Action Arcade Adventure Set
Diana Gruber

Installation Guide

The companion disk for Action Arcade Adventure Set contains the complete game that we'll be discussing throughout this book, including all the source code, art files, and other support files required to rebuild and run the game. In addition you'll find a complete game editor with source code for creating and editing the components of arcade games--background tiles, sprites, and so on. Last but not least, the disk includes the shareware version of a high-performance graphics library called Fastgraph. This library provides over a 170 useful C functions that you can call for performing everything from moving the mouse around in VGA Mode X to drawing fast-action graphics. On disk, you'll find not only the Fastgraph/Light library and utilities, but the complete documentation (over 600 pages!) for using the library and utilities as well.

Requirements

To install all of the files you will need approximately 3.5 Mb of free space on your hard disk. If you don't install the documentation for Fastgraph, you'll only need 2.5 Mb of free space.

Files on the Disk

Table I.1 shows the files you will find on the disk.
FileDescription
EXC.ARJExample programs from the Fastgraph User's Guide
FGE.ARJFastgraph Game Editor program and data files
FGESRCE.ARJSource code for Fastgraph Game Editor
FGLIGHT.ARJFastgraph/Light libraries, driver and utilities
HEDGE10.ARJGame: Hedge Row with source code
INSTALL.EXEInstallation program--run this first!
LEVEL.ARJLevel Editor and source code from Chapter 6
MAKEFONT.ARJUtility to make a character font header file
MANUALS.ARJFastgraph User's Guide and Fastgraph Reference Manual
ORDER.FRMOrder form for Fastgraph and special offers
PALETTE.ARJPalette matching and reduction utility
QF.ARJQuickFire demo
READ.MERelease notes
RIPPER.ARJTile Ripper program with source from Chapter 4
TOMMY.ARJGame: Tommy's Adventures
TOMSRCE.ARJSource code for Tommy's Adventures
UNARJ.EXEUnarchiving program
Table I.1: Disk Files Most of these files are stored in an .ARJ format. These files were archived using Robert K. Jung's ARJ program, and the individual files may be extracted from the archives using the UNARJ.EXE program which is included on the disk. While you should be able to unarchive any of the files without difficulty, I recommend that you run the install program to unarchive all the programs into convenient subdirectories.

Installing the Game and Support Tools

To install all of the source and executable files for the game editor and the actual game, place the Action Arcade Adventure Set disk in drive A (or drive B depending on how your system is set up). Next, move to the drive, switch to the root directory and run the installation program. Here are the three commands, you'll need:

 
A: 
CD \ 
INSTALL 
The installation program creates a main directory named FG and eight subdirectories. The .ARJ files will be archived into the subdirectories shown in Table I.2.

SubdirectoryDescription
\FG\EXAMPLES\Fastgraph example programs
\FG\FGE\Fastgraph Game Editor
\FG\FGESRCE\Source code for Fastgraph Game Editor
\FG\HEDGE\Hedge Row game with source code
\FG\QF\QuickFire demo
\FG\TOMMY\Tommy's Adventures game
\FG\TOMSRCE\Source code for Tommy's Adventures
\FG\UTIL\Tile ripper, level editor, palette matching program and makefont utility

In addition, the Fastgraph/Light files are installed in the \FG\ directory, including the FGDRIVER.EXE program, the various utilities and documentation for Fastgraph. The Fastgraph/Light libraries are installed in the appropriate library subdirectory. The install program will suggest a default choice which you may override. For example, the install program may suggest the subdirectory C:\BORLANDC\LIBRARY, but you may prefer to put the Fastgraph/Light libraries in another subdirectory, such as C:\LIB. I recommend you put the Fastgraph/Light libraries in the same subdirectory where your compiler usually looks for libraries.

Similarly, the install program will suggest an appropriate subdirectory for the Fastgraph header file, for example the C:\BORLANDC\INCLUDE subdirectory. If you have questions about library and header file paths, refer to your compiler manuals.

Running the Game

Before you do anything else, you'll probably want to run the game, Tommy's Adventures, that we'll be creating in this book. Go to the \FG\TOMMY\ subdirectory and enter this command:

 
TOMMY 

That's it. If you need help playing the game, read the instructions in Appendix A.

_______________________________________________

Cover | Contents | Downloads
Awards | Acknowledgements | Introduction
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18
Appendix | License Agreement | Glossary | Installation Notes | Home Page

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Copyright © 1998 Ted Gruber Software Inc. All Rights Reserved.