The Legend of Final Treasure Hunter Saga Turbo

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Contents:
   I.  Background
  II.  System Requirements
 III.  Setup
  IV.  Introduction
   V.  Menu Screen
  VI.  Game Play
 VII.  Strategy
VIII.  Bugs
  IX.  Interesting Facts
   X.  Contact/Liability Information


I. Background:
     This game was made by five individuals during a one week period at DigiPen Institue of Technology in Redmond, Washington.  The team members were Chris Thouvenel, Colin Godwin, Jace Miller, Mike Cowles, and Peter Justeson. The title of the game was purposefully lengthened to obviously defy a general rule of form that your game title should not contain overused phrases.  This Read Me was written by Jace Miller.


II. System Requirements:
     To properly run The Legend of Final Treasure Hunter Saga Turbo, you need: 
1. a Windows Operating system (Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, etc.), 
2. Winzip to download and unzip files from internet (obtain for free at 	http://www.winzip.com/),
3. approximately 11 MB hard disk space for all files (downloaded zip, source 	code, data, and executables),
4. 32 MB RAM,
5. and (I'm not sure, but I think at least) a 133 MHz processor


III. Setup:
     The first thing you should do is be sure you have a program to unzip files.  If you do not have one, you can download WinZip for free from http://www.winzip.com/  When you have a zip file extractor installed, click on the "Click here to download The Legend of Final Treasure Hunter Saga Turbo" words on Jace's Games Page.  A dialog box will appear, select "Save this file to disk" if it is not already selected.  Click "OK".  Another dialog box appears asking for the directory you want to download jacesgame.zip to.  You can place the file anywhere, but I recommend the Desktop.  Make sure the Desktop is selected in the box entitled "Save in:", click "Save", and wait for the 577 KB download to finish.  Once jacesgame.zip has completely downloaded to the Desktop, right click the jacesgame.zip file and select "Extract to...".  After clicking "I Agree", a dialog box will appear asking for the directory to unzip the files to.  Browse to the folder you wish, or (again I prefer using the Desktop) make sure the "Extract to" text box says "C:\Windows\Desktop\" and click "Extract".  Close the WinZip window and find the new folder called "Treasure Hunter" on the Desktop.  Congratulations!  You successfully downloaded The Legend of Final Treasure Hunter Saga Turbo!  Since the Introduction.exe and OurGame2.exe run in 640 x 480 screen resolution, you may want to set your screen in that mode to run the programs fullscreen.  Double Click on "Treasure Hunter" and begin reading the Introduction (part IV).


IV. Introduction:
     It is recommended that you close all other programs before running the introduction or game executables to ensure a fast framerate.  After downloading the jacesgame.zip file to your desktop, the first file you should open is "Treasure Hunter\Introduction\Introduction.exe".  It will graphically relate the story to the viewer(s).  Press SpaceBar to continue to the next dialogue.  Escape will terminate the application at any time.  I do not want to spoil any of the details, so I will give only a brief summary.  The main hero in the game returns to his village to find it ravaged by an evil foe.  After a quick confrontation, the hero promises to save the town by risking his life and going into a dangerous dungeon.  He wishes to recover the six treasures and defeat the foe (and most of his minions) who has caused all the destruction.


V. Menu Screen:
     After viewing the introductory story, you are ready to play the game.  Double click the "Treasure Hunter\OurGame\OurGame2.exe" file to run the main game.  After a short opening sequence, you come to the Menu Screen.  You can Play the Game, Edit the Options, or Exit the Game.  In the Options screen, you can toggle the difficulty of the game by highlighting Difficulty and pressing the right and left arrow keys.  The Sound Test does not work.  You can also view the Credits from the Options screen by pressing Enter after highlighting Credits.  To return to the main Menu Screen, highlight Quit and press enter.  Press Enter from the Menu Screen to run the Main Game (the fun part).


VI. Game Play:
     You are put in control of the hero.  You must use ingenuity and the items you collect to defeat Skeletor.  The hero has three lives when the game begins.  When the hero's health (shown in red) reaches 0, his number of lives decrements by one.  When the number of hero's lives is equal to 0, the game is over.  In addition to walking and jumping, there are three collectible items that will aid you in your quest to defeat Skeletor and return peace to the village.  The three items that can be collected besides treasure are Jump Boots (green winged boots), Ice Ball Magic (a blue crystal ball), and Sword Strength (a pointed sword).  The Jump Boots allow the hero to leap amazingly high and enable his access to higher areas.  The Ice Ball Magic causes two magical ice projectiles to be launched from the tip of the hero's blade.  The ice balls inflict a severe amount of damage to mossmen and mages (the ice balls are disabled when fighting Skeletor).  The Sword Strength ability empowers the hero's sword to deal twice the damage it is normally capable of.  
     The keyboard is configured for left and right handed movement control.  The action buttons are placed in the middle. This design maximizes the comfort of the player by letting him/her choose their hands' positions.  Below is a list of actions and the corresponding button(s) that perform those actions.

Walk/Run Left			Left Arrow Button (<-)     or    A
Walk/Run Right			Right Arrow Button (->)    or    D
Jump				K  or  N
Swing Sword Attack		J  or  M
Equip Jump Boots		1
Equip Ice Ball Magic		2
Equip Sword Strength		3

(The following three work only when the item is already equipped and you want to remove (or un-equip) it.  All items are removed when the hero moves to the next screen.)
Remove Jump Boots		7
Remove Ice Ball Magic   	8
Remove Sword Strength		9

Other buttons you need to experience the full functionality of the game.
Skip Introduction		Escape
Skip Credits			Spacebar
Skip Opening			Spacebar
Choose Menu Item		Enter
Toggle Difficulty Level  	Left (<-) and Right (->) Arrow Keys
Toggle Option Selected		Up and Down Arrow Keys
Quit Game From Menu Screen	Escape
Play Game From Menu Screen	Enter
Go To Options From Menu		Spacebar
Go To Menu From Main Game	Escape

If you do not know what to do, try pressing Spacebar, Enter, or Escape.  If your computer does not respond for a long time, press Ctrl + Alt + Delete at the same time once to bring up a dialog box.  Highlight DP Game Workshop and click End Task.  Repeat and Highlight OurGame and click End Task.  This should stop the game and you should see the Desktop again.  If other problems arise, e-mail Jace and he may be able to help you.


VII. Strategy:
     The basic strategy consists of defeating the mossmen (green) and mages (purple) to continue through rooms while collecting treasure.  You need to collect certain items (like the Jump Boots, Ice Ball Magic, and Sword Strength) with helpful abilities to complete your quest.  Be prudent in your use of magic called Mana.  Your limited supply of magic may be needed later to overcome obstacles to reach your final goal.  After collecting all six treasures, make your way to the final room where a final showdown with Skeletor awaits. The Ice Ball Magic is useless against Skeletor.  In fact, his evil prescence counteracts the Ice Ball's ability to form and you can not shoot them, even if you enable them.  There is only one sure way to defeat the master of evil.  If you really need hints, e-mail Jace at jacemiller84@hotmail.com for a detailed explaination of how to master any area of the game.


VIII. Bugs:
     There are a few bugs that were not taken out of the final compilation of the game.  Here is a list of a few known:

	1. Sometimes when jumping at walls, if the player keeps walking in 	   the direction of the wall, the Hero will be stuck in mid-air 	   walking into the wall.  This occurs because the program thinks the 	   Hero is colliding with the block below him, but in visual reality, 	   he is not.
	2. The Ice Ball Magic does not shoot to the left, only to the right. 	   This bug was never fixed due to a lack of time, there are not 	   major consequences besides the lack of the ability to shoot Ice 	   Balls to the left.
	3. Sometimes when fighting Skeletor, the hero can jump through the 	   wall on the right of the room.  This seems wierd, so we decided to 	   call it a feature of the game instead of a glitch.  There are now 	   infinite Skeletors to fight.  If you get to a second or third 	   Skeletor, he continues walking left, right off the screen.  Just 	   don't try jumping through the right wall when fighting Skeletor 	   and nothing crazy will happen.

     If you would like to report a bug or other type of error, see Contact Information and e-mail Jace Miller.


IX. Interesting Facts:
     There are 3144 lines of code that make up the program The Legend of Final Treasure Hunter Saga Turbo and 816 lines of code for the Introduction (keep in mind that some of this comes from the dialog).  That is 3960 lines of code disregarding the 48 lines of code in Text files that are read in during the game to get picture file locations.  The picture bitmap files contain 2008626 pixels of information.  These pixels make up the graphics you see when you play The Legend of Final Treasure Hunter Saga Turbo.  In reality, you only see 1558736 pixels in the entire game (only about 77% of the originally planned game graphics).  The Introduction has 1245480 pixels stored in bitmaps, but you only see 631080 pixels in the introduction (about half of the originally planned introduction).  All this data was created in only a week?  That's amazing.  Did you know that the only original character animation is a revamped version of a character in one of Jace's first games?  That's right, the Hero's 30 frames of animation were completely drawn by Jace in Paint.  Most of the other artwork came from bitmaps drawn by students at DigiPen, with embellishments by Chris Thouvenel. Chris did a great job by preparing the masks for nearly every picture in the game and programming the introduction as well as the beginning words.  Most of the collision detection, enemies, fire and ice ball creation / implementation, and level design was programmed by Mike Cowles and Jace Miller.  Most of the item detection was programmed by Colin Godwin and Peter Cowles.  Most of the Main Game setup and implementation was programmed by Colin.  Peter implemented the game midi (I turn the speakers off during the Main Game, I don't prefer the music) and options screen and Chris did the introduction midi (with a great music selection).  Mike refined and perfected Jace's Jump code.  Everyone programmed in the Actions, Draw, Input, Main Game and Defines files.  All in all, the game turned out great because of the people who made it.


X. Contact/Liability Information:

You can contact Jace at jacemiller84@hotmail.com

If you have any questions, comments, or complaints, please contact Jace.

     DigiPen and the game programmers (Chris Thouvenel, Colin Godwin, Jace Miller, Mike Justeson, Peter Cowles) are not responsible for any problems that occur with your computer due to running the executibles or with any files downloaded.  It is recommended to restart your computer after running the game (especially if the computer is having trouble) because the library used to load information into the game does not free the memory afterwards.