ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ»
     .                   º Gravity Force º
     .    .               ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ            
                                v0.1b
     .                                               .
                                  by
                         James Shaughnessy          .

                              (C) 1998


KEYS:         [L2]  load map2                   [R2] 2 player 

              [L1]  load map1                   [R1] 1 player


                FIRE                                 [^]
                            select              [[]]      [O] FIRE
            LEFT + RIGHT  [PAL/NTSC]                  
                                                     [X] THRUST
              

To run just type AUTO at the DOS prompt.
Once ran, type QUICK to rerun, to save loading in the maps/gfx again.

Yes folks I said I'd have something playable within a week of starting it
and indeed I have.  There's no front-end and no on-screen lives count
(it's best to keep count yourself -- the 'lives' counter's bugged) but
it has that classic Gravity Force feel from the Amiga 500 days.  I've
tried to capture the original game exactly, so it's blatently plagiarized
from the version by Stephan Wenzler, the best game of all time.

Looking at the source you'll notice there's no mention if ORDERING TABLES!
Yes indeed I did the WHOLE thing using manual graphics routines in order
to get that PIXEL PERFECT collision detection.  Feel free to nick any
stuff just give me a mention!  I don't recommend using my PUTPIXEL though
as it's VERY slooooow.  I need a machine code version, MoveImage just
doesn't do the job.  As you'll see the thing runs in 25Hz in 2-player mode,
well it trying to do 50,000 SLOOW getpixels and putpixels per second!  It
kicks into 50Hz in full screen 1-player but it's not scaled so you'll have
a job controlling the bugger.  This is purely a 2-player affair!

It defaults to DOGFITE1 MAP which works fine regarding the landing
pads and stuff, but you can have a look at an EXPERT map I whipped up
(not polished off yet) by pressing L2.  L1 reloads MAP 1.  You can't land
on MAP 2 but if each of you find some space, reload the map to clear
the glitches caused by swapping you can still have a dogfight-fest.

Pressing R1 and R2 sets the number of players/screens during a game, but
don't use this to make player 2 crash! :) 
Tell me what you think, especially regarding coding.  I tried to do
this the proper way (a way that heats up the GPU even a little :) ) but
ran into too many hurdles.  Can GsSPRITES do hardware collision detection?
I needed pixel-perfect and I wanted to use a big virtual screen and
single buffering.  Well, "I Did It My Way."

Also you can view the dogfight maps on the PC by typing GFMVIEW n  (n=1or2)
at the DOS prompt (that's why there's the BGI driver here).

You can draw your own maps, just save the 640x512 picture as RAW data and
use the RAW2GFM program to compress it.  I'm using this rather than TIM
files because my compression routine allows many more maps to be in memory
at once (seeing as how we can't load from the HDD), and I don't know PCX
file format too well.

I've got some nifty things planned for this game, I just hope I can
squeeze it all in.  But I'll have it running properly in a couple of weeks
so watch my page for version 0.1c !

Cheers,
Jim                          7th Jan 1998
-----------------------------------------
James Shaughnessy    james@manc.u-net.com
http://www.netyaroze-europe.com/~shaughnj
-----------------------------------------