Assassins - Ultimate CD Games Collection 4/Assassins 4 (1999)(Weird Science).iso/docs/shoot-ups/car_battle.doc

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 20KB | 456 lines

                        Car Battle v1.0

  By Jools Henn, (c) 1997.

 There aren't that many five-player at once games out, are there?
 Well, that is the main reason for me deciding to make this game.So,thanks
 to me, you can invite a few mates round, break open the beers and blast
 each other to your hearts' content.

 Features:

 --> Up to five players at once!
 --> Support for a parallel port 4-player adaptor (tested OK)
 --> Collect Powerups and blast the other players!
 --> Full PROPER stereo sound!
 --> Fast fun blasting action!
 --> Built in Joystick Tester!
 --> Avoid the nasty gas cloud!
 --> Floppy Disk Installation Script that actually works!
 --> Blast your mates to a pulp! (Did I mention that?)

 Well, I hope you enjoy this game.It was quite good fun to make,and (a bit
 of a first for me!!) fun to play as well.

 This game was made by and copyright Jools Henn.

 You may freely distribute this game through any method you want,as long
 as all files are intact, and you don't charge rip-off fees for it.

 No warranties are given, so use at your own risk.

 Well, that's about it!

 (I've kept it short, because probably nobody will read it anyway...)

 Running the game is very simple. Just run the CarBattle executable.
 Simplicity itself.

 If you are really feeling in a good mood, you can copy AMOS.Library to
 LIBS: if it is not there already, but the game will cope even if it isn't
 as long as it is present as Libs/Amos.Library.
 No install script is provided to install to hard disk, so you have to do
 it yourself, but come on, if you can't copy a directory across to your
 hard drive then you DO have problems!
 There is a nice install-to-floppy-disk script, though.

 Requirements:
        Amos Library
        The Math#? libraries (supplied with Workbench)
        Workbench & Kickstart v1.3+ (see speed note below)

 Speed Chart:

 Machine:        Standard A500   Standard A1200  Accelerated A1200

 2 Players       ****            ****            ****
 3 Players       ***             ****            ****
 4 Players       **              ***             ****
 5 Players       *               **              ****

 **** -> Great, runs at full speed!
 ***  -> Little bit of slowdown, but still perfectly playable.
 **   -> Jerky, but just about playable.
 *    -> Yuk, this is not going to impress anybody.

 This speed chart refers to the number of players that are alive at any
 time. So, if you are playing a 5 player game on an Amiga 500, it will
 start off really jerky and horrible, and get faster as players are
 killed.

 I might optimise my code a bit in the next version, but don't bank on it.
 After all, how many people are there that match all of the following
 criteria?-

 1. Own nothing better than an unexpanded Amiga 500.
 2. Have a four-player parallel port adaptor.
 3. Have five people that want to play this game.
 4. Have at least three joysticks.
 5. Have a copy of this game (!)

 I reckon that you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Probably
 with four fingers and a thumb still to spare ;-)

 Having said that, even if you do only have an A500, this game is still
 great fun for two or three players. If you want to create a bootable disk
 for an A500 / A1200 owner who doesn't own a hard disk, then just follow
 the instructions lower down on this page. (I know, in the old days when
 we didn't have hard drives, we all used to spend most of our time making
 bootable disks, but now we all have lovely fast hard drives, who can be
 bothered? So, I have included full floppy install script, including what
 files are needed to run the game below, which have been TESTED TO WORK.)

 This has been tested on the following systems:

 Amiga 1200, Blizzard 1230-IV/50, 10Mb RAM total, hard disk.
 Amiga 1200, standard, 2Mb RAM total, floppy disk.
 Amiga 500 as emulated by Kick 1.4.

 The game works fine under Kick 1.4, so it should work on a real A500.

 Installing this to a floppy disk:

 1. Execute the Floppy Install Script.

 Or, if you don't want to do that, try the following:

 1. Format a floppy disk (OFS if you want to use it on an A500)
 2. Copy CarBattle and CarBattle.Guide onto it.
    (or, preferably, just copy the whole lot)
 3. Make a LIBS directory on it, and copy AMOS.Library, and all of the
    maths libraries (copy libs:math#? df0:libs)
 4. Make an S directory, and create a file Startup-Sequence in it,
    containing only the word CarBattle
 5. Install a valid bootblock on the disk (install df0:)

 Simple, eh? I tried this, and it works.

 Now, here is the interesting bit, how to actually play the game.

 Well, load it up, and you will be faced with the cheapo title screen and
 a request asking how many players are going to play. Press the relevent
 number, and then you will get a request for each player asking which
 control method they would like. You can use the keyboard, the joysticks,
 or a four-player parallel port adaptor.
 If you want to use the keyboard, I would advise the Z-X-T-F-Space
 combination, as that does not have any keyboard clashes. The Cursor keys
 and enter combination has one clash on Left-Cursor-and-Enter.

 You will then see the Options Screen. Here you can set
 any options that you may want, or redo the controls. Click on the link
 above if you want more details.

 Now, once that has been dealt with, the game will start. Now, here's the
 complicated bit. (Well, maybe not)

 Moving up on the joystick will move your car forwards.
 Moving down on the joystick will move your car backwards.
 Moving left on the joystick will turn your car anticlockwise.
 Moving right on the joystick will turn your car clockwise.
 And I bet you can't guess what the fire button does.....

 Each player controls one car, and has to drive around shooting the other
 cars.

 The top of the screen is divided into 5 sections horizontally, one for
 each player. Each player's section is split into three, as follows:
  ______________________________
 |                              | 1. Represents the energy of the player.
 |              1               | 2. Which powerup, if any, the player
 |______________________________|    is in possession of.
 |       |                      | 3. How much of this powerup is remaining
 |   2   |           3          |
 |_______|______________________|

 Talking of powerups, I think I'll describe them here.
 __________   __________   __________   __________   __________
 |        |   |        |   |        |   |  ____  |   |        |
 |        |   |        |   | |\/\/| |   | /    \ |   |  3 x   |
 |  2 x   |   |  5 x   |   | |  S | |   | |  S | |   |        |
 |        |   |        |   | \____/ |   | |/\/\| |   |  pnts  |
 |________|   |________|   |________|   |________|   |________|

  2x Power     5x Power      Shield     Inv. Shield   3x Points

 2x Power       This gives you bullets that do 2x as much damage to
               anything that they hit.
 5x Power       Same as above but 5x as much damage.
 Shield         Nobody can do any damage to you.
 Inverse Shield Like the normal shield, but when you get hit, instead of
                taking energy away from you, it gives you energy instead!
                Not only that, but it takes points away from the person
                that is shooting you!
                This looks like the normal shield, but upside-down.
 3x Points      Gives you 3x the amount of points for anything that you do
                This is also a very nice thing to have, particularly if
                you have it when you are blowing someone up or the round
                is finishing.

 Points Allocation:

 This game is all about points, and who can get the most. So, if you want
 to get the most out of it, you need to know what points you get for doing
 what. So, here is the guide:

   1 point for each energy point taken off any other player.
  50 points for killing another player, plus all remaining players
     get 10 points.
 100 points for winning a round (i.e. killing all other players)
     plus 2 points for every point of energy you have left.

 Don't forget, if you happen to be in possession of a 3x points bonus at
 the time, you get three times the points listed above. Think about that.

 Watch out for the gas cloud! This is a nasty piece of work that if hit
 will take 25 units off your energy. If you have a shield, however, it
 will not do anything to you, and if you have an inverse shield, it will
 GIVE you 25 units of energy.

 It is better to be killed by the gas cloud than be killed by another
 player, because then nobody gets the 50 points for killing you,and points
 as I said, are what the game is all about! Suicide tactics can help
 sometimes after all...

 The gas cloud can be turned off. See Options

 At the end of every round, you will see the score for each player for
 that round (along with a sarcastic comment about how good or bad each
 player did on that round), and the total score for all rounds. The player
 with the highest total score is the winner so far.
 The game counts how many rounds have been played, so that you can say
 something like "We'll play ten rounds and then see who's the winner". If
 you reset the scores, the round counter is also reset,for obvious reasons

 That's all there is to it! Get blasting!

 Miscellaneous Junk

 First, we have the Amiga PD Game Cliche chart.

 At Number 3, there are Shoot 'Em Up Construction kit games. Formerly
 number one, these games have fortunately become less popular in recent
 years, the  main reason being that they are total crap.

 At Number 2, there are Amos games which use the supplied BOOM, SHOOT and
 BELL commands because the programmers are too lazy to implement their own
 sound effects. Irritating, eh?

 But at number one, we have that irritating explosion sample. Yes, the one
 that almost every PD game ever created has in it somewhere. The one that
 is horrendously distorted, and goes Kpppew-ooo-ah!!!!

 You've guessed right. That stupid, horrible, annoying sample is in this
 game. I'm really sorry about that, I just HAD to do it. Blow up
 another car, and what do you get? Kppppew-ooo-ah!! That stupid sample
 again!

 Also, that lovely AMOS orange colour is used as well.
 (Shouldn't that be the horrible AMOS orangey-brown colour?)

 This game features proper stereo sound! If you want more information on
 this, then see Sound.

 This game uses the useful Ercole.lib for AMOS to do the four-player
 adaptor tricks. Very handy extension. You can find it on Aminet in the
 Dev/Amos directory.

 I wasn't going to bother to make this game NTSC compatible, but I thought
 "Oh, may as well, just for fun!".So, the game does a bit of messing about
 and now the game should be perfectly usable in NTSC.The game does,however
 run 20% faster in NTSC mode (but you guys should be used to that by now),
 which actually makes the game more fun. Obviously it doesn't make much
 difference on "Ridiculously fast mode",is it goes as fast as it damn well
 likes in that mode anyway!

 If you are really bored, check out my Amiga web page. It should have info
 on all of my programming projects, and any other Amiga related stuff you
 may find interesting.
 The address is http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ma7jkh/amiga.html  -a bit of a
 mouthful, I know, but such is life...

 Possible things to implement in a future version of the game:

 Computer controlled nasties
 (Helicopters, Mini Tanks, Homing Missiles, etc).
 Some more powerups? (perhaps)
 Better car graphics! (I'm no artist)
 Better icons? (Nah, no point, is there?)

 Most of these will probably NOT get done, as the code is getting too big
 for its boots at the moment, and when I finally get around to
 implementing any of this in a few months time, I will probably be totally
 lost looking at the code!
 How do commercial game designers cope? (Well, for a start, they probably
 structure their code a lot better than I do ;-)

 Plus, I am away at university now, and I probably won't be bothered to
 make any updates to this game. So you are looking at it in its finished
 state, really. Obviously if you find that the game crashes most of the
 time I'll try and fix it, but don't expect too much beyond that.

 Known Bugs:

 If you shoot a bullet upwards and it happens to be passing the energy
 bars as they are being redrawn (because another player is shooting you or
 something), then they can look a little corrupted. If someone is shot
 again, they are redrawn OK. I know why this is, but it is not a major bug
 and it would take a while to fix, so I might just leave it.

 When I was testing the game using the interpreter, sometimes, the game
 slows down a bit, especially if there are five players on the screen.When
 one of the players are killed, the game speeds up a little.
 However, when the game was compiled, the situation improved dramatically.
 Also, sometimes when I was testing,AMOS went nuts and started looping all
 the samples. Not even the Sam Loop Off command would help. Hopefully this
 should not happen to you...

 Sometimes, when there is a lot of sound activity, you get sort-of
 squeaking noises. Strange, but fun.

 If you powerpack the CarBattle executable, then the game crashes on exit.
 I've noticed this with anything that I compile. Totally illogical. Shame,
 really, as powerpacking it would halve the size of the executable. Maybe
 it would be alright with some other cruncher.

 I'd just taken my A Level exams when I wrote this game, and I felt like
 writing a game to ease the stress a bit, so here it is.

 You can send me an e-mail at [e-mail] , and please do
 send me an e-mail if you like it. That e-mail address should be valid
 until about august 2000 (or maybe even 2001!).


 What's Cool:                          What Isn't:
 The Amiga (obviously)                 The PC
 Alcohol!                              Fags
 Prisoner Cell Block H                 The Spice Girls (annoying!)
 Hi-Fi Seperates                       Midi Systems
 Bassy Music!                          Bill G8ze
 The Aminet                            Windoze & Windoze 95
 Octamed Soundstudio                   Walking up hills
 CDs and CD-Roms                       Software that crashes for no reason
 Nicam / Hi-Fi Stereo VCRs             Linear Mono VCRs (Buzz, Hiss!)
 My Dodgy Car! (See Car 3 in the game) Equipment that goes dodgy
 Gloom Deluxe and Editor               Rip-Off Merchant "sales"
 Directory Opus 4                      The PC (have I already said that?)
 Video Backup System                   Tapes that leave oxide on your deck
 Decent games                          Games that won't install to HD!
 Magic Eye Pictures                    Dodgy connections!
 The Prodigy                           Organ Music
 Nirvana (Still!)                      Muffley Recordings
 Turbo Touch 360 Joypad                My web page!
 (I think it's a great pad but everyone else that I know hates it!)

 This game features Proper Stereo Sound!

 Most games use the "Oh, I've got to play a sound, I'll just chuck it on
 the nearest sound channel and forget about it" technique. No, not this
 one! This game uses proper stereo. If something happens on the left hand
 side of the screen, it will come through your sound system panned to the
 left by the relevent amount.
 Having said that, the "Chuck the sound to the nearest free channel"method
 is also available if you prefer that...

 It was reasonably simple to implement, so why the hell don't more games
 do it? I really hate the "chuck the sound to any old channel" approach,as
 you get totally unrealistic stereo presentation of the sound.
 Let's hope AHI will change all that. I was going to implement AHI support
 into this game, but messing about with device calls is not exactly my
 thing. If someone writes an AREXX port for AHI, then I might be
 interested.

 Choosing which sound method you would like:

 STEREO - This option gives you proper stereo sound, and is the
          default. It does, however, only give you two channels of stereo
          sound (so you will only be able to hear two things at once).
          If you have a stereo Hi-Fi system, however, I think the stereo
          panning makes up for this.

 MONO   - This option gives you the standard chuck-the-sound-to-the
          nearest-available-channel sound that most games seem to love.
          Sounds really annoying through a stereo system, but if you are
          listening to it in mono, this mode will sound better, as it will
          give you four mono channels, as opposed to two stereo ones
          (so you will able to hear four sounds at once).
          If you are listening through a mono TV, select this option.

 You can use the keyword "Mono" on the command line if you have a mono TV
 and you can't be bothered to set it to mono every time you run it.

 See Options for more information.

 This game features a built in joystick tester!

 To activate it, simply press J on the options menu, or make sure the word
 "Joytest" is on the command line, i.e. when running the game, type
 "CarBattle Joytest" (without the quotes).
 When the game is run, you will be presented with the joystick tester.

 The first two represent the two joystick ports on your Amiga. Two fire
 buttons are supported.
 The next two are for a four player adaptor (so this way you can see it it
 works or not).

 When you're fed up of playing with your joystick, press Escape, and you
 will be returned to the game.

 The options screen looks like this:

 S = Toggle Stereo Sound
 B = Toggle Background
 L = Toggle Gas Clouds
 G = Change Game Speed
 C = Change Controls
 J = Use Joystick Tester

 Stereo Sound
 On  => Two Channel Stereo
 Off => Four Channel Mono
 On is default. For more info about this, click here.

 Background
 On  => 3D Effect Background On
 Off => 3D Effect Background Off
 This does look reasonable, but it can put you off the game a bit, so that
 is why it is off by default. Try it on both, see which you prefer.

 Gas Clouds
 On  => Gas Clouds On (Take 25 points energy off when hit)
 Off => Gas Clouds Off

 Game Speed
 Ridiculous => Disables timing, so the game plays ridiculously fast! Funny
 Full       => Normal Speed. 50Hz update in PAL, 60Hz update in NTSC.
 1/2        => Half normal speed. A bit slow and jerky. Just like a PC!
 1/3        => One third of the normal speed. Painfully bad. Yuk.
 Full is the default, for obvious reasons.
 The speed of ridiculous mode depends on the speed of your CPU.On my 50MHz
 68030, this is too damn fast to be playable. I'm not sure I'd like to try
 it on an '060...
 By the way, it is possible to run into your own bullets in ridiculously
 fast mode. Yes, I know, slight inconsistency with the laws of physics,but
 due to how the game works,it would be hard to do everything exactly right

 Change Controls

 This simply lets you change the controls, i.e. it takes you back to where
 it asks "How Many Players? (2-5)", and then lets you change the controls
 of each player.

 Use Joystick Tester

 This takes you to the joystick tester. For more info, see Joystick Tester

 Command Line Arguments

 These can be specified in any order on the command line, as long as they
 are there, that is all that counts. They are also not case sensitive.

 Joytest    - Runs the joystick tester first thing.
 Mono       - Sets 4 channel Mono sound. (i.e. Stereo OFF)
 Background - Sets the background to ON.
 Nogas      - Sets the gas clouds OFF.
 Speed0     - Sets speed to Ridiculous (might come in handy?!)
 Speed2     - Sets speed to half of the normal speed.
 Speed3     - Sets speed to one third of the normal speed.

 Yes, this is the hidden bit. Wasn't too hard to find, now, was it?
 Personally, I prefer to use the Browse forward button to view amigaguide
 documents. If you're reading this, they you probably think the same way.
 Or maybe not. Who knows?

 Hohum, I could yap here all day, but there is no point in wasting disk
 space, really. So I'll shut up.