Plouf! is an Amiga game I wrote a long time ago.
It is a top-down 2-or-3-players game which features people sitting on floats, trying to sink the other players by throwing sea urchins at them.
You control your float like an RC car: you can accelerate, slow down and rotate left or right. The islands on the screen are randomly generated, so each game looks different.
You start with a very limited number of sea urchins, so you need to collect them as they appear randomly in the sea. You can also grab float bonuses which increase the strength of your float by one point.
To run Plouf! You need either an Amiga 500 or an emulator. On Linux it runs fine with E-UAE or FS-UAE. I expect it to work without problems on other platforms where a version of UAE is available.
By default player 1 uses the joystick, other players use the keyboard. This can
be changed in the Options menu.
Controls per players are:
- Player 1: Joystick 1 (default) - or - 5, 2, 1, 3, Numpad Return
- Player 2: Joystick 2 - or - E, D, O, P, Space (default)
- Player 3: Arrow keys, Return
While it is possible to play a 3-player game solely on the Amiga keyboard, using joysticks is highly recommended.
Plouf! was originally released as shareware, but license has been changed to GPLv3 or later.
Plouf! was created using AMOS, a game-oriented Basic language. It was released as a shareware in 1994: a floppy disk of the demo version (limited to 4 games) could be obtained from a few Amiga freeware and shareware floppy disk dealers.
To my knowledge, it has never been made available on the Internet. The floppy disks containing the source code stayed for 18 years together with my Amiga in a storage room.
Some time ago I decided to release it as free software. I bought a NULL-modem cable and transfered the source code to my laptop. I then adjusted a few things, got rid of the demo limitations, translated all visible strings to English and released it.
The source code for the game is in the plouf.AMOS file. Note that .AMOS
files are binary format, bundling together the source code and the program
assets. You need the AMOS Editor to read them.
There was also an asset editor named "Plouf! Config". This editor was available
with the full version. Its source code is in plouf config.AMOS.
All visible strings have been translated to English, but I did not go through the trouble of translating the source code: all comments, variables and procedure names are still in French.
(This section is more like a personal note in case I decide to work on Plouf! again)
Make sure AMOS Compiler has been installed on AMOS main disk.
- Start AMOS
- Open Compiler.AMOS
- Click the top-right button until it reads "Cli"
- Click the "Compile" button
- As source code: use
Plouf.AMOS - As destination: enter
Plouf!
