Ingemar's Skiing Game (ISG)

>Topic<Introduction

One of the greatest downhill skiers in modern time is Ingemar Stenmark from Sweden. During the late 70's and most of the 80's, he won an enormous number of contests, including olympic gold medals in both slalom and "storslalom". Together with Ingemar Johansson (heavyweight boxing world champion) he is one of the two big "Ingemar"s in sports.

Incidentally, I have the same first name as them, and I am rather fond of downhill skiing too, though getting down without falling is enough challenge for me.

In this game, you take the role of a skier in a championship. You can run practice runs, compete in separate games or run entire cups with several games. What you see on the screen is something like what you would see in TV: the skier seen from above.

>Topic<History

This is a game that I started on long ago, really long ago. The first version was made in Basic on my old Speed9 computer, in the early 80's. My sprite routines for the Mac (SAT) first started working at all back in 1991, in the form of an early Slime Invaders (B/W, released in spring 1992, colorized 1993). I decided to revive my old game as my second sprite-using Mac game. It got to playable state, though it was far from pretty. All the graphics was quick hacks, just to get it rolling. At version 0.9, I put it aside in order to make some other games.

It took until the summer 1993 until I finally made any more significant development on the game. Now it has color, supports external files, looks quite a bit better, the stupid "score" and "cup score" windows are replaced by a board with game results and a newspaper, some new objects are added and there are robot players. During the last months, it has moved from being a dust-collecting hack that I shouldn't have listed among my "playable" games, to one of the best - probably the most original one so far.

>Topic<Legal terms

Ingemar's Skiing Game (ISG), unregistered version (suffix 'u') is © 1991-1994 by Ingemar Ragnemalm. It may be freely distributed by non-profit organizations. For-profit distributors are obliged to send me a reference copy of their product (i.e. CD-ROM, book, magazine…).

If you use this game, please consider paying the $10 fee for my "shareware pack #2". Se below.

The registered version of this game (suffix 'r') is not freely distributable, and may not be distributed in any way without my written permission.

>Topic<Shareware pack #2

Ingemar's Skiing Game (ISG) is part of my "shareware pack #2", which is yours for a fee of $10. The exact contents of this package will change over time. In it, you will find games and other programs of mine that are not part of my shareware pack #1.

In the past, I have mentioned ISG together with the games that are in pack #1, but since ISG no longer fits on a floppy together with those, it is the first item in a second set.

Shareware pack #1, $15:

Bachman + extra module
Slime Invaders
MacSokoban + extra module
HeartQuest
Bikaka
Hexmines
Classic Daleks

Shareware pack #2, $10:

ISG (Ingemar's Skiing Game)
Christmas '93 (or variation of it, possibly depending on time of year)
Future games and other programs

Both packs: $20

Payment is best made in cash (neatly wrapped). I can cash US checks only as long as I have friends in the US who can help me, which is true during the spring -94, but I don't know after that. European users can consider postal giro: my number is 620831-2014.

As long as shareware pack #2 is not full, I will fill it out with games from pack #1 (except Bachman and Slime Invaders). Please list what games you are most interesed in, and the version numbers on the ones you have, in case they have been upgraded.

For programmer's (esp. users of Think Pascal v4 and Think C v5) I will, if you like, fill out the disk with parts or all of Sprite Animation Toolkit, my programmer's library that I used for this games and several of the others.

If you use it but feel that the $10 fee is too high, too troublesome to pay, or whatever, send me something else that I'll like, or just drop me a note. If you don't pay, I can't send you anything, but I understand that some people (especially in some countries – I don't expect getting dollars from Russia, for instance) can't afford the fee, even though it's rather modest. If you just can't pay yet, don't worry. I can wait.

Send registrations to:

Ingemar Ragnemalm
Plöjaregatan 73
S-58330 Linköping
SWEDEN

If you have E-mail, please send fan mail, bug reports and suggestions to ingemar@lysator.liu.se (or, if that doesn't work, to ingemar@isy.liu.se).

Note: The character 'Ö' can be typed on US keyboards by alt-U followed by 'O'.

>Topic<How to play

If you have never played the game before, you might want to start with some practice races in an easy course. The built-in courses at "Yxbacken" are fairly easy.

Select "Practice 1" in the Game menu. The screen now shows your skier in the starting booth. When you press the mouse button, he jumps out and starts racing downhill. You then control him by moving the mouse to the right or left. You can also switch to keyboard control.

You are allowed to make no mistakes. On the first fall, the race is over. This happens if you run into an object (fence, other skier, tree) but also if you go on the wrong side of a flag (in which case your skier stops obeying your control, but instead stops and gives up). The flags lean away from the side you should go. The game will also end when you make it to the finish, of course.

Important notice for color Mac users: The color of the flags tell what side you should go. They are not colorized in pairs, as they are in real slalom (since they are not required to be in pairs here). I know this can be a bit confusing, but this kind of color coding is, in my opinion, much more useful in a game like this.

You can select "Practice 2" (there are two courses at each site, since there is two laps in each competition) to try the other course at the chosen site.

However, the game is really ment to be played with several players, either in a single competition or a cup with several competitions. To run a single competition, choose "Select Players" to set the players you want (manual or robot ones) and "Select Track" to choose site. Then you choose "New Game" to run the competition.

The game will tell you what player is next to run. Every time the game stops between races, you click the mouse button to contine. When all players have completed the first lap, you will be shown a tableau with the intermediate results. When you click the mouse, the game will continue with the second lap, in an order that is determined from the intermediate results.

To run a cup, you specify players just as with a single competition. The site selection, however, is a bit different. Rather than choosing one site, you check all sites that you want to use in the cup, from one to all. Then you choose "Run World Cup", and the cup will start.

In a cup, you will not only get a result tableau after each completed lap, but also a cup status between each competition, in the form of a newspaper page.

>Topic<Menus

Some clarifications on the menus:

File Menu:
• New file… creates a new external file for your own tracks.
• Open file… opens an external file.
• Close file… closes a currently open external file and makes the built-in tracks active.
• Save track saved when editing
• Close editor closes the editor, and asks if you want to save, if necessary.

Edit menu:
• Edit track 1 or Edit track 2 opens the editor for the chosen track at the currently chosen site.

Game menu:
• Choose players… opens a dialog where you can choose names of players, who will participate, an if there should be robots.
• Choose site… opens a dialog where you can pick a site or check what sites should be included in the next cup.
• New game starts a game (a competition!) with all the currently active players.
• Practice 1 and Practice 2 starts a practice run on the chosen track.
• Run World Cup starts a cup with all the sites selected in the Choose site dialog.

Display menu:
• Show game results shows the results from the last game.
• Show cup cores shows the last newspaper produced after a cup game.

Options menu:
• Sound turns sound on or off. Usually used for not disturbing people, but is also a possible remedy in the very unusual case that the game breaks when playing sounds. (This has happened on some Macs with accelerators.) Default setting: On.
• Fast animation turns direct-to-screen graphics on or off. If the game crashes, draws totally wrong etc, you may wish to turn this off. Default setting: On.
• Faster lowers the frame rate to 15 frames per second rather than the 30 frames per second that the game otherwise tries to achieve. This makes the animation noticeably less smooth, but will make the speed better on slow Macs (i.e. 8 MHz Macs like Plus or SE). Default setting: Off.
• Configure controls… fires up a dialog where you can select mouse or keyboard control, select what keys to use (though the arrow keys are always active) and select how sensitive the control should be.

>Topic<Editing

You can bring up the editor by choosing "Edit track 1" or "Edit track 2" from the Edit menu. However, all you get in the unregistered version is a look. Editing is only possible in the registered version.

>Topic<MacSki

I always have a section about "related games", but in this case, there is only one related game I know for the Mac, and that game is MacSki, a commercial game. The two games seem rather similar at first glance, but at closer look, there are some significant differences. When I first heard about MacSki, I was a bit worried, wondering if it would make ISG (which was then at version 0.9) obsolete, but when i tried it, I found that the two games have the emphasis on totally different things.

In MacSki, humor is a very big issue, while traditional slalom is not. You are allowed to go on the wrong side of flags (for a time penalty). There are lots of funny things you can meet in the pist, including "bonus" objects. The object is to get a time that makes the high score list.

ISG, however, has its emphasis on competition. It is designed for tournaments with several players, and it is designed for traditional slalom. It has some humorous points, but not the same kind as MacSki (noisy bystanders rather than penguins and igloos). I also find it easier to control, but that's a matter of taste.

>Topic<Acknowledgements

Thanks to:
Ingemar Stenmark for the inspiration.
Eva, Folke and Ingeborg for the "hop-hop" sound and for being great friends.
Cary Torkelsson for this help system and for beta testing.
Paul DuBois and Owen Hartnett for the TransSkel library.
Fredrik, Gabriel, Tjalle, Ps and other friends who have enjoyed the game and encouraged me even back in the days of the ugly (but fun) b/w hack.
The other beta testers, Fabrizio Oddone and… (more to be filled in here)
All the people who have supported my work on SAT, who have helped in programming problems or who have supported me by paying the shareware fee for previous games.