Gamma Patrol
============


Description
-----------

Gamma Patrol is a vertical scrolling space shooter. It is available at:

      http://www.odahoda.de/avop/gammapatrol/


Requirements
------------

Minimal hardware configuration:

  - A pentium compatible computer with 100MHz
  - 32MB RAM
  - A graphics card that can display 640x480
  - 5MB free disk space

Software requirements:

  - Linux
  - X11 Server
  - SDL V1.1, SDL_image V1.0 and SDL_mixer V1.0
    (available at http://www.libsdl.org)
  - smpeg V0.4.0
    (available at http://www.lokigames.com/development/smpeg.php3)

Installation
------------

Please read the file INSTALL for instructions.


Playing the game
----------------

To start the game, change to the directory where it has been installed,
for example:

> cd /home/foobar/gammapatrol

Now run the game:

> ./gammapatrol

Note: './gammapatrol' is a shell script that launches 'src/gammapatrol', which
is the game itself. It tries to do some debugging when Gamma Patrol crashes.
If it on the otherhand introduces some problems, you can directly start
'src/gammapatrol'

Game play is rather simple and should be selfexplaining, you'll probably
only have to use the cursor keys and space.


Command line options
--------------------

The following options are available:

  --audio
  --no-audio      En-/disables all sound and music. You may want to disable
                  audio, if you don't have a soundcard installed, because
                  Gamma Patrol refuses to start then.

  --joystick
  --no-joystick   En-/disables use of the joystick. You may need this, if
                  you don't have a joystick, or your SDL version is compiled
                  without joystick support.

  --fullscreen
  --no-fullscreen Forces either fullscreen or windowed mode. Gamma Patrol
                  remembers the settings of it's last run, but if you have
                  problems with fullscreen mode, you may want it to start
                  in windowed mode.

Environment
-----------

Gamma Patrol doesn't use any environment variables for itself, but there are
some that influence SDL. It took me some time, to find information about them,
so I'll give you a short description here. You can find some brief informations
about this topic on the FAQ page of www.libsdl.org

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=xxx
    SDL uses the normal X11 API by default, but if you are lucky, your X server
    may also support the DGA interface, that gives SDL direct access to the
    video hardware. You may try
      %> export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=dga
      %> ./gammapatrol
    and see, if it works (you have to be root for this). 
    On my system Gamma Patrol is accelerated by a factor greater than two (!), 
    but for some reasons refuses to use double buffering.
    This means it's faaast, but with really heavy flickering :(

Licence
-------

Please read the file LICENCE for details.