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This program was written by Robert Dytmire in GFA Basic 3.5e and DSA's
GP Graphics Engine. The GP Graphics Engine is (C) 1992-93 DSA. Cud.
Lee's Quest is (C) 1992 Robert Dytmire. Sprites were done by Ari
Feldman. Background stuff was done by Robert Dytmire. This program is
Shareware and may be freely distributed in all forms as long as this Doc
and the REG.DOC files are kept in this folder and are un-modified.
Please read the REG.DOC file on how to register this program.
These Docs are broken into 2 sections. Section 1 describes how to play
Cud Lee's Quest while section 2 is my usual techno-babble.
SECTION 1
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PLAYING CUD LEE'S QUEST
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This game is basically a platform game aimed at the younger generation.
As this game is rather different than my others a little bit of
explanation is in order:
The game is aimed primarily at being a teaching tool as such it is
rather limited (for me) in the arcade experience. Memory
restrictions were observed as well as making the game appealing to
10-13 year olds. An open database of multiple choice questions
was used in order to give parents a greater degree of control over
which children could be tested. An adult mode makes the game
somewhat harder and should provide you with hours of enjoyment.
See the end of section 1 for an explanation of the Tutor Mode and
Tutor Menu.
The goal of the game is to explore and exit all 4 worlds.
Each world has an exit on the far right corner of the maze, by exiting
through the door on this wall you will complete the world. It is not
always necessary to explore the entire world in order to exit the world,
but high-score seekers will want to explore for treasure rooms and lots
of bonuses.
Each world is 5 screens by 5 screens big. So Cud Lee's Quest has
100 screens of action. (Not bad for two weeks of programming!!).
Moving Mr. Cud Lee- The main character is joystick controlled. By
moving him left or right you can move him left or right. Pushing up on
the joystick will begin his jump. The jump can be resumed in mid-flight
by waggling the stick. This seems unusual but it becomes a necessary
skill to master if you want to reach some sections of the world.
Pressing Fire cause a shot to be fired.
Ladders-These are the strange knobby things on the side of blocks.
Simply press up against the block to grab hold of a ladder. You
may jump from a ladder (giving you more height).
Keys- Keys allow you to open the doors that abound in the worlds. You
may carry up to four at a time. These are displayed in the lower right
corner of the screen.
Bonus Objects:
F - Increases the strength of your shots (and their look). This allows
you to do more damage per shot to the baddies.
P - Gives you another shot. You start with two and may have up to five.
S - Increases speed. This power only lasts for a little while.
J - Extra Jump. This power is like speed in that it runs out.
SS - Shot speed increase. Watch you shots really move!
L - Increase Shot range. Useful if you want to fire off-screen.
Money/Jewels- These icons can really increase your score.
The Baddies
The Orc - Slow and stupid these creatures are really easy to kill.
These creatures may jump!
The Fighter - Faster than Orcs and a little harder to kill.
They jump more often than Orcs.
The Viking - Slower than Fighters yet really tough.
Again, These creatures may jump.
The Wizard - Slow, easy to kill, these guys look like easy targets until
they throw their tracking beams at you. Note: These tracking
beams are NOT stopped by walls!!
The Death Knight - Fast and VERY tough. They fire at will and are
probably the meanest things in the game. Handle with extreme care!
These creatures can throw magic on upper levels.
The Troll - Fast and tough. Only slightly less dangerous than Death
Knights.
In this program I'm moving all of the monsters ALL OF THE TIME. Be
careful! Don't think the monster has de-activated just because you
can't see it! Monsters tend to wander set areas and could appear in
your area at any time. If you are unsure what lays beyond the current
screen then wait a little while (in a safe place) and see if anything
shows up. Jumping monsters can switch levels depending on where
they land. Use EXTREME care when entering a blind area or you'll
be toast. NOTE: In beta tests the Wizard tended to be most
dangerous when you couldn't see him! WATCH for magic sparkles
coming towards you from below or above....sudden death awaits the
unwary!
Also because of the above fact, the gameplay WILL get smoother as
you kill more baddies. Don't worry if things seem a little slow
at first (I'm moving 60 monsters and 10 Shots!!).
For music: If you're lucky enough to have 1 meg+ of memory and
any of those self-playing xbios programs then simply move one into
the cudq directory and re-name it music.prg. This program will
look for this file and run the program if it's there.
The child mode is REALLY easy. All monsters have 1 hit point.
The child starts out with 3 shots and shot level 2.
Small children should love this mode.
TUTOR MODE:
I have received several requests and a long letter or two on the
need for more educational software on the Atari Market. Cud Lee's
Quest is my first attempt at an educational piece of software.
Please do not judge me too harshly, I gave myself 2 weeks from
start to finish on this game and I don't think it turned out so
badly!
Tutor Mode: When this option is selected the program will draw
upon the question file in CUDQ.1, CUDQ.2, CUDQ.3, and CUDQ.4 to
ask questions every time the player attempts to open a door. Each
question has four possible answers and an answer is selected by
moving the joystick and pressing fire. If the answer is the
correct one then the door will open (providing the player has a
key to open it with!) and gameplay will resume. If the answer is
incorrect then the door will remain locked.
This program has internal listings of questions the player has
missed/gotten right throughout all games played (until the data is
re-set...see below). These stats will be printed out on any
standard printer through the Tutor Menu. Also, this program will
print the % correct on EVERY question. It will also print out any
questions that the player has missed more than 50% of the time thus
giving you an additional tool to monitor your child's performance.
NOTE: Once tutor mode is selected in CANNOT BE DE-SELECTED. Also,
the program tracks answers until option 2 is used to clear the
arrays in the Tutor Menu.
Question file format:
Any type of question may be used. History, Math, Economics, ect..
Each file represents a world. I tried to make my questions
tougher as I progressed in worlds. Each question file is a
straight ASCII text file formatted in the following way:
There are 25 questions per file. There MUST be at least 25
questions or the program WILL CRASH!! Note: This should come out
to 150 lines of text.
Each question has 6 lines describing it:
line 1: The actual question as you wish it to appear to the player.
lines 2,3,4,5: The possible answers for the question.
Line 6: The correct answer. This should be a number from 1 to 4.
No spaces, blank lines, ect.. should be placed between questions.
Each line should be separate (CR at end). Look at my files for
further help.
NOTE: Please send any CUDQ files that you make up to my U.S.
address. I'll then be able to send these out to any folks who
register thus giving you a larger database of questions to work with.
Have fun!!
Section 2
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Techie Talk 4.0
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AAAAGGGHH! I'm watching the Super Bowl at this moment...ok, not
watching just listening..but can the AFC EVER WIN A GAME???
Geez..
Yes, this game crawls at first. Remember the GP Graphics Engine
has to plot those sprites (or at least decide they don't belong on
the screen) EVERY game loop (75 16 x 20 masked and clipped sprites
per game loop) and GFA Basic is doing a LOT of logic to move all
of this stuff around (I'm controlling 16 sprites/loop thus giving
the enemies a stutter look...controlling all 60 enemies every loop
is just too much for an 8Mhz machine) and I've got all those
collision check happening and screen/map character peeking AND I'm
doing a full screen re-draw AND a 20 line Fully masked blit for
score and pick-ups! The game can run as slow as 12 frames/sec
(really slow!) to a max of 20 frames (after you kill about 1/2 the
enemies) which is pretty quick. The samples are running at 4Mhz
and all xbios effects are built-in GP Graphics Engine commands.
Oh, yeah, I am controlling Enemy shots every game loop (up to 6)
and I have to do a max of 6 collision detects and 32 character
collisions per game loop.
If you've got any ideas for my follow up game write down your
ideas, sketches, graphics ect and send them to my U.S. address.
I'll be happy to include you're name in the sequal!
Memory: C'mon folks! Get with the 1 meg crowd. I've heard a lot
of Atari Owners have not yet decided to join the 90's and upgrade
to 1 meg. Let's face it. If most of you would spend the small
amount to upgrade I could make all of my stuff 1 meg and REALLY
construct some AWESOME games. So let's make new-years goal of
upgrading that ST/STE (or buying a Falcon!) so shareware
programmers can have more to work with. 512K sounds like alot
until you've got to reserve 3 screens just to do page flipping!!
(96K) and then load in 80K+ of graphics (not to mention the 100K+
that GEM hogs) and THEN loading in 60+ or so of digital sound. As
you can see, memory becomes a problem even when you don't think it
might. You might thank some of these software companies that get
so much out of you're machines!!
Ok ok enough already! Yes Dropix is STILL in the works. YES Cyberdroid
is STILL in pre-production. But times do change and I decided this
format of a game would be more acceptable to the game mags when I
submitted them. Yes...I am pursuing wide distribution and I will change
time-tables on games if I can get wider release on a different style
game.
Mr. Cud Lee is going to be seen again. He's slated as a main character
for Dino-Man and Mr. Cud Lee (of course!). Get to know the little guy
cause you're going to see more of him.
Production time: Well..reality has broken in. I've found out that no
matter what my good intentions have planned, I seem to be able to
produce only one game per month. It's not because I'm a slow programmer
it's just the fact that everyday life keeps breaking in. College is a
huge drain, taking care of the house (we live in the woods...guess what
that means...yep...lots of firewood..if I chop it!), and even planning a
social life (girls...you know about girls don't you?) can eat into a
day. On top of all that, I'm working on several other projects
including sprite design, Engine Beta Testing, Answering mail and
watching Star Trek every Sunday.
Don't fear, if I get you're support the summer can see me producing a
game every two weeks (No college...and I won't have to work full time if
YOU donate and keep me glued to this chair). I have received requests
for some educational stuff. I'll probably produce an educational game
or three this year. Write me if you have any suggestions/ideas for
something in this field.
This game is taking an unusual approach to sprite movement. I'm moving
all 60 monsters all of the time. This allows monsters to move from
screen to screen without lots of checking around. As you can see this
game speeds up as you kill things.
This game didn't take all that long to write. The Engine has really
nice mapping commands as well as global sprite movement features that
made this stuff a breeze. The game is moving (max) 73 16 x 20 sprites
at god only knows what VSYNC...probably 4 or 5. The score stuff is a
little cheat using some of the Engine's custom Blits.
Dropix ST is in Alpha Version right now. It SHOULD be completed very
shortly (My firmest commitment nowadays). I've got the brick falling and
the pull-out routines finished. All the graphics and sound files are
complete. I've just gotta finish the Attack menus and de-bug the
simulated multi-tasking environment that the game works under (this is
the part that's driven me crazy...how to have one side entering his/her
name on a really neat table while the other side is playing the game at
any stage...the flags can get a little confusing at times). Dropix IS
going to be my next game....after I finish updating INSECTROID (for
registered users)..and get a 512K version of Megapede set up for
release.
This game may be really lame to some. But it does fill a need out
there for really entertaining educational games. If you think
it's too easy then make the CUDQ files into an extended Lamer
test (see who can complete it then!) or do some Calculus Identities
(I do this myself)...Trig Identities work well on this also.
I want more Falcon Info! If anybody out there has ANY info on this
machine please write me! I especially interested in what kind of
speed the true-color mode can achieve in games and the DSP's
buffer & I/O setup!
I would REALLY like to talk to the programmer of BACKTRAK.ACC...There's
money in it guy!
Greetz!
Well...no demo groups have seen fit to send me anything. 'Cmon
guys...my stuff isn't that bad!
All loyal Atari Users...let's have a laugh at Windows 3.X. What a piece
of junk windowing system.
To Everybody who's supported my previous games! Thanks for the help!!
To anybody waiting for Dropix ST of Cyberdroid- I have NOT forgotten you
guys.
Are their any girls programming the ST? If so...what have you gal's
programmed? I'd like to see what the other half can do on the ST.
Oh...here's some more stuff...
This game uses a selection of sprites from our forthcoming Sprite
disk. All of the foreground graphics in this game are in our
sprite disk. I've also decided to do a very small educational
program called Child-Ball. Look for it if you have small kids
that like to type of the keyboard!
Well, gotta go folks...see ya on the next game!
:-] Rob :-]
P.S. Anybody Remember Dr. Who? Is it still playing in England?
They don't show it over here anymore!
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