njh / primateplunge

PRIMATE PLUNGE README
http://www.aelius.com/primateplunge/
email: primateplunge@aelius.com



1. INSTRUCTIONS There is an instructions page within Primate Plunge
which can be accessed from the main menu - for quick information on how
to play the game, please see that. However, for more comprehensive
details, see below.

Primate Plunge is played with 4 keys - Left, Right, Down, and Special.
Several keys are assigned to each of these actions, including but not
limited to:

Left: Left Arrow Key, Numpad 4 Right: Right Arrow Key, Numpad 6 Down:
Down Arrow Key, Numpad 2 Powerup: Up Arrow Key, Space Bar, Numpad 0

The aim of the game is to help a certain primate by the name of Monkey
travel as far down the level as possible. He mustn't drop off the bottom
of the screen (move too fast) or hit the ceiling (move too slowly). If
he falls off the bottom, he will instantly fall to his death. If he hits
the ceiling, he will be hurt. There are many other obstacles (types of
platform) within the different worlds which Monkey can either avoid or
use to his advantage. Experiment!

There are 4 different powerups in Primate Plunge: the heart, the
parachute, the jumping bean, and the jetpack. The heart restores
Monkey's health to full, and in fact makes him invulnerable to damage
for about 1 second. The parachute limits his terminal velocity, allowing
him to float slowly down or across to harder to reach areas. The jumping
bean allows Monkey to jump up and down on any platform as if it were a
trampoline (very useful on hot rock!) Finally, the jetpack allows Monkey
to fly, using controlled rocket bursts.

2. SCORES AND STAR RATINGS For each world there is a pass mark in order
to progress to the next one, or in the case of the last world, to
complete the game. This required score is shown on the world selection
screen, and turns into a high score once you have completed it.

There are also ratings from one to five stars after you have completed
the world. There are five more score marks as you progress through the
level which allow you to get a rating for that world. As you pass the
score marks, the appropriate number of stars will be shown at the top of
the screen. Your rating for each world is shown at the bottom of the
world selection screen.

You are also awarded a medal every time you manage to complete the whole
game on a new star rating.

3. FAQ Q: Primate Plunge looks tiny on my high res display! I can't see
what I'm doing! A: Yes, a lot of people have found this, but I'm afraid
that there wasn't really any easy solution for this - I simply didn't
have the time to implement a way of enlarging the window. As a quick
fix, you can go into "Universal Access" in the System Preferences and
turn on zoom.

Q: Sometimes when I try to land on a platform, Monkey just goes straight
through! A: Monkey will only attempt to grab onto a platform which you
have not already passed - do not go below any platform you intend to
grab onto. Be particularly careful of this on the last level, as the
jetpack makes moving upwards much easier.

4. CREDITS AND THANKS, AND A LITTLE ABOUT THE MAKING The original
concept for Primate Plunge came from a game called NS-Shaft, which is
for MacOS Classic, and can be found at
http://www.nagi-p.com/eng/nsshaft.html

I wanted to expand slightly upon the NS-Shaft concept, and wanted to
make the game MacOS X native. My other main goal was to make a small
desktop game which DIDN'T run fullscreen. Although fullscreen games are
great, I miss being able to play a little bit of a game, pause it, do
some work, unpause it, and carry on playing! Sometimes I feel like I
want to have a quick bit of fun in a game, not spend too long on it, and
not devote the whole of my Mac's screen to playing it.

Primate Plunge began development and design just before uDevGame began.
About half way through the project I decided that rather than try and
fruitlessly generate some kind of revenue from selling the game as
shareware, I would enter it into the uDevGame 2003 competition.

The game is written purely in C, using the SDL library for graphics and
the SDL_Mixer library added on for sound and music. This is in fact my
first major completed project both in C and on the Macintosh, although I
have finished another game called Triaction, which was made in a game
programming language Blitz3D (www.blitzbasic.com) for Windows. But of
course I'd rather develop for the Mac any day :-)

Primate Plunge was created by: Joseph Humfrey (all design, programming,
graphics) primateplunge@aelius.com http://www.aelius.com/ Jens Nilsson (sound,
game music) public@fadeoutstudio.com http://www.fadeoutstudio.com/
Shigeki Miyashita (title music - thanks to iDevGame's resources section)
http://www6.shizuokanet.ne.jp/~miya/