AngelWars - README
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Version 0.21

Note: this program is released under the Perl Artistic License.  The text
of this license is available at http://www.opensource.org/licenses.  

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Phew!  Public release number three!  We've made a LOT of changes and it
shows!  Check out the changelog for a list of things we've altered, added,
and/or fixed.  No new monsters or backgrounds yet, though...if anyone
would like to contribute art for this, PLEASE contact us!  :)

The image tarball should be quite a bit smaller now that we're compressing
one of the backgrounds as JPEG.  Yeah, it's still big, but we haven't found
a compression method for the other (masked) background that looks right and
doesn't result in a performance hit.  (We tried the PNG loading routines from
SDL_image, but every ran much slower.  Go figure.)

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To install, you must have the following FOUR files:

angelwars-0.21.tar.gz
angelwars-images-0.21.tar.gz
angelwars-levels-0.21.tar.gz
angelwars-docs-0.21.tar.gz

Yes, I know it's a lot of tarballs, but there's good reason to keep them
separated.  (Mainly the fact that the images tarball is MUCH bigger than
the others.)

These are available on our SourceForge page as modules angel-wars,
angel-wars-images, and angel-wars-docs, respectively.

You also need the Simple DirectMedia Layer library, which is available at
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/.  Get version 1.1, and follow the
instructions there for installing it.  You need the development package in
order to compile Angel Wars.

Once you have SDL installed, put all the Angel Wars files in the same
directory, and run the commands:

tar -xzvf angelwars-0.21.tar.gz
tar -xzvf angelwars-images-0.21.tar.gz
tar -xzvf angelwars-docs-0.21.tar.gz
tar -xzvf angelwars-levels-0.21.tar.gz

This will extract all of the files into a subdirectory called
angelwars-0.21.  Switch to this directory and type:

./configure
make

This will compile the game binaries.  They will be placed in a
subdirectory called "angelwars".  (That is, angelwars-0.15/angelwars.)
Switch to this new directory and type:

./angelwars

To run the game.

Note: You'll also need libjpeg and libpng, but if you have a reasonably
modern linux distribution, you should already have these...if not, look
for them at rpmfind.net.

The Game
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Once you are in the game, use the arrow keys to move around and the left
control key to attack.  (This is rather easy to change in the source code;
just take a look at the BehaviorFromKeyboard class.  You'd need to
recompile, of course.)  Update: You can now use the < and > keys to switch
weapons.  There are three weapons so far.

There's only one level with a few monsters, but it's rather easy to edit
the script for the level (and add more monsters) by editing the
angelwars-0.21/angelwars//usr/share/games/angelwars/levels/level00.txt file.  Check out scripting.txt
in the docs directory for more detail about this.

There are only two different monsters available at the moment.  Hey,
give us a break, it's just the first release.  :)

If you come up with some great combination of monsters for the script
file, please send it to us!  We're always looking for contributions, and
we need a good level designer.  :)

Credits
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Programming, Documentation:
	Orin Tresnjak (lancekt@wam.umd.edu)
Graphics:
	Icewind Stormbringer...eh, Chris Krietz (icewind@xecu.net)

Uses code from the SFont library by Karl Bartel and the SDL_image library
by Sam Lantinga.

Website: http://angel-wars.sourceforge.net
Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=6254

Please go to the project page above to make suggestions, report bugs, and
give us general moral support.  If you find a way to improve the code,
please tell us!  All contributions are tremendously appreciated.  This is,
after all, an open source project.  Oh, by the way, if you can do art in
the general style seen in the game, and especially if you can make huge,
long background images of any style, please contact us!  We could really
use your help.  This game is too much work for one artist. :)
