Port of Apricots to the GCW Zero gaming handheld.
Changes introduced in this port:
- the game was modified to run in 320x240
- introduced a menu system
- $HOME directory support
- autogenerating apricots.cfg if none is present
- minor GCW Zero related changes
To do:
- joystick support
Port maintainer:
- Artur Rojek (Zear)
Apricots-0.2.6
Overview
Apricots is a game I've been writing in my spare time.
Despite the name, it has nothing to do with apricots.
It's a game where you fly a little plane around the
screen and shoot things and drop bombs on enemy targets,
and it's meant to be quick and fun.
History
The original version of the game dates back to around
1991. The very first version of the game was written on
an Amiga, using the AMOS language, and the game was
called 'Planegame'. This was a very simple affair with
simplistic landscapes, no guns or shrapnel, and very
limited computer AI. It was also dreadfully slow. The
AMOS compiler improved things somewhat at a later date. A
couple of years later I obtained the BLITZ language for
the Amiga, and ported 'Planegame' carefully over to that,
resulting in a huge speedup. Impressed by the capabilites
of BLITZ, in 1995 I proceeded to rewrite the game
entirely from scratch, even using completely new graphics
and sound. The result was 'Planegame2', which, for
various reasons also got dubbed 'Apricots'. This new
version of the game added anti-aircraft guns, shrapnel,
trees, towers, water, better airbases and a huge
improvement on graphics, sound, and intelligent computer
AI. Slightly later, in 1996, the Draks were added as a
bit of amusement. The result was a highly playable game,
which I distributed to a few of my friends. A few years
later and I now use a PC, which can run Linux. Having
learnt C++ by this time, at the beginning of 2002 I felt
ready enough to port 'Apricots' cross platform from BLITZ
on the Amiga to C++ on a Linux PC. What you see here is
work in progress on that port. The game has been tweaked
slightly while being ported over, so is not identical to
the Amiga version.
Authors
Project Leader: Mark Snellgrove (Original concept and game
coding)
Co-author: Mark Harman (First Windows port and SDL conversion)
Additional contributor: Judebert (Configuration file)
Status The game is still under development. Apricots-0.2.6 is a beta release using the SDL library. Despite this, it is highly playable. Please mail apricots@fishies.org.uk any bug reports, upgrades or comments.
C++ Compilers
Apricots is known to successfully build under the following
OS/Compiler configurations
Linux - gcc (reported by Mark Snellgrove)
OpenBSD - gcc (reported by Johan Luff)
Windows - Borland (reported by Mark Harman)
Windows - Visual C++ 6.0 (reported by Mark Snellgrove)
Windows/Cygwin - gcc (reported by Judebert)
It may build successfuly on other platforms, but this has
not been tested. Let me know!
Requirements
SDL > 1.2.0, download from www.libsdl.org
OpenAL, download from www.openal.org [optional]
Compilation options
-DAP_PATH="datadir" Set directory where apricots looks for
its data files. Defaults to current directory
if unset.
-DAP_AUDIO_OPENAL Turns on audio, using OpenAL. Off by default.
Instructions
CONTROLS PLAYER 1 PLAYER 2
-----------------------------------------------------------
ROTATE LEFT CURSOR LEFT Z
ROTATE RIGHT CURSOR RIGHT C
ACCELERATE / STEALTH CURSOR UP S
DROP BOMB CURSOR DOWN X
FIRE SHOT RETURN LEFT CTRL
Gameplay is fairly common sense to work out.
Stay alive, and shooting enemy targets gains you points,
whereas being shot down or shooting the wrong things lose
you points. You have infinite planes, and are competing
against the other computer planes (or other player!).
First to a certain score wins once they land at base.
Simple!
Play Options
At present there is no option screen. Options can be changed by
editing the configuration file apricots.cfg (on UNIX systems this
will probably require root access, user configuration files will
be added soon in a future release). The number and type of planes
can be varied, along with the airbases, as can 1/2 player game
be chosen. The number of anti aircraft guns and scenery
can be selected. Draks can be turned on or off, and a
different condition for winning the game can be chosen.
License
Apricots falls under the GPL. Please read the file COPYING included
in this distrubution. The sourcecode of apricots-0.2.6 will either
be included in the distrubution, or can otherwise be downloaded
from the apricots webpage (see below)
Webpage
For updates, bugfixes, binaries, sourcecode and more info please
visit the apricots webpage at
http://www.fishies.org.uk/apricots.html