Space Plumber 1.0.1 - The 3D Game

Main documentation
(C) Angel Ortega 1997

Index

     What's this?
     License/Disclaimer
     System Requirements
     Background story
     The menu
     I'm inside. What must I do now?
     Command line parameters
     Credits & Acknowledgements
     More info

What's this?

     Space Plumber is a first-person 3D game, that is, a game where
     you see what the character you are controlling sees. Your main
     goal is to save a sinking processing plant from being swamped by
     activating the water extraction pumps spread around the
     corridors.

     There exists two implementations of Space Plumber, one that runs
     on DOS / Windows 3.11 / Windows 95 boxes and another one that
     runs on Linux machines. The Linux version has no sound support.
     You must have the version that suit your operating system in
     order to play.

License/Disclaimer

     This version (1.0.1) is released as freeware. I (Angel Ortega)
     have the copyright. It can be distributed freely, but it must not
     be modified in any way and must be accompanied by this document,
     in plain text or html format.

     This software is provided 'as is', without warranty of any kind,
     express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties
     of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and
     noninfringement. In no event shall the author be liable for any
     claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of
     contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in
     connection with the software or the use or other dealings on the
     software.

     For any comment about the program, please contact the author,
     Angel Ortega, or visit the Space Plumber Home Page at
     http://www.ddnet.es/personales/johannes/splumber .

System Requirements

     Space Plumber runs well on a Pentium machine with at least 8 Mb
     of RAM. On a 486DX/2, it works a bit slow and must be run in
     motion blur or low detail modes. It has not been tested on slower
     machines. It definitely needs a math coprocessor. Both DOS and
     Linux versions are basically the same.

     DOS Version

          The DOS version has been tested over Windows 3.11,
          Windows 95 and standalone DOS successfully. A
          SoundBlaster card is recommended for huge fun. You must
          have the BLASTER environment variable correctly set to
          make the sound system work. If you use Windows 95, this
          variable must already be set. If you use DOS or Win
          3.1, maybe you have an utility that defines it for you
          or have to fill it manually, but if you ran QUAKE and
          you heard something, then it's ok and you'll have
          nothing to do.

          To install Space Plumber, just uncompress the package
          to a directory you like. As it is a .zip file, You must
          have pkunzip or unzip to uncompress it.

     Linux Version

          The Linux version requires the dynamic library svgalib
          installed in the system. It has been proved with
          versions 1.2.4 to 1.2.10 successfully. This library
          usually comes with most Linux distributions, but if
          this is not your case, take a look at the usual
          Internet Linux archives (If you ever had run DOOM in
          your Linux, you have this lib installed). The binary is
          in a.out format (I don't have elf support on my Linux
          box) and has been tested on Linux kernels 1.2.x, 1.3.x
          and 2.x. You have to be root to run it, or chown/setuid
          root to allow other users to play.

          There is no sound support in this Linux version. Sorry.

          To install Space Plumber, just uncompress the package
          to a directory you like, for example under
          /usr/games/splumber. It is compressed with gzip and
          archived with tar, as the 99.9% of the Linux packages
          available. If in a trouble, look in the man pages.

Background story

     22nd century, somewhere inside planet system X-239. This recently
     discovered group of planets, all of them with a surface covered
     completely by water, has become one of the richest source for the
     mining industry. Powerful companies had installed a vast
     processing plant network all over these water worlds, carrying
     there all kinds of technical professionals, engineers, scientists
     and plumbers. You are part of a plumber patrol that travels from
     planet to planet trying to solve problems in these wealth
     processors.

     But as all successful enterprises, these companies spend little
     money on employees.

     When the alarm sounds, you run to your console to read the
     incoming message. One of the biggest processing plants has a
     severe fault in its pressure system, letting pass the water
     inside. But, due to a recent staff rearranging, you are the only
     space plumber available at this time to make the things work.
     'The only one?', you ask to yourself. And the trouble is hard:
     you have to run through the corridors, find the water extraction
     pumps and activate them manually, one by one. 'Manually!?', you
     ask again. But this isn't all: some levels have a security system
     that locks all the pumps. In these levels you must find first ALL
     the consoles, deactivate them, and then activate the pumps. 'Why
     this fu**y security system is not broken?', you wonder. Well,
     life's that hard. And expect the light system to be 'unstable' in
     some of the areas. There is a total of 30 levels in the plant.

The menu

     The menu appears after a brief introduction, showing five
     options.

     Begin

          This option begins playing level 1. When you finish a
          level (activating all pumps and deactivating all
          consoles, if available), an access code for the next
          level will be shown. Write down these code, it will let
          you go directly to that level next time you run the
          program. After resolving a level the next one is
          launched automatically.

     Go Level

          This option lets you jump to one level. It ask you to
          enter the level number and its access code. After this,
          it works the same than the previous menu option.

     Custom

          This option lets you create a maze on your own. A
          random map will be generated for you. Here you can tune
          some parameters in order to play a customized area.
          There is a brief description on screen about each one
          of these parameters, feel free to experiment.

     Help

          Shows a screen with a quick reference of the keys used
          in the game.

     Quit

          Quits. (No! Really?)

I'm inside. What must I do now?

     You're inside! Well, it isn't much different from any other
     first-person games you've already played. You see what Space
     Plumber sees: stairs, corridors, rooms. Use the cursor keys to
     move forward (up) and backward (down), the left and right arrows
     to turn. Pushing also any of the shift keys lets you run (note:
     only if your feet aren't inside the water). As the water level
     goes up, you tend to move slowly, and if you are completely under
     the water, you can swim in 3D freely, using the keys mentioned
     above plus the 'C' and 'D' (or SPACE) keys to swim down and up,
     respectively (you must take your head out the water to take
     oxygen, if the ceiling lets you).

     You'll identify easily the pumps: they are on walls, and their
     aspect is that of metallic, cross or round shaped, water valves.
     The consoles appear also on walls and they look like a bricky
     computer monitor. To switch all of them on, just walk over and
     touch them (there is no 'use' key).

     You'll see a countdown timer in the lower right of the screen. It
     is just the estimated total sinking time; the game doesn't finish
     when it takes to zero, only when you die (on having 0% of oxygen)
     or win (activate all pumps). Note that the levels never sink
     completely: somewhere there is a little oxygen bag (a room not
     completely full of water) you can use to survive.

     Another thing: when you activate all pumps, the water extraction
     system begins to work and the water level starts to decrease. You
     DON'T resolve a level until the water goes below you; you may die
     (without oxygen) after activating all pumps but before the water
     lets you breath.

     The F1 key set / unset the low detail mode. This mode is faster,
     but the overall look of the rendered screen will be worse. The F3
     key activate / deactivate what is known as motion blur mode, that
     is, a hybrid mode that renders the screen in low detail when the
     player is moving and in high detail when he is stopped. Try this
     one first if your computer is slow, and remember you must
     deactivate low detail to use motion blur mode.

     The F2 key activate/deactivate the gamma correction. If your game
     looks too dark, hit this key. Some (old) monitors seem to show
     Space Plumber too shadowy.

     Finally, you can temporally pause the game pushing the 'P' key
     and exit to main menu hitting ESC.

Command line parameters

     Space Plumber may be run by simply typing splumber and hitting
     RETURN. Anyway, there's a lot of parameters that can be used to
     tune game performance.

     In this document only a small set of the parameters are
     described. For a comprehensive list, take a look at the Space
     Plumber Home Page.

     Space Plumber parameters may be used as command-line arguments or
     by storing them with a standard text editor in the startup file,
     splumber.rc, one per line (this file must be in the same
     directory as the program). Their format is variable=value.

     Parameters

          low_detail=[1 or 0]
               Activates low detail rendering mode by default.

          use_motion_blur=[1 or 0]
               Activates motion blur rendering mode by default.

          use_gamma_correct=[1 or 0]
               Activates gamma correction by default.

          gc_level=[2..5]
               Set the gamma correction level. By default is 2.

          no_sound=[1 or 0]
               Deactivates the sound. There's no way of
               deactivating the sound inside the game.

          wanted_sample_frequency={integer}
               Set the desired sampling frequency. By default is
               11025. It has been detected in an old 8bit
               SoundBlaster Pro that this default frequency
               degrades sound quality (specially low frequency
               noises). If you experiment this, try a smaller
               frequency, as 5500 or so. This parameter and the
               previous one are ignored in Linux version.

     Examples

          Running Space Plumber in low detail mode:

                  splumber low_detail=1

          Running it without sound, with a higher gamma
          correction:

                  splumber no_sound=1 gc_level=4 use_gamma_correct=1

Credits & Acknowledgements

        * Coding by Angel Ortega ( johannes@mail.ddnet.es). The DOS
          version was built on a Pentium 133 with 32Mb RAM and Windows
          95, using DJGPP 2.01 and MedPro 2.0 text editor. The Linux
          version was built on a i486 DX/2 with 12Mb and Linux 1.2.13,
          using gcc version 2.6.3, SVGAlib 1.2.10 and vi text editor.

        * Graphics by Angel Ortega ( johannes@mail.ddnet.es). Rendered
          using Persistence Of Vision Raytracer (POV) 3.0 for Windows.
          Other graphics and textures were taken from the CDROM 'Free
          multimedia resources from the Internet', as well as most
          sounds.

        * The intro and menu music is a fragment of Neptune: the
          mystic from the suite The Planets Opus 32 by Gustav Holst.

        * The sound code is based on the Sound-Blaster Library for
          DJGPP 2.0 from Joel H. Hunter (email
          jhunter@kendaco.telebyte.net).

        * The V-Dub truetype font used in some of the graphics (mainly
          the menu) was made by Ray Larabie. The screen font
          resembling V-Dub was made by Angel Ortega with KgeFont 1.0.

        * Special thanks to DJ Delorie, Charles Sandmann and GNU
          (DJGPP), Linus Torvalds (Linux), the POV Team (POV) and to
          all people that release awesome software to the world
          without expecting money in return and feel that developing
          good computer programs is a form of art expression.

        * Also special thanks to Jose Luis Molina and friends for the
          interest and ideas, and family for the time Space Plumber
          robbed to them.

More info

     So you want more info about this jewel? Visit the Space Plumber
     Home Page. As said above, you can have a complete reference of
     the parameters (including cheating ones!) in English and Spanish;
     a comprehensive documentation of the file formats used in the
     game, and more documents to come, including a complete revision
     (with source code examples) of the techniques used in the
     development of the game. May be even new levels and patches!

     Hope you enjoy playing Space Plumber as I did making it.

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(C) Angel Ortega 23/09/1997
