Deluxe Snake 3.0.0 ReadMe
-------------------------

Deluxe Snake is a clone of the classic arcade games Nibbles and Snake, with
improved gameplay, including power-ups, mushrooms, walls, tail-bite, and other
fun stuff. Play on multiple arena sizes, with borders on/off, in 4 different
gamemodes. There's a top 20 high-scores list for each combination of settings,
which also stores gamelengths and dates, and can be merged with friends' lists.

A top 100 high-scores list for the default settings can be found at
http://www.dascdev.net/scoreboard.php.

Deluxe Snake is available for Windows, Linux, BeOS, and QNX. You can find the
latest version at http://www.dascdev.net/deluxesnake.php.



Table of Contents:
-----------------

 1 -- Disclaimer
 2 -- Copyright/Permissions
 3 -- Requirements
 4 -- Install
 5 -- How to play/Gamemodes
 6 -- Power-ups & mushroom effects
 7 -- Scoring (points & lengths)
 8 -- Controls
 9 -- Custom MIDIs
10 -- Command line options
11 -- Troubleshooting
12 -- Contact me
13 -- Credits
14 -- Changes



1) Disclaimer:
-------------

Deluxe Snake (the "Product") is provided "AS IS", and without warranty of any
kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied
warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire
risk as to the quality and performance of the Product is with the user. Should
the Product prove defective, the user assumes the cost of all necessary
servicing, repair or correction. In no event shall the author Daniel Schlyder
be held liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation,
direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, exemplary, punitive, loss of
business profits or special damages) arising out of use or inability to use
the Product, even if Daniel Schlyder has been advised of the possibility of
such damages.



2) Copyright/Permissions:
------------------------

Deluxe Snake is Copyright (c) 1999, 2000, 2001 Daniel Schlyder. All rights not
specifically granted below are reserved. Copyrights on the MIDI files
are held by their respective composers (see credits below).


Deluxe Snake may be freely used and distributed subject to the following terms:

(1) Deluxe Snake may not be sold or resold, distributed as a part of any
commercial package, used in a commercial environment, used or distributed in
support of a commercial service, or used or distributed to support any kind of
profit-generating activity, even if it is being distributed freely, without
prior written permission from the author Daniel Schlyder.

(2) The integrity of the original Deluxe Snake distribution, as distributed by
Daniel Schlyder, is essential. Deluxe Snake and all of its related files must
be distributed together in the original format. The Deluxe Snake distribution
may not have files added to it or removed from it, and none of its contents may
be modified, decompiled, or reverse engineered.

(3) Daniel Schlyder retains the right to modify these terms at any time, and
without prior notice.



3) Requirements:
---------------

* Windows 9x/Me/NT4/2000/XP (with DirectX 3.0 or higher), BeOS (Intel, R5),
	Linux, or QNX 6.1

* Pentium or better processor

* Graphics card that supports 640x480 in 15bit or higher colour depth

* Allegro 4.0 (included in all versions except Linux - see install notes)



4) Install:
----------

To install the Windows version double-click the executable and follow the
on-screen instructions. The other versions must be manually decompressed to a
directory of your choice. Please note that you can keep your old config.dat,
hiscores.dat, and stats.dat files. If a new version breaks compatibility (see
changes), they will be overwritten.

To use the Linux version you must first download and install Allegro 4.0. You
can find it at http://alleg.sourceforge.net/. (Get the enduser archive!)



5) How to play/Gamemodes:
------------------------

Your goal is simple: eat the numbered food to gain points. Game ends when you
eat yourself, or crash into a wall.


UltraBasic
----------
In this gamemode, only one food is spawned at any given time, and it remains in
the arena until eaten.


Basic
-----
In this gamemode, up to three food may spawn at once, and food will disappear,
or turn into walls (40%), if not eaten quickly enough. Bonus points equal to
1 + length / 50 are awarded every second.


Deluxe
------
This gamemode is just like Basic, but has a lot of extra stuff to make the game
more fun:

Frogs                Eating a frog gives you a power-up (see list below).
Gifts                Same as frog, only gifts don't move around.
Megafood             Extra high value food.
Mushroom             30% chance of food turning into this if not eaten.
Mushroom Generator   May spawn when number of mushrooms is above 9. While
                     spawned, it generates red mushrooms at a slow rate. Remove
                     it by reducing number of mushrooms to less than 10 again.
                     Eating a generator will spawn 3-6 new mushrooms.
Stone food           May spawn when number of walls is above 3. A stone food
                     counts up from 1 to 9, after which it becomes a grey wall.
Tailbite             Bite yourself in the tail to cut length in half. When you
                     do this, all blue walls turn grey, and 3-6 new mushrooms
                     are spawned.


Deluxe Cash
-----------
In this variant of the Deluxe gamemode, you get cash when eating frogs and
gifts, and can then buy the power-ups you need, when you need them. You can
have a maximum of six cash symbols at any time. Eat more frogs, and you'll
get candy canes instead. Buy power-ups using the blow up walls and reverse
keys plus the special buy keys. Power-ups cost:

Antidote    2
Bomb        4
Diet Pill   2
Multiplier  2 (can be 2X or 3X)
Life        6 (only in 3 lives games)
Reverse     2
Shield      1


3 Lives
-------
The Deluxe modes can be played with three lives for longer games. When you die,
the snake will slowly shrink to start size and be placed in starting position.
You will then be granted a special version of the antidote power-up that
protects you against everything except border and snake tiles for a short time.
In Deluxe Cash mode you can buy back a lost life if you have collected 6 cash
symbols.



6) Power-ups & mushroom effects: (N/A in all modes)
-------------------------------

Antidote          protects against mushroom effects
Candy Canes       eat the candy for bonus points
Diet Pill         food eaten reduces length
Doubler           2x scores, 1.5x lengths
Dynamite          collect 3 to assemble bomb, then press Space to blow up all
                  blue walls, or Left Shift to blow up 4 grey
Mushroom, red     control keys are reversed
Mushroom, blue    generates 2 blue walls
Reverse           press Left Control to reverse direction travelled in
Shield            Survive crashing into a blue wall
Tripler           3x scores, 2x lengths

Antidote, Diet Pill, Doubler, Tripler, and mushroom effects, lasts 15 seconds
with normal gamespeed.



7) Scoring (points & lengths):
-----------------------------

                           points      length
                           ------      ------
candy cane                 50          1
diet food                  10-90       - 1-9
food                       10-90       1-9
megafood                   150-250     15-25
mushroom (if immune)       10          1
red mushroom (if poisoned) 20          1
mushroom (else)            30          1
mushroom generator         40          1
stone food                 0           1-9
tailbite                   length      - length/2



8) Controls:
-----------

Default control keys: (you can change these in the options menu)

Left Arrow     change snake's direction to left
Right Arrow    ------------- " ----------- right
Up Arrow       ------------- " ----------- up
Down Arrow     ------------- " ----------- down
Left Control   reverse direction travelled in (need Reverse power-up)
Space          detonate bomb, blowing up all blue walls
Left Shift     detonate bomb, blowing up 4 grey walls
A              buy Antidote power-up
D              buy Diet Pill power-up
X              buy Multiplier power-up
Enter          regain a lost life (only in Deluxe Cash mode)


Other keys:

P              pause game
F4             toggle FPS counter on/off
F8					updates the screen (use it if you get a black display after
					task switching)
F11            take screenshot (saved in TGA format)
Esc            return to menu


Joystick support:

You can also use a joystick to control the snake. Make sure it's connected
before you launch the game. Go to the Options menu, and change the Controller
option. Note that you can not use the joystick to navigate the menus.

Buttons:			1 - detonate bomb, blowing up all blue walls
					2 - detonate bomb, blowing up 4 grey walls
					3 - reverse direction travelled in (need Reverse power-up)
					4 - buy Antidote power-up
					5 - buy Diet Pill power-up
					6 - buy Multiplier power-up
					7 - regain a lost life (only in Deluxe Cash mode)



9) Custom MIDIs:
---------------

You can add and remove files from the midi directory. If the "Preload
MIDIs" option is disabled, new tunes will be loaded as needed. This may cause a
loss of framerate while a new tune is loaded. To avoid this, set the option to
the number of tunes you want to preload. Only the preloaded MIDIs will be
played in the game (a new set will be loaded for each new game). Don't set this
too high! You may run out of memory!



10) Command line options:
------------------------

-bpp <n>

Set the colour depth. Use <n> bits per pixel (<n> must be 15, 16, 24, or 32).


-gdriver <driver>

Start game using specified graphics driver. Choose between the following
drivers supported by the Allegro library:

directx
   fullscreen DirectX driver. Used by default
directx_soft
   same as above, but will not use any hardware accelerated features
directx_safe
   simplified DirectX driver that doesn't support any hardware acceleration,
   and some other features that my game doesn't need
directx_win
   windowed mode DirectX driver. Equivalent to using '-win' option
directx_ovl
   DirectX overlay driver. This uses special hardware features to run the game
   in a windowed mode: it doesn't work on all hardware, but performance is
   excellent on cards that are capable of it
gdi
   windowed mode GDI driver. This is extremely inefficient, but works on all
   hardware. Only use this if all the others fail! Performance is horrible

Note: This option is only available in the Windows version.


-merge <file1> [file2]

Merges high-scores files. On success the files will contain the top 20 of the
combined lists' high-scores. If only one file is specified, then the default
hiscores.dat file will be used to merge with.


-win

Start the game in windowed mode. (Use desktop colour depth for best
performance).



11) Troubleshooting:
-------------------

QNX: Changing workspace while in fullscreen crashes the program
---------------------------------------------------------------
This is a known bug in the Allegro library. I'll release a new version of the
game as soon as this has been fixed in the library.


Windows: S3 based graphics card fails to set graphics mode
----------------------------------------------------------
Setting hardware acceleration to max may help. You'll find this option under:

   Settings->Control Panel->Display->Settings->Advanced

You may also try using other graphics drivers with the command line option
'-gdriver' (described above).


Windows: "DCOM missing" warning message
---------------------------------------
The original Windows 95 distribution lacks DCOM. You can download an update
from Microsoft's site at:

   http://www.microsoft.com/Com/DCOM/Dcom95/dcom1_3.asp

As far as I know, DCOM is needed for high precision timers. I don't think my
game needs this, so if you can live with the annoying warning message...


Windows: Game crashes when trying to change colour depth on a Voodoo 3 graphics
card
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Try using the command line option '-bpp' to specify desired colour depth.


Windows: Alt-Tab'ing out of a full screen game in Windows NT/2000 causes crash
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a bug in the nVidia Detonator 3 6.50 driver that affects the Riva TNT
and TNT2. The 6.31 driver works fine.


Windows: display is black after task switching
----------------------------------------------
Try pressing F8 to update the screen.


Windows: "MSVCRT.dll missing" error message
-------------------------------------------
Deluxe Snake uses the Microsoft runtime library MSVCRT.dll. If you're using
Windows 95 Release 1 you won't have this. Please download it from Microsoft's
site (http://www.microsoft.com).



12) Contact me:
--------------

For comments, suggestions, and bug-reports, please send mail to dsc@c2i.net.

My homepage is at http://www.dascdev.net/. Please sign my guestbook!

Deluxe Snake's page is at http://www.dascdev.net/deluxesnake.php.



13) Credits:
-----------

Design, Programming, and Graphics: Daniel Schlyder

Music: Fredrik Sand (Fall and Partille)
       Jay Baron (The Jayomon Beat)

Explosion Animation: Jan Evensen

Testing: Eivind Johan Smedholen (RIP)
         Bernt A. Linge
         Ole Anders Hove
         Trond Refsnes
         Massimiliano Lussana

Allegro logo, sfx, textures, and fonts: Unknown
(Contact me, and I'll put your name here!)

Special Thanks to: Michael Bukin
                   Jani Utriainen
                   Ole Theill Sørensen
                   Christian Weinert
                   The Allegro Community

Executable and Allegro DLL compressed using UPX (http://upx.tsx.org).



14) Changes:
-----------

3.0.0 - 22.12.2001
+ using Allegro 4.0.0
+ added support for Linux
+ added support for QNX 6.1
o recoloured blue, and brightened purple and red, backgrounds
o midi dir moved out of data dir
o replaced shield and bag of gold sprites, and removed Darren Hebden from credits (to avoid copyright problems)
o changed colour of poisoned bar to green
o readded relative controls option for the crazy among you (you know who you are! ;))
o added option to Windows installer for creating desktop icon to launch game in windowed mode
o added program icon to BeOS version
o pressing F8 updates the screen (use it if you get a black display after task switching)
o cleaned up part of the sourcecode (might accidentally have fixed a bug or two :))
* FIXED: time not recorded correctly for games lasting an hour or longer
* FIXED: average and total time played displayed are wrong
* FIXED: switching workspace when running the game in fullscreen mode crashes BeOS (was Allegro bug)
* FIXED: game icon replaced by Windows default program icon
* FIXED: site URLs in ReadMe.txt and Windows Start Menu


2.9.13 - 09.07.2001
* MIDIs played too slow fixed in the new Allegro 3.9.37 DLL
o added crude joystick support (you can't navigate the menus, and buttons are
	hard-coded)
o removed steering option (you'd have to be crazy to use relative controls :))
! broke config.dat compatibility


2.9.12 - 21.06.2001
* fixed high-scores above 65535 not saved correctly (if you have a file with a
	messed up score, send it to me, and I'll fix it)


2.9.11 - 19.05.2001
* MIDI volume bug should be fixed in the new Allegro 3.9.36 DLL included
	(as always, you can safely delete any old DLLs)
* fixed files fail to load if 'å' or other ASCII characters above 127 are used
	in file path


2.9.10 - 26.04.2001
o proper Windows installer using Inno Setup
o replaced '1st place beaten' sound (with the one to be used in DS2)
o very little processor time should be used when in menus or paused
o UPX used to reduce size of executable and Allegro DLL
o all sound effects resampled at 22050 Hz mono (next BeOS version should
	benefit from this, at least they sound better using an SBLive card)
o when initializing graphics mode program will always cycle through supported
	colour depths in optimal order
o colour depth can be changed in windowed mode (use the same as desktop for
	best performance)
* fixed game freezing trying to spawn new object when arena is full
* fixed game exiting from high-scores menu or unpausing when user Alt-Tabs away
* fixed game crashing when run in windowed mode using same colour depth as
	desktop under Windows 2000 (was bug in Allegro)
* fixed random freezing in Windows 2000 (another Allegro bug)
* more bugfixes
!! new version of Allegro used. You can safely delete any old DLLs


2.9.9 BeOS - 13.02.2001
+ first version released for BeOS


2.9.9 - 27.01.2001
o all versions compiled using new version of Allegro library (3.9.34)
   (Windows version should benefit from many bug-fixes and improvements in the
   library)
* game will no longer run windowed if desktop colour depth is lower than 15 bit
! old 'config.dat' files are not compatible with this version


2.9.8 - 06.01.2001
o added command line option '-gdriver' to specify graphics driver for use in
   Win32 version. See 'Command line options' section above for more info


2.9.7 - 04.01.2001
* fixed game timers started before preloading of MIDIs. Might prevent lag at
   game start on slow computers
* fixed 'Set All Keys' option. It no longer sets all keys to default values :)


2.9.6 - 01.01.2001
o specify colour depth using new command line option '-bpp <n>'
o to merge high-scores lists you must now use the command line option '-merge'
o since keyboards from many countries don't have the Alt Ground key, Left Shift
   is now the default key to detonate a "grey bomb"


2.9.5 - 27.12.2000
+ support for custom MIDI music. Place your files in the data/midi directory
+ experimental support for windowed mode in Windows version using new command
   line option "-win". ("Colour Depth" option disabled. Desktop depth is used.)
o default "Detonate Grey Bomb" key moved from ALT to ALT GR to work better in
   windowed mode
o last high-score name remembered between program runs
o brown background texture looks more brown :)


2.9.3 - 22.11.2000
o game distributed as self-extracting archive
o snake's head is marked while game is paused
! datafiles are not compatible with older versions
   (Note: this only affects the files in the data directory!)


2.9.1 - 14.09.2000
o increased chance of Tripler slightly
o multiplier power-ups no longer affect length removed by biting tail
o tailbite always cuts visible length in half (minimum length is five though)
o uses new Allegro DLL version 3.9.33 (you can delete 3.9.32)
o minor speed optimization (maybe?)
* a few very minor bugs fixed


2.9 - 11.08.2000
+ added support for longer games with 3 lives for the Deluxe modes
+ added support for 4 different gamespeeds (easy, normal, fast, and too fast)
o changed costs of power-ups in Deluxe Cash mode. (Shields cost 1 and bombs
   cost 4, all other power-ups cost 2). So it's harder now, and impossible to
   go on forever just buying Diet Pills. Warning: Old Deluxe Cash hiscores-
   lists will be deleted. Hiscores-files from version 2.8.4+ can be loaded in
   this version, but saved files won't be compatible with older versions.
o added power-up Tripler (triples scores and doubles lengths). Rare.
* fixed a few minor bugs
o lots of minor stuff you probably won't notice


2.8.6 - 15.07.2000
o added soundfx for end of poison and antidote effects, stonefood spawning,
   eating mushroom generator while protected by antidote, and removing mushroom
   generator
o replaced sounds for spawning and eating mushroom generators, stonefood
   countdown, get powerup reverse, and action failed
o changed display to show next hiscore on list, instead of always first place
o last game's score displayed below hiscores, if not high enough to enter list
o awards for mushrooms and mushroom generator increased slightly
o added fade in/out effect to dynamite frame
* fixed merge hiscores-files error message not displayed if number of
   parameters is above two


2.8.4 - 01.07.2000
* fixed a couple of serious bugs in the hiscores code. Unfortunately I had to
   break hiscores-list compatibility again. (I'll fix your old hiscores-file if
   you email it to me!)
* changed stats fileformat to fix a stupid bug. Old stats will be lost.


Visit the game's homepage for info on older versions.
