Working with the Plateau Program

Getting Started:

Plateau is a DarkBASIC program that lets you create a 'plateau world' and then roam around in it. To begin:   Download  Plat.Zip   (847 Kb)

Now unzip this file into its own folder and have a look at the ReadMe.txt file for an explanation of what is in the included files.

What to do next:

1. Make your own plateau world. Call it Plat???.txt where ??? is replaced by your initials.

2. Download the trial version of DarkBASIC from: www.DarkBASIC.com  and install it onto your computer in the default folder -- C:\Program Files\Dark Basic Software -- I will call this the DarkBASIC folder from now on.

3. Download Dark EDIT from the same web site and install this into the DarkBASIC folder.

4. Make a link on your desktop that points to the DarkBASIC folder. Make a link in the DarkBASIC folder that starts Dark EDIT. Now you can start Dark EDIT with two mouse clicks.

5. Make a subfolder in the DarkBASIC folder called Plateau. Copy the files that you have already unzipped in Getting Started to this new folder.

6. Run Dark EDIT and open the Plateau program. Now you are ready to make some minor changes that will help get you comfortable with using Dark EDIT and DarkBASIC.

Programming Tasks:

1. Plateau consists of three files. You will only be working with the file called Plateau and will find that this is well documented. Read the whole file and understand what it does, then execute it.

2. Drop out of Dark EDIT, get into the Plateau sub folder in the DarkBASIC folder and rename the file Plat0.txt to be oPlat0.txt. Now rerun Dark EDIT, reload Plateau and execute it again. This time your world will come right up and you are now ready to make some changes.

3. Change the program so that it has your name instead of mine as the Author at the bottom of the screen.

4. Increase the speed of camera movement to 15 for the forward speed and 10 less than that for backward movement.

5. Change the program so that pressing ' f ' (faster) makes the camera move faster, and pressing ' s ' (slower) makes it move slower. Don't let the speed go to less than 5 for either forward or backward movement. Report the speed near the bottom of the screen, and add documentation for the new commands at the left of the screen.

6. Notice how the sky pans as the camera does. Now tilt the camera down using the mouse. Notice how the sky does not tilt? Fix this bug.

7. Implement a toggle caller ' r ' (resolution) that switches between showing the side text as now, and a whole screen mode where the plateau world image fills the entire 800x600
screen.

8. Implement a 'night mode' toggle whereby pressing ' n ' (night) changes the sky to a night sky and drops the ambient light level to an appropriate level. You can find sky textures here
on the Internet.

9. Think of your own improvement to the Plateau program and implement them in the code. Document your new feature somewhere on the screen.

10. Read the files DBExtensions and LoadPlateau to see how all of the functions in these files work.

Ok, if you managed to do all that you are making excellent progress. Now it is time to add objects to your world.