Gutterball 2 * Read Me
A Skunk Studios™ game

Overview
Gutterball 2 is the 2nd coming of the original 3d bowling game that started it all. With a completely re-tuned, true-to-life physics engine and an amazing new 3D style, it's the bowling experience you've been waiting a lifetime for. Real yet outrageous, clean but not too clean, optimized for fast and not-so-fast computers. Here's to the great sport of bowling, tamed and brought beneath your mouse and onto your desktop. Strike it big!

Characters
Gutterball 2 features characters who populate the 5 unique alleys and emerge to give you 'love' or 'not so much love' depending on how your bowling game is going. Watch out for monkeys in Jungle and the infamous seal who cruises the Iceberg. Not to be outdone, the stealthy ones in Lotus Lanes will slice and dice if you're not bowling well. For those of a mind to shoo them all away, the options menu presents a checkbox for such purpose.

Controls
Gutterball 2 is mouse controlled. You throw and steer the ball using your mouse.

To throw the ball:
1. Move mouse left and right on screen to align ball with lane
2. Click and hold the left mouse button to grab the ball
3. Drag the mouse down, as if pulling back your bowling ball
4. Drag the mouse up, toward the pins, fast... and release the left mouse button!

To steer the ball:
- As the ball hits the floor, you will see a green steering arrow appear
- To spin your ball to the left, move the mouse to the left side of the screen
- To spin your ball to the right, move your mouse to the right side of the screen
With practice, you may find yourself throwing beautiful, smooth strikes! (Or gnarly, wobbly gutterballs... but it's in your control!)

Single Player Mode
One human player, going it solo. Scores count for high scores, and players earn $ based on scoring levels.

Player vs. Computer Mode
Take on one of 10 computer opponents. Defeating a computer opponent will unlock the bowling ball they use, and earn players $1000. Computer players will have their statistics tracked, and they appear on your high scores list to give you some competition.

Player vs. Player Mode
Bowl with 2-4 people on a computer, just like down at the local alley. The more humans play, the larger the prize money.

Unlockable Items
Many of the crazier items in Gutterball 2 are locked! You will need to achieve certain goals to unlock these items. Unlockable items include the chilly Iceberg alley and the bizarre madness of the Wacky House lanes. Experienced bowlers will enjoy the unique challenges these alleys present. In addition, many of the snazzier bowling balls are locked, until you defeat certain computer bowlers, or until a human player earns a specific total amount of prize money in the game.

Customizing your Bowling Ball
You may customize any unlocked ball's Spin, Speed and Weight properties. These physics properties have a great impact on the gameplay with that ball. For example, a ball with more spin will make faster turns as you steer it down the lane. A ball with a higher speed will take off faster when thrown with the mouse. A ball with a higher weight will require a stronger throw with the mouse, but also hits the pins with more force. Each ball has a max Power rating established when the game begins. You can move Power points around to balance your ball's Speed, Spin and Weight. And, rolling a strike with any ball will give that ball 1 additional Power point to use.

To truly customize your ball, you can also add any digital image! Images can be loaded up from the Web, or your hard drive. Skunk Studios provides an online catalog of ball images and we update this catalog from time to time. How cool is it to slap your face on a ball and toss it down the lane? Get creative with this feature, and find out!

Bowlers
The 'bowlers' tab in the high scores shows you the earnings and W-L records for your bowlers. Bowlers are ranked by Earnings, which are earned by defeating other human and computer opponents, or bowling for good scores in single player mode. Bowling averages can also be viewed on this screen.

High Scores
There are 5 high scores lists in Gutterball 2, one for each alley. Click the tabs on the top of the screen to see who's the best in each game mode!

Worldwide High Scores
Gutterball 2 connects to the Internet to let you post and view high scores from around the World! There are 5 worldwide high scores lists, one for each alley. Are you the best in the world at Gutterball 2? Post to worldwide high scores, and instantly find out! The worldwide high scores are reset every day, to give you a fresh chance at worldwide fame and glory.

Troubleshooting & 3D Performance Tuning
Gutterball 2 is a high-performance 3D game, and there are several Options settings that can affect the game speed. Depending on your computer, some settings will give you better game speed than others.

If the game is playing slowly, please try the following:
1) Switch your 3D Renderer. From the main menu, click Options. You will see an option called "3D Renderer". There are two primary options, Open GL and Direct X. On most computers, Direct X will play faster than Open GL. However, some computers will play better using the Open GL renderer. Try the other renderer, and find out which is best for your computer. Note: on Macs, Open GL is the only option.

2) Upgrade DirectX. If you do not see a DirectX renderer option, only software, you would definitely want to upgrade. There is a free download available on the Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/directx/

3) There are a variety of game specific options, which you can turn off to improve game speed. These include Characters, Reflections, Particles and Weather. These all help in performance optimizing. Characters take up a good amount of RAM, so if you have 128MB or less you may want to turn this off. Reflections take a better 3D video card, since there are more polygons. If your computer doesn't have a great video card, turning off Reflections will help, especially in Retro. Turning off Particles and Weather will also help performance a bit on lower-end computers, though probably not as much as Characters and Reflections.

4) Use the 640x480 window size, or 800x600 at the largest. The larger the window size, the slower the game will play. On fast computers, the larger screen sizes make for great looking graphics, but for fastest performance, the small window size is the way to play.

Customer Support
Skunk Studios customer support can be contacted at this URL
http://www.skunkstudios.com/support

Credits
Created by Skunk Studios™
Audio by Ronkat the Funklectic
Additional 3D Modeling by Eddie Alcazar
Voices by Eric McFadden, Kathy Mello
Ball Textures by Shelly L. Long
We thank you for playing Gutterball 2!
Skunk Studios™ (www.skunkstudios.com)
© 2004 Skunk Studios, LLC. All rights reserved.

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