NANOTECH VERSION 1.0 BY SEAN LANE FULLER a first-person 3d platform game with cool music and sound effects -------------------------- THE STORY --------------------------------- The people of Earth have been at peace for many years ... a peace ensured by a superpowerful spacestation that is controlled by an advanced artificial intelligence. The peace may shortly end because the space stations computers have become infected with a virus and it is now threatening several major superpowers. Their only hope is a remotely controlled nanobot that has been lying dormant within the space station's computer. You must pilot the nanobot to the computer's central core and destroy the virus. ---------------------- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ---------------------------- Soundblaster compatable sound board IBM PC Compatable >=80386 >=33Mhz DOS >=5.0 >=450 Kilobytes of low memory >=1.2 MB Disk >=VGA graphics ------------------------ STANDARD DISCLAIMER ---------------------------- In no event will the author be liable for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential loss or damages arising out of the use or of the inability to use this program -- even if the author has been advised of the possibility of such damages. The author will in no event be held liable for direct, indirect, or incidental damages resulting from the omission of any part of this product, including this document. The author makes no warranties, either expressed or implied, respecting the software, its quality, performance, merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. "NanoTech" is copyright Sean Lane Fuller 1995. "NanoTech" is freeware in the public domain and may be distributed freely if all of the following rules are followed: 1. No fees are to be collected from the distribution or use of this software, except for reasonable shipping and handling. 2. The program and associated files may be distributed in a modified form as long as credit is given to Sean Lane Fuller in the distribution. 3. If "NanoTech" or a modified version of it is distributed in CDROM format, send me a free copy. --------------------------- CONTACT INFORMATION ------------------------- Sean Lane Fuller 124 Autumn Lane Tullahoma, TN 37388 615-393-4550 email: fuller@hap.arnold.af.mil If there are any oversights or errors in the documentation or any part of this game please feel free to let me know. If you have the time _please_ send me a postcard. I'm not working for money, only for the enjoyment of others. A postcard would let me know that I should continue to write games like NanoTech and give me a nice feeling about it. Thanks! I welcome constructive criticism and comments. ---------------------------- RELEASE NOTES ------------------------------ Release 1.0 - November, 1995 - I'm finally going to release the game. I believe it still needs work (and more levels), but it is quite playable. I feel pretty good about switching to MOD music. Faster. I sure wish I had a Watcom compiler (for inlining assembler routines and optimization). Release 0.x - July, 1995 - Never saw the light of day and was only used for beta testing on a few different machines. It used MIDI music, which didn't work well for me. Used mode X graphics. ------------ INSTRUCTIONS --------------- Uncompress the game into a new directory (ex: c:\ntech). Then cd to that directory and type "vr" and then press . If you want to quit the game press . If you want to restart on a level then type vr followed by the level you want to start on (ex: "vr 5"). Give yourself a while to get the timing right to jump between platforms in 3d. To find out what level you are on press 'i'. Controls: F1 ............ display help screen up arrow ...... move forward down arrow .... move backward left arrow .... turn left right arrow ... turn right page up ....... look up page down ..... look down spacebar ...... jump escape ........ quit to DOS Instructions: Try to collide with the spinning sphere to exit a level. The cubes are switches and landing on one will toggle platforms. The objective is just to get through all the levels. You cannot die. There is no time limit. The goal is just to have fun! ------------ CREATING YOUR OWN LEVELS ---------------- The game has a built-in level editor. Pressing 'a' will let you add objects and pressing will allow you to modify the object in front of you. To create a new level start with a world file like 000.wld and copy it to a new level number like 999.wld then start nanotech with "vr 999" to go directly to that level. To insert the level in the game you will have to renumber the files by renaming them and then rename your new level to a number you opened up. This kind of sucks, but it is the way I created the game. The name of the song that will be played during the level is on the second line of the .wld file. If the first line of the .wld file starts with a 'b' then the lighting will fade on and off in the level. Pressing 'l' will bring up a dynamic location and frames per second display. Pressing 'c' will bring up a directional compass. Pressing 'i' will display statistics such as the number of facets and objects and the current level. The intro and ending pictures are stored in 256 color 320x200 PCX format. Use an editor like PC Paintbrush to edit the PCX files. I started by rendering with the POV ray tracer. The music is stored in 4 channel MOD format. You can use a tracker like Scream Tracker 3 to edit the music and DigiPlayer to edit the samples. The sound effects are stored in WAV format without compression at 8000 samples per second. I used wrec that was included with my Sound Blaster to create these files. I also dynamically add echo to them during the game. -------------- CREDITS ---------------------------- I wrote all of the graphics routines myself. I learned a lot of 3d graphics concepts from "High-resolution Computer Graphics Using C" by Ian O. Angell. I also played around a lot with Rend386 and XSharp several years ago. They both taught me a lot about speeding up my graphics routines. XSharp was published in Dr. Dobbs Journal by Michael Abrash (I think), and Rend386 was written by Dave Stampe and Bernie Roehl. Thanks to Kalle Kaivola for writing Scream Tracker. Thanks to Sami Tammilehto for writing DigiPlayer. Thanks to the POV-Ray team (Chris Young, coordinator). I got my disclaimer from a game called Board War. It was written by a friend of mine, Mike Cozart. His war simulation game is pretty cool. Take a look at it (BWxx.ZIP) if you get a chance. I got a lot of inspiration and DMA code from Varmit's Audio Tools version 0.6. VAT was written by Eric Jorgensen and based on ideas and a bit of code from Peter Sprenger's library called SOUNDX. Eric has since expanded and improved greatly on the code, so I would get one of his newer versions. -------------- PLANS -------------------------------- I'm considering adding the following features to NanoTech. * linear texture mapping * moving platforms * enemies and shooting * more levels * better music * time limit * score * bonus items * navigation between levels * ??? ------------------------- THOUGHTS -------------------------------- Sure hope somebody gets a little enjoyment out of this game. The graphics routines are the product of several years of work. I wish somebody had a free good fast 3d graphics library that I could use because I would really like to concentrate on Artificially Intelligent critters instead. I just kind of got side tracked. I know I could use Microsoft's 3d stuff in Windows, but I just don't have the money to play with (does anybody?).