Gigantic Games 2/Gigantic Games 2.iso/pc/_g_/gtaxi/taxi.doc

Text File | 1994-12-22 | 25KB | 552 lines

SHORT(ish) PREFACE, 1994 - This game fragment's been sitting around on my
HD for quite some time; almost all of the work on it was done in late
92/early 93. After seeing the SECOND bad Taxi clone on the Amiga ("Space
Taxi" by Andreas Spreen, better than the other one i mention, but still
essentially ungood, as it's missing visible taxi thrust and a sense of
humor), and the usual "Weren't 8-bit games great? I wish someone would
port [insert several games here]" threads on c.s.a.games, i pulled my
version out and added some air resistance, then suddenly decided to
release it in an 'as is' sttate to see if it gets any response at all.
I'm including the old, slightly-inaccurate (it refers to the theoretical
completed state that i never attained) doc file because it's quite
amusing. And no, there is NOT a hypertext version of it. That'd take all
the fun out of it!

Things missing from this version:
Sound
Any clue as to which pad a passenger wants to go to (Make a guess)
End-of-level detection code
Almost all panel indicators (except for the blinky lights)

Features of this version:
Kindasorta[TM] system-friendly. You shouldn't have any memory leaks at
least.
A sure Enforcer hit upon start and exit. Okay, i'm bad, but at least my
code *should* be able to deal with having the VBR in fastmem.
100% assembly "For small tight code" (yeah right, i've just never gotten
around to learning C)

Bugs:
a) It doesn't work on AGA. I'm not sure if it works if you choose ECS in
the boot menu.
b) On 2.x, it exits immediately about 25-50% of the time; just run it
again.
Other than that, there are no known bugs. Being able to fly off the top of
the screen isn't a bug, it's a *feature!* (grin)

Future plans:
A complete rewrite from the ground up - i'm using all 8 sprites right now
for just the taxi, the flames, and the passenger; interesting levels will
definitely require blitter objects. Besides, the code is generally a mess;
i started with just moving a sprite around with the joystick, it just
kinda... grew... (If you have good blitter code you're willing to share,
drop me e-mail. No money or anything, but credit in any theoretical final
release.)
Sound. Taxi sounds and lots of kinda-low-res passenger samples (each
passenger, of course, has to have a different voice.)
More passengers; at LEAST 8 total. Possibly even some non-bipeds.
Competitive, simultaneous multi-player mode? I really need more colors for
that to look good.
Several buttloads of levels - possibly re-works of the original c64's
levels, as well as my own deranged ideas.
Better system-friendliness. I'd like to at least do it on par with "Hired
Guns": possibly take over the machine while playing, but have an iconify-
and-pause key that gives the system back and puts a small window on the WB
screen. Or maybe even open (gasp) a real Screen, or at least a rastport...

Running Taxi: Just be in the same place where you unarchived this to and
type "taxi". You need to have "lev_01" in the same directory. Taxi uses no
stack and doesn't need much more chipmem than, oh, displaying a 320x200
HAM picture.

Finally, i can be reached under "[e-mail]". Please put "ATTN: PAUL"
or some such in the headers, as it's not really my account.

The state of my Taxi as of now (June 1994) is basically the same as the
state of the Amiga's future: uncertain at best. My monitor's screwed up at
the moment and i'm not sure if it's fixable (I sure hope it is, as i don't
have the bucks to buy a new one...). My mouse is also frotzed. And i'm
just really, really, really not too psyched on re-writing all this code
from scratch, and writing a BlOb (I much prefer "Blob" to "Bob" as a
shortening of "blitter object") package as well.

And now, on to the labyrinthine original documentation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi there, and welcome to the first public-release demo of Space, er,
Galactic, Taxi.

I suppose i should have a bit of a title here:

                         GALACTIC TAXI
                        © 1993 Ducksoft!
                Written by Paul (raccoon) Trauth

That'll do (Footnote 39).

Those among you who are a bit long in the tooth have already guessed what
game this is a rehash of, and can skip ahead to the next bit. Younger
folks, or people who didn't have a C64 for ages and ages, are going to
need a bit of explanation here.

IN THE ELDER DAZE
-----------------
Some time ago, on the C64, there was a great game called Space Taxi
(Footnote 1). ST [as i'm henceforth going to call it (Footnote 40)] was
rather obviously descended from games such as the stone-age Lunar Lander
type things, as it was a thrust/gravity type of game. The twist was that
you were, surprisingly enough, a taxi driver. A passenger would appear on
one of several landing pads scattered about the screen, and shout "Hey,
Taxi!" through the miracle of cheesy 1-bit samples. (Samples were a really
big deal back then.) You would fly your tiny little taxi over to their
pad; they'd walk in and either say "Pad x, please." or "Up please.",
depending on whether they wanted transport across the screen or to the
next one. And you'd deliver them. Of course, you had to contend with
limited fuel, convoluted and dangerous screens, the ever-decreasing tip
you'd be getting, and of course a wide variety of twisted special-case
levels.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE NINETIES...
----------------------------------
In the summer of 1992, i acquired a terrible port of ST done by a European
demo coder (Footnote 2). It was horrible. Sure, the basic idea was there,
but it was lost in a completely soulless implementation. The programmer
must have never actually played the game himself, but merely had it
described over the phone. I said to myself, "The real thing wasn't
anywhere NEAR this bad, was it?" and pulled out my copy of the original
C64 version to reassure myself that i had more taste than /that/.
I was right. The real thing was, and is, still a very good design,
implemented very well, with quite a lot of chrome for a game that old.
(After all, for a long time, the only other games to use speech samples
were Castle Wolfenstein [published by the same software company (Muse),
and i think written by the same person] and Epyx' Impossible Mission [or
was it Mission Impossible? I always get that mixed up].) I looked at the
bad Amiga port again and said, "I can do better."
So i pulled out DPaint and began playing around. Soon, i had quite a lot
of frames of the taxi and several variant passengers. Classes loomed
large, though, and i quit doing much computer stuff due to needing to
study. Until exams came along.
About a week before my final exams approached, i sat down and did some
quick code involving sprites, and got it to work right. Quite shortly, the
possibility of my own Taxi seemed good, and working on the game became a
good way to put off studying for my exams...

GALACTIC TAXI.
--------------
And now here i am with a small demo version of my very first game
(Footnote 80). I've decided to rename it Galactic Taxi to hopefully avoid
legal problems. (Even though Muse is gone, and there's another wildly
popular game borrowing heavily from their OTHER big hit [Wolfenstein 3D,
the clone world's PD answer to Thing, er, Wing Commander], i'd rather be
careful...) The main kernal of the game is finished after working on and
off for around a month; all that remains is intro/extro material and
writing lots of levels. Lots of them. I plan for the final version to have
versions of the original 25 levels, along with a similar number of levels
designed by myself (and perhaps a few friends).

COMPATABILITY
-------------
This was written on an Amiga 2000, with 1.3, ECS Agnes, a GVP Series II
8M/SCSI board, and a 68010. It's been tested on pretty much the whole
spectrum of pre-AGA machines: 500s with 1.3 and 2.04, 2000s with 2.04, and
a couple A3000s (Footnote 72). It hasn't been tested on an A4000 or A1200
(Footnote 82) because i haven't SEEN one yet, and i doubt the local Amiga
dealer would let me run anything i wrote on their demo model when one
comes in. (They don't know much about how these things work, and are anal-
retentive dweebs to boot. Unfortunately, they're the only dealer in town.
[Footnote 83]) I /have/ followed most the guidelines in the various system
manuals for banging the chips. If AGA is /half/ as backwards-compatible as
it's supposed to be, this should run fine. I don't do anything
undocumented; i make sure to either leave undocumented bits alone or set
them to 0 (depending on the situation). If it doesn't work, well, don't
blame me (Footnote 45).

HOW TO PLAY
-----------
Make sure you have a joystick (or pad, if you're one of Those People)
plugged into port #1. (The mouse is, of course, port #0.) Moving the
joystick about thrusts the taxi in the appropriate direction (Footnote 3).
Pressing fire will engage or disengage the landing gear. When the landing
gear is out, the left/right thrusters are inactive for various reasons,
mostly to make it more challenging (Footnote 44). Keep this in mind.
To take off after landing, simply push up - your landing gear will
automagically disengage.
The control panel is mostly self-explanatory: lives, score, fuel, last
message, level, and the ever-decreasing tip. The blinky lights are a
little more complex, but not by much. The left-hand pair of lights act as
a rough indicator of your vertical velocity. When the top one lights
green, you're going slow enough to land safely. Descend a bit faster and
the light will become yellow, indicating that you're going to land hard
and bounce a bit. (A Bad Thing for those tip-hunters, as shaken passengers
don't tip!) A red light, on the other hand, means that you are going too
fast to land at all, and will crash, even if you're on a proper pad. But
remember that all the green lights in the world don't mean a thing if
you're trying to land on a random patch of ground; you can only land on
the labeled pads.
The right-hand lamps are simpler, and mostly for show: the green one means
it's OK to take off; the red one means that it's unsafe to take off, as
you'd hit a paying passenger, a bad move all around, as it costs you money
in hospital bills (the passenger's, not yours). In fact, when a passenger
is entering the taxi, safety interlocks insure that you WON'T take off.
A pad labeled "F" is a fuel station. If you find yourself running low on
fuel, you can land here for a fill up. Of course, nothing's free in this
world. As your tank fills, your wallet drains. And any passenger you may
be carrying isn't going to approve of waiting around while you do
something that could be done between passengers; there goes your tip
(Footnote 70).
The rest of the game is left for you to discover for yourself. I've
selected some ...amusing... levels for this demo version (Footnote 4).
Oh, yes, even though i'm the guy who researched how to properly hook a
Sega Genesis pad to the Amiga and be able to use all 4 buttons (Footnote
6), this game only supports ordinary one-button controllers. Anything more
would be superfluous. Perhaps in my next game (Footnote 35).

IN THE FUTURE
-------------
Hopefully, the final version will be completed soon. At this point, i'm
not sure when - it depends on many factors, such as my workload next
semester, whether or not i bring in a few friends to help on the levels
(Footnote 7), and how much stuff i have to do that i can put off by
working on this game.
As Jeff Minter (Footnote 8) has pointed out, most computer games are
written for a theoretical entity known as Darren (Footnote 9), a spotty
14-year-old male who doesn't get on that well with people. Darren isn't
interested in anything that's not dripping with chrome but is otherwise
just like seven hundred other games that he already owns. (Witness the
popularity of Street Fighter II and its many rip-offs [Footnote 77].) This
game probably isn't one Darren will like. It's rather different from
today's stuff. But then again, i mostly wrote this for myself, not to make
oodles of cash (Footnote 13). Anyway, this game is probably going to be
released as "verb"ware. I don't know what verb it will be. I also am not
sure if sending me money will get you anything but a nice warm feeling
inside (Footnote 79). Source code is a possibility (Footnote 51). So are
specs on creating your own levels, complete with routines to handle
strange events (be warned, this is not a task for somebody without
programming knowledge!). Or perhaps not. If there's a software company out
there interested in publishing this, contact me (Footnote 53).

That's about it for the vaugely useful information; now it's time for a
bit of maundering on. Since i don't write demos, i gotta do it
somewhere...

THANKS AND REGARDS TO
---------------------
All my beta-testing friends for actually checking out and commenting
(nicely!) on the flood of revisions ("Well, i'm done for the night, i
guess i'll turn in... Wait, i'll send a copy of the latest to Jason...
[modem modem modem] Oooh, now i think i know how to solve THAT bug...
[codecodecode] [Repeat until consciousness is lost (Footnote 65)]"): Jason
Fonseca, Brent Stewart, Kenny Miller, Nicholas Lauland.
My artistic influences: Matt Howarth, Phil Foglio, Chuck Jones. The only
one you can really see any traces of in here is Matt; some of my shading
owes a lot to tricks i learned from his work (Footnote 16). Perhaps my
next game will be a 'tooned out' sort of thing, and show more of my
stylistic debt to Foglio (and Vaughn Bodé through him) and Jones.
Music: Art Of Noise, B-52s (early stuff), Devo, Front 242, Peter Gabriel,
Genesis (back when Gabriel was with them...), Ministry, Nine Inch Nails,
Oingo Boingo, the Orb, Ozric Tentacles, Pop Will Eat Itself, Shamen,
Skinny Puppy, They Might Be Giants, Thomas Dolby, Was (Not Was), and
others. (Footnote 17)
Lewis D'Aubin for sonic idiocy such as "Rabbid" and "Krazed Archer"
(Footnote 18)
Wile E. Coyote for being my spirit guide (Footnote 19)
The ol' Amiga Los Gatos crew (Footnote 21)
Walt Kelly and George Herriman, more artistic influences ("Pogo" [footnote
25] and "Krazy Kat", respectively).


And a great big nasty wet rasberry goes to my aging keyboard, which,
though it sports a spiffy zebra paint job (gotta match the main box,
right?), is missing its left ALT (Footnote 22) and is going a bit marginal
on the B (Footnote 75). The left alt isn't it's fault really; it got
dropped entirely too much for a while due to a poor desk arrangement, but
i had nothing to do with the B.

GO AHEAD, BOTHER THE AUTHOR.
----------------------------
I can be reached at the following addresses. They'll probably be good for
a while.

Snailmail: Paul Trauth
           4752 Press Drive
           New Orleans, LA 70126
           USA

Internet:  (1994 edit here) [e-mail], put "ATTN: PAUL" in mail
titles.

Fidonet:   Where /is/ that dratted address? (Footnote 27)

If you wish to contact me on other networks, hard luck. (Footnote 29)

FOOTNOTES
---------

Footnote 1: Written by John F. Kutcher; published by Muse (Footnotes 32,
34).

Footnote 2: What was that guy's name anyway? (Footnote 36) His version
sucked. I've also heard a bit about a commercial Space Taxi revamp, called
"UGH!". It seems to have a prehistoric theme (Huh?) to it, rising water
ala Killing Gameshow, and a lack of voices. I haven't actually seen it.
I'd kind of like to see a demo version, if one exists, just to compare my
rendition with theirs... (Footnote 41)

Footnote 3: Usually.

Footnote 4: Mostly because they provided good tests of the mechanism for
levels with custom code modules.

Footnote 5: Isn't it fun reading through all the footnotes? (Footnote 24)

Footnote 6: Swap pins 5 and 7; use pin 5 as an output to choose between
UDLRBC and A/Start. Beware the slow change rate of pins 5 and 9.

Footnote 7: Please don't send me mail (e- or otherwise) offering your
services. I know enough people locally to work on this. Do, however, send
me your comments on the game.

Footnote 8: A true game-writing god, as well as an inspiration. (If you're
reading this, Jeff, thanks for all the great games. I actually own a copy
of "Yak's Progress" [a compilation of most of Jeff's C64 games], and am
waiting eagerly for you to do a port of Ancipital, one of my other
favorite C64 games... Want to swap registered copies or something?)

Footnote 9: Here in the States, his name is Steven (Footnote 11), he's
twenty-five, and he owns a vanilla x86something clone (Footnote 74). He
still doesn't get on too well with people. Spottiness, however, is
optional.

Footnote 10: This is the famous, and rather inevitable, recursive
footnote. (Footnote 10)

Footnote 11: My apologies to anyone named Darren or Steven who /does/ get
on reasonably well with people... (Footnote 12)

Footnote 12: These footnotes are getting a bit silly, aren't they?
(Footnote 38)

Footnote 13: Not that i'm terribly averse to a bit of that, i'm just a
realist.

Footnote 14: Probably.

Footnote 15: Which i won't do unless i can get permission from DMA Design.
They're getting a letter explaining my intent and a disk with this on it.
(1994 comment: If i ever get going on this sucker again...)

Footnote 16: Most prominently, /Those Annoying Post Bros./ and /Savage
Henry/, published on alternate months by Rip Off Press. (Footnote 84) Well
worth the $2.50, and he's got to be one of the best author/artists out
there in alternative comix. How can you not be interested in a comic
starring real-life obscure musicians and the Elder God C'thulhu? (he plays
keyboards for the Bulldaggers, the band that Savage Henry is the frontman
for.) He's also got a bunch of keen self-published stuff; check it out!
(Footnote 63)

Footnote 17: That's just the best stuff.

Footnote 18: **INSERT LYRICS**

Footnote 19: Er, not really, except when i'm feeling really mystical (an
occasional event). But it got a laugh, didn't it?

Footnote 20: This document has entirely too many footnotes (Footnote 32).

Footnote 21: You knew that was coming, didn't you? And you know what for,
too.

Footnote 22: Actually, it's not missing. I know exactly where it is. It's
on my desk, in front of my monitor, along with an assortment of dry pens,
pencils with broken points, and dusty d6 in various colors (Footnote 60)
from when i played RPGs more often.

Footnote 23: But who isn't?

Footnote 24: Footnote 5 is blatantly stolen from any of Steve Meretzky's
Infocom games containing footnotes (Footnote 37).

Footnote 25: The original strip from before i was born (Footnote 55), not
the pale modern imitation.

Footnote 26: If you dump the main program, you'll find several text
strings. The first person to correctly identify the sources of all of them
gets a genuine Marvel surplus four-color Know-Prize (Footnote 64). Typing
them while the game is running has no effect. Honest. Trust me. Would i
lie to you? (Footnote 14)

Footnote 27: It's somewhere around here. I just have to hunt it down.
(Footnote 30)

Footnote 28: Actually, this doc file was written before the passengers
even began walking out of the Roach-Motel-esque (Footnote 66) taxi, much
less before there were any sounds or disk i/o. One hardwired level
(Footnote 50) built into the executable. One passenger (Footnote 78).

Footnote 29: Or you can use a gateway to Internet or Fido. Most networks
have one or the other. (Footnote 73)

Footnote 30: x:xxx/xx.x (Footnote 85), user name "Paul Trauth" (Footnote
73)

Footnote 31: Especially Vclock, by fellow Ducksoft member David Vasquez.
Oh dear.

Footnote 32: Footnote 1 is the only footnote with any real meaning. The
rest are a joke that got out of hand (Footnote 76).

Footnote 33: Yeah. Right. Next thing i know i'll be seeing a pig fly past
my window.

Footnote 34: I think they're gone now, like so many other entertainment
software companies of the 8-bit days.

Footnote 35: If there is one (Footnote 81).

Footnote 36: "Acute" of Effect.

Footnote 37: Probably Stationfall (Footnote 42).

Footnote 38: I hope you didn't waste all your paper printing out this file
(Footnote 58).

Footnote 39: Besides, big ascii title pages always look tacky to me.

Footnote 40: Because i'm too lazy to type "Space Taxi" over and over
again, that's why (Footnote 71).

Footnote 41: This footnote is not referenced anywhere in the document
(Footnote 43)

Footnote 42: Or maybe Hitchhiker's... (Footnote 48)

Footnote 43: Meaningfully, at least.

Footnote 44: I didn't feel like trying to justify it any more than that.
It's the way the game works.

Footnote 45: Isn't there supposed to be an ECS fallback mode anyway?

Footnote 46: There. I said it. I'm happy now.

Footnote 47: Yes, you can fly as psychotically as you like and the
passengers will meekly submit. They'll even give you a hefty tip if you're
a /fast/ psycho.

Footnote 48: Notice the clever positioning of the footnote about the
Hitchhiker's Guide? (Footnote 67)

Footnote 774: This is the misplaced footnote.

Footnote 49: I suppose there are restrooms available elsewhere.

Footnote 50: The one with the three pads in a rocky landscape with
mountains seen dimly in the background (Footnote 68).

Footnote 51: Maybe.

Footnote 52: A present from Michel.

Footnote 53: If i go commercial, i'll probably have to forget about the
Lemmings level (Footnote 15), unless Psygnosis publishes me (Footnote 33).

Footnote 54: Nearly half the document consists of footnotes. (Footnote 56)

Footnote 55: July 5, 1971. Don't bother putting it in your "Today in
History" files.

Footnote 56: Is that too much? (Footnotes 14, 20, 32, 57, 69)

Footnote 57: Footnote 56 references more text than any other sentence
(Footnote 56, 59)

Footnote 58: Or maybe i'm actually part of the international paper
manufacturing conspiracy (Footnote 35).

Footnote 59: Especially if you get recursive.

Footnote 60: A green one with white pips, a translucent orange one with
nearly-invisible numbers (Footnote 62), a similar translucent green one,
and a microscopic pink one with white pips (Footnote 52).

Footnote 61: You didn't see that.

Footnote 62: Good for rolling just out of the GM's easy reading range,
which is pitiful with these suckers.

Footnote 63: No, i don't get a cut. I just like his stuff.

Footnote 64: No prize, just the satisfaction of knowing it.

Footnote 65: Speaking of losing consciousness, this footnote was written
at 6:38 AM. And i don't get up earlier than 10 AM unless forced to.

Footnote 66: "They check in, but they don't check out."

Footnote 67: I'm so clever it just makes me puke.

Footnote 68: Clever collision detection, eh? (Footnote 67)

Footnote 69: I debated for a while about including a footnote 69, due to
the rude connotations of the number. Finally i decided, well, why the FUCK
not? (Footnote 46)

Footnote 70: There are only two things that honk passengers off - bad
landings and improper landings (Footnote 47). Fuel pads, to them, are the
wrong place to be. Nobody ever wants to go to the gas station (Footnote
49).

Footnote 71: On the other hand, i typed out every instance of the word
"footnote" myself. Go figure.

Footnote 72: It doesn't like some screen/pointer blankers very much
(Footnote 31).

Footnote 73: Actually, i'd prefer that you contact me through Internet if
at all possible, unless you feel a desire to send me money (Footnote 33),
in which case you should use my paper address.

Footnote 74: About two or three generations behind the state of the art,
even setting aside the general bodginess of 80x86 machines. At the current
time, Steven has a 386 or a 486, VGA, a SoundBasher, and is very confused
about the 80x86 processor market (Footnote 23).

Footnote 75: Try writing hardware code on the Amiga with a B key that
doesn't register more often than not. Even if you DON'T do much blitting,
there's still the bplcons to hassle with, and the ever-present Bcc
instruction (Footnote 20).

Footnote 76: There are even a few footnotes that are not referenced
anywhere in this document.

Footnote 77: Bleah.

Footnote 78: The Resident.

Footnote 79: Aaaaaaw.

Footnote 80: Yes, this is my first game, but not, i hope, my last. I've
been wanting to write a game for years, and have quite a few interesting
designs and concepts lying around. Nothing amazingly different, but
handled with a lot of humor and finesse...

Footnote 81: Fnord. (Footnote 61)

Footnote 82: Actually, it's been tested on a 1200, and it doesn't work. As
soon as i get my 1200 in i'll dig up the latest HowToCode and try and make
it AGA-friendly at least. (Footnote 86)

Footnote 83: Not any more - now there's NO Amiga dealers in town. I hate
New Orleans.

Footnote 84: I've just recently heard that /Post Bros./ is going to go
monthly, at the expense of /Savage Henry/'s existence (although Henry and
the rest of the Bulldaggers will continue to appear in /Post Bros./).

Footnote 85: The BBS i used to get (Usenet|Fido) (mail|news) through is
now down - see the preface for my current address.

Footnote 86: Footnotes 82-86 are 1994 additions, as if you really cared.