Open Ski Jumping

Copyright (c) 2004 Michal Brzozowski

------------------------------------------------------------------------
This program 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 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program 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 this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc.:
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
													 
		
Introduction
------------

First of all, thank you for downloading this game.  This very early version 
is not yet ready to be played for fun, as it is only basic skeleton of what it 
is going to become in the future.  But there are a few reasons why I wanted to 
publish it this early.  One is that, as far as I know, there are exactly
zero good ski jumping games to be found on Linux.  This fact inspired me
to try making such game, which is not at all easy to write.  This is also
why I uploaded it to the internet, to show that there is something going on.
I'm also very eager to talk to someone who knows a bit about aerodynamics,
and/or ski jumping, from a more technical side.  The reason for this is that
I want it to be as much reallife as possible, from a physical point of view.

Alright, I consider the paragraph above as obsolete.  This game is ready to be 
played for fun now. :)						^^

Compilation and Installation
--------------------------

The only library you need for compilation is Allegro.  You can get it from
http://alleg.sourceforge.net.  If you have installed a binary package of Allegro,
remember to supply the headers (the *-dev package).  You can also compile it
under DJGPP, which is also supplied with Allegro.  The game has been succesfully
compiled and run under Freedos + DJGPP.  I heard rumors that it also runs on
WinXP, although there seem to be problems with Win98 and Win2000.  I currently
don't support any of the windows platforms.

My development machine runs Debian 3.0, gcc 2.95.4, but the game should compile
without problems on most modern distributions and compilers.
To compile and play, just type
./configure
make
make install
skijump

The game will install itself in /var/games/skijump and in 
PREFIX/share/games/skijump, where PREFIX is by default /usr/local and can be
changed using the configure script. See ./configure --help for details.

Allegro will try to use the following graphics drivers (in that order):
- XFree86
- Fbdev (framebuffer console)
- Svgalib
- or other, for example under Freedos.

Hardware requirements
---------------------

The game will run on almost any machine, the problem is the frame rate.
If you have a good graphics driver, such as rivafb, you should
be happy with about 600 MHz of processor speed, maybe even less.  If you 
want to run it for example on vesafb, you will need a bit better processor.

Note - you might want to use a stable release of Allegro rather than unstable
for better frame rate.

Jumping
-------

When you choose to make a jump, either for practice or in a competition, you
will begin with a view of the hill from a far distance.  Look at the picture in
the top left.  It will show your position throughout the whole jump.  Use the 
right arrow to lean forward and the down arrow to bend your knees.  Get a good 
approaching position, but be careful or you'll lose balance and fall over. 
Meanwhile the camera will move closer to the jumper and you'll begin to move
down the inrun.  When you're almost at the end of it, use the up arrow to jump
up in the air.  Now again you can use the left/right arrows to adjust your
position during the flight.  When you feel you're getting close to the ground, 
use the left arrow to streighten up and land.  That's it!  Have a look at the
replays which come with the distribution to see how the author jumps :).

You can switch cameras with the F1, F2, ... keys.  You can move a camera
around with i,j,k,l.


WWW
---

The project homepage can be found at:

http://www.skijump.org

Bugs, ideas, suggestions
------------------------

Should you find any bugs, have any suggestions, ideas, just send an e-mail to 
rusolis(at)poczta.fm, although I recommend using the new mailing list: 

skijump-public@lists.sourceforge.net

Happy skijumping!

