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SW_readme
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1989-09-12
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9KB
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238 lines
SPACEWAR version 1.1
Copyright 1989, Jeff Petkau
Program by Jeff Petkau
Graphics by Brian Fehdrau
This program is shareware. It may be copied and distributed via
bulletin boards, online services, disk collections, or any other
means, with the following restrictions:
1. No fee may be charged for distribution except to cover the cost of
media, shipping, or online time.
2. No additional copyright of any sort may be claimed over it.
3. The complete, original archive must be distributed. You may
convert the archive to other formats, such as lhz and zip, but all
files in it must be included unmodified.
If, after trying this program, you decide to keep it, send $20.00
(U.S. or Canadian) to
Jeff Petkau
829 3rd Street East
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
S7H 1M6
This .zoo should contain the following files:
readme 9823 bytes
SpaceWar 34008 bytes
SpaceWar.info 398 bytes
damage.8svx 15648 bytes
engine.8svx 18134 bytes
entdeath.8svx 16500 bytes
entfire.8svx 3176 bytes
klindeath.8svx 4904 bytes
klinfire.8svx 1408 bytes
swabout.ilbm 3558 bytes
swcoalesce.ilbm 14196 bytes
swmoon.ilbm 5488 bytes
swnumber.ilbm 644 bytes
swships.ilbm 17532 bytes
swsun.ilbm 956 bytes
swtitle.ilbm 2070 bytes
swtransport.ilbm 4880 bytes
History
I wrote this game about two years ago, and ever since then have been
delaying releasing it because I kept wanting to add one more feature.
Somewhere along the line, I decided to try to sell it to a magazine
(Amiga Resource, to be specific) since I figured I'd get more money
out of that than shareware. Soon after, I discovered that a beta
version had already made it at least as far as Georgia, so I had to
scrap that idea. I then continuted to hold off releasing it until I
could get a digitizer and record some decent sounds. I still haven't
got a digitizer, and I'm still using rotten sounds, but I really
don't care any more. So here it is.
The Game
To start SpaceWar from the CLI, change your current directory to
wherever the sound and graphics files are and start the program. The
default stack should be big enough. To start from the Workbench,
click on the icon. The sound and graphics files must be in the same
directory as the program and icon.
SpaceWar is a two player game. One player controls the Enterprise,
the other the Klingon ship. Why the little triangle is always called
the Klingon, I do not know. The object is to shoot the other player
(no kidding). One point is scored when you kill the other player.
The game ends when a player reaches fifty points.
Each player can have a maximum of eight shots out at once, or twelve
if you count the fragments from an explosion.
Menu Options
Game
TAB Pause.
Start a new game.
Display vital information.
Quit the program.
Options
rapid fire When selected, hold down trigger for rapid fire.
black hole Makes sun invisible. Shots can pass a bit closer to
it without being destroyed, but ships will still be
ripped apart by the gravity. If there is no gravity,
then the sun is gone; objects can safely pass through
where it isn't.
asteroid Causes a small round asteroid to orbit the sun.
space Controls the size of space. At the larger settings,
ships can go some distance past the edges of the
screen before they hit the end of the universe.
edges Controls what happens when ships (and shots) hit the
aforementioned edge of the universe. "Wrap" means
they simply come in the other side, retaining their
original velocity. "Bounce" means they bounce off.
"Nasty" causes shots to disappear and ships to be
annihilated.
gravity Controls the strength of gravity. If gravity is set
to "none" and the sun is invisible ("black hole")
then there is no sun at all.
thrust Controls the strength of ship thrusters.
Control
Use this menu to select which controls control which ship.
Joystick 1 and 2 are pretty obvious. The keyboard controls are keypad
4 and 6 to turn, keypad 8 to thrust and keypad 5 to fire. Select
"Remote"after establishing a modem connection to indicate that
the other player is controlling this ship. "Computer" is inactive at
the moment, and is there mainly to remind me to get around to adding
a computer-controlled ship.
Remote
begin remote Opens the serial device and displays the chat lines
on the screen so that you can talk to your modem.
end remote Closes the serial device and removes the chat lines.
baud rate You figure it out.
chat lines These two options control the number of lines of
chat text visible on the screen. The top text is
incoming chat, the bottom is outgoing.
Sound
load sounds This attempts to load all the sound files from disk.
See below for more info.
There are hotkeys for some menu items, but they aren't visible in the
menus because they looked like hell (colors all wrong).
pause TAB
newgame N
quit Q
about HELP
begin remote R
end remote E
load/unload sounds S
Sound
All game sounds are loaded from 8SVX sound files when the "load
sounds" option is selected. There are four basic sounds: FIRE.8SVX
(when someone shoots), ENGINE.8SVX (the engines), DEATH.8SVX (when
someone explodes), and DAMAGE.8SVX (when someone has been hit but
isn't dead yet.) For each of the sounds, you can specify that only
the Klingon is to use this sound by prefixing the filename with KLIN,
or that only the Enterprise is to use it by prefixing the filename
with ENT. For example, this archive has different explosion sounds
for the two ships (ENTDEATH.8SVX and KLINDEATH.8SVX) but only one
engine sound (ENGINE.8SVX).
NOTE: I scavenged all of these sounds from various sources. As far as
I know, none of them are copyrighted; if one of them is, please
inform me and I will remove it from the archive. I would really like
to digitize all the sounds myself anyway (thought you'd heard the
last of that old explosion sound? Ha!)
Remote Game
The remote game options allow two players with Amigas to play over
the phone lines (or with a null modem). The first step is for both
sides to start up spacewar and select 'begin remote' from the
"Remote" menu. As long as neither ship's control is set to remote,
you can use chat as a simple terminal to get your modems connected
and ready to go.
After you are all connected and able to chat with the other player,
decide who is going to play what ship. The player with the Enterprise
should select 'remote' from the Klingon's control menu, and the
player with the Klingon should set the Enterprise to remote. All
options must be the same on both sides, and you cannot both be
controlling the same ship.
Features and Other Members of the Insect World
- It flickers a lot. This gets more annoying every time I look at it,
so I'll probably fix it Real Soon Now.
- If there is no gravity, the moon just kind of hangs there.
Enterprising players can actually push it over to where the other
guy's ship appears to collect a few dozen points.
Future Versions
Various sorts of fuel supplies will be added, along with limits on
fuel.
An option for Gorfian shots.
More variety when someone is hit. The arcade game was great for this.
Better sounds. These ones suck. Again, the arcade game was wonderful.
As soon as I get around to it, I will add some method for re-syncing
the two sides in the middle of a remote game, if they get messed up.
It should be fairly tolerant of line noise already, though. I can
usually pick up the phone and scream without screwing it up.
A four-player option, with two players on each side of a phone
hookup.
Speed is the main restriction here. Could also add support for a
joystick parallel interface, except that I don't even know what that
is.
(Mr. Franklin in Georgia's idea. If he's reading this: I tried to
reply, but it bounced.)
Eventually, I might allow one of the ships to be computer-controlled
so that you can play the game without having to find another person.
Unfortunately, some really Nasty Math might be required to make the
computer player even tolerably good; I'm not sure if I can do it or
not.
---
Jeff Petkau
usenet: petkau@skorpio.usask.ca
fidonet: 1:140/80
no net: (306)664-3185
829 3rd Street East
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
S7H 1M6