Weapon Properties Guide version 1.0
             for Raptor: Call of the Shadows version 1.2 registered
             ======================================================
                                  by Porcupine

Introduction
============
Raptor is a classic, vertically scrolling, shoot 'em up game for DOS. These
days though most PCs run Windows XP or Vista. Depending on your computer you
may or may not be able to get the game to run in the Command Prompt. I had to
use the DOSBox emulator to get Raptor to run again. The biggest complaint I
have with DOSBox is that it doesn't offer much control over the refresh rate of
your display. The vertical sync doesn't work so graphics will shear, but it's
still playable I guess. The best thing about DOSBox is that it allows you to
remap the keyboard, something that can be quite useful for Raptor.

Raptor plays a little differently from the typical shooter, which in some ways
is less annoying. Although their capabilities are nowhere near yours, the enemy
ships function somewhat similarly. Your ship can take many hits before being
destroyed, but the enemies can also take a number of hits. Many of their
weapons are even similar to your own. Therefore weapon stats and damage levels
are more important in Raptor than in other shoot 'em ups, where enemies are
instead typically like swarming gnats that die in one hit.

Mainly out of curiosity, I've done all sorts of tests to experimentally
determine the numerical stats of every weapon in the game. In this guide I
describe how each weapon works and give my thoughts on which are good.

General Information
===================
Your weapons fall into two categories: 'Always Equipped' and 'Selectable'. The
first type is always active, which is terrific. Unfortunately you can only
choose one 'Selectable' weapon to be active. However you can switch your
selected weapon at any time with the Alt key, and the newly selected weapon
will begin firing with no delay whatsoever. Therefore, repeatedly mashing Alt
enables you to fire more than one 'Selectable' weapon simultaneously. If you
rapidly cycle through all the 'Selectable' weapons you own, each of them can
theoretically fire at their maximum rate without pauses. But due to physical
limitations on how fast you can mash Alt, and other reasons, in practice it's
not nearly this perfect. More on this technique later.

Another important attribute of each weapon deals with the type of targets it
can hit. There are three types of targets: air, ground, and building. Buildings
aren't a big deal because they can't hurt you, but they still absorb gunfire
and act as blockers for the things that can. If all your weapons ignored
buildings that'd be fine, but your mainstay 'Always Equipped' weapon hits
everything. So all other things being equal it is generally a good thing for a
weapon to be able to hit buildings, to help out. Ignoring buildings can have
its advantages too, though.

One last remark, some of your weapons fire projectiles in pairs. In Raptor,
hit detection is pretty accurate and projectile pairs always function as two
separate objects that can hit independently of each other. But I have chosen to
treat projectile pairs as a single shot for purposes of listing damage and
firing rate, so keep that in mind. Your projectile pairs are generally fired
close together so usually both will hit, but if only one hits then the damage
will be halved.

Player Weapons
==============

Reaver Twin Machine Guns
------------------------
type: always equipped
targets: air, ground, building
damage: 2 points (pair)
firing rate: 15.6
damage rate: 31.2
projectile speed: fast
cost: 12000 credits

Default weapon that you start the game with. It is awesome, most players don't
appreciate how powerful it is. It does more damage than people realize. Never
sell it unless you want to teach yourself not to take this weapon for granted.

Air\Air Missile
---------------
type: selectable
targets: air
damage: 8 points (pair)
firing rate: 3
damage rate: 24
projectile speed: average
cost: 63500 credits

A pretty decent weapon, average in most regards. Don't buy, you'll pick it up
pretty early. Its shots are more concentrated than those of the Twin Machine
Guns, which is better in some ways and worse in others.

Plasma Cannon
-------------
type: always equipped
targets: air
damage: 2 points
firing rate: 3
damage rate: 6
projectile speed: average
cost: 78800 credits

An extremely weak and pathetic weapon but since it is 'Always Equipped' one
can't complain. It also fires out of the center of your ship so I guess it is
nice that it is different. The purchasing cost is moderate so it's up to you
when to buy it. It's usually the first weapon upgrade I buy despite how weak it
is, but you may prefer to save for the Micro-Missile first, or even avoid
buying this altogether until you have so much money that you don't know what to
do with it.

Bomb
----
type: selectable
targets: ground, building
damage: 5 points (against ground targets)
firing rate: 1
damage rate: 5
projectile speed: slowest
cost: 98200 credits

Huh? Is this really that pathetic? Yes, but the Bomb does have a use. It is
mainly for destroying buildings. If it hits a building, the Bomb gains other
properties. One, it destroys any building in one hit, as far as I have seen.
Which means it does much more damage against buildings. Two, when it destroys a
building, the Bomb has an area-of-effect, and any buildings within that area
are also destroyed. The area-of-effect consists of one building block to each
side of the impacted building block, one building block diagonally-upwards to
each side, and two building blocks upward. There is no special animation
depicting this area-of-effect, any buildings there are simply destroyed. Most
of the time there will be no buildings to take advantage of this effect and
nothing will happen. If the Bomb impacts a non-building ground target such as
an enemy turret, the area-of-effect does not engage.

Don't confuse the area-of-effect phenomenon for the general destroyed building
phenomenon. If you destroy a large multi-block building with any weapon, most
of the building or the whole building will explode. The blocks within some
buildings explode sequentially so an unknowledgeable player will continue
firing into the exploding building to finish the job. But actually the building
has already been destroyed and the player doesn't need to waste time shooting
it anymore. With extremely large buildings, sometimes you will have indeed only
destroyed part of it, but the remaining parts will be small and easily finished
with only a few shots from the Machine Guns.

Overall though, the Bomb totally sucks. The Air\Ground Missile is better.

Air\Ground Missile
------------------
type: selectable
targets: ground, building
damage: 40 points (pair)
firing rate: 1.5
damage rate: 60
projectile speed: slow
cost: 110000 credits

This is what the Bomb should have been. The Air\Ground Missile only hits things
on the ground but it does a ton of damage. Shooting air targets is usually more
important than ground targets so this won't usually be your primary selectable
weapon, but you can switch to it to eliminate ground targets at will.

Don't buy, just pick it up. After you get this and the Air\Air Missile, you can
mash Alt and both will fire simultaneously with no decrease in firing rate if
your timing is correct. Tap Alt at twice the fire rate of the Air\Air Missile.
If your timing is off or you mash uncontrollably it will be almost as good so
don't worry. Everyone should definitely try this at some point, and it is good
practice for the more advanced version of this technique I will describe later.

The Air\Ground Missile is arguably about as good as the Bomb at clearing out
buildings, better in some ways and worse in others. One hit from this will
destroy almost any building, it only lacks the area-of-effect property which is
mostly useless anyway. And against ground enemies that actually shoot, the
Air\Ground Missile rocks.

Dumbfire Missile
----------------
type: selectable
targets: air, ground, building
damage: 8 points (pair)
firing rate: 3
damage rate: 24
projectile speed: average
cost: 145200 credits

Another good pickup. The missiles fan out to the sides and randomly fire
crooked which is good in some ways and bad in others. Appears to fire at a
quicker rate than it actually does but this is an optical illusion. I like how
it hits everything so when I get them I sell my Air\Air and Air\Ground and just
use this. Alternatively, you can use the Alt mashing technique with full
effectiveness using this and the Air\Air or Air\Ground, or even all three if
you are willing to mash faster.

Micro-Missile
-------------
type: always equipped
targets: air, ground
damage: 4 points (pair)
firing rate: 7.8
damage rate: 31.2
projectile speed: average
cost: 175600

The best 'Always Equipped' weapon upgrade available. It is essentially the same
as having another Reaver Twin Machine Guns at the same time, except it doesn't
hit buildings. The missiles also come out from closer to the edges of your
ship's wings than the Reaver, so they increase the 'thickness' of your main
guns too. Buy this as soon as possible.

Missile Pod
-----------
type: selectable
targets: air
damage: 8 points (pair)
firing rate: 6
damage rate: 48
projectile speed: average
cost: 204950

Same as the Air\Air Missile except it fires twice as fast. Powerful, but by the
time you might be considering this there will be better weapons to use.

Auto-Track Mini-Gun
-------------------
type: selectable
targets: air, ground
damage: 1 point
firing rate: 26
damage rate: 26
projectile speed: fast
cost: 250650

One of the best weapons in the game, buy it. It is essentially the same as the
Reaver except it will track and shoot directly at all visible enemy targets.
People usually rave about this but underappreciate the Reaver, not realizing
how similar the two weapons are in strength. This is because the Mini-Gun seems
more damaging than it really is due to the fact that it is potentially always
hitting something. Your other guns together do way more damage but most of
their shots don't hit anything and fly off into space.

Anyway, damage isn't everything, functionality matters just as much, and the
way this weapon works makes it awesome. It is especially terrific in Bravo
Sector and other early stages where the enemies are slower and weaker, when it
will pretty much obliterate everything and can be preferrable to all other
weapons, even those normally considered 'stronger'.

The Mini-Gun is also great against bosses. It is great against any aerial boss.
Some people have noted that it is also great against ground bosses but I am not
a fan of it in that situation. By the time powerful ground bosses appear, you
will likely have the 'stronger' weapons and I would rather use those to blow
them away. There are a couple of ground bosses where using the Mini-Gun can be
a bit safer, but it takes much longer to destroy them that way, and it feels
like a cowardly method.

This weapon does have its weaknesses though. One, if many enemies appear all at
once the Mini-Gun is stupid and will fire at all of them simultaneously rather
than focusing its firepower on one at a time. Two, the bullets although fast
can be dodged. This will happen more often against fast-moving enemies who are
far away. Three, the Mini-Gun's aim itself is not perfect. Every bullet it
fires is aimed at a different random point on the enemy's body. Sometimes it
aims at the front, sometimes at the back. When it aims at the back the bullet
will be dodged with the slightest enemy movement. Four, although the ability to
hit both air and ground targets is a plus, in the wrong situation this ability
becomes harmful. Because this also increases the number of visible enemies and
causes the Mini-Gun to distribute its limited firepower even further.

In later stages, where the enemies are faster, tougher, and appear in greater
numbers, the Mini-Gun can be overwhelmed into occasional uselessness. For these
stages the 'stronger' weapons are recommended.

Power Disrupter
---------------
type: selectable
targets: air
damage: 1 point
firing rate: 15.6
damage rate: 15.6
projectile speed: average
cost: 300750

Like everyone, I dislike this weapon, but it's not as completely worthless as
some think. It does do damage, just not very much. Most people only notice the
special ability. An enemy hit by a single shot of this will lose its ability to
shoot. But the Power Disrupter only hits aerial enemies, and even some of those
aren't affected by the ability. For the enemies that are affected, they may
have already fired their load by the time you hit them. Enemies that have their
guns taken away can still ram you, and with most enemies the threat of being
rammed is just as dangerous as the threat of the guns themselves.

Bottom line, avoid this weapon. The Pulse Cannon is sort of superior to this in
every way. An enemy that is hit by the Power Disrupter would have also been hit
by the Pulse Cannon, and probably destroyed immediately.

Laser Turret
------------
type: selectable
targets: air
damage: 5 points
firing rate: 4.9
damage rate: 24.4
projectile speed: instant
cost: 512850

One of the best weapons in the game. After you buy the Auto-Track Mini-Gun, buy
this next. It functions the same as the tracking Mini-Gun except that it never
misses. However it can only target aerial enemies. This is a weakness, but as
mentioned before this attribute can sometimes work to your advantage as it
helps the Laser Turret focus its fire on fewer targets. It doesn't fire a
constant stream of bullets like the Mini-Gun, but each laser beam will aim at a
random different enemy. Yet with luck the Laser Turret could repeatedly target
the same enemy so it focuses its fire better than the Mini-Gun does.

Damage-wise, the Laser Turret is average, doing about the same damage as the
Mini-Gun. However since it hits more reliably, in practice it tends to feel
anywhere from slightly to much stronger, depending on the situation. Overall, I
prefer the Laser Turret to the Mini-Gun in the Tango Sector and beyond.

Pulse Cannon
------------
type: selectable
targets: air, ground, building
damage: 5 points
firing rate: 9.8
damage rate: 48.8
projectile speed: average
cost: 725000

This is generally considered to be one of the 'strong' weapons but I personally
do not really like it anymore. When I played the shareware version long ago I
thought this was great but the only other top weapon in the shareware version
was the Auto-Track Mini-Gun, and the Pulse Cannon was the most damaging weapon
available. But in the registered version that's not the case so this weapon no
longer impresses me. The most unique thing about the Pulse Cannon among the top
weapons is its ability to hit buildings. The worst thing about the Pulse Cannon
among the top weapons is that all it really does is power up your main guns,
leaving you a one-dimensional fighter. The other top weapons function a bit
differently and can give your destructive line of fire an added dimension.

I should point out though that the Pulse Cannon is superior to both the Power
Disrupter and the Missile Pod in almost every way.

Deathray
--------
type: selectable
targetS: air, ground
damage: 24 points
firing rate: 4.3
damage rate: 104
projectile speed: instant
cost: 950000

One of the best weapons in the game as is, but the Twin Laser is superior in
every way, it just costs twice as much. Nevertheless, the improvement of the
Twin Laser is worth the cost so after I buy the Laser Turret, I save up until I
have enough to buy the Twin Laser directly. I come back and buy the Deathray
afterwards when I've got more money than I can possibly spend. It's still
useful because it has the same properties as the Twin Laser, including the
firing rate. That is actually what enables one to use the Alt mashing trick to
fire multiple 'Selectable' weapons simultaneously with no decrease in each
one's fire rate. Without such a match, the trick can still be used but it will
be slightly more awkward and the firing rate of one of the weapons may be
lowered somewhat.

Mashing Alt when you only own the Deathray and the Twin Laser essentially
results in an improved laser attack, with twice the firing rate and 30% more
firepower. However if you own any other selectable weapons such as the Laser
Turret and the Mini-Gun the technique won't work well anymore. Fortunately not
only is there a way to overcome this problem, but the solution works even
better than the Alt method. Instead of using Alt to switch weapons, use the
numerical hotkeys which correspond to the weapons directly. The hotkey for the
Deathray is '0' while the hotkey for the Twin Laser is '-'. Simply mash and
twiddle between '0' and '-' and the technique still works. Actually it works
even better since two fingers are better than one. You still need to keep the
fire button, Ctrl, pressed at all times of course, but you can reach the right
side Ctrl with your thumb while you twiddle '0' and '-' with your middle and
index finger.

There you go, that's the advanced version of the Alt mashing technique I was
referring to earlier. But as you may realize by now, that's not the limit of
this technique since you've still got two more free fingers and many other good
selectable weapons to choose from. I will go into more depth later.

Twin Laser
----------
type: selectable
targets: air, ground
damage: 80 points (pair)
firing rate: 4.3
damage rate: 346.7
projectile speed: instant
cost: 1750000

The most powerful weapon in the game. Fires twin laser beams straight forward.
A single beam is enough to destroy most targets. Bosses can be brought near
death before they even begin firing.

However the Twin Laser isn't just about damage. Functionality matters just as
much. This weapon excels in this category as well due to a couple of unique
properties. One, the beam appears instantly, the equivalent of shooting out a
bullet of infinite speed. This aids in your 'response time' in the sense that
when you see a new enemy appear, you can get to it and kill it much quicker,
before it fires anything. But there's another benefit to this property. Since
the Twin Laser's speed is infinite the beam always appears straight in front of
your ship even as you move sideways. Your other main 'Always Equipped' weaponry
will leave trailing shots as you move sideways. What this means is that if you
strafe back and forth, your Twin Laser is going to be hitting different areas
of the screen than your main weaponry. This is what I meant when I said that
the top weapons give you an added 'dimension' to your assault. They help you
kill more enemies not just via more damage, but also by covering different
areas than your main guns.

The second unique property of the Twin Laser is that its beam will plow through
destroyed enemies and continue on to hit enemies behind it. The beam must
destroy the first enemy to enable this effect, but the follow-through beam will
be at full strength as long as it does. Graphically though this effect does not
appear like you might expect. If there are no additional enemies behind the
first enemy that would be hit by the follow-through beam, the follow-through
beam won't be drawn. The laser beam will end where the first enemy is and the
small impact explosion will be drawn, so it will appear as if the enemy sucked
up your laser, shielding enemies behind it. But had there been another enemy
directly behind it, the follow-through beam would have been drawn, accompanied
by another small explosion on each destroyed enemy, so don't worry.

Something to be aware of regarding the Twin Laser is that the beam does have a
small active window. Each beam you fire lasts for more than one frame, the open
window is either three or four frames. This is a very short time though, the
beam doesn't count as being active nearly as long as it looks. If you are
moving sideways sometimes your beam will drag across an enemy's body without
killing it. Usually the enemy survived not because it was durable, but because
you missed despite appearances. It is possible to truly graze an enemy by only
hitting him with part of the active window, but this can only happen if you or
the enemy are moving sideways and the timing of the beam's appearance matches
up perfectly. Grazing hits are ultra rare, but if they do happen the damage is
lessened accordingly.

Megabomb
--------
type: special
targets: air, ground, building, projectile
damage: 50 points
firing rate: 0.5
damage rate: 25
cost: 32250

Maybe this isn't technically a weapon but I tested this too. You can fire it
simultaneously with everything else so that's great, too bad you can only carry
five. When you fire it, an ultra slow-moving bomb canister is launched towards
the center of the screen. Actually slightly above that. When the canister gets
there it will explode and every target on the screen takes 50 points of damage.
All enemy projectiles are also destroyed, which is something only the Megabomb
does. I sometimes like using it to get rid of enemy Mines.

If you want the Megabomb to explode faster you can move your ship to where it
wants to go before dropping it, then the Megabomb explodes instantly. However
it will still take roughly 2.5 seconds before you can fire another Megabomb
regardless of where you drop it, because it also has a firing rate.

Explanation of Numbers
======================
Damage I determined by shooting several enemy test subjects with all the
various weapons and counting how many shots were required to kill them. My
primary test subjects were the Bravo Sector Wave 1 End Boss, which has 150 hit
points on Rookie and 300 hit points on Elite, and the Bravo Sector Wave 5 End
Boss, which has 300 hit points on Rookie and 600 hit points on Elite. The
reason for testing against bosses is that you need a durable enemy to determine
the damage of each weapon with perfect precision. These two bosses were just
barely tough enough to determine all weapons exactly. I am confident that all
my weapon damages are correct to the exact point. I also tested a few random
secondary test subjects to make sure the same damages apply to normal enemies
and buildings, which they do. 

The firing rate figures were even tougher to determine. I got them by using a
combination of several crude methods. For rapid fire weapons I shot the Bravo
Sector Wave 1 End Boss to death and timed how long it took with a stopwatch.
For the rest I fired out 21 shots and timed that with a stopwatch and divided
the time by 20 (the last shot doesn't count because its recovery time doesn't
add into the total time). Many repeat trials were done to minimize human error.
I also tried firing weapons in combinations to check which of them fire at the
same rate or at integer ratios of each other.

I should explain my 'firing rate' units. It uses a relative scale. I assigned
the Bomb a firing rate of 1x speed. In actuality each shot of the Bomb has a
recovery time of exactly 78 frames. So a firing rate of '1' corresponds to
roughly 1 shot every 1.25 seconds. Many other weapons have firing rates that
are perfect integer multiples of this, such as 0.5x, 1.5x, 3x, or 6x. Others
fire at different rates so there may be some slight rounding. At the end of
this guide I have a table of all the weapons which also includes the exact
frame recovery data.

General Enemy Information
=========================
The game documentation claims that at higher difficulty settings, there are
more enemies, who take more damage to destroy, and whose shots do more damage.
That's not completely true. There are indeed progressively more enemies in each
of the four difficulty settings. But they take the same damage to destroy at
any difficulty, except for bosses. Bosses have the same life points in Training
and Rookie, but double in Elite and Veteran. Also enemy shots do the same
damage in any mode except Training. I figured out the enemy damages by getting
hit and checking how many bars of life I lost. Normal Shields give you 100 bars
of life, and each layer of Phase Shields adds 100 more.

Even though there are many different enemies in the game there are only a few
fundamentally different weapons that they use so that is nice. Different
enemies fire at different rates and in different clusters though, so I will
just describe the properties of a single projectile of each, which is a little
different from how I treated the player's weaponry.

Enemy Weapons
=============

Flak
----
appearance: orange bullet
damage: 2 bars (1 bar in training mode)
projectile speed: slow

The basic enemy weapon. Probably their version of your Reaver Twin Machine Guns
except way worse. Good thing too, otherwise you wouldn't be able to dodge it so
easily. Their bullets are much slower, and also bigger and easier to see.

Tracking Flak
-------------
appearance: orange bullet, exact same as Flak
damage: 1 bar (1 bar in training mode)
projectile speed: slow

The only tracking enemy weapon in the game, so that really helps things. Unless
you count the monkey coconuts. Their version of the Auto-Track Mini-Gun except
much worse. In later stages, the tracking turrets will shoot blobs of Tracking
Flak that look like one bullet but are actually several bunched up.

After testing the monkey coconuts they ended up being the exact same as the
Tracking Flak, just brown instead of orange. They seem way more dangerous but
it's probably just because the monkeys throw so many of them.

Missile
-------
appearance: same as one of your Air\Air Missile
damage: 4 bars (2 bars in training mode)
projectile speed: average

Very similar to your own Air\Air Missile, even the damage is the same. If you
look carefully they don't quite move in the same way though. Your missiles
start out slower but accelerate a bit, while the enemy's version has a more
constant velocity. But overall the average speed is similar. Not usually too
troublesome except in a few cases.

Plasma
------
appearance: same as your Plasma Cannon except orange instead of blue
damage: 15 bars (7 bars in training mode)
projectile speed: average

Hugely damaging especially when enemies fire them in bunches. Why couldn't your
Plasma Cannon have been like this? This enemy weapon is overall the most
problematic in the game. The Laser is way more damaging but less enemies have
them, and most of them that do must pause for long periods between blasts.

Laser
-----
appearance: same as one beam of your Twin Laser except orange instead of blue
damage: 36 bars (18 bars in training mode)
projectile speed: instant

Similar to one beam of your own Twin Laser. Functions in about the same way,
and is likewise capable of only getting a grazing hit, which seems to happen
more often for them than it does for you. Maybe it's just because the player
tends to do a better job of evading. Fortunately for you no enemy can fire
their lasers continuously like you can, they each have their own unique pattern
of firing and resting so that you can destroy or avoid them.

A critically important thing needs to be said about Lasers that are shot by
ground-based tanks and turrets, though. They all shoot double-length shots, so
a 'single' hit takes a whopping 72 bars of damage, not 36 bars. Some shoot in
visible quick bursts of two shots, but most shoot what appears to be one blast
that lasts slightly longer than what you or aerial enemies shoot. Either way,
that makes it much easier to get a grazing hit, but it's still quite possible
to get caught flat-footed, which could kill instantly. There are also a few
tanks with dual Laser barrels that do 144 damage.

Mine
----
appearance: little stationary bomb
damage: 16 bars (doesn't appear in training mode)

These are laid by those mine-layer ships. They are quite annoying. They are
also fairly damaging so don't ram them when they are in your way even though
you probably want to. Destroying mine-layer ships should usually be your first
priority.

Fire Multiple 'Selectable' Weapons Simultaneously
=================================================
In order to perform this technique using the best weapons, you are going to
have to remap your keyboard for two reasons. One, the hotkeys for the best
weapon combinations aren't really close enough to each other to reach with one
hand. Two, there is some kind of weird keyboard hardware limitation such that
if one presses too many different keys at once, some of them will fail to
register and the keyboard will lock up. The strange thing about this is that
certain keys are less tolerant of this phenomena than others. If you press some
combinations of only 2 or 3 keys you can trigger this lockup, while compatible
keys can allow for 11 or more keys to be pressed simultaneously.

I suggest that you remap your keyboard exactly like I do when I play Raptor.
Turn the rightmost Enter key next to the direction pad into Spacebar so that
you can use it to fire your Megabomb with your right hand. Turn your Spacebar
into Ctrl so that you can hold it down to shoot your guns. You can leave the
existing Ctrl as is, so you can use either to fire if you want to. Now turn 'W'
into a '6' (your Air\Ground Missile). Turn 'E' into '0' (Deathray). Turn 'R'
into '-' (Twin Laser). Turn 'T' into '3' (Laser Turret). Finally, turn 'U' into
a '9' (Pulse Cannon). All of these keys can be pressed simultaneously, along
with Spacebar, any of the direction keys, and Enter, without triggering lockup.
In theory it should even be okay to use keys that can cause lockup as long as
you release them before you press another one, but in the heat of battle as you
twiddle constantly like mad, I guarantee you will eventually leave two or more
hotkeys pressed at the same time by accident, perhaps as you are getting tired,
so this setup is truly necessary.

You may do whatever you want with the number keys that you remapped. It may be
a good idea to replace them with the letter you switched them with but it is up
to you. One word of caution: I can't be sure that everyone's keyboard works in
the same way, so after you finish remapping you should test the setup. Simply
press W,E,R,T,U in sequence without letting go of any of them. If the keys
register then you are fine. If some don't come out though, then you are locking
up and will have to find your own combination of keys that work.

There are lots of ways to remap your keyboard besides DOSBox but I'm no expert.
Use any method you like or are able to find.

Now this is how you do the technique. While holding down Spacebar with your
thumb, hit E,R,T,U in rapid sequence, as fast as you can. All four weapons will
shoot out rapidly after each other. Now simply repeat over and over and that is
the technique. However, the timing at which you do this can affect how rapidly
each weapon fires relative to its potential when fired alone. The Twin Laser
and Deathray are the most important weapons plus they have the same natural
refire rate, so I suggest you sync the rate at which you type ERTU to the
natural firing rate of the Twin Laser/Deathray. This way, they can shoot out at
full power, limited only by how reliable and precise your timing skills are.
The Laser Turret will also fire at the same rate, which is slightly below its
potential, but nothing can be done about that. The good thing is that the Pulse
Cannon can still fire quickly because its hotkey is the final one you hit in
this sequence. After typing ERTU as fast as possible you should have to pause
slightly before typing it again, as you wait for your Twin Laser to be ready to
fire again. This gives the Pulse Cannon time to fire out an extra shot.

With proper timing the ERTU method yields a weapon output efficiency of:
Twin Laser 100%, Deathray 100%, Laser Turret 88.9%, Pulse Cannon 88.9%

If you like you can also turn the 'Y' key into a '2' (Auto-Track Mini-Gun).
This enables the ERTY technique which is done in the same way. It replaces the
Pulse Cannon with the Mini-Gun, but it can only fire at 50% efficiency. The 'Y'
key does lock up in conjuction with the 'W' or 'U' keys, so don't use it with
any other combination besides ERTY.

If your timing is not very good, or these techniques make your hand too sore,
you can use the RT technique. It is not nearly as visually impressive but it is
arguably just as effective as any of the above techniques. Since the Laser
Turret is the final input in this sequence it will be able to fire out at
closer to its full potential. Make sure that you do not twiddle between 'R' and
'T' uncontrollably, but rather use good timing. You should go from R to T as
fast as possible, but pause slightly before continuing in accordance with the
Twin Laser's firing rate.

The RT technique is relatively easy and yields an efficiency of up to:
Twin Laser 100%, Laser Turret 98.3%

You can also selectively add shots to the RT technique when you feel you need
them. Up against a boss or fortified ground turret, temporarily use ERT. When
you move to destroy a building, one round of WRT will do the trick instantly.

Bonus Section: Using Macro/Hotkey Programs
==========================================
It turns out that as I was writing this guide I was also looking for a good
hotkey macro-executing program to help me fire everything simultaneously. I did
find something decent but not as good as I had hoped.

There are a lot of programs that do this but the problem is that unless their
macro keystrokes are sent with precision timing, they won't be of much use. No
DOS-based Terminate-Stay-Resident hotkey program I found was able to do this.
They all said that there was no reliable mechanism to precisely keep track of
time in DOS, whether that is true or not I do not know. Someone in the DOSBox
forum had asked their programmers to implement such a feature, but no helpful
responses were offered.

However a number of Windows-based programs or hardware gaming keyboards claimed
to offer the necessary features. But when I tried or investigated them, the
claims were not quite true. They do have timing capabilities more precise than
the DOS-based programs, but even so they are still not precise enough. You can
generally instruct these programs or devices to send keystrokes with
millisecond precision. However the sad truth is that the keystrokes are not
actually sent with that level of accuracy. In practice, depending on your
computer, the keystrokes may only be sent out with 10 ms ~ 100 ms precision.

The program that I ended up using was AutoHotkey for Windows. On my computer it
can send keystrokes with timing accurate to within 33 ms, or 2 frames, +/- 1
frame in each direction. That's just barely enough to be useful. A skilled
human player can reliably time things just as accurately. But in Raptor, a
computer does offer two advantages over a human. One, it has more than four
'fingers'. Two, it can send more complicated, less repetitive keystroke
sequences that a human would be uncomfortable doing.

I am putting my Raptor AutoHotkey Script at the end of this guide so that you
can try it too. You need to download and install AutoHotkey to use it, but it's
free. My script assumes that you did not remap your keyboard. However you must
still remap your Fire key or they keyboard may have issues again. Again, you
can do this with any method or even use the Raptor Setup program itself. Remap
the Fire key to anything you like but use normal keys like letters or Spacebar.
Don't use Ctrl, Alt, or Shift, as these are what cause the problem here.

I am actually using a more advanced script that supposedly uses a better timing
mechanism than the default one in AutoHotkey. It was supposed to offer 1 ms
precision timing but in the end it too only had 2 frame accuracy. Nevertheless
I found it to perform very marginally better than the standard commands so I
used it. The script may crash though on most newer computers, like it did on
mine. To fix that you must turn off a very stupid Windows feature called DEP
(Data Execution Protection). It crashes tons of programs not just AutoHotkey.
This is probably good advice in general. Whenever anything crashes in Windows
XP or Vista the first thing you should try is turning off the accursed DEP.

I also make no guarantee that the script will perform correctly even if it runs
because everyone's computer is different. I already tried it on one other
computer, which ran Raptor under the Windows XP Command Prompt instead of
DOSBox, and the script failed miserably. It could also be that AutoHotkey is
not at fault for the poor timing issues. Everything could be DOSBox's fault or
the Command Prompt's fault, I don't know.

Using the script is easy. After starting the script, type the comma key ',' and
your computer will automatically begin mashing the programmed sequence. Typing
the comma key again will stop it. I only bothered to program in one specific
sequence which I think takes good advantage of the computer's ability to fire
more than 4 weapons at once, and send slightly more complex key sequences. Feel
free to modify it if you want. I don't think this sequence is innately more
powerful than ERTU, ERTY, or (W)(E)RT. It is vastly superior though in one
aspect. The script spaces out the firing of the Twin Laser and Deathray evenly
between them. This is much more useful than the manual method, which must fire
them at about the same time. Enemies will no longer stand any chance of passing
in-between laser shots, so you can sweep your ship across the screen at full
speed without worrying about that.

The script's weapon output and efficiency consists of:
Twin Laser 100%, Deathray 100%, Laser Turret 88.9%, Auto-Track Mini-Gun 33.3%
Air\Ground Missile 96.3%, Dumbfire Missile 96.3%

Conclusion
==========
If keys could be typed with more precise timing, the player's total firepower
might increase significantly. Being able to simultaneously fire the Mini-Gun at
full power should become possible, which would help more than anything else.
Hacking the game itself so that all weapons naturally fire simultaneously would
be even better but I don't know how, maybe someone can do it someday. Of course
if someone could do that they could just make the Laser Turret do 10 times more
damage, but that would just be unfair.

Appendix I: Weapon Data Table
=============================

Weapon Name                 damage  fire rate  damage rate  frames     speed
-----------                 ------  ---------  -----------  ------     -----
Reaver Twin Machine Guns         2       15.6        31.2        5     fast
Air\Air Missile                  8        3          24         26     average
Plasma Cannon                    2        3           6         26     average
Bomb                             5        1           5         78     slowest
Air\Ground Missile              40        1.5        60         52     slow
Dumbfire Missile                 8        3          24         26     average
Micro-Missile                    4        7.8        31.2       10     average
Missile Pod                      8        6          48         13     average
Auto-Track Mini-Gun              1       26          26          3     fast
Power Disrupter                  1       15.6        15.6        5     average
Laser Turret                     5        4.9        24.4       16     instant
Pulse Cannon                     5        9.8        48.8        8     average
Deathray                        24        4.3       104         18     instant
Twin Laser                      80        4.3       346.7       18     instant
Megabomb                        50        0.5        25        156     none

Appendix II: AutoHotkey Script
==============================
#MaxThreadsPerHotkey 2
Process, Priority, , R
SendMode Input
SuperFire:=False

,::
If (SuperFire=False)
{
  Timer(50, 0, True)
  SuperFire:=True
  Cycles:=0
}
Else
{
  Timer(0, 0, False)
  SuperFire:=False
}

Handle_TimerMessage()
{
  Global
  Cycles++
  If (Cycles>18)
    Cycles:=1
  If (Cycles=1)
    Send -
  If (Cycles=2)
    Send 1
  If (Cycles=3)
    Send 3
  If (Cycles=4)
    Send 0
  If (Cycles=5)
    Send 2
  If (Cycles=6)
    Send 6
  If (Cycles=7)
    Send -
  If (Cycles=8)
    Send 2
  If (Cycles=9)
    Send 3
  If (Cycles=10)
    Send 0
  If (Cycles=11)
    Send 1
  If (Cycles=12)
    Send 2
  If (Cycles=13)
    Send -
  If (Cycles=14)
    Send 2
  If (Cycles=15)
    Send 3
  If (Cycles=16)
    Send 0
  If (Cycles=17)
    Send 2
  If (Cycles=18)
    Send 2
}

GetMinMaxResolution( byref p_min_resolution, byref p_max_resolution )
{
   failure := DllCall( "winmm.dll\timeGetDevCaps", "int64*", time_caps
     , "uint", 8 )
   If ( ErrorLevel or failure ) {
      MsgBox, [GetMinMaxResolution: timeGetDevCaps] EL = %ErrorLevel%
      Return False
   }
   p_min_resolution := time_caps & 0xFFFFFFFF
   p_max_resolution := time_caps >> 32

   Return True
}

Timer(p_period, p_resolution, p_start)
{
   static critical_section, message_id, HandleTimer, timer_id
     , timer_resolution, timer_recycle

   If message_id=
   {
      ; -- critical_section --
      rec_CRITICAL_SECTION_size = 24
      VarSetCapacity( critical_section, rec_CRITICAL_SECTION_size )

      ; -- message_id --
      message_id := DllCall("RegisterWindowMessage", "str","AHk_Timer")
      If ( ErrorLevel or message_id = 0 ) {
         MsgBox [Timer: RegisterWindowMessage] EL = %ErrorLevel%
         Return False
      }

      ; -- HandleTimer (LPE code generated by the script) --
      old_DetectHiddenWindows = %A_DetectHiddenWindows%
      DetectHiddenWindows ON
      Process Exist
      WinGet hw_this, ID, ahk_class AutoHotkey ahk_pid %ErrorLevel%
      DetectHiddenWindows %old_DetectHiddenWindows%

      h_module := DllCall("GetModuleHandle", "str", "kernel32.dll")
      proc_EnterCriticalSection := DllCall("GetProcAddress", "uint",h_module
        , "str","EnterCriticalSection")
      proc_LeaveCriticalSection := DllCall("GetProcAddress", "uint",h_module
        , "str","LeaveCriticalSection")

      h_module := DllCall("GetModuleHandle", "str", "user32.dll")
      proc_PostMessage := DllCall("GetProcAddress", "uint", h_module, "str"
        , "PostMessageA")

      VarSetCapacity( HandleTimer, 48, 0 )

      DllCall("RtlFillMemory", "uint",&HandleTimer, "uint",1, "uint",0x68)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+1
        ,  "uint",4, "uint",&critical_section)
      DllCall("RtlFillMemory", "uint",&HandleTimer+5, "uint",1, "uint",0xB8)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+6
        ,  "uint",4, "uint",proc_EnterCriticalSection)

      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+10
        , "uint",4, "uint",0x6AD0FF)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+14
        , "uint",4, "uint",0x68006A)

      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+17
        , "uint",4, "uint",message_id)

      DllCall("RtlFillMemory", "uint",&HandleTimer+21, "uint",1, "uint",0x68)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+22
        , "uint",4, "uint",hw_this)
      DllCall("RtlFillMemory", "uint",&HandleTimer+26, "uint",1, "uint",0xB8)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+27
        , "uint",4, "uint",proc_PostMessage)

      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+31
        , "uint",4, "uint",0x68D0FF)

      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+34
        , "uint",4, "uint",&critical_section)
      DllCall("RtlFillMemory", "uint",&HandleTimer+38, "uint",1, "uint",0xB8)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+39
        , "uint",4, "uint",proc_LeaveCriticalSection)
      DllCall("ntoskrnl.exe\RtlFillMemoryUlong", "uint",&HandleTimer+43
        , "uint",4, "uint",0x14C2D0FF)
   }

   If ( !p_start ) {
      OnMessage( message_id, "" )

      If ( timer_recycle )
         DllCall( "winmm.dll\timeKillEvent", "uint", timer_id )
      DllCall( "winmm.dll\timeEndPeriod", "uint", timer_resolution )
      DllCall( "DeleteCriticalSection", "uint", &critical_section )
   } Else {
      DllCall( "InitializeCriticalSection", "uint", &critical_section )
      timer_recycle = %p_start%

      If ( !GetMinMaxResolution( min_resolution, max_resolution ) )
         Return False

      If p_period not between %min_resolution% and %max_resolution%
      {
         MsgBox [Timer] requested period is outside of permissible range
         Return False
      }

      If p_resolution < min_resolution
         timer_resolution = %min_resolution%
      Else If p_resolution > max_resolution
         timer_resolution = %max_resolution%

      failure := DllCall( "winmm.dll\timeBeginPeriod", "uint"
        , timer_resolution )
      If ( ErrorLevel or failure ) {
         MsgBox [Timer: timeBeginPeriod] EL = %ErrorLevel%
         Return False
      }

      OnMessage( message_id, "Handle_TimerMessage" )

      timer_id := DllCall( "winmm.dll\timeSetEvent"
                        , "uint", p_period
                        , "uint", p_resolution
                        , "uint", &HandleTimer
                        , "uint", 0
                        , "uint", p_start | (A_OSVersion = "WIN_XP")<<8 )
      If ( ErrorLevel or timer_id = 0 ) {
         MsgBox [Timer: timeSetEvent] EL = %ErrorLevel%
         OnMessage( message_id, "" )
         DllCall( "winmm.dll\timeEndPeriod", "uint", timer_resolution )
         Return False
      }
   }

   Return True
}