1Apricots-0.2.6
2
3Overview
4
5 Apricots is a game I've been writing in my spare time.
6 Despite the name, it has nothing to do with apricots.
7 It's a game where you fly a little plane around the
8 screen and shoot things and drop bombs on enemy targets,
9 and it's meant to be quick and fun.
10
11History
12
13 The original version of the game dates back to around
14 1991. The very first version of the game was written on
15 an Amiga, using the AMOS language, and the game was
16 called 'Planegame'. This was a very simple affair with
17 simplistic landscapes, no guns or shrapnel, and very
18 limited computer AI. It was also dreadfully slow. The
19 AMOS compiler improved things somewhat at a later date. A
20 couple of years later I obtained the BLITZ language for
21 the Amiga, and ported 'Planegame' carefully over to that,
22 resulting in a huge speedup. Impressed by the capabilites
23 of BLITZ, in 1995 I proceeded to rewrite the game
24 entirely from scratch, even using completely new graphics
25 and sound. The result was 'Planegame2', which, for
26 various reasons also got dubbed 'Apricots'. This new
27 version of the game added anti-aircraft guns, shrapnel,
28 trees, towers, water, better airbases and a huge
29 improvement on graphics, sound, and intelligent computer
30 AI. Slightly later, in 1996, the Draks were added as a
31 bit of amusement. The result was a highly playable game,
32 which I distributed to a few of my friends. A few years
33 later and I now use a PC, which can run Linux. Having
34 learnt C++ by this time, at the beginning of 2002 I felt
35 ready enough to port 'Apricots' cross platform from BLITZ
36 on the Amiga to C++ on a Linux PC. What you see here is
37 work in progress on that port. The game has been tweaked
38 slightly while being ported over, so is not identical to
39 the Amiga version.
40
41Authors
42
43 Project Leader: Mark Snellgrove (Original concept and game
44 coding)
45 Co-author: Mark Harman (First Windows port and SDL conversion)
46 Additional contributor: Judebert (Configuration file)
47
48Status
49 The game is still under development. Apricots-0.2.6 is a
50 beta release using the SDL library. Despite this, it
51 is highly playable. Please mail apricots@fishies.org.uk
52 any bug reports, upgrades or comments.
53
54C++ Compilers
55
56 Apricots is known to successfully build under the following
57 OS/Compiler configurations
58
59 Linux - gcc (reported by Mark Snellgrove)
60 OpenBSD - gcc (reported by Johan Luff)
61 Windows - Borland (reported by Mark Harman)
62 Windows - Visual C++ 6.0 (reported by Mark Snellgrove)
63 Windows/Cygwin - gcc (reported by Judebert)
64
65 It may build successfuly on other platforms, but this has
66 not been tested. Let me know!
67
68Requirements
69
70 SDL > 1.2.0, download from www.libsdl.org
71 OpenAL, download from www.openal.org [optional]
72
73Compilation options
74
75 -DAP_PATH="datadir" Set directory where apricots looks for
76 its data files. Defaults to current directory
77 if unset.
78 -DAP_AUDIO_OPENAL Turns on audio, using OpenAL. Off by default.
79
80Instructions
81
82 CONTROLS PLAYER 1 PLAYER 2
83 -----------------------------------------------------------
84 ROTATE LEFT CURSOR LEFT Z
85 ROTATE RIGHT CURSOR RIGHT C
86 ACCELERATE / STEALTH CURSOR UP S
87 DROP BOMB CURSOR DOWN X
88 FIRE SHOT RETURN LEFT CTRL
89
90 Gameplay is fairly common sense to work out.
91 Stay alive, and shooting enemy targets gains you points,
92 whereas being shot down or shooting the wrong things lose
93 you points. You have infinite planes, and are competing
94 against the other computer planes (or other player!).
95 First to a certain score wins once they land at base.
96 Simple!
97
98Play Options
99
100 At present there is no option screen. Options can be changed by
101 editing the configuration file apricots.cfg (on UNIX systems this
102 will probably require root access, user configuration files will
103 be added soon in a future release). The number and type of planes
104 can be varied, along with the airbases, as can 1/2 player game
105 be chosen. The number of anti aircraft guns and scenery
106 can be selected. Draks can be turned on or off, and a
107 different condition for winning the game can be chosen.
108
109License
110
111 Apricots falls under the GPL. Please read the file COPYING included
112 in this distrubution. The sourcecode of apricots-0.2.6 will either
113 be included in the distrubution, or can otherwise be downloaded
114 from the apricots webpage (see below)
115
116Webpage
117
118 For updates, bugfixes, binaries, sourcecode and more info please
119 visit the apricots webpage at
120 http://www.fishies.org.uk/apricots.html