HFLIGHT(6) HFLIGHT(6) NAME hflight - A multiplayer heightfield flight simulator SYNOPSIS hflight [main_opts] driver [driver_opts] [host[:Port]] List all main options and graphics drivers with hflight For a description of all main options type hflight -help List all options of a specific graphics driver with hflight [driver] - For a description of all driver options type hflight [driver] -help DESCRIPTION hflight is a multiplayer flight simulator which uses an output technique called 'heightfields', though many people know it under the term 'voxel space', which is definitely wrong! Right now only the graphics engine and multiplayer support is implemented, but I have no idea of a smashing game con- cept for this type of graphics. Well, we'll see what's happening in the future... You are able to fly a gravity slider inbetween the bound- aries of a world of fraktal mountains, you may see other players as light red quadrics and you are able to fire shots which will explode (and deform landscape when speci- fied) as they hit a mountain. There's no collision detection right now and you can't be hit by others' shots, though... REQUIREMENTS You'll need a fast unix machine to get a resonable speed. Some graphics drivers may need some libraries to compile or to run. For instance the graphics driver 'gl' needs Sillicon Graphics 'gl'-library for running and the accord- ing includes for compiling. GETTING STARTED First of all run hflight First Version February 1995 1 HFLIGHT(6) HFLIGHT(6) to see whether there's a graphics driver available for your type of machine. If not, you're lost... Second run hflight driver to start a new session. Other players may connect to you by specifying your hostname typing hflight driver host Off course they must specify the graphics driver for their very own machine! When there are some peaole around playing hflight, all you need to contact them is the hostname of one player (and the port number, if he specified one). hflight automati- cally detects all contacted hosts. GAME CONTROL You can accelerate the slider going forward or backward by moving your mouse up or down. You can rotate the slider by moving your mouse left or right. There are options to alter mouse control if you don't like those slugish move- ments. Your height is automatically controlled by the slider's main computer core, so you don't have to worry about crashing into a mountain. You can hit autobrakes by pressing middle mouse button. This will stop your slider and its rotation. By moving your mouse up / down / left / right while pressing the button you are able to control your position in a much more sensible way. Just try it! Shots are fired by pressing left mouse button, aproxi- mately aming and then releasing the button. This sounds complex but it is fairly easy. While pressing left button an aming pointer apears. Move it in the direction you want to fire and release mouse button. When you just click it (don't be too fast - mouse buttons are only testen once every frame), you shoot in the same direction as last time. Shots are affected by gravity, by the way. You can leave the game by pressing right mouse button. SCORING No scoring right now... SOUND SUPPORT No sound support right now... First Version February 1995 2 HFLIGHT(6) HFLIGHT(6) NOTES I would be glad if someone had a smashing game idea. When- ever you have some ideas for game design or other propos- als, just email me. Please mail me, too, when you discover some bugs or mis- spellings. ;-) hflight was developed for Computergrafik Anwendungsuebung WS 1994/95, Aufgabe 5 in university of Erlangen, germany. DISCLAIMER (c) Copyright 1995 Matthias Hopf All rights reserved. I won't be responsible for ANYTHING this programm does! I won't even prommise that this programm does ANYTHING usefull. The following is copied from xboing (please don't mind :-) Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this soft- ware and its documentation without written agreement is hereby granted. You cannot sell this software without written permission from the author. This entire copyright notice must appear in all copies of this software. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THE AUTHOR SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUD- ING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MER- CHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE AUTHOR HAS NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUP- PORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS. AUTHOR Matthias Hopf Student of computer science at university of Erlangen, germany. EMail: mshopf@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de First Version February 1995 3 HFLIGHT(6) HFLIGHT(6) WWW: http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/user/mshopf BUGS Whenever you exit, other players won't be informed that you left. But you will be thrown out of their current list of known hosts after a timeout of 10 seconds. Some consitency checks may have been forgotten. This may even result in a system crash. You have been warned! Some time ago there was a bug in the code which caused hflight to freeze in some rare cases. Never found it but it never occured again. Yesterday I found myself jumping from one location to another one time. This has never happend before and I was not able to let it happen a second time... TODO There's a lot to do: First of all I need a game concept. This will result in a lot of new todos... No collision detection yet. Graphics output could be improved, e. g. Gouraud shad- ing. Graphics output could be optimised, though not very much. There could be a user-adjustable flying height. A new method for consistency checks should be added. Some other graphics drivers should be programmed. How about a meta server (just like xpilot) looking for all hflight players? First Version February 1995 4