This program started out as an experiment in 3D graphics programming with
QuickDraw 3D.
As it progressed I got an idea for a game, and started working towards that.
But the more I worked on it the more convinced I became that the game idea
was pretty poor, so I decided to stop working on it and just tidy up what
I had for release.
So it's sort of a game, sort of a 3D demo. If you're wondering what sort of game it might have been, imagine it with scoring based on the number of bombs hitting the crab, the crab moving faster over time and more intellegently, and not wandering off the playing field, collisions with the crab being fatal, sound effects, a way to configure keys, a high score table, etc..
Use balloon help to find out about menu commands. If you have multiple displays the program will try and locate the best one to use when it starts up: if you don't like its choice you can drag the game window to another display while paused to use that display. This is also the quickest way to force an update, e.g. if you want to see the results of changes to the 'Options' menu: just drag the window so most of it is off screen, and it will spring back and recenter itself, redrawing as necessary.
| Controls: | |
| 2,8,4,6,7,9 on keypad: up,down,left,right,roll left,roll right | |
| shift,control: accelerate,decelerate | |
| space: drop a bomb | |
| 1: toggle wireframe/filled | 3: toggle texture |
| 2: toggle transparency | 4: toggle music |
| 0 on keypad: show game title | |
| esc: pause/enable menus | q: quit |
It's being distributed as freeware but is still Copyright © 1995-1997 John Blackburne. This means you can freely download it, give it to your friends and upload it to any public or private file server, as long as it doesn't charge for downloads. But it cannot be distributed commercially without my prior express permission. In particular if you want to include it on sharware/magazine CD-ROMs ask me first.
It comes without any express or implied warranty as to it's fitness for any purpose or use. I cannot be held responsible for any problems it causes on your machine, and if problems do occur I have no intention of fixing them. At best if it doesn't work you are entitled to a refund of double the above quoted sale price.
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I had planned to release this late last year, but delayed it a few weeks to wait for the release of version 1.5 of QuickDraw 3D. But this had a number of bugs which were quickly uncovered by my program - it crashed if run with QD3D 1.5 installed. To work around these bugs I would have had to completely rewrite the program's geometry routines, in the process making the program incompatible with earlier versions of QD3D, with which it worked fine.
I decided not to bother, instead waiting for version 1.5.1 of QD3D which as expected fixed almost all the bugs in version 1.5, so my program worked with only minor modifications. To avoid crashes the program disables itself if run with QD3D version 1.5 installed. It still works best with versions of QD3D before version 1.5, e.g. versions 1.0.3 - 1.0.6, as 1.5.1 has been optimised for new geometries introduced in version 1.5: in particular hardware accelerated texture mapping has significantly degraded performance compared to performance with QD3D 1.0.x.
The program requires QuickDraw 3D (and so a PowerPC based MacOS computer), QuickTime 2.0 or later, and will use Internet Config and QuickDraw GX if available. Internet Config is used to launch a Web browser to connect to this Web page, while QuickDraw GX is used for 3D text in the program, and can be either a full QuickDraw GX installation or just the GX Graphics INIT. The program is also minimally scriptable. Basically if you've installed MacOS 7.6 it should work just fine.
The program is optimised for QuickDraw 3D hardware acceleration: it requires such hardware to achieve smooth frame rates and for transparency effects used in the program. Despite this reliance on hardware I've not disabled the program when no 3D hardware is installed, as some people might like to try the program as it is, and future processors and 3D renderers may make it possible to achieve reasonable frame rates without dedicated 3D hardware.
The program was developed using Apple's 3D accelerator card, and has also been tested with ATI's XClaim VR (with 4MB RAM) and a pre-release Screaming Cablala software plugin renderer. The two cards have similar performance and capabilties: in particular both greatly improve frame rates, providing smooth animation even with texture mapping and transparency enabled (at least with version 1.0.x of QD3D), and both support transparency effects. The Screaming Cabla renderer provides greatly enhanced performance/frame rates, close to those of hardware, at the expense of quality.
The program does have some problems with the ATI card: the card does not support the lighting techniques used in this program, and has problems where polygons intersect, I think because of the way it sorts polygons for drawing. It also seems to be getting the camera's 'yon' value wrong, causing it to hide objects further than a short distance from the camera. I've not tested it with other cards but would be interested in any reports of performance and compatibility with other 3D accelerators (or even better sample cards so I can run tests myself).
© John Blackburne, johnb@hk.super.net, 20th April 1997
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