This file has been dedicated to the public domain, to the extent possible under applicable law, via CC0. See http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ for more information. This file is offered as-is, without any warranty. ======================================================================== Thank you for downloading Project: Starfighter! Project: Starfighter is a space shoot 'em up game originally developed by Parallel Realities in 2002, and released in 2003. You assume the role of Chris Bainfield in his quest to put an end to WEAPCO, the weapons corporation which has enslaved the galaxy. If you played one of the versions of Project: Starfighter distributed by Parallel Realities, you might notice some differences in this version compared to the original: * The graphics, sounds, and music are all completely different. This is because most of the original media was not properly licensed, and therefore needed to be replaced to make the game 100% libre. Most of this work was done by the previous project at SourceForge; the current project completed that work by adding music and replacing one non-libre graphic that got into version 1.2 by mistake. * There are several gameplay changes. These changes were mostly done to balance the game better. However, if you want the original experience, "Classic" difficulty emulates it as closely as possible (see the CLASSIC DIFFICULTY DIFFERENCES section to read about the few differences that exist). * Much of the dialog has been changed. There are various reasons for this; some of these include fixing bad writing, making the dialog match new music queues, and giving the characters more personality. * In many places, the interface has been considerably improved. As an example, the simplistic target arrow of the original has been replaced with a system of several arrows, one for each ship. * Typing "humansdoitbetter" in the title screen no longer enables cheats. This is actually because the switch to SDL2 broke the original feature, and rather than fixing it, I just replaced it with something else. I'll let you figure out what the new method to access the cheat menu is. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GENERATING CONFIGURE SCRIPT If you contribute to Project: Starfighter's source code, you will need to know how to generate a configure script for compiling the program. NOTE: This is for developers only. End-users simply compiling releases of Starfighter from source can ignore this section and skip straight to the COMPILING FROM SOURCE section. The following components are required to generate the configure script: * Autoconf * Automake * pkg-config Once these dependencies are installed, simply do the following from a terminal window: autoreconf -vif The arguments are technically optional, but recommended. If for some reason you need to remove all of these files from your directory, you can do so via the following command (requires Git): git clean -fdx Note: automatically generated files are listed in .gitignore, so you generally don't actually have to do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COMPILING FROM SOURCE Project: Starfighter depends on the following libraries to build: * SDL2 * SDL2_image * SDL2_mixer Once you have all dependencies installed, you can do the following from a terminal window: ./configure make make install Run "./configure --help" to see more options. The third step ("make install") is technically optional, but highly recommended. For most Linux systems, an icon should be added to your menu when you run "make install". You can click on this icon to start up the game. Otherwise, you can manually install or use the launcher found in the "misc" directory, or you can run the "starfighter" command to start up the game. If you choose not to use the "make install" command, you can find the "starfighter" binary in the "src" directory. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PLAYING THE GAME The basic controls are the arrow keys, Ctrl, Space, Shift, and Escape. Other keys on they keyboard can also be used in case of keyjamming or if you simply prefer other controls; alternative keys include the keypad, ZXC, ASD, <>?, and 123. A gamepad or joystick can also be used. The basic objective of Project: Starfighter is simply to complete all missions. Exactly what entails completing a mission varies and is explained in-game. In the system overview screen, various sections can be accessed by clicking the icons on the bottom of the screen. You can also use the keyboard or a gamepad if you prefer (use the arrows to move the cursor and the fire button to "click" on things). Other than that, have fun, and good luck! 🙂