O P E R A T I O N   B L A C K   S U N  2 alpha 3 (06-05-02)
-------------------------------------------------------------

(c)1999-2002 by "a group of people who didn't come up with a nice name yet"


#include <std_disclaimer.h>



   "We do not accept responsibility for any effects, adverse or otherwise, 

    that this code may have on you, your computer, your sanity, your dog, 

    and anything else that you can think of. Use it at your own risk."





What is Operation Blacksun 2?

----------------------------


Basically, this is the successor to OBS1 ( obviously ). Our goal is to 
create a fun to play overhead spaceshooter for single and multiplayer games,
supporting various game modes. This is an early alpha release, so very
little of this stuff is implemented right now.



System Requirements
-------------------

A fast PC with a relatively fast OpenGL supported 3D card. ATI Rage 128
is too old/slow for the game, GeForce 2 MX suffices. Other cards are not 
tested, yet. For internet play, at least a 56k modem is recommended.



Installation

------------

After unzipping the archive you should start the game once and exit right
after that. Now you can tweak quite some settings in config.cfg ( which was
newly created ).



Starting a game

---------------

To create a game, click on "Multiplayer" from the mainmenu. The first time you do this you will 
be confronted with the player setup screen, in which you should configure your player name 
and connection speed. After finishing that, select "Start Server" and you have the 
following options:

°Game Name:
  ... will be shown when other people try to join other servers. It is basically
  the name under which your server will appear in the lists. 

°Password:
  ... shouldn't be used, yet.
°Port:
  ... is the port your server will listen for new connections on. Servers behind firewalls or
  NATS are not possible.
°Maxplayers:
  ... defines the maximum amount of players allowed to join your game, the local player included.
°Maxrate:
  ... is the maximum amount of bytes/sec allowed to be sent to each player. 0 disables this 
  feature.
°Map:
  ... select your map here. We have included one map in 2 variations:
    - "test.obl": is for multiplayer purposes
    - "testship.obl": spawns some ships for you to shoot at
°Advertise server:
  ... if enabled, the game will try to register your game online, so other internet players
  can see it.

After you made your choices, press "Start" to launch the game.

Joining a game
--------------

Go to the "Multiplayer" menu and press "Join game". The two checkboxes at the top of the screen
allow you to configure where to look for games. "Search LAN" broadcasts in the Local Area Network,
while "Search Internet" will try to contact the master server and download a gamelist.

After you're done, press "Refresh" to actually perform the search. You can also manually enter
a server adress in the "Target adress" field. If you don't specify a port "ip:port", OBS2 will
default to 14200.

Press "Connect" to initiate the connection.


The console

-----------



You can popup a console by pressing F10. Known commands are:

  

  - list   			- list all cvars and cmds
  - ...

If you want to learn more about the console, use the "list" command
and/or stduy config.cfg, which uses the exact syntax as you should, 
when issuing commands to the console.



The editor

----------

Yes, the editor is still there. You can use it for toying around or even make
maps. But if I were you, I wouldn't do it, since the mapformat is very likely
to change completely one more time.



More to come

------------

Since this is an alpha release, there is not much you can do yet. No real funstuff
has been implemented as this is only intended as a "nettest", to see if my networking
and engine concepts are working. If you have any wished concerning features of any
future version, please speak up. I will consider every idea, if it fits into the game.



How to play

-----------



The standard config looks like that:



general keys:


CONSOLE     : F10

SCREENSHOT  : F11
INSTANT QUIT: F12
EXIT        : ESC
CHAT        : T



1P mode:

  THRUST FORWARD: UP

  THRUST BACK   : DOWN

  TURN LEFT     : LEFT

  TURN RIGHT    : RIGHT

  FIRE          : L-CTRL
  CHANGE OBSERVATION FOCUS: ALT

  SELECT WEAPONS: 1/2/3/4/5



Report Bugs

-----------



If you found a bug, please mail us with the name, version and build date of 

the game as subject. 

If the game crashes, please send us a mail including the things above, 

OBS2.LOG and what happened just before the crash if you noticed something

special.



About this game

---------------



This game is developed mainly in C++ under Linux, using Shawn Hargreaves' Allegro library 
for I/O routines, and the FMOD library for music and sound. The reason why there is no
linux release this time is, that I am currently unable to compile it in Linux.



Credits

-------



Jörg "Sharky-X" Rüppel

    Coding, Design, Music, SFX, GFX



Andre "Nemesis" Kleinschnittger

    GFX, Design

Thorsten Mortag
    Ship Graphics



David Lyr 

    2D tileGFX

External use of any media shipped with this game is prohobited unless you are explicitely allowed
to do so.



Thanx fly out to:

-----------------


Oh my, I am too lazy to list all those nice people on all these mailinglists right now :)



Contact

-------



You're always welcome to mail us with your comments, suggestions and any other

thoughts you want to inform us about.



Thanx in advance for any reply. 



E-Mail: sharky-x@gmx.net

WEB: http://www.sharky-x.de