Thrust3D
========
Post-apocalyptic Jet Set Willy, set in a 3D nuclear power station.
Aim
===
In the year 2084, humanity's first nuclear power station on Mars suffered a total meltdown. Radioactive debris were
spilt across almost a thousand square kilometres of Martian land. The reactor building itself stayed structurally
intact, but was filled with radioactive particles spewed out by the core. Your job is to pilot a small
remote-controlled decontamination vehicle around the power station complex, collecting all of the radioactive particles.
Unfortunately the lander craft suffers from almost comically low fuel efficiency, and its fuel cells become depleted
after only a few hundred metres of flying. Your craft's electrostatic shielding system is powered from the same energy
source, and will draw a larger current when necessary to deflect radiation away from its sensitive electronics. Hitting
any stationary object in flight will put a huge momentary strain on the batteries and take a sizable chunk out of your
fuel reserve.
Luckily for you, there are a great many energy platforms distributed around the building to recharge the service robots
which inhabited the area. Your vehicle can land on these platforms to recharge, and they are the only objects which it
is safe to come into contact with.
Background
==========
You may remember Jet Set Willy from many years ago. It was a 2D platform game in which you guided a little character
around a huge maze of different rooms, dodging obstacles and finding secret passages while collecting little flashing
debris from all over the game's abstract world.
In the mid 90s, I played a game from a magazine cover disk (Archimedes World I think, but I really can't remember)
called "Lander". No, not the demo version of Zarch, this was a completely different game where you piloted a small 2D
spaceship round a vast world collecting glowing radioactive debris from over a hundred separate rooms. The spaceship
part was just like the many Lunar Lander variants you have probably played, but the exploration of a vast world appealed
to me for the same reasons that I enjoyed Jet Set Willy many years before. In Lander, just like in Jet Set Willy. the
game would theoretically end when all the debris had been collected. In practice, this was virtually impossible due to
the sheer size and complexity of the game. The attraction of the game was not in winning it, but in being able to
explore a seemingly never-ending world of pure imagination.
In creating Thrust3D I wanted to recreate that feeling of exploration and imagination, but using the capabilities of
modern graphics hardware to heighten the feeling. I learnt a lot of OpenGL graphics programming and rendering
techniques in the course of my doctoral studies for visualising my research results, but none of this gave me an excuse
to use any of the advanced capabilities available. Thrust3D was an outlet for this, and here is the result.
Installation
============
For installation details, see the 'INSTALL' file. Basically it's just the usual ./configure / make / sudo make install.
3D Graphics Acceleration
========================
You will almost certainly need working 3D acceleration (direct rendering) and a vaguely modern graphics card to play
Thrust3D smoothly. To see if you have this, run 'glxinfo' in a terminal and see if it says 'direct rendering: yes' or
not. If not, you most likely need to install 3D drivers for your graphics card. Linux drivers for NVIDIA and ATI cards
come from the respective manufacturers' websites. For Intel cards, look up the DRI project. Drivers might be included
in your distribution.
Thrust3D runs at full speed, but only just (about 14 frames per second), on my ATI Mobility Radeon X600 card. This is
the primary development system. It also works fine on my NVIDIA Quadro FX540. Both of these are 'entry-level' cards
with fairly comparable specifications. If you have something beefier, great - it'll probably munch this for breakfast.
If you have a lower spec card, you can still play: If Thrust3D detects that a certain OpenGL feature isn't available,
it should disable its use and fall back gracefully. You may need to turn the resolution down (for example, by starting
the game from a command prompt with 'thrust3d --resolution 640') to get smooth play from a low-end card. You might
also need to disable certain OpenGL features manually if the card advertises things which it technically supports but
whose implementation causes trouble: see the output from 'thrust3d --help' for details of things you can disable and
experiment until it works.
Music
=====
You can put some suitable background music as an Ogg/Vorbis file at $PREFIX/share/thrust3d/sounds/music.ogg ('$PREFIX'
is probably '/usr/local' unless you've done something different when you typed ./configure. If you don't know what
this means, don't worry). 'Radioactivity' by Kraftwerk is particularly appropriate. Obviously I can't distribute a copy
of that material with the game, so you'll have to obtain your own copy.
Controls
========
Space - thrust upwards
Left arrow - turn left
Right arrow - turn right
Up arrow - thrust forwards
Down arrow - thrust backwards
Mouse - change viewing angle (press 'r' to reset to default)
Mouse button 1 - thrust upwards
'w' - enter wireframe mode (this is not useful)
'e' - exit wireframe mode
"Mouse button 1" is usually the left mouse button, unless you're left-handed like me. Controlling the view direction
and vertical thrust with the left hand while controlling the lateral motion on the keyboard with the right hand works
very nicely with a left-handed trackball setup like mine.
Feedback?
=========
I'm keen to hear what you think of this game. Email me on taw27@cam.ac.uk
Legal
=====
Copyright (c) Thomas White <taw27@cam.ac.uk>
Source material for some texture images from http://www.cgtextures.com/
Some audio source material from http://www.freesoundfiles.tintagel.net/
Thrust3D is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Thrust3D is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Thrust3D. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
