery. Wet roofs gradually dry after the rain stops.
LIGHTNING — Storm clouds may produce lightning strikes. A gorilla struck by lightning may be warped to a different rooftop, subject to a cooldown.
GUSTS — Temporary changes in wind strength can alter both banana flight and cloud movement.
JUKEBOX
Click Enable Shared Music to use the jukebox. YouTube tracks can be queued during a match and broadcast to both players.
Both players can add to the playlist in an online game. When a track ends, the next queued track is played automatically.
Use the chatbox #play command followed by a YouTube link to add a track. #skip advances to the next track.
Tracks played during the match are collected into the match playlist. At the end of an online match the playlist can be copied, saved or published.
Published community playlists can later be browsed and loaded back into the jukebox.
Press F2 during a match to open the SOUND menu. Press F2 or ESC to return to the game.
ABOUT GORILLAS
THE ORIGINAL
GORILLAS began life as GORILLA.BAS, one of the example programs supplied with QBasic in the MS-DOS era.
Two gorillas. A randomly generated city. Exploding bananas. Choose an angle and velocity, account for gravity and wind, and attempt to remove your opponent from the skyline.
The complete BASIC source code was there to be read, studied and changed. For many people, that was as important as the game itself: GORILLAS wasn't just something you could play — it was something you could take apart and mess with.
HOW THIS VERSION HAPPENED
Many years later, Gorillas was still getting played.
Si and I would spend evenings playing it together — usually accompanied by some good tunes, a little whisky, and increasingly questionable ideas about things that could be changed in the game.
What started as messing around with the code gradually became something much bigger. New effects appeared. Weather became more interesting. Physics became less sensible. Bonus rounds arrived. Gorillas got struck by lightning. Saxophones became considerably more dangerous than they had any right to be.
The guiding principle remained the same: keep the simple character of the original game, but don't be afraid to exaggerate things when it makes the game more fun.
GOING ONLINE
Eventually Si moved to Scotland.
Sitting at the same computer for a game of Gorillas was no longer quite so convenient, which created a fairly obvious problem:
How do we keep playing?
The answer became the network version.
Local Gorillas grew into an online game with hosting, joining, chat, shared weather and game state, statistics, rematches and eventually a shared jukebox — because if you're going to throw explosive bananas at somebody hundreds of miles away, you may as well listen to some good music while doing it.
THE PHILOSOPHY
This isn't intended to turn Gorillas into a realistic physics simulator.
Wind bends bananas. Buildings provide shelter. Rain makes rooftops slippery. Gravity wells can slingshot shots around planets. Lightning can relocate a gorilla.
Some of it resembles real physics. Some of it very definitely does not.
If exaggerating something creates a better shot, a funnier accident, or a moment that makes both players laugh, then it probably belongs in the game.
CREDITS
Based on the classic QBasic GORILLAS / GORILLA.BAS.
Original GORILLA.BAS source: Copyright (C) IBM Corporation 1991.
This version: conceived, modified, tested and repeatedly broken in the pursuit of better banana warfare.
Special thanks to Si — opponent, co-conspirator, beta tester and enthusiastic supporter of increasingly ridiculous game mechanics.
AND FINALLY...
Two gorillas.
One city.
Exploding bananas.
Some ideas don't need improving.
They just need more Baker St.