ReadMe
D O C U M E N T A T I O N
to the ShareWare - Game 'The J.A.R.'
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Copyright-Information:
The game 'The J.A.R.' and all files of this game,like graphic datas, are
Copyright (c) 1988/1989 by Andreas Ehrentraut. All rights are reserved.
Permission is granted to distribute the game and data, provided the fol-
lowing conditions are met:
1. All files of the game must be redistributed without changes, incl.
this documentation file.
2. The distributor may charge a fee to recover distribution costs,
but is not allowed to derive any profit from it. The concrete price
for a copy including the disk ought to be less than 6$.
Anyway, anybody who gets pleasure from this game ought to send me a con-
tribution as he pleases:
Andreas Ehrentraut
Ku'markt 9
2848 Vechta
(Western Germany)
How to install the game:
It is necessary to install the game on another disk for it takes a lot
of memory. Then it is also able to work on 512KB - Amigas with a single
drive. To install,
1. FORMAT an empty disk (e.g. using the workbench),
2. enable it to boot from using the INSTALL command (if you have a
single drive, copy the command into the RAM, change disks, then
type 'ram:install df0:'),
3. COPY all files from the directory to the empty disk,
4. create an S-directory on the startup-disk (MAKEDIR s),
5. RENAME startup-sequence as s/startup-sequence.
Then, switch off all external drives of an 512 KB - Amiga and boot the
game.
About the program:
This program may be copied and spreaded, provided that no commercial use
of it is made. For I put a lot of hard work in the game (about one year
of hard work), I'd like you to contribute me something like 5$ or what-
ever it is worth to you. If you add 5$ more for disk and postage and
give me your address, I will send you not only the latest version of the
program with source code, but also an Scene-Editor which enables you to
create new scenes for the game, so that you can take up new challenges
again and again. It will make the game a real 'Jump-And-Run Construction
Set'.
From the source code of the game, which is sized ca. 150 KB and consists
of @97% C, @3% Assembler code, an @ 90 KB - executable is compiled by an
Aztec C-Compiler, which still contains no graphic data.
This version of the game lacks sound-effects especially for memory-space
reasons; the need of memory is about 440 KB.
By the three-dimensional graphic it occurs that objects in the perspec-
tivical background are hidden by those in the foreground of the graphic.
Hence, it became necessary to write special Hidden-Area routines which
recalculate the shapes of objects every move they make from the heights
of the front walls and the shapes of the front objects. Blitter-aided,
the Amiga is able to do this in little time, but most games shied away
from the inconveniences of programming involved in it so far. So I made
the seemingly impossible possible and brought to you the first ever
Jump'n'Run making use of real 3d-graphic in larger scale.
How to play the game:
After the title screen appeared and the graphic data are loaded, it is
possible to choose the starting scene in steps of five scenes by moving
the joystick vertically. By moving it horizontally, a one or two player
game can be selected.
Having pressed the fire button of the joystick (in port II), the title
screen fades out and the game starts in the chosen scene. The player
sprite, of a human shape, appears and can be moved by joystick in the
corresponding directions.
Now the players' task is to collect the blue pills lying on the walls,
not to fall down and to avoid several monsters wandering about. After
that, he can get into the next scene by going into the flashing exit.
Several aids are available to support the player against the monsters:
There are two kinds of weapons lying around, six-guns and hammers, to
shoot them or to bash the red monsters and the green worms.
If there is no weapon activated, the player sprite will jump when pres-
sing the fire button. Of course, there are also ladders he can climb.
There is one more thing to take notice of: There are boulders appearing
in some scenes that can be pushed around and dashed on monsters. Only
the blue ghosts will stand this.
The difficulty of the game depends very much on the scenes created in
the editor. It increases when no spare guns are scattered about.
To leave the game, use the ESC-key in the title screen. Make sure that
the disk is not write-protected because hi-scores will be saved.
ReadMe.fnf
This material was submitted to me on disk directly by the author,
Andreas Ehrentraut, for inclusion in the library. Thanks Andreas!
I spent quite a lot of time with iconx, cd, stack, assign, etc trying
to get this to run from a workbench icon, without success. It appears
that all the files must be in the root directory of a bootable disk
to get it to work. To create a games disk, assuming a blank disk
in df1, use the following commands:
format drive df1: name JAR
install drive df1:
copy AmigaLibDisk242:JAR JAR: all
makedir JAR:c
copy AmigaLibDisk242:c JAR:c all
and then reboot with the games disk. The last two commands just copy
the MuchMore text reader to the games disk so that the readme files will
still be usable from workbench on that disk.
-Fred ><>
30-Aug-89
