Sopwith II Unoffical Docs     

1. Introduction to Sopwith II 
2. How to start playing 
3. Control Keys 
4. How to beat the computer 

 I take no responsibility for bad things that may happen to you or your computer using these instructions - in other words, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!



1.Introduction to Sopwith II

Sopwith II is a simple, easy-to-play CGA game for MS-DOS systems with 286+ processors.  The object of the game is for you to destroy all of the red forces.  Once you destroy all of the red forces, you advance to the next level.  The first level seems to be an introductory level; tanks and buildings do not shoot at you.  After the first level, the speed of the game increases and tanks and buildings begin to shoot at you.

Status Bar:

When you're playing Sopwith II, you'll see something at the bottom of the screen like this status bar.  The number at the left of the status bar is your amount of points.  The four bars to the right of the score are how many planes you have, how much fuel you have left, how many bombs you have, and how many bullets in your machine gun, respectively.  To the right of the bars is your map; the white outline is the landscape, the blue dots are your forces and birds, and the red dots are the enemies.



2.How to start playing

All you need is the Sopwith2.zip file that you can find on this site.  Unzip it using PKUNZIP or WINZIP, then run it either from Dos or the Dos Prompt.  It will not run under Windows '95 (at least, not on my system).  Pick your game options, and then the game starts.

Command line switches:

-q : Quiet Mode (no sound)
-w : Run Sopwith II in Monochrome (Black and White)
-g# : Run Sopwith II at level #.  (Game starts at Level 0 normally)
-s : Run Sopwith II on single player mode
-c : Run Sopwith II on computer mode
-m : Run Sopwith II on multiplayer mode*
 -a : Run Sopwith II on asychronous line mode*
-j : Run Sopwith II with a joystick
-k : Run Sopwith II with a keyboard
-i : Run Sopwith II with an IBM keyboard (use in conjunction with the above)
-h_ : Record a Sopwith II movie (replace underscore with file name)
-v_ : View a Sopwith II movie (replace underscore with file name)

For example, typing in
sopwith2 -q -g3 -hMymovie.sop
would start Sopwith II in quiet mode, on level 3, while recording the Sopwith II movie "mymovie.sop"

*Options seem to be unusable.



3.Control Keys

Sopwith II has a lot of control keys; here are the ones that I found out.
X - Speeds your plane up.  Press and hold down to take off.
Z - Slows your plane down.  Sometimes used to outmanuever the red planes.
, - Makes you go up.
/ - Makes you go down.
. - Flips your plane upside down, and reverses the "," and "/" keys.
Space - Shoot your machine gun.
B - Drop a bomb.
H - Head for home, lets you land to refuel and rearm, but makes it easy for the enemy to shoot you down.
S - Toggles sound.
CTRL-Break/CTRL-Pause - Quits game.

4. How to beat the computer

The computer is tough to beat, so here are a few tricks that I've discovered:
- Dive up, then down repeatedly.  This confuses the computer and makes it hard for him to shoot at you.
- If the computer keeps outmanuevering you, throw a bomb at him. Dive close to the ground at a low speed, then pull up when the computer is tailing you close. He'll usually crash into the ground.
- Throw a bomb or shoot into a flock of birds, and then when the birds split up trick the computer into hitting one.
- When you come at the computer and you're aiming level towards him, pull up a notch and drop a bomb. After a little pause, pull up and do a loop all the way back and if it's timed right, he'll go into it.
- Come at the enemy plane straight and inverted. Drop a bomb and he'll fly right through it.
- When you're taking off and he's over at his place, if you stay relatively low and hold down space, he'll come at you straight on and go through the bullets. It seems that the AI tells it not to fly into a stream of bullets above or below it, but if its right in front of it, it won't 'notice' it.
- If he's doing that endless circle around you, you can just go up above the ceiling (NOT straight up, he'll crash into you) and he'll invariably follow you up. You went up first, though, and so you can pull out of it first, and you have time to add some distance between you and circle back to try and hit him.
- Diving towards the ground and at the same time slowing down with the Z key will sometime make him smash into things. The computer's not too quick to notice speed changes and seems to follow a "if he can do it, I can do it" philosophy.
- Fly low slightly over a building. Before you reach it, drop a bomb and go over it, just out of the range of its debris once it explodes. If you get down quick enough and there's enough distance between you, he'll try to go straight for you and hit the debris.
- Fuel tanks are the easiest things to use to hit him (I like to use my own, since its in an easy place, but only when I'm playing to mess around). Go straight down at the tank, but offset a bit so that the bottom of your plane will drop a bomb to go directly on top of it). Drop a bomb as close to the top of the screen as you can. Straddle the bomb (with him following you down) as long as you can, and pull back and get away as quick as you can when it explodes. If you got him close enough to the tank when it exploded, he'll get hit.
- Probably the best trick is to have the computer follow you to one of these red lines.  After the computer crosses one, he'll turn the other way and let you have a clear shot at him. 



created by Magitek Chocobo.
Additional Credits go to:
Mike Caldwell
David G
