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Getting Started: Plateau4 extends the Plateau3 program. In addition to bothersome cleaning robots and a vicious trio of ants, the action sounds in the game have been improved and midi music plays in the background to make Plateau into a real game. To load the source and related data files: Download Plat4.zip (1.14 MB)
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. 1. Run Plateau4 from Dark EDIT. Play and beat the level. By doing this, you see the code in action and that will make it much easier to understand. 2. All the new stuff is in the Plateau4.dba file. The included files contain routines that were developed in earlier versions of Plateau. Some of these were moved out of the main file, but they function exactly as they did before. By examining Plateau4, you will understand how the monsters, the midi background music and the game sounds were made to work. 3. In reading the new bits of Plateau4 you will see that adding the midi music and sounds was trivial. The monsters are another story. I found that when the ant was added to the normal object collision code the performance of the program suffered. The solution was to let the robots and the ants worry about themselves in the DoToDoList routine, and for them to use mathematical collision detection instead of relying on the standard Dark Basic collision detection mechanisms. Standard collision detection was probably impacted by the many parts that make up the ants. By using a different technique, the ants were added without affection program performance. 4. The cleaning robots were made with 3D Canvas, in much the same way as the bridges, walls and other objects that we first saw in Plateau2. The animation of the robots is under programmatic control, and although the math is a little mind boggling, the net result is easily understood. Take a look at the DoRobot function if you like a puzzle.
5. The ants were miserable to create, and took days of messing around until I stumble on a tutorial on the web that explained how to create animated models using 3D Canvas Pro. It is lots of fun once you latch onto the principals involved. When the ant was finally done, it was easy to add to the program and animate, but, as mentioned above, slowed things down considerably until I turned collision detection off. Now the ants work well and chase you around as you try to complete the level. 6. Pete created two of the midi files using Cakewalk Express, a piano roll based music authoring system that came bundled with his sound board. You might check out Cakewalk Home Studio 9 at the Cakewalk site. This looks to be very good indeed, and costs $80 from Amazon - no free demo though. Search for Cakewalk in Amazon to find what is currently available. 7. I did the other midi used in the game. This is a strange concoction called Nazca. I used Midi Orchestrator, by Voyetra -- another freebee included with a sound card. Their current offerings along this line are Digital Orchestrator Plus and Pro. The Plus version looks plenty good and goes for $40. A limited demo is available. 8. For the sounds, I used N-Track Studio, but either of the modern midi products mentioned above could have handled the job. FruityLoops is also worth a look if you want to use techno background music for your game. Now all that is needed are nice splash and ending screens and the project will be complete.
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