Welcome to Snake Byte

What's Snake Byte?

   In Snake Byte there is no fancy plot, no 'save the universe from the nasties' theme. You're a snake, that's all. Snake Byte is about bare survival in a hostile landscape.
   In order not to die of consumption, you have to eat apples. But as you eat apples, you grow and you get faster. When you have eaten enough apples to satisfy your hunger, a little hole opens in the part of the wall that is in the top of your screen; through that hole you get to the next stage.
   Every time you eat an apple another one appears somewhere else. You have to go eat it quickly. If you don't, three more will fall…
   This is what you have to do to win. What you have to do not to lose too soon is this: never crash into a wall, never eat your own tail, never get hit in the head by a rock and never try to eat a rock. If you do, you die!

The Controls

   You think that your task is a little complex? Nah, you'll get used to it… To help you, the controls are definitely simple: only two keys are used to control the snake: left and right. You think that's easy? Try it first; if you're not a Maëlstrom (a really great game) freak, I bet you'll change your mind. Here's a couple of FAQs:
   - "How do I go up or down, then?"
   Your snake doesn't know about up and down. For him, there is only strait ahead, turn left, turn right. If you want him to go towards the top of your screen, turn his head in that direction.
   - "How do I turn around?"
   Just go twice to the left or to the right, but only twice. To press the left or right key three times in a row is one of the easiest ways of committing suicide.

The control panel

   The gray line at the bottom of the screen represents the time elapsed since you last ate. If it reaches the end, you get three more apples. When you start a new level, you have to eat 10 apples to finish the level. If you get more apples because you were too slow, you will have to eat that many more apples until you finish that level, even after you die. This is a little confusing… 
   Lives: you start out with 5 lives. Every time you get to the next level, you get a new life.
   Score: the scoring system is a little complex. Just note that apples are worth more at higher levels, that finishing levels without getting killed is worth a lot, and that everything is worth more if you have rocks than if you don't (think of this as a risk-bonus).

The menus

   New Game start a new game, I bet you figured that out!
   Resume Game resumes a paused game. You pause a game by clicking the mouse or hitting Command-P while playing. You can alse resume a paused game by clicking in the game window.
   The Rocks pop-up lets you choose the number of rocks that you want (or don't want) rolling around your field.
   Preferences lets you set the number of lives you start with, the kind of apple you want - red apple or Apple™ apple - (see copyright notice), the keys you want for left and right and the level you start from.
   Check or uncheck the Sound item to turn sound on/off.
   Check or uncheck the Allow Background to give some time to background applications. If you have a slow machine and this option makes Snake Byte jerky, you should uncheck it.
   You can view and erase the high score table with the High Scores and Erase High Scores items.
   Level Manager lets you enter the level manager mode.
   Finally, you can Quit. No kidding!

The Level Manager

   I have provided a few levels with this version of Snake Byte, but as you get better, you will feel the need for more challenging levels. The Level Manager lets you edit the existing levels, create some new ones and exchange your creations by using a compact export format (you may have noticed that the Snake Byte application itself is not compact).
   You choose the level to edit by double-clicking the list. The level being edited is identified by the name between the list and the two buttons. The menu actions (delete, rename, duplicate) operate on the level that is selected in the list, not the level being edited. This is important, and if it is contrary to the Mac's intuitive policy, I apologize. You can reorder the levels by moving them in the list (click-and-drag; now this is intuitive!)
   The editing commands are straitforward: select the Draw Line button to draw a new line on the field. To erase a line, select the Delete Line button and click on the line to delete. Note that you cannot draw isolated dots. This is one of the limitations in Snake Byte.
   You can turn on the grid by checking the Grid item in the menu. It helps a lot when you have to center your walls.

   When you want to build a file with your levels, just choose Export Levels. To add some levels to your own, use Import Levels; you can import levels from a copy of the Snake Byte application, or an export file. It is a good idea to export a copy of the original levels before attemptiong to modify them so you can restore the original state if you delete some levels by mistake. Importing new levels doesn't delete the old ones, so you can freely import new levels, and delete them if you don't want to keep them.

   I added the import-export capability, so people on the Internet could easily exchange levels. I know I'm a little bold to think that anyone at all would be interested in wasting bandwidth for such a stupid game, but then a lot of people I have shown Snake Byte to have grown addicted to it, so why not some of you netters?

Making Snake Byte (a lot) thinner

   If you have little memory, Snake Byte will not be able to play sounds, but it will accept to run with as little as 400kb. It will tell you that it couldn't load all the sounds.
   If you want to run with less than 400kb, you will have to replace the three big 'PICT' resources and replace them with small picts. The ID of the PICTs is important. You shouldn't do this if you're not familiar with ResEdit.
   If it is the disk space you grudge, you can get rid of all the sounds ('snd ' resources) except the 'Null' sound. You will get the alert at the beginning saying not all the sounds were loaded. If you want to get rid of the alert, duplicate the 'Null' sound and name the copies "Shotgun", "Tac", "Pomme", "Bonus", "Gagne", "Go", "TypeSomething", "Doesntmatter"; the names are important. Again, you have to be familiar with ResEdit to do this.

Credits

   Snake Byte is my first program on the Mac. I know it is very badly written and that if I had been a hacker it would have been ten times faster. But 20kg of Inside Mac can't make you a hacker overnight and I wrote this program for fun, so don't complain if it crashes. In fact, I begun it as a birthday present for my Dad. He loved it on the Apple ][, so I simply had to adapt it to the Mac. The first credits go to him and my little brother for pushing me to do it.
   Then, I would not have even thought I could program the Mac if it hadn't been for all the wonderful people on the Internet who make their programs available through FreeWare and ShareWare, and the discussions on the UseNet newgroups.

   In making Snake Byte, I used the following:

      - the Sound Demo source by Marv Westrom
      - the Great Beeps package ("Type something, will'ya, we're payin' for this stuff")
      - sound (when you crash) ripped out of the Blast It AfterDark module, by Alan Goates
      - the Sample Editor, by Garrick McFarlane, to sample and edit the sounds
      - the XTextures PhotoShop plug-in module

all of these are available on Mac-Archive.UMich.Edu and/or Sumex-Aim.Stanford.Edu by anonymous FTP.

   My thanks also to my friend Véronique, who ate a whole apple before I could sample the sound correctly; Dire Straits and The Cure for the two pieces of music; my roommate, Greg, for going to sleep with the computer humming, clicking and shining (not to forget the "gogogogogo" and the crashes) and I swearing; my school, Télécom Paris, for my Internet account!
   Todd Clements, for finding many small but annoying bugs I hadn't discovered (he is very thorough) and for many useful suggestions.
   And finally, to the guy who thought up this game in the first place, whoever he is.

FreeWare Notice

   No, you don't have to pay for 700kb worth of sounds and graphics. Snake Byte is cute (I think so anyway) but not a great or original program (would you pay for yet another version of Tetris - I love Tetris, but…).
   You are free to distribute Snake Byte as long as you distribute it freely and unmodified. Changing the levels is acceptable, but should be avoided. If you want to distribute your levels, please use the export capability and send me a copy so I can include them in the next release. Changing the graphics or sounds is not acceptable. If you want to see Snake Byte being distributed with alternate graphics or sounds, send me your creations, I would be happy to include them in the next release.
   Bulletin-Boards that charge for connection may distribute Snake Byte as long as they don't charge for it. If you want to Include Snake Byte in a CD-Rom collection (about the only media that will accomodate its girth), you must ask my written permission, which I will be happy to give.

   As I said, Snake Byte is free, but if can, please drop me a note, be it to flame or praise me or more likely to correct or help me… I can be reached at :

          Pierre-Luc Paour
          99, rue de la République
          13980 Alleins
           France

and     PAOUR@INF.ENST.FR

   I would love to hear from you! And I need bug reports in order to drive out the remaining bugs.

   I provide this software as is. There is no warranty whatsoever expressed or implied. I cannot be held responsible if it crashes your hard drive, you Mac, loses your data or makes you lose precious time. I will certainly not be held responsible if you become afraid of rocks or go on an apple-only diet… Also, please remember that you cannot shed your skin.

Copyright Notice

   In Snake Byte, I used material that may be copyrighted. If you know for sure that this is an offense, please erase your copy and advise me. This applies to the sampled songs and the Apple™ apple.
   As Snake Byte was compiled using Think Pascal, some portions may be copyright Symantec.
Also, the original game may have been copyrighted by its author. 

   Finally, a very innocent question. A lot of programs publicly available under Share- or FreeWare are said by their authors to be copyrighted. Does the simple use of the © symbol magicaly copyright the program, or do you have to register, even pay (I'm not very rich) for it? And what does it do - copyrighting? Well, in the event copyright is magical, I might just as well do it:
     ©Pierre-Luc Paour 1993, 1994

Thanks for your attention. Enjoy!

                       Pierre-Luc Paour.

Version history

1.1: Improved the way Snake Byte handles sound and added an option to allow background tasks. Improved (sort of) updates. Changed the way pause works.

1.0: Initial release.