
2005 by Sascha Willems
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Readme |
This is the readme.html for my contest entry. It contains some information on the story (kind of, since it has no real story) and (which is much more important) what you need to play it and how to play/use it.
If you want to use/play around with the source, please refer to this file!
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License |
This software program is distributed without charge and may be freely distributed in its original form as long as the author of it grants you the permission to do so. The copyright and any intellectual property relating to this program remain the property of the author. If you're allowed to distribute it, the distribution MUST contain all files from the original package.
Disclaimer of Warranty:
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, author provides this software on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License.
Limitation of Liability :
In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall the author be liable for any damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the software (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if the author has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
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Background |
The Second World War was the first big war that was not only decided on land, but also with heavy help from aircrafts (e.g. Germany's Blitzkrieg at the beginning of the war). In "Jagdgeschwader" you're a brave pilot of a war aircraft and you're pitted against another high skilled WW2-pilot. Your goal : Kill him, or be killed. You have the choice between different planes and different scenarios, but you don't have all that modern fuss like homing air-to-air missiles or automatic targeting systems. It's all up to your skills and how good you are at ripping the enemy apart with your machine guns!
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Credits |
Credit where credit is due :
Vincent Moyet, for letting me use his excellent aircraft models in my game.
M van der Honing (Noeska), for his great 3DS-loader.
Kevin MacLeod, for the background music (which is public domain).
Dominique Louis, for organizing this great contest!
Julio Jerez, and the rest of the Newton Team for Newton Game Dynamics.
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System requirements |
Please note that these are just rough estimations, and that I only tested the game on two different systems. So if it runs too slow on your PC, please reduce the resolution and lower the drawing distance and disable reflections. Especially the later will boost performance. Also note that performance usually get's worse when playing split-screen. And last but not least : the graphics card matters more than the CPU, which means that a slower system with a fast graphics card will play the game better than a High-End CPU with a cheap graphics card.
Requirements (see bracktes for optimal settings) :
- CPU with 1 GHz (2.5 GHz)
- 256 MBytes RAM (512 MBytes)
- Graphicscard with 32 MByte Memory that supports OpenGL (128 MByte Memory)
- A soundcard that supports DirectSound (the game will work without it)
- A network card, if you want to play over LAN
- Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
- About 75 MBytes of free disk space
I've tested the game on an ATI-graphics card (Radeon 9700) and two NVidia cards (GeForce4 Ti4400 and GeForce 4 MX440), and all ran it fine. So it should at least display correct on almost all systems, but please (as always) keep your drivers current. If you get an access violation upon start of the game, you most likely still have the default graphics drivers installed that came with Windows XP. Those are stripped of OpenGL-support, so the game can't work. If that's the case, please update those drivers.
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Configuration |
The game itself can only be configured using the "configtool.exe", which let's you adjust different things from resolution to network ports. If you close the tool (button "close") the settings are saved and used in the game.
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First start |
When you start the game for the first time, a small window will pop up and tell you that the game needs to build serialization collision data for the maps. This is done only once, but will reduce loading times for the scenarios by a very huge amount (without this, loading levels would take at least double the time than with this data).
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Gameplay |
Gameplay should be easy to get : It's not much more than a one-on-one deathmatch with airplanes. Both players can choose from different airplanes and they than fight each other over a given scenario. Since those air planes are from WW2, they don't have any modern weapon/computersystems that are common nowadays. You just have a single weaponsystem, the machine guns of your plane. Your goal then is to destroy your enemy only using those machine guns, but pay attention : They tend to get hot very fast and then need to cool down before you can use them again. So don't just fire blindly, and also don't forget that machine guns are neither precise nor do they have a very long range.
If you've destroyed your enemy he'll loose one live and respawn on a random place again. If one player has lost all his lifes, the game ends.
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Starting a game |
Jagdgeschwader can only be played with two human players, an AI for computer enemies is not implemented. You can play it either :
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with two players on one PC (called "head-to-head") : The screen get's split horizontally and the players use the controllers that are set in the configuration tool.
- two players on different PCs over LAN : One player starts the server and selects airplanes and scenario. After he started the game, the game will wait until the other player will connect as a client.
If you're connecting as a client you'll have to tell the game at what IP the server was started. Please note that some firewalls may block the game or the port used, so you maybe need to take care of this. The default port for the game is 5000, and client and server need to use the same port.
Note : The LAN-Modus has not been tested very much and may (or better : will) not play as smooth as the splitscreen mode.
After you have chosen on how to play you get to the screen where you can setup the game (except when you're starting as a client, where the server tells those settings). You choose the plane for player 1 (upper player/server) on the left side (use the arrows) and the plane for player 2 (lower player/client) on the right side. The two arrows on the bottom of the screen are used to scroll between the different scenarios.
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Controls |
The aircrafts can either be controlled by using the keyboard, or with a plugged-in joystick (in case you own one). To change what aircraft is controlled by what controller, please use the configuration tool.
Keyboard controls :
- Cursor left/right : Roll
- Cursor up/down : Pitch
- Q/W : Yaw
- +/- : Change speed
- Space : Fire
Joystick controls (Note : The stick should have some common features like a third axis and throttle) :
- X-Axis : Roll
- Y-Axis : Pitch
- Z-Axis : Yaw
- Throttle : Change speed
- Button 1 : Fire
Other controls :
- F1 : Player 1 : Set camera close behind plane (default)
- F2 : Player 1 : Set camera far behind plane
- F3 : Player 1 : Set camera behind cockpit
- F4 : Player 1 : Set camera free rotate (hold mousebutton and drag to rotate, mousewheel to zoom)
- F5 : Player 2 : Set camera close behind plane (default)
- F6 : Player 2 : Set camera far behind plane
- F7 : Player 2 : Set camera behind cockpit
- F8 : Player 2 : Set camera free rotate (hold mousebutton and drag to rotate, mousewheel to zoom)
- F9 : Toggle background music
- f : Toggle FPS-display
- Escape : Quit current game and return to main menu
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User interface |
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Gauges
You can see these gauges in the lower left corner of your screen/viewport. Number 1 shows your current speed, number 2 informs you about the temperature of your machine guns and number 3 shows your how much energy you have left. This circle get's smaller as you loose health, and your plane will start to throw smoke/fire when you're very low on health. |
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Map
This small map is an overview of the current scenario and can be found in the lower right corner of your screen. The green rotating arrow shows your position, the red one your enemy's position. The yellow dots indicate positions for dropped bonus crates.
Note : If you leave the map or fly to high, you'll start to loose your health very quickly, so try to avoid it. |
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Lifes
Located in the upper left corner of the screen, you can see how many lifes you have left. If you loose one it'll be grayed out. |
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Bonus crates |
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From time to time bonus crates fall from the sky (you'll hear a plane dropping them) which you can pick up. Each crate contains one of the following bonus items, but be quick as they explode when they hit the floor. Also note that some bonus items add up (like cooling and speed) and that you loose all collected boni if you die. |
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Life
If you have less than the maximum amount of lifes, this will give you an additional one.
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Cooler machineguns
This adds a better cooling to your machine gun, so that you can fire for a longer time and your guns cool down faster.
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Repair
Repairs your plane to full health.
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Speed
Gives you a nice engine boost that speeds your aircraft up.
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Personal thanks/greetings |
Yes, even programmers tend to have at least *some* real life, and so I hereby dedicate this game to the following people :
Katja (Danke fürs Zuhören!), Volker und Tina, Petra, Björn, Timo.
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All contents Copyright © 2005 by Sascha Willems (www.delphigl.de) |