*** THIS FILE IS CURRENTLY OUTDATED ***
README for Cavepilot
http://cavepilot.spacecentre.se
Cavepilot is a cave-flying game much like the classics Turbo Raketti and Gravity Force. Examples of modern counterparts are Turbis and Luola. Cavepilot currently only supports one (which is rather boring) or two player games on a split screen. Some sort of network play is in the planning stage though.
See the file INSTALL for installation instructions.
Playing the game
The game features a menu where the game can be started, exited and configured. At this moment only the most relevant parameters can be configured. Please note that the configuration is not saved between sessions.
For permanent configuration you have to edit the file cavepilotrc[.txt if you are using windows]. See below.
A game can be aborted at any instant by pressing the ESC key. This key can also be used for moving up among the menus, or to exit if at the top-level menu.
The player controls can only be set in the menus. The defaults are:
Player 1:
turn left: left arrow
turn right: right arrow
thrust: spacebar
fire gatling: up arrow
fire rocket: down arrow
Player 2:
turn left: c
turn right: b
thrust: left ctrl
fire gatling: f
fire rocket: v
Other keys are the s key for taking a screenshot. The screenshot is saved as 'screenshot.bmp' in the cavepilot directory. Beware that this is only a temporary solution and a screenshot will over-write any previous one.
The status display at the bottom of each players part of the screen shows from left to right: lives left, current shield, fuel, gatling ammo, and rocket ammo.
Configuration
Most settings can be changed in the cavepilotrc file. The current values are also the defaults that are set if the file is missing. Beware that most of these values have no limits, and I take no responsibilty what so ever for the games behaviour upon any extreme values set here!
Here you also set which level the game will load. The default level is called "masterpiece", but its not very pretty. Luckily, there is now an other option. Available levels are the *.lvl files in the levels/ dir.
Creating your own levels
Creating levels on your own and sending them to me for distribution with the game is greatly encouraged! ;)
It is really no complex matter at all. Just draw a level, preferably as big as possible, but no less than 800x600. Just beware that cavepilot uses a 16 bpp (Hi-colour) display, so the number of colours are not unlimited. Save the map as a bmp file (other formats will most likely be supported later). The map should have at least two bases looking however they want as long as their surface is flat. Next create a collision-map. It must be exactly the same size as the original map, but using only two colours -- black and white. Black is for everywhere on the original map that are free for flying, and white is for everywhere the ships can crash into (including the bases!). The final step is to create a level-file. It is rather simple. The file levels/masterpiece.lvl is a well commented example. Just beware that the 'players' parameter specifies how many bases are defined below it. Further on, the relative path from the game's directory (e.g., top-level of the distribution) to the image files must be specified. Take the demo-level "masterpiece" as example: it is specified as the level of choice in cavepilotrc on the line 'level: masterpiece.lvl' and in that file, the image and collsion-maps are specified as 'levels/...'. Its as simple as that.
Please note: for windows users, the level files are from now on called blah.lvl.txt. The .txt suffix is optional in the levelname in the cavepilotrc file though.
Moreover, the optional fields in the .lvl file is at the moment not used at all. The name displayed in the menu is just the filename without the .lvl suffix. But this may change at any time in the future.
Have fun!