Is this... the end?
v1.8, 6/6/2001
======================

by Spyros Paraschis

(if you use notepad to view this, maximize its window)

*** Note *** See the bottom of this file for the changes made to this version

Overview
........

"Is this... the end?" is a shoot-em up game, inspired by Galaga and other,
less well-known, older shoot-em up games. The main objective of the player
(as if you needed instructions!) is to destroy all the alien ships, by
shooting them from his ship at the bottom of the screen.

"Is this... the end?" is my entry for the Allegro Games Competition 2,
organized by Mr. Arron Shutt.

This version of the game is mainly a bug fix release and adds few elements
to the game:
- a windowed mode
- a compatibility mode that forces the game to run on all graphic cards, 
sacrificing performance
- fixed a silly bug, which caused the game to play the title music twice on
some occasions.
- made some speed optimizations
- added a cheatmode

Feel free to visit the game's homepage at http://members.xoom.com/abbysios

About "Is this... the end?"
...........................

My version of the game tries to add some things to the basic Galaga
formula, which will hopefully help to make the game more playable and
challenging.

Apart the the cosmetic changes I've made (Galaga is a 20-year old game
after all), I tried to make the aliens smarter. Thus, most alien ships try
to avoid your shots and generally do not follow preset movement patterns. 
However, each alien type has a certain weakness, and the player has to study
their behaviour, to recognize this weakness, in order to fight the aliens
effectively.

This final version of the game contains twelve levels. My initial plans
were to include over 20 levels, with more variety and personality,
but I had very little time in my hands, since on Jan 11th, 2000, I had
to join the Greek Air Force to serve my 20-month obligatory duty.
So version 1.0 of the game (the previous one) has been my entry for the 
Allegro Games Competition 2. I know that the game is not finished yet 
and I had many things in mind for it, but I have to live with that. At
the time of writing this, almost a year has passed since the game 
submission deadline for the competition ended, but no results have been
announced yet.

Previous versions of the game were distributed in two archives, one for
DOS and one for Windows. This version (v1.8) supports only Windows. It
has been compiled using the MinG C/C++ compiler and Allegro v4

The source is written in a portable style, so it can easily be compiled under
DOS and Linux, (thanks to the portability of Allegro of course). 


Installation
............

You can run the game in two ways. Either execute the theend.exe file to play
with the default options, or use the endlaunch.exe to access the config dialog.
From this you you change the resolution, the screen mode (either full-screen or
windowed), the difficulty and you can activate the fast mode, with will hopefully
allow older PCs to run the game decently. The *.dat files should go in the same 
directory as the main executable. 

As for the game requirements, I really do not know. I think that a slow
Pentium will be enough, but I depend on user feedback to find out. The game has 
been tested on 200MHz Pentium machines and performed well. To increase performance, 
turn the scrolling and the lighting off, in the options screen. You can also use 
the fast mode (with the launcher utility of using the -fastmode command line argument).

In the options menu, all options shall be obvious, with the exception of
"Bullet Shield". If this is on, then whenever the player bullets hit
the alien bullets, they will both be destroyed. If the "Bullet Shield"
option is off, then there will be no collision between them, as is the
case with most shoot-em ups. I my opinion, setting this option to on
makes the gameplay better.

If you run the game and wait a bit, at the main menu, a screen explaing 
the various bonii will appear. Wait a little longer and a demo will start.


Controls
........
Left, Right cursor keys - move ship
Left Control - Fire
P - Pause
F12 - Screen capture (at "dump.pcx" file)
F11 - Activate FPS counter
F10 - Disable FPS counter


Command-line Arguments
......................
If you do not want to use the launcher tool, you can use the following command-line
switches:
-640          640x480 mode
-512          512x384 mode
-400          400x300 mode
-320          320x240 mode (the default)
-windowed     Run game in a window
-fastmode     Activate the fast mode, for older PCs
-easy         easy level
-normal       normal level (default)
-hard         hard level

Keep in mind that the game has been initially designed for the 320x240 resolution. Using 
the other graphic resolutions makes the graphics look smaller and changes the gameplay 
balance to something... well, different. Try these modes to see if you like them. Also, in
the 400x300 and 512x384 mode the title screen does not look very nice, since it is stretched
(from the original 320x240) to cover the full screen. In the 640x480 this does not happen,
since the pixels are simply doubled.


My comments
...........

In general, I am quite happy with the way this game turned out to be. It is my
first game in C (and my first experience with Allegro) and I really enjoyed it.
The game has many flaws and look rather incomplete to me. I really wanted to
add many things, in order to enrich the gameplay experience of "Is this...
the end?", but, as I have already mentioned, I did not have enough time. 
Especially the later levels were done in a harry and are not tested well. I am
not particularly happy with the enemy behaviour. In addition, I am sure that 
my code is very inefficient, since I did not do any optimizations. However, 
I hope that every decent Pentium will run the game with no problems.

 
Changes
.......
Jun 6, 2001: Version 1.8
- added a launcher utility, to access start-up options
- added 4 different resolutions, either in full-screen or windowed mode.
- added 3 difficulty levels
- the reverse control "bonus" (the mushroom) can be reversed with another mushroom (no, 
  I am not on drugs ;-)
- if you obtain the best weapon (3-shot, 9 bullets on screen), getting more weapon bonii
  increases bullet speed.
- in-between screens can be skipped
- made the game more Windowed friendly
- added a fast mode to allow older PCs to run the game decently
- made the big aliens at the last level (still awfully designed ;-) ) harder to beat.
- added a decent cheat mode (e-mail me to find it out)
- added an fps counter

Feb 20, 2001: Version 1.2
- dropped the DOS version
- added a windowed mode
- added a compatibility mode that forces the game to run on all graphic cards, 
  sacrificing performance
- fixed a silly bug, which caused the game to play the title music twice (sounding
  awful), if you entered the options screen while the music was playing and did not
  turned it off.
- made some speed optimizations
- added a cheatmode
- other minor changes

Jan 28, 2000: Version 1.0
- Added 3 more levels in a hurry, reaching 12
- Changed the behaviour of some aliens
- Added a new end screen, better that the previous one, but still horrible...
- Changed the music; now the game's soundtrack is an original piece
  composed by Costas Ntokos. We met during our service at the Air Force.
- Added in-game music
- Other minor changes

Jan 11, 2000: Version 0.5
- Added 3 more levels
- Fixed some glitches, pointed by An Ly
- Added graphic counters to represent the duration of the time freeze 
  and reverse control boni.
- Added support for a stretched 640x480 mode, if the default 320x240
  is not supported by the graphic card (is this possible?)
- Added a second type of particle explosions
- Other minor changes.


Jan 3, 2000: Beta version
- Added 3 more levels
- Many bugs were found and killed
- Added sound effects and title music
- Changed the options screen

Dec 22, 1999: Alpha version - initial release


Legal state
...........

"Is this... the end?", , can be freely copied, as long as nothing included 
in the archive is changed. I haven't protected, in any way, the data files,
 but please, contact me first, if you want to use ay of the resources 
contained there. Keep in mind that not all of the resources are mine. 
Here is the people I have to thank for contributing to this game, whether they
know it or not ;-)

The background graphics and some other game graphics (title screen,
option screen etc) were rendered in POV, using the Galaxy plugin
by Chris Colefax.
Some of the game sprites were taken from Ari Feldman's SpriteLib.
Some of the game sprites were ripped from the arcade games Alpha
mission II, Andro Dunos, Blazing Star and Temutjin 2, using the
well known emulators NeorageX and Raine. After ripping, they were
processed and slightly modified using PaintShop Pro 5.
The game music was composed by Costas Ntokos.
This game uses the amazing Allegro library, made by Shawn Hargreaves.
Allegro is often described as a game library, since it contains
many advanced graphic, audio and timing functions, of particular
interest to game creators. However, its numerous features (and
especially its portability, since it supports DOS, Windows and Linux)
can be used for many more things than games. Visit Allegro at 
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro


Credits
.......
Game concept, programming and graphics: Spyros Paraschis
Music: Costas Ntokos
Allegro library: Shawn Hargreaves


Contact
.......

For any comments or bug reports, please contact me by e-mail. I may not
answer you soon, since I will be away for a while (as I said, I have to
serve my Air Force duty). However, I will read every mail you send me.

Spyros Paraschis
www.paraschis.gr