                   /+##############################+\
                   #|                              |#
                   #|      - FUTURE's END -        |#
                   #|                              |#
                   #|        by SiegeLord          |#
                   \+##############################+/

Version: 0.9

Table of Contents

I:    Story
II:   Gameplay
III:  Races
IV:   Game Types
V:    Controls
VI:   Other
VII:  Building From Source
VIII: Legal
IX:   Contact Me


I: STORY

This is the year 2403 CE. Several races across the galaxy having achieved technological singularity were making enormous leaps in technology. Research that had taken decades before, now could be done in milliseconds. Power outputs that were unimaginable even a year ago are now surpassed by 100's of orders of magnitude. This technological era was supposed to be an age of peace, and intra-galactic cooperation between races.

It did not happen quite like that...

On December 25, 16:31:32 UTC six of the races constructed a supercomputer on each of their respective planets. Each supercomputer, though the universal laws of logic, determined that its survival depends on the destruction of every single other technologically advanced race. On December 25, 16:31:33 the final war started, a war that promised to be the very end of the entire galaxy. The future's end is at hand.


II: GAMEPLAY

In this game, you control your home planet. It is equipped with basic shields, a powerful weapon, power generators and a wormhole gate inducer. Through the use of those devices, your goal is to destroy all of the opposing planets, while remaining alive yourself.

The galaxy on which the game is played out is composed of two layers with subtly different purposes and characteristics. The first is the normal realm of space. It consists of stars, interstellar gas and dust and various degenerates like black holes and neutron stars. This space concerns you only in terms of its potential for energy. Your planet's generators absorb the surrounding space-matter and convert it into energy to drive your planet's quest for survival.

The second layer is the realm of subspace. It is the medium for all supra-light transportation in this game. Subspace is transversed by the weapon beams that your planet can fire, and it has to be teleported through when your planet relocates to another section of the galaxy. Subspace rich regions are conducive to these phenomena. Subspace poor regions are not, and thus require much energy in order to traverse them. The weapon beams attenuate greatly in subspace-poor regions, and wormholes have trouble opening through such regions as well.

The game proceeds in two alternating stages: the planning stage and the action stage. During the planning stage all of the players plan their planet's actions during the action phase. Once all of the players signify that they have finished their planning the action phase begins. During the action phase all of the selected actions occur simultaneously for all the planets.


There are 6 actions that you can choose to perform during the action phase: Open Wormhole, Build Generator, Build Shield, Fire Space Weapon, Fire SubSpace Weapon, GNDN.

OPEN WORMHOLE: This action opens up a wormhole exactly halfway through the action phase and instantly teleports your planet to a selected location. Subspace poor regions require more energy to travel through.

BUILD GENERATOR: This action builds a generator exactly halfway through the action phase. The more generators you have, the larger the radius of matter collection is. Since the area increases very rapidly with increasing radius, every new generator increases the power generation by a large ammount. Unfortunately it takes more energy to build each successive generator.

BUILD SHIELD: This action builds a shield exactly halfway through the action phase. The shields are your planet's sole defence agains enemy (and your own!) weapons. The death beams can easily vapourize anything that is not shielded, which means that once your shields go down to 0, your planet is instantaneously erased from existence. Each shield provides a set ammount of points, and increases the shield regeneration rate; but each successive shield costs more than the previous one. When a shield is damaged it will use your planet's energy in order to recharge itself.

FIRE SPACE WEAPON:
 This action fires the planet's space weapon at the beginnign of the action phase. This weapon can directly damage the space to deprive your enemies of raw materials, and it can damage the said planets directly. This weapon is generally negatively affected by subspace poor regions.

FIRE SUBSPACE WEAPON: This action fires the planet's subspace weapon at the beginnign of the action phase. This weapon can directly damage the subspace of the galaxy. This can be used to attenuate incoming enemy planets' weapon discharges, or pin down your opponent. 

GNDN: Aka, Go Nowhere, Do Nothing. This action is not an action per se, but rather an absence of action. It requires no energy to complete, and thus allows for the full energy input of your planet's generators to be deposited into the energy reserves.


III: RACES

While the biology and culture of the races that attained this wonderous level of technology does not really matter, the underlying ideology of the progenitor governments has shaped the weapon systems of these planets. 3 main divisions exist.

COMMUNISTS - Originally coming from a totalitarian regime, planets of this race sought to maximize their military might. The culmination of the scientific progress of these races was the design of a gigantic beam array around their planet. A very flexible weapon system, it can vary in its intensity and spread, as well as being able to differentially damage space and subspace.

When firing, the angle and direction are set. Since the beam's energy is spead out across the pulse front, a small angle beam will deal the most damage. The array is quite extensive however, and thus there is a small minimum range associated with this weapon. This weapon is very safe, as the only way to damage oneself with it is to foolishly teleport in front of the pulse front.

ANARCHISTS - A utopian society regulated by a small number of individuals who do as they please, it, through a collaborative, open-source, project has created a sizeable cannon in close orbit of their planet. This cannon can fire a faster-than-light warhead that will travel a certain distance and then detonate, spewing projectiles that can destroy both space and subspace. If this warhead inpacts some other planet first, it will detonate prematurely.

When firing, the direction and range of the warhead are set. The maximum range is determined by the ammount of energy put into the warhead, and can be increased through the normal means. Tick-marks are provided for convenience, displaying the positions of the warhead in the future turns. This weapon can be dangerous to fire at close distances, as the projectiles that are spawned by the exploding warhead damage everything without regard to affiliation.

CAPITALISTS - Originally a society based on the transfer of material posessions, it has abhorred the creation of offensive weaponary on or near their planet. Instead, they have constructed a large shipyard complex that was upgraded to rapidly produce autonomuous drones. When launched, these drones travel towards a predetermined location while intermittengly firing their primary weapon at whatever enemy planet happens to be the closest. The drone does not posess any methods to obtain energy however, so once it runs out of it it self destructs to avoid capture.This arrangement would be useless to destroy subspace however, so the planets of this race have created a separate array of non-offensive subspace cannons in a spherical arrangement around the shipyard complex.

When firing the drones, the direction and the range are set. The maximum range is determined by the ammount of energy put into the drone, and can be increased through the normal means. Tick-marks are provided for convenience, displaying the positions of the drone in the future turns. When firing the subspace cannons, the direction and the angle of the spread are set.

IV: Game Types

DEATHMATCH - In this game type, your goal is to destroy all other planets before they destroy you.

BOUNTY - In this game type, your goal is to obtain as many points as possible by destroying the bounty circles. Once a planet reaches the maximum number of points (set in the game screen), it is victorious. The bounty circles start out small and grow every turn, eventually self destructing. The larger the bounty sphere, the more points it will yield when destroyed. It is not possible to kill an opponent in this game mode, but attacking the other planets can still be useful, as the drain on the energy by the damaged shields may put them at a disadvantage.


V: CONTROLS

Tab - End Turn
LClick - Select Worm Hole destination
RClick and drag - Define Space Weapon
RClick and drag + Shift - Define Subspace Weapon
G - Build Generator
S - Build Shield

F1 - Display Help
F2 - Toggle Subspace View
F3 - Toggle Grid

F5 - Previous Color Scheme
F6 - Next Color Scheme

F9 - Change the chat window size
F10 - Show score screen

Enter - Open chat imput box

= - Scroll chat window up
- - Scroll chat window down

PgUp - Increase Weapon Power
PgDn - Decrease Weapon Power

Arrow Keys - Move View

Esc - Clear Action(initiate GNDN)


VI: Other

Changing Resolution/Making the Game Fullscreen

Go to the settings.ini and change xres and yres to whatever you want(note that some values are probably not supported by your video card). Set the fullscreen field to 1 to make the game start in fullscreen mode.

Adding new palettes.

If you want to add more color schemes to the game, create an indexed(256 colors) bitmap in the game folder and then add it's file name to the "settings.ini" file (make sure to keep the numbering scheme consistent). The palette should have a gradient between the indices 0 and 128 with 0/1 being black and 128 being white. Obviously, if so desired, that suggestion can be ignored. Make sure to put the palettes into the palettes folder.

Adding new maps.

Read the mapcommands.txt in the missions folder.

Editing AI names.

The ai.ini contains two sections, NAMES and SPEECH. Names section simply lists the names that the bots will choose from. The speech section lists the sayings that the bots will say at random times. The rate field determines how often they will speak. Keep this number low.


VII: Building From Source

For this you need a properly install Allegro library version 4.2. Also, you need CMake 2.6 and mingw installed.

Extract the whole folder somewhere.
Create a folder called build.
If you are in windows, run the cmake GUI on the CMakeLists.txt, clicking configure a bunch of times (make sure to specify the correct directories too)
Then, navigate to the build folder and run:

cmake ..

And then:

make
-or-
mingw32-make

(Apologies for the thousands of warnings) Then, copy the resultant executable into the FuturesEnd folder. You can delete the build folder.
You may need to copy your own copy of alleg42.dll if you have a different version of Allegro than this was built with.


VIII: Legal

(c) SiegeLord 2007 All rights reserved

See License.txt


IX: Contact Me

You can contact me via email:

siegelords_abode@yahoo.com
