At the begining oy year 2002 I finaly rejected DelphiX and flinged into
programming with Direct3D 8. First larger project using this API is
here this Drake Rider (which was initialy working name)
Drake Rider is 2D fantasy action game with some RPG elements for one to four players.
Such type of game where you fly from left ro right and gigantic amounts of
bloodthirsty beasts rush right against you and you can destroy them with help of
weapons of many types and effects. Mentioned RPG elements are these: You earn experience points XP
for merciless killing of enemies in amount according to might of slayed beast.
Between missions you can spend XP on speed and health incereases or new weapons, armors
and aerial beast. Missions are connected by story into campaign...
All these features Drake Rider should have contain and it really containts
most of them
which surprises even myself according to state of finish of my other projects.
But nowadays (it is 16.11.2002) I don't work on it and I don't know
if I will work on it in future.
Though Drake Rider is 2D game, it uses Direct3D 8 required to run.
Usage of D3D allows to take use of many effects (blending, transformations,
lights, texture filtering etc.) which are acelerated thus faster then DirectDraw.
2D displaying itself is relatively much faster in DirectDraw because it is only
memory copying but these fast and "easy" to use effects won.
Drake Rider supports these resolutions:
- 640x480x16 bit
- 640x480x32 bit
- 800x600x16 bit
- 800x600x32 bit
- 1024x768x16 bit
- 1024x768x32 bit
Used refresh rate is the highest rate supported by your monitor in
selected mode.
Graphic of user interface strongly resembles these pages and really, graphic here
comes mostly from Drake Rider and it is because I am lazy person.
On the other hand graphic of game itself is really murky. Especialy
main hero is verily unprepossessing. It is because I wanted to
make some images when I will have some time (about year 2048 when I will retire
I think). Only graphic in map Desert.drm (I had launched 3D Studio and waited and waited ...)
matches something which should be in full version.
For better imagination there are some graphicalous constructs from this game taken:
I am absolutely certain it should run but I can not say it entirely right.
When I was programming Drake I was happy owner of this fierce piece of computing system:
Intel Celeron 333@416MHz
256MB SDRAM
RIVA TNT2 PRO 32MB
Windows XP s DirectX 8.1
On this config Drake Rider runs in the highest resolution always
above 20 FPS. So if you have something like this or rather
something faster you don't need to worry.
There can be only problem with your graphic card:
It will not run with 1/2/3 card.
Recommended is 32MB and more video RAM but it also works on
8MB and possibly on 4MB card.
Right here or in Downloads section
Furter info about source code and editor can be found somewhere below
in separated sections.
Furter info about install program is in next sentence.
Installation for Drake Rider was made in Setup Generator Pro which
is very nice program and created install behaves like other standard installs.
You need about 1500kB of free space for Drake Rider.
You can only pray now but nor this should help you ...
Well, let us be serious now. In Main menu is all clear and
in Settings too. After clicking New Game and after reading
the story (Nothing better doesn't come on my mind that time)
main between-mission screen will appear where players who will
take part in active mission can be checked. Players can be edited after clicking
on "Hraci" button where you can also split experience points
between Speed (Rychlost) and Health (Zdravi). Buying
and selling is missing meanwhile.
Some special keys:
- F12 - take screenshot
- F9 - immediate return to menu
- F4 - immediate return to Windows
-
~ (tilda) - invokes command line where you can use these commands:
"Fill x" (x=1,2,3) Polygon filling 1=points,2=wireframe,3=solid
"Filter x" (x=1,2)Textur filter 1=none,2=bilinear
"WorldSpeed x" (x=integer) World move speed
"Engine StopMove" stops move
"Engine ResumeMove" resumes move
"Quit","Exit" no comment
"ToggleFullScreen" window to full or backward
"TexMemUsage" returns number of textures and memory used by them
"Map *.drm" loads map , searches in "Data\Maps"
"Player [idx,name] [AddHP,AddSpd,AddXP] X " Adds player "idx" or
named "name" X hitpoints or speed or XP.
Drake Rider can be compiled in Delphi 7 and Delphi 6. After some minor
changes it should compile in Delphi 5. In source archive are included
all dependencies not preset in Delphi after installation.
Drake Rider uses:
- Grafika - Direct3D 8.0
- Přehrávání WAV and MP3 - extarnal library BASS.DLL
- Přehrávání MIDI - DirectMusic 7.0
- Vstup - WinAPI
All questions send trough =>
Vampyre SoftWorks
All maps in Drake Rider were created in Drake Rider Map Editor.
You must explore its funcionality alone because I have no time to write some
manual which should not be read by anyone.
Here is shot:
And here is some basic info:
- Graphic - Drake Rider supports these image formats:
- BMP - Windows Bitmap
- JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
- PNG - Portable Network Graphic
- TGA - Truevision Targa
- PPM - Portable Pixelmap
If you want to create transparent image, as a color you don't want to show,
use this
fuchsia (Red:255 Green:0 Blue:255,
hex code: $FF00FF).
Do not use JPG format to store transparent image because it uses lossy
compresion and $FF00FF will stay hardly anywhere.
-
Music - if you do not define Theme Music it can be randomly picked from playlist.
Only standard MIDI files are supported as music.
-
Objects - If you want to create new object it is very complicated. If you have noticed
empty TabSheet4 -> this was designed for obj editor. But it is not here now so you must
download source code archive and add your object to right unit
(they are in CrObj dir) compile Datas.dpr.
-
Save often - Though Undelete works I should not believe it very much...
Galfar
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