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Space.Doc
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1990-01-18
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SPACEWAR
version .91
Copyright 1989, Jeff Petkau
Program by Jeff Petkau
Graphics by Brian Fehdrau
PLEASE NOTE: This is a preliminary version of the SPACEWAR game, and is
now undergoing tests and revisions to the remote game option.
Please do not include this in any disk collections until the
official release version (1.0) is complete. This version does
work well, has proved to be very bug free, is a lot of
fun to play, and is presented here for your enjoyment.
This .zoo should contain the following files:
damage.8svx 15648 bytes
engine.8svx 18134 bytes
entdeath.8svx 16500 bytes
entfire.8svx 3176 bytes
klindeath.8svx 4904 bytes
klinfire.8svx 1408 bytes
SpaceWar 68504 bytes
SpaceWar.info 274 bytes
readme 8092 bytes
The Game
To start SpaceWar from the CLI, change your current directory to wherever
the sound files are (if you want sound) and start the program. The default
stack should be big enough. To start from the Workbench, click on the
icon. The sound files must be in the same directory as the program and
icon (if you want sound).
SpaceWar is a two player game. One player controls the Enterprize, 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 one player reaches fifty points and the other one doesn't.
Each player can have a maximum of ten shots out at once. The fragments
from an explosion count as shots.
Menu Options
Game
pause [TAB]
Pause.
new
Start a new game.
about...
Display vital information.
quit
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 drift by every now and
then. For this version, the asteroid is not affected by
gravity and shots pass right through it. It is not a good
idea for ships to get too close, though.
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.
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
Each side must be running at the same baud rate for a
succesful session. The speed of the transmission will
affect the speed of game play, so pick the highest
baud rate your modem (or nullmodem connection) can handle.
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.
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 Enterprize is to use
it by prefixing the filename with ENT. For example, this .zoo has
different explosion sounds for the two ships (ENTDEATH.8SVX and
KLINDEATH.8SVX) but only one engine sound (ENGINE.8SVX).
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.
One way of getting a connect is for one player to call the other by voice,
and then one can type an "ATD" command to his modem and the other can type
an "ATA" command. Once the modems are connected, you can chat back and forth
and determine the game options that you are going to use for the game.
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 Enterprize should
select remote from the Klingon's control menu, and the player with the
Klingon should set the Enterprize to remote.
IMPORTANT: Make sure that you aren't both controlling the same ship, and
that all of the options are the same on both sides. If both
players control the same ship on their end, or if the options
are different, the two sides of the phone link will gradually
diverge. In other words, you aren't seeing the same game.
You can tell that something has gone wrong if the other player
seems to be flying horribly, going into the sun a lot and
shooting at nothing. The only fix is to start a new game.
Features and Other Members of the Insect World
- When a ship explodes, all of it's outstanding shots are drafted for the
explosion. This can be annoying if one of those shots was just about to
hit the other player. Will fix.
- It flickers a lot. I might eventually try to fix this by using QBSBlit
and getting all fancy, but don't expect anything soon.
- I know there were a number of other things I wanted to add here, but I
can't recall them right now. Have fun finding them.
Future Versions
Version 1.0 (the first official release) will definitely check that the
options are set up the same on both sides of a remote link before starting
a game. It will also display the version number on the about, instead of
just a "v" and a dot.
As soon as possible, I will make the moon subject to gravity, and possibly
shots.
As soon as I get around to it, I will add some method for re-syncing the
two sides in the middle of a game, if they get messed up. It should be
fairly tolerant of line noise already, though. I hope.
Also as soon as I get around to it, I will change the game (or at least
add an option) so that a new round isn't started every time someone gets
killed. I don't like it this way.
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.
---
Jeff Petkau