Itana I: Old Enemies Reunite

Instructions

 

Eventually this document will evolve into the finished form of the documentation.  The information that appears in readme.txt also appears in the game under the instructions button and contains a brief list of commands and ship descriptions.

 

Installation Notes:

Itana is copyright 2001 by Jason Winnebeck.  You may freely distribute this game in its original archive(s).  If us wish to use code from Itana feel free to do so.  If you do a mention in the credits or a mail to gillius AT mail DOT rit DOT edu would be appreciated.

 

Whole Package:

Install the entire program into a new directory.  All files needed by the program are contained in this zip for the Windows version.

 

For the Linux version, you can add the directory "." into your ldpath, or become root to install the libraries in some acceptable place, like /usr/local/lib.  Other shared libraries are required as shown below (not all may be loaded, depending on which graphics method you use).  The client does not require ncurses:

 

            libncurses.so.5 => /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x40019000)

            liballeg-3.9.35.so => /usr/local/lib/liballeg-3.9.35.so (0x40060000)

            libbgui.so => /usr/local/lib/libbgui.so (0x4012e000)

            libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3 => /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3 (0x4013c000)

            libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4018c000)

            libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x401aa000)

            libgpm.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgpm.so.1 (0x40291000)

            libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40297000)

            libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x402a4000)

            libesd.so.0 => /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 (0x40379000)

            /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

            libaudiofile.so.0 => /usr/lib/libaudiofile.so.0 (0x40384000)

 

Basic Storyline:

            Four alien races fight for domination over a newly discovered planet in a distant solar system, which has the highest quantities of bollium ever discovered.  Bollium is the main material used to fuel the space fold engines for their ships.

            The zylex discovered the planet first, but the humans just a few days later discovered the planet before a zylex mining colony could be set up.  A week later a human colonization ship folded into the system to find out that a zylex colony ship was in orbit already surveying possible landing locations!!!

            For the last 20 years the four known races: humans, zylex, ornons, and alsetti have been at a cautious peace, in the aftermath of a huge war, in which the races were all so evenly matched that no one gained a real foothold on any of the others.  The human central government, the United Planets, did not want to start another war.  A galactic meeting was called on the UP headquarters starbase orbiting the human homeworld, Earth.

            The four races decided that they did not want to start another war, after coercing the warlike ornons, who as usual wanted to stupidly blast away any thing, ship or asteroid or whatnot in their path and wanted to start a new war.  The wise alsetti proposed that all races could share the planet and an interspecies colony would be set up there.  The arrogant humans and the warlike ornons refused to share the planet.  Instead, the zylex proposed that all races send a transforming ship to the new, still unnamed solar system.  Upon defolding, the ship would transform into a fully automated base of operations, and launch a single piloted fighter, which would engage the other races.  The winner would have undisputed control of the planet.  The ornons were eager to fight and so agreed.  The humans were convinced that they could win this fight and so agreed.  The zylex thought their superior technology would come out on top of this battle and so agreed.  The alsetti, who did not wish to fight almost declined to the idea and thought about letting the other races have the planet but decided that they badly needed the fuel and so reluctantly agreed.

At the end of the galactic conference the races brought up the point that the planet had not been named yet.  They discussed this topic and it was a matter of irony that the planet was named after the Alsetti’s delegate’s daughter, being as modest as they are.  The races then agreed on a month to prepare for the battle that was ahead of them.

            After a month the four races defolded in the new star system and chose their orbits around the planet.  As was decided a single piloted ship came out of the new base.  Each race chose its best fighter design and its best pilot.  The zylex and humans decided to risk the battle with new designs that were quickly put together.  The designed where untested but used state of the art technology.  The alsetti used their traditional, proven design.  The ornons used the only ship design that was intelligently built enough to face the other fighters one-for-one (although some doubt the design is actually the ornons’ but instead designed by a human firm, which was heavily paid in secret by the ornons.  This is only a rumor, however).

            Each race was very wary of this battle.  The wise alsetti commander was especially wary of the battle.  She thought, given the events in the past, would each race REALLY stick to their pact?  Would the other races simply let this simple battle decide everything and then allow the one race sole control over the largest known deposit of bollium in the galaxy?!  She decided to prepare their fleets and increase military production just in case.  Can the others be trusted?  Only time will tell.

 

Quick Ship Summaries:

 Alsetti:

  Speed Ranking: 2nd

  Default Weapon: Blaster

  Special Ability: Paralizing bolt that disables ships it hits

 Zylex:

  Speed Ranking: 1st

  Default Weapon: Zylex Laser

  Special Ability: Travels through asteroids without injury

 Ornon:

  Speed Ranking: 4th

  Default Weapons: Ornon Cannon (x4)

  Special Ability: Forward-Mounted Ornon Plasma Bolt Launcher

 Human:

  Speed Ranking: 3rd

  Default Weapon: Ultra-High Speed Machine Gun Array

  Special Ability: Cloaking Device

 

The races:

Humans:

            The humans always think they can survive and win the fight.  To some extent their arrogant belief has some truth to it.  The well-balanced and adaptable humans, although somewhat weak in comparison to the other races have found ways to survive situations that the other races thought were impossible to survive in.

The human ship uses an ultra-high speed machinegun array as its primary weapon. The human ship can cloak, appearing translucent while it is firing and completely dissapears when doing nothing. Other players can see the thrust comming out of the cloaked ship.

 

Zylex:

            The zylex are the most ingenious and technological known race in the galaxy.  They were the first ones to discover that by folding space-time they could travel huge distances in just a matter of days.  Their ships have the best propulsion systems but their military prowess is much less glamorous.

            The zylex make the fastest ships in the galaxy.  A laser serves as the primary weapon of this ship, and as a special ability they can travel through asteroids without injury, a system that was developed when it was discovered that Zylex pilots flew so fast they could not avoid many obstacles.

 

Alsetti:

            The alsetti are considered by the other races to be the wisest and the most conservative, and although they stick strongly to tradition, their tradition is much more open, flexible, and less discriminatory than the other races’.  For example they do not discriminate based on gender (women roughly equal men in the armed forces).  They are usually withdrawn and shy, and would rather have peace than fight.  But even they know that sometimes fighting is inevitable and have developed a strong military capable of keeping intruders out although not as capable of invading.

The alsetti ship has the infamous alsetti blaster as its main weapon. Its secondary weapon is the parabolt that paralizes an enemy ship for a short time.

 

Ornons:

            The ornons are the most belligerent of the races, and also the stupidest.  Their solution to everything is to destroy it, and the other races have a hard time of convincing the ornons of anything else.  They have the strongest firepower in the universe, but being as stupid as they are their only tactic of a frontal assault makes them extremely predictable and even easier to destroy.

            Because their ship is so slow they mounted four guns in four different directions on this ship.  At the front of the ship the ornons have mounted a plasma bolt cannon, the most devastating weapon in the known universe.

 

Network Play Notes:

Client:

At this time selecting bandwith options are not available until the code is optimized for modems.

 

Under Windows you'll want to pick winsock -- Linux users pick UNIX sockets to play over the internet.  Other methods are untested as of yet.

 

Server:

Run the server giving the driver and port information.  Pressing a key exits.  The server sleeps when no clients are around to relieve CPU.

 

Theoritical (assumed 100% bandwith, but with no compression):

 

56k modem (modems untested as of yet):

Can play ONE player one-on-one, one as server/client, one as client

Can play with up to 3-4 players connecting to a broadband server

 

28k modem

1-on-1 modem server

modem client under broadband server can play 2-3 players.

 

Right now the game is optimized for broadband connections.  Bandwith rate changing will be added later.

 

Rate requirements:

Server:

incoming: 3.4k/s/player

outgoing: 1.2k/s/player

 

Client:

incoming: 1.2k/s * (# of players - 1)

outgoing: 3.4k/s