Argon V - blast your way home (c) 1999 - 2002 by Till Harbaum -------------------------------------------------------------- palm@harbaum.org - http://www.harbaum.org/till/palm This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. WHAT IS ARGON V? Argon V is the first game for the palm to make use of the 16 shades of grey the new palm models can display. Argon V is a action shooter with vertical multilayer scrolling. You objective is to shoot everything that moves. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Argon V requires a palm computing device capable of displaying 16 shades of grey simultaneously. Currently the Palm IIIx, Palm IIIe, Palm V, Palm Vx and the Handspring Visor do support this. Furthermore, the device needs a screen with high refresh capabilities to avoid smearing and streaking effects. Unfortunately most Palm IIIx displays have been verified to be unable to display fast moving sprites and backgrounds. INSTALLATION Install Argon V on your Palm Pilot by hotsynching ArgonV.prc onto your Palm. HISTORY Version 1.0 - initial release Version 1.01 - gamepad support, changed default key mapping, slower but Palm IIIc and Visor compatible video driver Version 1.02 - small updates of the video driver for Palm OS 3.5 and up Version 1.03 - another video driver fix, this time for the palm tungsten FURTHER DEVELOPMENT Argon V is a work in progess. To further develop this game into the best palm game ever, your help is needed. Without your help version 1.02 will be the last version released. You will have noticed, that Argon V lacks several features and needs the inclusion of more and different enemies, sounds, music, a nice title screen, more weapons and other extras, more complex background images ... Let's prove, that there is another way for game development on the palm than shareware! GRAPHICS You don't need to be a programmer to participate. Just take your favorite paint program and draw new background images (imag*.gif) or sprites (sprt*.gif). Take a look at the existing images for the required image format (left half is always image data, right half is transparency map). Please use only the predefined shades of grey displayed as in the grey bar in all images and sprites. New background images can then be transferred into gif images with correct gif transparency using ImageMagick and afterwards be included into the level editor argoned. Under Linux a simple 'make level' will do all this automatically. Windows will probably need some changes to the Makefile or new batch files (see the WINDOWS section). SOUND Argon V currently has no sound at all. If you have some cool sound routines or free midi tunes for the palm, they are very welcome. Please don't send me midi tunes that are not verified to work with the palm sound routines. WAV files, MP3 and whatever else won't work either. Complete sound routines are preferred :-) NEW ENEMIES, NEW WAVE TYPE, NEW GAME PLAY This involves major code changes/extensions. You'll have to be a programmer to participate in this. Ideas for new game elements are welcome, but if you implement you ideas into the game yourself, they are much more likely to become part of the official Argon V. A VERSION FOR OLD PALMS The current version of Argon V does not support machines with less than 16 shades (4 bits) of grey. A version for the old palms would require images reduced to four shades of grey (2 bits, black, white and two greys, see empty4.gif for the shades available). If all necessary images are available in four shades of grey, the image conversion tools (grey.c and bmp2bin.c) need to be changed to support 2 bits per pixel, too. And the video driver for the palm (video.c) needs to be translated into a new version for images with four shades of grey. DEVELOPMENT TOOLS Argon V was developed on a Linux machine using free development tools only. To compile the current version of Argon V you'll need: - gcc (compiler for the host) - prc-tools (compiler and tools for the palm) - pilrc (palm ressource compiler) - ImageMagick (image conversion utilities) - Tcl/Tk (script language with GUI support) LINUX The recent linux distributions include ImageMagick and Tcl/Tk. Links to the necessary prc-tools and pilrc are available at http://www.harbaum.org/till/palm WINDOWS Windows versions of the prc-tools and pilrc are available at www.palmgear.com, Tcl/Tk, a gcc for the host and other development tools needed are in the cygwin package available at www.cygnus.com. Binaries of ImageMagick for all kinds of OS's are available at http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html A complete compile of Argon V under Windows hasn't been tested yet, but will probably need some changes in the Makefiles. Any feedback is very welcome, please try not to break the Linux Makefiles when adding Windows support. CODEWARRIOR Argon V has been developed using gcc. A port to codewarrior hasn't been done, but should be possible without major problems. If you port Argon V to this platform please try not to break the unix development branch.