Useless Bomber Games by Useless
Useless Bomber Games - A Possible Solution to UnBore Music Disks?
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NfoFile v1.0
7.19.97.WiredPartyplace
³ Launching
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By typing 'u_bombg /?' you can reach the command line help.
³ Disclaimer
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You may freely distribute and copy this package provided that no fee is
charged and the distribution archive contains unmodified copies of the
original files as produced by Useless. No part of any file may be modified,
altered, reverse engeneered, sold or distributed in any form whatsoever which
would involve some sort of trade without prior written permission from
Useless. You may add this package to a distribution CDROM provided you send
one copy of the CDROM. Contact gcottenc@ens.insa-rennes.fr for further
information.
This package is provided as is, without warranty of any kind or fitness
for particular purpose, either expressed or implied, all of are hereby
explicitly disclaimed.
In no way Useless can be made liable for any damages that are caused by
this package. You are using this production at your own risk.
By launching the program you agree with this terms.
All the trademarks quoted in this file or in any other files of this
package are property of their owners.
³ Minimum configuration
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þ A PC :)
þ MS-DOS or an MS-DOS highly compatible emulation (works with win95 but not
with winNT)
þ 8 megabytes of RAM for full program, 4 megabytes for a 'no-sound'
configuration (4 megabytes : clean boot!)
þ A SoundBlaster or an UltraSound to hear sound
The program has been tested to run prefectly smoothly on 486 DX33 without
mixing device. (ie, without SoundBlaster)
³ Overall description
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Useless Bomber Games is a music disk. Well, a quite special one.
As a music disk, you can hear some marvellous musics played on your Gravis
Ultrasound or your Sound Blaster.
But, as I thought music disks were a little bit boring, I added something
which will make you enjoy a good while hearing our musics. That's a game.
With Useless Bomber Games you can play a BomberMan clone, using high
resolution graphics. It's 4-playable.
As I'm sure lots of people will tell me : why have you taken the BomberMan
original graphics instead of redrawing graphics?, I want to say two words about
that here, so I'll be able to tell them : RTFNF! (ie, read the fucking nfo
file)... The first idea of creating a music disk appeared when I discovered how
great our musicians are. But when I started to really think about doing it, I
discovered that I had only 3 music disks on my hard disk (which two of them
were the famous Future Crew's, only using the MDP...) and the reason is that
music disk are LARGE packages which you NEVER launch because you're too limited
in your choice (and some of them even don't have a dos shell feature...). So,
I tought it might be a good idea to code a little game. At this moment I
remembered me and my friends were Dyna Blaster's maniacs, but we always thought
Dyna Blaster should have provided a better joystick usage and 3 simultaneous
players at the keyboard... so I did it! I took exactly the same appearance than
Dyna Blaster (graphics, but also reactions, handling, speed, bonus, etc) and I
added all the features I thought would increase its playability.
So now you know the reason and you won't bother me anymore. :)
Basic aim is to burn all your opponents using bombs : just launch a bomb
and wait a little till it explodes. In the gamefield you can find 'smooth'
walls that can be burnt and can sometimes release bonus or malus, and 'hard'
walls that can't be burnt.
At the beginning of the game you can only drop one bomb at the same time,
and your bombs can only explode two blocks far in each direction. Take some
'bomb' bonus to increase the number of bombs you can drop simultaneously, and
some 'flame' bonus to increase the length of their explosions.
Sometimes a smooth wall releases a 'death head' : this is a malus. It can
do lots of things : make you move slowly, make you move quickly, make you
unable to drop bombs, make you drop all your possible bombs (these are the 4
basic malus), make you pass through smooth walls, invert your keys, and swap
the players. (these are the 3 extended malus)
Use the function keys as proposed on the main screen of the music disk, to
change music and to start games. At the beginning of the game, player 1 is
the white one, player 2 the red one, player 3 the blue one, player 4 the
green one (always moved by the joystick).
The unmodifiable keys are F1-F12, space, and the key next to 'Pause' : this
key is used to make a pause, because I could not safely use the original Pause
key. (problem of code conflict with the Ctrl key)
Use 'Escape' to exit.
There are also five special keys you can redefine (with /k) :
I've called the first one 'Restart with same scheme' : it will start another
game with the same players enabled as last time you started a game with the
'space' key. By default it's the 'r' key. This key is very important if you
want to play a 'multi-win' match (for example 5 win match) because wins are
reset when you start a game with 'space', but kept when you use 'r'.
The second one is for the dos shell ; the default key is 'd'.
The third, the fourth and the fifth ones are used for the 'playlist'
features : there is one for 'previous music', one for 'next music' and
one for 'restart current music'.
³ Parameter informations
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Please run with '/?' to get the parameter list from the command line.
þ v : skip video memory test
-> program needs your video card has 300 kbytes of memory in order to
use 640x480x8, and it will exit if it detects less than that ; it
needs 600 kbytes if it detects successfully 640x480x16 ; 3D gfx
presentation image will be set to greyscale if there's not enough
þ g : skip granularity and window size test
-> as program does not use the 'linear frame buffer' for old video
cards compatibility, it uses 'banking' ; this method of addressing
video memory wastes so much CPU time I didn't want to support the
'strange banking' that is found on some old cards like Cirrus
Logic. Anyway, you can use our program even if you have this type
of video cards : just load 'univbe', it will set banking method
to the regular one
þ s : don't use VESA2 special functions even if VESA2 is detected
-> this parameter is very important, because program uses some
features of the VESA2 which may lead to problems ; the main one is
the use of a special double buffering method called 'set display
start during vertical' (see VESA2 specs for more details) which
increases animation smoothness and reduces blinking problems ;
but this may lead to a huge blinking in animation ; if you have
this problem, try with this parameter (if your computer is a 486
or poorer or if you run the program under Windows with another
task at the same time, the blinking is probably due to the lack of
CPU power)
þ k : redefine keys
-> please note that program defaultly uses the customized keys
þ d : use default keys
-> I know the default keys are hard to play with ; but if you want
to enjoy 4-players games with 'confirmed' players who will want
to control very precisely the moves, try to get acustomed to
them ; if you're not in that case, I suggest you modify the
player 3's keys only, which lead to quite good results
þ j : calibrate joystick
-> This operation will allow program to adapt to your joystick's
special values
þ b : don't use extended malus
-> usefull for Original BomberMan maniacs
þ u : use a menu setup for the player
-> if your soundcard is badly detected / if you encounter problems
in low memory configurations / or to test our Internal
GargleBlaster routine!
þ p : perform a pause before initializing the player
-> to have more time to see init comments
þ z : don't delete temp music files : if you want to use them out
-> as we use Diet to pack our data files, it's the way if you want
to keep our music files, to use them later. Each time the player
loads a file, it will stay in your temp repertory. (default temp
is 'c:\' if you don't have a 'temp' environment string)
þ lfilename.ext : load an external module (must be .XM, .MOD or .PLS)
-> if you're addicted to the game, maybe you'll want to hear
something new ; be careful, there is no module bug detection,
any bug in the module will lead to a crash ; '.PLS' is for
playlists : modify the 'perso.pls' with your own favorite modules
³ Moving Players
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Let's precise that changing default keys (/k) may cause hanging when
moving the three players simultaneously... that's why I designed default keys!
Default keys can be used by the /d parameter. Otherwise program uses the
last saved custom keys.
The main problem of the PC keyboard is that it is made of 'groups of keys'.
In general, groups are made of keys located next to each other. This is the
main reason why default keys are meant to be used with one hand for the
horizontal direction, one hand for the vertical one. (but there are
exceptions ; for example, you can change the player 3's keys to use the '8'
instead of the '7' but there might be hangs) In general, the keyboard sends
an overflow code when 3 keys of one group are pressed simultaneously.
Actually, it *is* possible to redefine keys with any of these (except 2 keys
which send the same code, or 'strange' keys like 'Pause' which does not send
regular 'make' and 'break' codes) if you respect a single condition : do not
press two direction keys from one single player simultaneously. This is what
hangs the keyboard (when this happens, any other keypress is ignored). But,
most of the time, especially with 'amateur' players, you can't count on that.
Keys for default dos keyboard :
Keys for white player (P1) are :
Up : 1! Down : qQ Left : \| Right : zZ DropBomb : LeftCtrl
Keys for red player (P2) are :
Up : oO Down : lL Left : [{ Right : ]} DropBomb : AltGr
Keys for blue player (P3) are :
Up : Num7 Down : Num4 Left : Num5 Right : Num6 DropBomb : RightEnter
The green player (P4) can only be moved with the joystick.
Keys for French keyboard :
Keys for White Player (P1) are :
Up : 1& Down : aA Left : <> Right : wW DropBomb : LeftCtrl
Keys for Red Player (P2) are :
Up : oO Down : lL Left : ^ù Right : $ DropBomb : AltGr
Keys for Blue Player (P3) are :
Up : Num7 Down : Num4 Left : Num5 Right : Num6 DropBomb : Entr
The green player (P4) can only be moved with the joystick.
The worst keys from default keys are surely the player 3's. I think it's
because with player 1's and with player 2's you can press the 'Drop Bomb'
key with the thumb, but you can't with player 3's.
When I play with friends, I use slightly different keys than default ones,
because they can't cope with them : my keys for the blue player (P4) :
Up : Num8 Down : Num5 Left : Num4 Right : Num6 DropBomb : GreyPageDown
³ Joystick
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The program is designed to use one joystick. Calibration can be performed so
that every joystick may be used (not as Dyna Blaster) : just use the '/j'
parameter the first time you run the program, or every time you connect a new
joystick. Each joystick button may be used in order to drop a bomb.
After each calibration, values are saved on the disk and automatically
loaded each time you launch the program : you just have to calibrate one time.
If you launch a game with player 4 enabled, and without a joystick connected
(or if the joystick has problems), the green player will keep moving right.
As you can't move diagonally on the gamefield, only straight moves are
tested (ie : up or down or left or right) ; in case of a double direction
of the joytick (for example up-left), program does *not* select which one is
possible.
With the joystick, as with the keys, you must only send one single direction
command.
³ Best Results
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Here are the things you should apply to if you want to get the best results :
- Video card compliance to VESA 2.0 standard. If your video card does not
support it hardware, try running 'univbe' from SciTech Software.
On most computers where it has been tested, the animations blink a lot
fewer with 'univbe' loaded.
- Have a supported soundcard with a correct environment string (results using
Sound Blaster are far better than using Ultrasound because the GUS is far
more sensitive upon sample problems, and because the GUS hardware mixing
normalizes the sound volume to a constant value, whereas SB software mixing
don't).
- Have a temporary repertory with its environment string.
³ Usefull stuff and tips
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Use the 'Restart with same scheme' key, it's very usefull. (see Overall
Description for more details about this special key)
Define your own custom keys, in particular when you plan not to be 3
players at the keyboard : make it more convenient for you.
Try to play 4-players game, that's really fun!
Take the 'malus', they are the real salt of the game.
Enjoy yourself!
³ Credits
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I can't actually credit all the people who helped me for coding tips.
But here are some of them...
Michael Tischer, 'Pc System Programming'
David Jurgens, 'Help Pc'
SWAG Support Team
Sean Palmer
Yohann Magnien ie Satanic/Useless
³ Who did what
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Musics : -M- and Pulsar
Graphics : Danube (main graphic) and Sibaho (3D presentation graphic + font)
Code : Hornet (all except Player), FreddyV (Player), LightShow (E.O.S)
³ Greetings
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I want to thank my friends of #demofr : Skal, SMKaribou, X-Man, Cyg, Darwin,
Fantom, Roudoudou, Walken, Stef, Phar, Mercure, Quick, Mandrixx, Sacrilege,
Moa, Tbf.
I really think #demofr is the best channel of the demoscene.
Special greetings to : Unreal, Sirio, Sweek, Fif, Totor, Lightshow.
³ Special
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'Hasta la victoria. Siempre.'
³ Known Bugs
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1) There is a 'File not found' bug on loading one module, sometimes. This bug
is really nasty, but I think it's due to an out of memory. If you only
have 8 megs of memory, try with a clean boot. Any memory configuration will
do, but the Raw one (no memory driver, even himem.sys) gives more memory
to E.O.S.
2) As this program is designed for fast machines (yes, it's only a music disk,
but there are 50 Hz SVGA realtime animations using banking and a high
quality player behind it!) when it turns low-CPU time, moves' speed decrease
3) The dos shell is unstable. :) If you get back to the program directly after
trying a dos shell, it's probably because of a lack of memory.
³ End words
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I really hope you loved our musics. I think they are great.
Would you like a 8-playable BomberMan over a direct connection or an IPX
network?...
_Hornet_Useless_7_19_1997_WiredPartyplace_
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