Captain Bumper 0.58

Welcome !
Thank you for downloading this first preview of Captain Bumper.

What is "Captain Bumper"
A fun "Arcade Style" game, with blasting fast animation.
Your mission: help the captain in the exploration of a mystery planet !

What is this "Preview Version"
This game is under development so this version features only one level
but you can loop 3 times within it, some graphics are provisional
and some others are not finished !
Music and sound effects are provisional too !
Nevertheless this software is really "stable", and you shouldn't expect any crash.
So the main purpose of this "First Preview Version" is to let you know about it ,
to have some fun and to have feedback from you please (the latter is very important for the future of the game).
We need:
-All suggestions, bug reports, and of course encouragement, is welcome !
Please e-mail all that stuff at: rs@macrun.com

Freeware Notice
This "First Preview Version" is absolutely free, so feel free to
copy it.
A new full 3 - level Shareware version should appear in a few weeks, depending on your feedback !

System Requirements
Captain Bumper requires any PowerPC - based Macintosh, with at least:
-25 Mb of free memory.
- MacOS 8.0 or above.
-SoundManager 3.3, included since MacOS 8.5 or later, or included in Quicktime 3.0.
-DrawSprocket, included since MacOS 8.6 or later, otherwise you should download it:
at http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11167

But Fast PowerMac G3/G4 or Imac with MacOS 8.6 is strongly recomended to obtain smooth animation - up to 67 frames a@ second !

Controls
To play use the keyboard:
- arrow keys or numeric keypad to move
- ctrl or 5 (numeric keypad) to invert direction
- space bar to "fire"
- esc to pause

What is MacRun?
Maybe one of the greatest Macintosh Software development companies...one day !
But for the moment, just 2 French guys:
-Richard Soberka, Project Management & Development
-Richard Mariencourt, Design & Graphics

To contact us: rs@macrun.com

Help us !
-We are looking for original music so if your are musician and interested in Mac gaming, contact us.
-Once again, all suggestions and encouragement is welcome.
-If your are planning to make an "Arcade Style" Macintosh Game, the "MacRun World Engine" is for you - contact us !

What is "MacRun's World Engine"

It's a highly optimized 2D 1/2 animation engine featuring:

-Unlimited numbers of Worlds, which are a kind of "living fresco" almost limitless in size.
-Each World is made up of thousands of stacked Layers and, in this way, 3D effects can be simulated with lightening and transparency.
-Each Layer contains unlimited numbers of Sprites which are actors in the game.
-Each Sprite can be:- a fixed image, an animated image, a video clip or even multiple
images or video clips.
-Each Sprite can be solid, solid with mask, solid with mask anti-aliased, translucent, lightning, etc..
-A Sound Channel can be associated with each Sprite with stereo panning !!!
-Collision detection between Sprites are one pixel accurate !!!
-Each Sprite may have it's own behaviour: velocity, artificial intelligence, etc...

-All the World definitions are enclosed in a simple text file and thus editing a World can be easily done with an word processor. The engine "understands" a simplified syntax such as: Sprite Enemy 1: ShapeID = 2000, Live = 1, Layer = 27, Posx = 1200, Posy = 200, Velocex = +45, Velocey = -12, Phase = 4, StartFrame = 0, etc...

- The Screen of your computer behaves like an open window scrolling through the current World.

-The World's live timebase is 1/60 of a second.
-The Screen refreshment tries to stick as closely as possible to the VBL for more smoothness.
So, if your Macintosh is fast enough, the game should run at 60 or 67 frames per second !!!
This can be achieved with a G3's running at 333 Mhz or higher. Below, the engine drops Screen refreshment to 1/2 VBL or 1/ 4 VBL, that means: 30-33 or 15-17 fps.

-No worries about color tables: The "MacRun's World Engine" is designed to run in thousands of colors (16 bits), so Worlds, Sprites, etc... are designed in thousands or millions of colors without restrictions.

-Built for speed: The "MacRun's World Engine" is written in highly optimized C language but the most critical parts of code, where the processor spends 80 % of its time, are written in PowerPC Assembly language with highest manual tuning of instructions, pipelines, caches, etc... After all, 10 years of experience in assembly programming must come in handy here !

All these features give a way of creating nice, fast "Arcade Style" games for the Macintosh.

Bye-Bye

We hope you're going to have some fun with "Captain Bumper".

Bye-Bye

R.Soberka - 23 december 1999

Original file name: Read Me - converted on Sunday, 26 December 1999, 18:38