163 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
163 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
This file has been dedicated to the public domain, to the extent
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possible under applicable law, via CC0. See
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http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ for more
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information. This file is offered as-is, without any warranty.
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========================================================================
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Thank you for downloading Project: Starfighter!
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Project: Starfighter is a space shoot 'em up game originally developed
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by Parallel Realities in 2002, and released in 2003. You assume the role
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of Chris Bainfield in his quest to put an end to WEAPCO, the weapons
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corporation which has enslaved the galaxy.
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If you played one of the versions of Project: Starfighter distributed by
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Parallel Realities, you might notice some differences in this version
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compared to the original:
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* The graphics, sounds, and music are all completely different. This is
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because most of the original media was not properly licensed, and
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therefore needed to be replaced to make the game 100% libre. Most of
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this work was done by the previous project at SourceForge; the current
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project completed that work by adding music and replacing one
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non-libre graphic that got into version 1.2 by mistake.
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* Much of the dialog has been changed. There are various reasons for
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this; some of these include fixing bad writing, making the dialog
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match new music queues, and giving the characters more personality.
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* There are several gameplay changes. These changes were mostly done to
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balance the game better. The original game is contained in the Classic
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difficulty option, which is nearly identical to the original
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experience. A few small differences (mainly old bugs that were not
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left in) do exist, and they are explained on the following page:
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https://pr-starfighter.github.io/old.html
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* Typing "humansdoitbetter" in the title screen no longer enables
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cheats. This is actually because the switch to SDL2 broke the original
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feature, and rather than fixing it, we just replaced it with something
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else. We'll let you figure out what the new method to access the cheat
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menu is. 😉
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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PLAYING THE GAME
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The basic controls are the arrow keys, Ctrl, Space, Shift, and Escape.
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Other keys on they keyboard can also be used in case of keyjamming or if
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you simply prefer other controls; alternative keys include the keypad,
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ZXC, ASD, <>?, and 123. A gamepad or joystick can also be used.
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The basic objective of Project: Starfighter is simply to complete all
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missions. Exactly what entails completing a mission varies and is
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explained in-game.
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In the system overview screen, various sections can be accessed by
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clicking the icons on the bottom of the screen. You can also use the
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keyboard or a gamepad if you prefer (use the arrows to move the cursor
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and the fire button to "click" on things).
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Other than that, have fun, and good luck!
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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COMPILING FROM SOURCE
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If you are an end-user, it is easiest to use an existing binary
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distribution if possible. If you want or need to compile yourself,
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however, instructions follow.
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Note: Developers compiling the source code from the Git repository,
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please first see the GENERATING CONFIGURE SCRIPT AND BUILDING LOCALES
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section below.
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Project: Starfighter depends on the following libraries to build:
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* SDL2 <http://libsdl.org>
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* SDL2_image <http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/>
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* SDL2_mixer <http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/>
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* SDL2_ttf <http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/>
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* Pango <https://www.pango.org/>
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Once you have all dependencies installed, do the following from the
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Project: Starfighter base directory:
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./configure
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make
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make install
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This will perform a system-wide installation, which is recommended for
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most users. For most Linux systems, an icon should be added to your
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menu which you can then use to run Starfighter; if not, you can use the
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launcher found in the "misc" directory or run the "starfighter" command
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manually.
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If you would prefer a "run in place" build, you should instead do the
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following from the Project: Starfighter base directory:
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./configure SF_RUN_IN_PLACE=1
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make
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mv src/starfighter .
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For Windows and MacOS, a run in place build is preferred. Note that the
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final step (moving the Starfighter binary out from the src directory) is
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required; in particular, failure to do so under MacOS leads to a failure
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to load data (images, sounds, fonts) needed by Starfighter.
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On Linux and most other POSIX systems, you can instead build a run in
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place build with the following commands:
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./configure SF_RUN_IN_PLACE=1
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make
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mv misc/starfighter.sh .
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For Linux, this method is preferred as the binary itself often cannot be
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run by double-clicking, and the starfighter.sh script also automatically
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sets the current working directory, making it suitable for launchers.
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Run "./configure --help" to see all options for compiling.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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GENERATING CONFIGURE SCRIPT AND BUILDING LOCALES
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If you contribute to Project: Starfighter's source code, you will need
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to know how to generate a configure script and build locales needed for
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compiling the program. NOTE: This is for developers and other people
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compiling source code taken from the Git repository. End-users simply
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compiling releases of Starfighter from source can ignore this section.
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The following components are required to generate the configure script:
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* Autoconf
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* Automake
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* pkg-config
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And the following is required to build locales:
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* Python
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Once these dependencies are installed, simply do the following from a
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terminal window:
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./autogen.sh
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The Python script build.py may fail on MacOS due to a missing msgfmt
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program. msgfmt is part of gettext and the version that ships on a Mac
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does not include the msgfmt utility. This can be solved by using gettext
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from Homebrew:
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brew install gettext
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export PATH="$(brew --prefix gettext)/bin:$PATH"
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If for some reason you need to remove all generated files from your
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directory, you can do so via the following command (requires Git):
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git clean -fdx
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Note: automatically generated files are listed in .gitignore, so you
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generally don't actually have to do this. This is mainly useful for
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build tests.
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