ISV Strong Games/ISV_STRONG_GAMES.iso/arcade/digger/!Help(PC)

Text File | 1998-11-14 | 25KB | 540 lines

                      Digger - back and digitally remastered
                      ======================================

                     The really long digger file - 15/11/1998

                        by Andrew Jenner
                        with thanks to Windmill Software

Included in the distribution is the game itself, this document, and an icon
for running under Windows or OS/2 (but see Known bugs and issues for
information about running Digger under these operating systems).

There is also a version for RiscOS. See the website for more information.


Contents
--------

The story so far...
How to play Digger
Frequently Asked Questions
Extra levels
Hall of Fame
Technical details
Known bugs and issues
Ideas for future enhancement
Digger pages on the web and other versions of Digger
What's New?
Feedback


The story so far...
-------------------

Finally, after 3 years of (on and off) hacking, Digger is back! This game, for
those who don't know it, was one of the best games available for the XT - the
CGA graphics were beautifully drawn and animated, and the sound effects and
music were state of the art.

It wouldn't run on modern PCs, of course. The CGA graphics directly accessed
hardware registers that the VGA didn't have (and wouldn't have looked so hot on
today's high resolution monitors anyway), the background music and sound
effects just didn't sound right and the whole thing just ran far too fast.
Also, you probably didn't want the game to access the disk directly and save
your high scores in an arbitrary place (probably overwriting some other file)
or to reset your computer just to exit the game.

I was extremely disappointed to discover all these things when we replaced the
family PC1512 with a brand new multimedia 486, so I set about re-writing it. It
was a big job - all the code had to be disassembled, the necessary routines
re-written and the whole thing put back together again. I finally finished the
project in easter 1998, having decided not only to fix all the compatibility
problems but also to convert all the graphics to VGA standard, redrawing
them.

Since then, I have almost completely rewritten Digger in C to make it easier to
add new features and move it to other plaforms. This is the result!

Unfortunately, I have not been able to contact the original author of the game,
as all I know is the copyright message on the title screen "(C) Windmill
software 1983." I have head one rumour that the author died shortly after
completing the game, but if you know otherwise, or, indeed, if you are the
author, please get in touch. The latest news on this front is that Windmill
Software was based in Ontario, Canada. I have written to their original address
(found by Jaap van Hengstum in an ancient computer magazine) but have heard no
reply as yet.


How to play Digger
------------------

The keys you need to play the game are, by default: Left, Right, Up, Down (or
2, 4, 6, 8 on the numeric keypad) to move Digger, F1 to fire, Space to pause,
F7 to toggle background music and F9 to toggle all sound. On the title screen
press Esc or 'N' to toggle one or two player mode, or F8 to save the last game
if you forgot to give a name on the command line. To exit from the game to the
title screen or from the title screen to the operating system press F10. To
increase the game speed during play, press '+'. To decrease it press '-'. Each
press of these keys corresponds to an increase or decrease in the command line
speed parameter of 5. All these keys except Esc, 'N' and F8 can be redefined
with the /K option.

The command line options are:
  /S:n    = set speed to n
  /L:name = use level file "name"
  /C      = Use CGA graphics - these are faster than VGA but this is only
            really noticable if you have a slower computer or are playing at
            high speeds.
  /B      = Use CGA graphics with BIOS palette functions (try this if the
            palette doesn't work properly with the /C option, but be warned: it
            might cause a crash if you get a high score)
  /Q      = Quiet mode (no sound at all) - use this if you're running under
            Windows.
  /M      = Turn background music off. Curiously, if you complete a level and
            no music has been played since you started the program, if makes a
            different noise. Who knows what other mysteries Digger holds...
  /R:name = Record game to file "name"
  /P:name = Playback game file "name" and restart program
  /E:name = Playback game file "name" and exit program
  /?      = Display this list.
  /O      = Go back to the beginning of the command line and start again. Handy
            for playing recorded games as screensavers.
  /K      = Redefine keyboard.

/S and /L are optional (you can just specify a name and/or number) but are
harmless, and will help to prevent confusion (especially if you have a level
data file called something like "20.dat")

/Q and /M don't completely disable sound and music, you can still toggle them
with the F9 and F7 keys.

/K lets you choose the keys you want to use to play the game with. Normally,
the program will let you redefine the keys to move Digger around and fire, but
if you override another key (by making the space bar fire, for example) other
keys will be redefined. If you soecift the /K option, the program enters
keyboard mode before the title screen appears. In keyboard redefinition mode,
the name of each action which needs a key comes up on the screen in red, and
changes to green once you've pressed the key for that action. Note that the
name of the key does not appear on the screen: it would be too complicated to
program Digger with knowledge of all known keyboard layouts. However, I may
program it with knowledge of some of the keys in a future version. I do not
recommend redefining 'N', Esc or F8 as anything else, as these keys cannot
currently be redefined so this could cause confusion. To return all the keys to
their defaults, delete the DIGGER.INI file.


Record and playback could hardly be easier to use. There are two ways to record
your game: either give Digger a filename when it starts, or press F8 once your
game is over. The filename used if none is specified on the command line is
DIGGER.DRF. Bear in mind that any previously saved games in this file will be
overwritten unless you rename or move the file first.

To automatically save your game once it is finished, simply start Digger with a
command such as "DIGGER /R:DIGGER.DRF" Then, the last game you play before
exiting to DOS will be saved to this file (in this case, DIGGER.DRF, although
it can be anything you like). The recommended extension is .DRF (Digger
Recorded File). Again, remember that only the last game played before exiting
is kept.

To playback the file, use either the /P or the /E option:
"DIGGER /P:DIGGER.DRF" or "DIGGER /E:DIGGER.DRF". The only difference is that
when the playback is finished, the /P option restarts the program so you can
play normally, and the /E option exits to the operating system.

If you specify both /P and /R (or /E and /R) on the command line (/R first),
the playback itself is recorded, so some elementary editing of recorded game
files can be done. Not enough to make it look like you've done better than you
have, of course.

To playback a file at a different speed, put the speed on the command line
first. Command line arguments are processed in order. You can even play back
multiple files at different speeds with the same command, such as
"DIGGER 20 /P:DATA1.DRF 10 /E:DATA2.DRF" (plays DATA1.DRF at speed 20, then
DATA2.DRF at speed 10, then exits). You can take control of a game that is
playing by pressing Ctrl-T. However, you will not then be able to record that
game (that would be cheating).

No information about the speed at which the recording was made is kept, nor
whether it was recorded with CGA or VGA graphics, so any file can be played
back at any speed or resolution.

Recorded files are very small (only a few kilobytes) and are formatted as text
files, so they can easily be transported on floppy disks or sent over email.

Please send me your recorded files to put on the website!

Unfortunately, the DRF format completely changed on October 15th, 1998, so any
old DRF files you have won't work any more. I'm afraid that no converter is
possible, you'll just have to make new ones. However, the new format is much
smaller and more versatile.


Frequently Asked Questions
--------------------------

Scoring system (may be considered spoiler material)
* Emerald: 25 pts.
* Eight consecutive emeralds (octave): Extra 250 pts.
* Gold: 500 pts.
* Killing Hobbin or Nobbin by shooting or hitting with gold: 250 pts.
* Bonus: 1,000 pts.
* (In bonus mode) Eating Hobbin or Nobbin: 200 pts. for first, 400 for 2nd,
  etc. (doubling each time) - still 250 for other methods of killing, though.
* At every multiple of 20,000 pts. you get an extra life. This is different in
  some of the sets of extra levels (see below for more information on these).


The maximum possible score on completion of level 1 is 8,650 plus 3,150 for
every life used. I can repeatably obtain 8,650. The maximum possible score you
can have by the end of level 2 is 19,925 if you don't die, so it is not
possible to start level 3 with more than 2 lives in reserve. I have got maximum
score on the first two levels a few time. I haven't bothered to calculate
similar statistics for the other levels, but I will if anyone's interested...


The background music for the main part of the game is called "Popcorn", and was
a hit for the group "Hot Butter" in the 70s. There's more info at
http://www.cam.org/~lafranc/popcorn/origin.html. The background music for the
bonus is the William Tell Overture by Rossini. The music which plays when you
die is "Funeral March" by F. Chopin.


In my explorations of the code of the game, I have discovered some things I
didn't know.

On each new level up to level 10:
* The monsters arrive more frequently.
* There are more monsters in total.
* The number of times nobbins have to cross to become hobbins decreases.
* The monsters move slightly faster on average (their speed is actually
  random).
* The monsters less frequently stop chasing you (they always chase you on
  level 6 and above).
* Hobbins stay hobbins for longer.
* Gold hangs around for less long.
* Fire takes longer to recharge.
* Bonus mode lasts for less long.

Levels above 10 use the same variables as level 10 but different layouts.

The level plan is 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-6-7-8 then the sequence 5-6-7-8 repeats 247
times. You you complete level 8 249 times, all the subsequent levels use the
layout from level 5, but I doubt anyone will be both good enough and have time
to do this.

Gold (as in a broken bag) disappears very quickly if you dig underneath it.

Monsters going up change direction when there is a bag falling on them, but
they do the same thing even if the bag is below them in the same column.

Player 2 (in two player mode, obviously) doesn't get the extra life until after
multiples of 20,000. Player 1 (in either mode) gets it *at* multiples of
20,000.

The noise made when you complete a level is polyphonic if no background music
has been played since the game was started.

The program allocates enough resources for 6 monsters, but only 5 are on screen
at any given time. By changing a single byte in the executable, you can make
all 6 appear at the same time.

When you get a game over and no high score, the screen flashes between its
two colour schemes for a while, but the original didn't do this on my 8086.
Apparently it did on some other people's computers, though, so it must have
been a hardware oddity. It was taking ages to get back to the title screen, so
I changed the number of times it flashes from 20 to 10. This seems to do
something different in the latest version.


This version of Digger now uses your computer's internal timing chip for all
its timing, so it should run at exactly the same speed on all machines, no
matter what how much action is happening on the screen. The only exception is
that if there is more action on screen than your computer can handle, it will
run too slowly (as happened with the original game on a 4.77MHz machine). You
won't notice this effect unless you have a very slow computer or are running
Digger at an extremely high speed. Using the CGA graphics rather than the VGA
ones will speed things up in this case.

You can speed up or slow down the game depending on your personal preference.
To do this, simply specify the speed on the command line. The default is 40,
higher numbers give slower speeds, lower numbers (1 being the lowest) give
faster speeds.

If you're good at the game you might like to try playing it at a faster speed.

If you use a really slow speed like 500, you may have to hold the keys down for
longer to get it to do anything.

Note that the music and sound effects are independent of this speed setting.

If you are used to playing Digger on a slower computer, you might notice an
apparent increase in speed as more monsters appear on screen. This is a
psychological illusion! If you notice this, it means that your subconscious
has been counting the number of monsters on the screen and adjusting the
apparent speed to compensate! This effect will disappear after playing the new
version for a while. However, if there is demand I could put in a feature to
actually slow down the game more when there is more action on the screen.


Extra levels
------------

An extra 35 sets of levels are available from my website at
http://www.digger.org/diglev.zip. To use these, unzip the file into directory
where you installed Digger, and make sure that this is the current directory
when you run the game.

To play a different level set, just specify its name on the command line when
you play the game.

Note that the scores are now saved in the same files as the level data, not in
separate .SCO files as in one old version (although the DIGGER.SCO file is
still used if no .DAT file is specified). If you played this version and have
lots of .SCO files, email me for the conversion utility.

Most of the levels in the pack were designed by Mikel Lavrentyev and his
friends.

The files VALYA123, VALYA2 and VALYA3 were designed by Valentina Borisenko, a
schoolgirl from the Irkutsk (Russia).

The file ANTON was designed by someone called Kalmykow Anton, who hacked into
Digger in 1987 and made several changes. His version of Digger (ANTONDIG.EXE)
displayed the graphics better than the original on non-CGA displays and had a
whole new set of levels but there were still many problems with it.


Hall of fame
------------

Welcome to the hall of fame. Your name could be here! All you need to do is
send me a recording of a game you played where you got more than 42,250 points.
Recordings of all the official top scores are available on the website.


Rank Name                    Country      Score  Level Speed

 10  Robert Schobesberger    Austria      42,250    7   35?
  9  Aleksi Muukkonen        Finland      58,175    8   50?
  8  Diethelm Albert Kabus   Germany      58,975    8   40?
  7  Amit Yakir              Israel       62,925   10   25?
  6  Mariusz Artur Borkowski Poland       74,875   11   50?
  5  Andrew Jenner           England      75,975   10   50
  4  Matthias Wermann        Germany      77,300   10   50?
  3  Norman Smart            South Africa 87,325   10   50
  2  Stephane Reusser        France       92,050   11   35
  1  Clive Rademan           South Africa 95,350   11   60?


Notes:

* Andrew Jenner is the author of Digger Remastered.
* Matthias Wermann donated the digger.org domain name. His unofficial top score
  exceeds 121,000.
* Norman Smart's unofficial top score is 104,000.
* Stephane Reusser is a student. He also recorded THEVOID.DRF, a new way of
  playing Digger which really must be seen to be believed...


If you can beat 42,250 you can get into the hall of fame. To save your game,
wait until you are back at the title screen (after the "Enter your initials"
screen, or when the "Game Over" screen has disappeared) just hit F8. Then exit
the program in the normal way. This will create a file called DIGGER.DRF which
you can send to me.

If you have access to email, this is the best way to send it: simply attach the
DIGGER.DRF file to an email and send it to "[e-mail]". If you don't know
how to attach a file to an email, simply open the DIGGER.DRF file in a text
editor (such as Notepad in Windows), select the whole thing, copy it and paste
it into the email message. If you don't have access to email, you can still
send in your DRF - put it on a floppy disk and snail-mail it to me at the
address at the end of this file. If you want your disk back send a suitable SAE
as well.

For some more information on recording and playback, see the "How to play
Digger" section.


Technical details
-----------------

The dissassembly was done using Microsoft's DEBUG utility and lots of QEdit
macros. The new code was completely written by me, from scratch. Most of the
old code was subsequently converted from assembler to C line by line, by hand.
I wrote utilities in Borland's Turbo C 2.0 to extract the graphics data and put
it into a format I could use with CHARDES, my personal favourite sprite editor.
I used this program to redraw all the graphics in glorious 16 colour 640x400
VGA. With more utilities I wrote, I turned the new sprites back into C code
so it could be easily linked with the code. Finally, I assembled everything
with A86 and Turbo C, linked it all with Borland's TLINK and compressed it with
PKLITE (it's now smaller than the original!)

Note: the high scores are now saved in an actual file, DIGGER.SCO, and *not* on
an arbitrary sector of the disk in drive A:, as the original did. If you're
clever, you can hack into this file and make your scores apparently arbitrarily
large. Please don't do this, it's very antisocial. Don't do it on Minesweeper
or Freecell, either.


Known bugs and issues
---------------------

Most of these have arisen because of the way the original game uses the
hardware, and I that want to keep it as similar to the original as possible, in
terms of sound and gameplay). However, with the latest version this list is
looking a bit depleted...

* Crashes on level completion when running under Windows (3.1 enhanced mode
  or 95) when sound is on. I consider this to be a bug in Windows, not a bug in
  the game, the music just wouldn't be right if I didn't reprogram the timer.
  MS-DOS mode under Windows 95 is okay, though ("Use default settings" will
  usually work).

* The screen goes all speckly when you get a high score. Let me know if this
  is a problem for anyone.

* Digger can be run under OS/2 in a full-screen DOS session, but the music may
  be a little distorted. To fix it, set:

  HW_TIMER         ON
  IDLE_SENSITIVITY 100
  INT_DURING_IO    ON
  SESSION_PRIORITY 32

  OS/2 displays the Windows icon with no problems. Thanks to Mariusz Borkowski
  for this information.


Ideas for future enhancement
----------------------------

Please get in touch and tell me which of these you'd particularly like/hate or
if you have any better ideas.

* Analogue joystick support (this was in the original game, but didn't work
  unless you were running the game on a 4.77MHz 8086).
* Level editor, graphics editor, background music editor etc.
* Simultaneous two player mode, either split screen or both on the same
  screen (so two diggers can help or fight each other as they see fit) -
  perhaps wil an option for network play.
* Gauntlet play: unlimited lives, and a fixed time limit to get as many
  points as possible. Thanks to Marek Zgadzaj for this idea - he played a
  hacked version of this original Diggre to do much the same thing.
* Windows version (don't hold your breath!)
* More than two players

Which other classic games would you like to see restored? I have three other
Windmill software games ("Conquest", "Rollo and the Brush brothers" and
"Moonbugs") and heard of another two ("Floppy Frenzy" and "Video Trek 88"). I
mentioned here previously that I'd like to restore Datasoft's 1983 masterpiece
"Bruce Lee", but it had already been done and only needed a minor speed patch.
Email me for further information.

If there are any Windows programmers out there who would like to have a go at
converting Digger to run in a window or even making the Digger screensaver,
email me and I'll send you the source code and all the graphics you need in the
format of your choice.

I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone who would like to port Digger to
other platforms such as Unix, Mac and Atari. An Amiga version has already been
started. I have converted most of the source to C code to aid portability.


Digger pages on the web and other versions of Digger
----------------------------------------------------

http://www.digger.org
The latest version of this document is available at my own site, redesigned by
Aycan Gulez. Various utilities and recorded files are also available here.
Check back here often for updates.

http://home.worldonline.nl/~terdudio
Reinder Kraaij of Holland has started a rewrite of Digger in Java. The graphics
are as in the original, but the game itself is being rewritten from scratch.
What is there is playable, but it's just not the same as the original -- yet.
Work on the project has restarted, so watch this space! (Or that one...)

ftp://ftp.torget.se/pub/games/reader_files
This game plays nothing like the original Digger, although it does have certain
game elements in common. Don't be fooled by the 4Mb installation or deliciously
rendered title screen, the game itself is simple, slow and fairly boring. It
does, however, attribute itself to the original Digger so I include it here. To
download, get both digger_1.zip and digger_2.zip and use PKUNZIP with the -d
option.

http://www.rinet.ru/~mikel
Mikel Lavrentyev of Russia has written a "patcher" for the original Digger
which fixes most of the problems. The loader also has a level editor and many
sample levels. This package is highly recommended, although the patcher does
have some unwanted side effects - the controls seem "sticky", the background
music isn't quite right, and the speed seems to be always either too fast or
too slow. The levels from Mikel's version of Digger are available for use with
this version of Digger - the "Extra levels" section of this file for more
details.

http://www.oldskool.org
The Oldskool PC hosts the Digger site and is an invaluable reference for anyone
interested in old games or demos and running them on modern PCs.


Know of any more? Get in touch!


What's new?
-----------

14 Nov 1998: Hall of fame revamped.
13 Nov 1998: Keyboard redefinition added.
4 Nov 1998: New URL: http://www.digger.org . Minor bugfix for /O option.
21 Oct 1998: Minor changes so you can playback a recording as a screensaver.
17 Oct 1998: Update to RiscOS version: minor bug fixes and sound added.
16 Oct 1998: RiscOS version added. Minor bug fix to DOS version making the
             keyboard work more like it did in the original. Speed control and
             playback cheat added.
15 Oct 1998: Major new version! Most of the changes are invisible but will help
             with future development. However, there are some major new
             features, including a greatly improved recording/playback feature,
             which you will need if you want to get on the new Hall of Fame.
13 Oct 1998: Digger chat mailing list added. You can subscribe at
             http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/digger
22 Sep 1998: Four new sets of levels added in the extra level pack.
8 Sep 1998: Trivia section added in the FAQ
7 Aug 1998: If you liked Digger, try Styx
            (http://www.oldskool.org/shrines/styx).
28 Jul 1998: DRF compressor program (now obsolete) and DRF files added.
25 Jul 1998: Digger should now run on slower computers.


Feedback
--------

That's about all I can think of to put in the the really long Digger file for
now. Let me know if there's any other Digger information you urgently need, you
want the source code or you want to be put on an email list to be told whenever
a new version comes out.

If you have access to email that is the best way to contact me - my address is
  [e-mail]

If not, you can snail-mail me at:
  Andrew Jenner
  Queens' College
  Cambridge
  CB3 9ET
  ENGLAND

You can also visit my site at http://homepages.enterprise.net/berrypark/andrew
if you're interested.


If you liked the Digger website and want Aycan to design your site, you should
email him at
  [e-mail]


Many thanks to Matthias Wermann ([e-mail]) for the very generous
donation of the digger.org domain name. Matthias runs an ISP, the URL of which
is http://www.emsnet.de .