Depot Games: TPong Mini

Current Version: 1.1

Project Status: Completed

Links: Web Site

Category: Pong

Developers: ITM

Number of Players: 1 (Split Screen)

Ports: Windows

Source Code: Available

Author's Description: TPONG 1.1 MINI (20/09/2003)
by Emeric Poupon (aka ITM)

I) TPONG

Hi! It's strange, but I never thought I'd have the idea to make this game someday... and it went on to be the first game I've ever completed...
So I thought about a new concept, because the original was VERY primitive. Then I had an idea: why not make the AI unbeatable? It would be entertaining to play for as long as possible against him! So, I decided to create TPong. After that, I added some new modes like Human vs Human and Computer vs Computer and even 2 Humans vs Computer, but you cannot get on the high score table when playing in these modes.
I also added some difficulty modes. Now you can choose the mode you want in the option menu. There are three available modes:
A) Regular Mode. This is the easiest mode.
B) Hard Mode. Yes, this mode is very hard, so don't try it before trying Regular Mode. Otherwise you'll get bored losing all the time and not scoring higher than 25.
C) Unlimited Speed mode. As you might have noticed, there are some speed limits in TPong in vertical and horizontal directions. This mode deactivates these limits. In this mode, AI can lose, owing to the speed limits of the rackets.

II) TPONG MINI

Why TPong MINI? Well, I once tried to set Tpong in 320*240 in order to see how fast it is. I was very amazed since the game was really great fun like that! So I decided to release a special version... In fact, I've just changed some things. Indeed most of the changes I've made are cosmetic ones. I also reduced the high score table to 5 entries instead of 10.
Be careful : Regular mode is far harder than before... I don't even mention "Hard" and "Unlimited speed" mode, they're both nearly unplayable!!
Here is the result, lemme me know what you think about it :)

III) RULES

The goal is REALLY easy - just try not to lose the ball! A lot of people told me they couldn't play this game because it was too difficult. I don't think so. At the beginning, I couldn't score higher than 40 either. But after some practice, I really got better at it. Have a look at the high score table, you'll see ;)
If you're proud of all the high scores you get, please don't hesitate to send me the file "scores[h or u].sco" and I'll add your entries to the high score table distributed with the game!
Oh, another thing: the AI isn't cheating at all! It just manages to anticipate everything and to add some effects on the ball.

IV) CONTROLS

Here are the default controls.

* Human vs Computer
(This is so easy, I don't know why I'm even mentioning them here)

[UP]: UP arrow
[DOWN]: DOWN arrow

* Human vs Human

Player one (left):
[UP]: Q
[DOWN]: A

Player Two (right):
[UP]: Keypad 9
[DOWN]: Keypad 6

* You can redefine these controls in the options menu.

* You can take a screenshot by pressing [F12]. The screenshot will be saved in "Out.bmp"

V) GAME CONFIGURATION

I don't have time to make TPong figure out everything for your system automatically, so instead, you can change the options for yourself in "config.ini".

[gfx]
method = x
x should be:
1 for Double Buffering
2 for Page Flipping
3 for Triple Buffering

If your computer can handle Triple Buffering or Page flipping, choose one of them!
For Double Buffering, there's a special option:

enable_vsync = x
1 Activated. (This makes FULLSCREEN mode look better)
0 Deactivated. (fps rate will be higher, but you may get tearing; if you don't like it, turn this back off).

depth = x
x should be:
15, 16, 24 or 32

This depends on your system. If the game says it doesn't support the color depth, change it here. 15 or 16 are recommended.
WARNING! This option is available only in FULLSCREEN MODE. In windowed mode, the color depth will be the same as that of the desktop.

windowed = x
1 The game is launched in a window
0 The game runs in FULLSCREEN mode (better for making record scores I think...)

Note that the DOS version will not start in windowed mode.

[sfx]
sounds = x
1 Activated
0 Deactivated

sfx_volume = x
where x is a value from 0 to 255
255 -> loud
0 -> off

reverse = x
1 Swap the left and right channels
0 Don't swap them

music = x
(This option is NOT ACTIVE yet, because there's no music)

music_volume = x
(This option is NOT ACTIVE yet, because there's no music)

VI)REQUIREMENTS

It works "fine" on my Celeron 333 with a poor gfx card -About 85fps in windowed mode on Windows 98SE (16 bit colors).
However, it's by far better with my other gfx card -Geforce2MX- I get about 850 fps in the same conditions.
If the game is jerky on your computer, I would be interested to know your hardware configuration :). But try to alter the gfx methods to increase your rendering speed.

VII) TPONG SOURCES

The sources are available. The current makefile only works with Mingw32. The sources should work on compilers supported by Allegro... It compiled fine on BeOS and Linux! It's great fun, and it works perfectly. As for compiling on UNIX systems (like BeOS or Linux), just rename makefile.unix to makefile and type make to compile it, and it should be OK. DOS version obviously doesn't accept windowed mode, so edit config.ini to fix the problem.
Huh, you still don't know how to compile it?

Go to -> tpong/src
and just type:

make

The new executable file will be created in the tpong/ directory. (With a nice icon on Windows versions)

VIII) CONTACT ME

You can visit my website if you want or just send me an e-mail:

E-Mail : itmfr AT yahoo DOT fr
Website: http://iteme.free.fr/

IX) VERSION HISTORY

*v1.1 (20/09/03) First public release.

X) CREDITS

* TPong is made with the great library ALLEGRO http://alleg.sf.net/ which is freeware.
* It has been compiled with MINGW32, which is freeware too.
* For BeOS, it has been compiled with GCC 2.95.3, which is also freeware...
* Thanks Laurent KNEPFLER, who brought me nearly all the gfx http://www.chez.com/kloks/ (site is in French)
* The whole of the Allegro community http://www.allegro.cc/
* Joseph "MajorTom" Bridgewater and especially Ben "entheh" Davis for proofreading the English :) Major edit by Cat (AngelCat) DX
* My brother Kevin who brought some nice ideas.

Downloads

Name	Comments	Size	Date
tpongmini.zip	Windows Binary & Source Code	372,287	05/28/2007 5:52 PM