PUNSSi (c) 1995 by Eero Tamminen



INTRODUCTION

Punssi is a small arcade game that I made as the idea seemed
interesting.  Punssi works on ST hi-rez and is intended for two players
so you'll need two joysticks to play this.  Game doesn't need GEM's
presence to work (you can use it even with MiNT run from the
autofolder).


GAME IDEA

The game idea is to score points by pushing (bouncing) the ball to your
home area on the opposite side of the screen and to avoid the droids
that tail you and your opponent.  When you'll chrash into a droid,
you'll start again from your starting place, the droid that chrashed
into you disappears and the other droid splits a new droid.  Ball
returns to it's starting place after it has been pushed into the 'goal'.


SCORING

At the start of the game both player have nine lives.  Game will end
when either of the players runs out of lives.

Getting ball into your goal gives you 300 points.

Opponent chrashing into a droid gives you 100 points.

At the end you'll get 100 points from every live that you still got
left.


TACTICS

At the beginning avoid bouncing from the walls as it easily bounces you
against the droid tailing you (though it's handy when you'll play the
game more).

If the ball is near the (dear) opponents 'goal', move it toward's his
starting place so that when he dies, he will be put there and therefore
his disorientation could get him into droids again (which you brought
there by following the ball).

You could bounce your opponent into a droid althoug this might result in
dirty language (angry opponents play worse ;-).  Be careful yourself
though!


THE OBLIGATORY STORY

You are in the role of the new information fetching 'agents' (ie.
software filters) that roam the InterNet.  Your mission is to guide the
found information (represented as a ball) to your host computer and to
avoid the (Intel/Micro$oft sales) droids which try to confuse you with
mis-information.  Getting contaminated by mis-information kills you and
reverts you to where you started.


COPYRIGHT

This game is copyright of Eero Tamminen.  It comes with the source on
GPL (see GNU Licence) terms and is FAIRWARE ie.  if you like the game,
use the source or otherwise feel like supporting my programming, I ask
you to send me 5$ or the equivalent on our own currency (deutch marks,
dollars and pounds preferred).  At least send me a postcard!

You are allowed to distribute this game free of charge and providing
that all the accompanied files (punssi.c, punssi.h, dosound.h, joyisr.s,
punssi.tos, bg.dat, objects.dat, font.dat and punssi.txt (this one)) are
present.

Source can be used on other FREE/FAIRWare programs on condition that
you'll include your source with them.  I would like you to inform me
about your project (E-mail preferred but a postcard will do too :-) and
a binary (in case you have an internet account) would also be nice but
not nesseccary.  I am especially interested about ports to other
machines.


BACKROUND

I have programmed this program totally in C as it's fast enough (70hz
frame update!).  There are a couple of lines GCC assembler (MIT syntax)
for handling the IKBD joystick interrupts.  That was from the Warwick
Allison's AMS C++ game library* and copyrighted by him.  I used the GNU C
compiler v2.5.8 and Everest 3.3 & ME-3.5 (The Mutt Editor) editors under
the MiNT v1.12 and Thing desktop v0.24 on my 8Mhz STfm (4/120MB) to
program and compile this.  Programming this took over a week, about
eight hours a day (including testing :).  I of course had previously
done some code that I could use on this project.  My previous
programming experience is about two years of GFA programming and less
than a year of C programming.

*) Available on atari.archive.umich.edu, it's mirrors and on numerous
other ftp-sites as ams++lib.zoo (all the WA's source are educational to
read :).  The file should be on a couple of Atari PD software CDs too.
For general GNU Public Licence (GPL), see any official GNU product
documentation, ask in any gnu newsgroups or contact the Free Software
Foundation itself.


THANKS TO

  Warwick Allison for doing all that free C++ stuff and porting programs
  for GEM.

  Johan Klockars for programming the wonderful Mgif image manipulation
  program (also free).

  Jarkko Kniivil"a on helping me when I started C. And being a hardcore
  portable and (especially) modular code design fanatic.

  J"urgen Lock for arguing with me by E-mail about the relative merits
  of GFA Basic and C last spring...

  My roommates for testing this program (as they play more, they beat be
  badly on this...). WARNING! this game really strains your joystick(s)!


	9th of March in 1995

	Eero Tamminen		E-mail: t150315@cc.tut.fi
	Sahantie 2		WWW: http://proffa.cc.tut.fi/~t150315/
	23600 Kalanti
	FINLAND