Death Dawn (build 2127 01/03/08)

Death Dawn is a pseudo-3D action game inspired by such classic games and films as:

System Requirements

You may also want:

Getting started

Extract !DeathDawn from the ZIP archive to somewhere writeable. Double-click the icon to load it onto the iconbar. Once loaded you will be able to do the following:

It's recommended that you look at the different configuration options before playing the game for the first time.

Keyboard configuration

Selecting the "Keys..." option from the iconbar menu will open a window allowing you to choose what keys do what. Each game control can have a primary and secondary key defined. Change the key(s) that are configured for a given control by clicking the appropriate button, and then pressing the new key. Right-clicking a button will toggle it between having no definition and having the currently active definition.

Clicking the OK button at the bottom of the window will confirm the new settings; closing the window using the close icon will discard them.

Any keys which have been defined mutliple times, or any controls which have no key defined, will be highlighted in red and the OK button will be greyed out until you rectify the problem.

Default controls are as follows:

General
PauseP
View mapM
Go to desktopF12
LeftLEFT
RightRIGHT
ForwardsUP
BackwardsDOWN
AttackLEFT SHIFT
Next weaponZ
Previous weaponX
Recall mission titleF7
Recall mission textF8
Recall pager messageF9
Recall locationF10
Recall car nameF11
On foot
RunLEFT CTRL
JumpSPACE
Enter carRETURN
In car
HandbrakeSPACE
HornLEFT CTRL
SirenTAB
Exit carRETURN
Rotate turret leftA
Rotate turret rightS
Next radio stationF5
Previous radio stationF6

Graphics options

Selecting the "Graphics..." option from the iconbar menu will open a window allowing you to configure the graphics options for the game. A pop-up list of valid graphics modes for your computer is provided for you to select the display resolution and refresh rate from. The game assumes that you are using a mode with square pixels - i.e. if you have a 4:3 monitor, you'll want a mode with a 4:3 ratio.

The 'Use main RAM' option will cause DeathDawn to render to a buffer in main RAM before copying the result to VRAM. This is usually only useful if you are using DMA.

The 'Use DMA' option will only have an effect if 'Use main RAM' is enabled. This option will only work if you have the IntelDMA module loaded (and that module will only work if you're using an Iyonix). But if you do have an Iyonix and IntelDMA, using main RAM & DMA will improve rendering performance. However due to the way sound (currently) works on the Iyonix, there is a good chance that it will cause severe sound distortion, so DMA might be an option best left turned off.

The 'R/B swap' option will swap the red and blue channels. This is only of use to Iyonix owners, who do not have R/B swapped graphics cards.

You can also enable and disable VSyncing. Having VSync disabled will result in a higher framerate, but may result in 'tearing' of the image.

Click OK to confirm the changes, or the close icon to cancel them.

Sound options

Selecting the "Sound..." option from the iconbar menu will open a window allowing you to configure Death Dawn's sound system. From this window you can control the volume of the game sounds and the radio by clicking on the sliders, as well as disable the game sounds or radio completely if you so wish.

Click OK to confirm the changes, or the close icon to cancel them.

Playing the game

Still want to play, huh?

*** note that a fair amount of this is wildly inaccurate since the game isn't finished yet ***

Assuming everything is set up correctly, clicking the iconbar icon will load the game data files and start the game. Using the movement controls you can (unsurprisingly) move around the world, and interact with its many inhabitants.

Various screen elements may or may not be visible, depending on what you're doing:

Also centered around your character you will see the compass. This will point you in the direction of various items of interest, typically the locations of your current mission targets, or where to find more missions once you've completed your current one.

Carjacking is an important element of the game, so once you see a car that you like, walk up to it and press the "Enter car" key to remove the current driver and go for a ride. Just make sure the local law enforcement don't see you!

Pressing the configured "Go to desktop" will immediately pause the game and return you to the desktop. Clicking the iconbar icon will then allow you to continue playing.

Pressing the "View map" key will switch to a fully zoomable 2D map of the world, with your location and various important landmarks highlighted. Use the movement controls to scroll the map and the weapon change controls to zoom it.

Pressing the "Pause" key will (unsurprisingly) pause the game. From here you can go to the map, the desktop, or unpause and resume playing.

Everything else you need to know is either common sense or explained in game. Get playing already!

Radio configuration

The radio is a tricky beast, since as default Death Dawn doesn't come with any music for it. If you want to make use of the radio then you'll have to create/edit the !DeathDawn.radio file in a text editor. Each line of the radio file can be one of two things: A station definition or a track definition. Each station has a style and name, and each track has a type and file name. Each valid track will be added to the play list for the radio station most recently defined. Use tab characters to seperate the station style/name and track type/file name on each line. The default radio file is designed to be used with the GTA 1 CD, to give you an idea of how a radio file should look.

The different station styles are:

You can define multiple EMERGENCY, MUSIC and LOADING stations, but there should be no more than one PAUSE, CREDITS, and AMBIENT station defined in the radio file.

The different track types are:

AMPLAYER, QTMMODULE and TIMPLAYER are only available if you have the AMPlayer, QTMModule and TimPlayer modules installed (i.e. in your !System directory). CD is only available if you have (a) a CD drive, and (b) a CD with one or more audio tracks in the drive. If you have multiple CD drives, the first drive found with a CD (audio or otherwise) will be the one the game uses.

Any changes to the radio file will only take effect the next time you load a save game or start a new game.

Command line arguments

DeathDawn will recognise the following command line arguments:

-playStart the game immediately
-debug <n>Set debug level to N
-load <file>Load the named savegame, and start playing
-game <file>Use 'file' as the gameconfig file, instead of the default
-profStart profiling straight away
-vsync <n>Enable (1) or disable (0) vsync
-width <n>Set screen width to N
-height <n>Set screen height to N
-randseed <n>Set random number seed to N
-fixframe <n>Fix game update rate to N centiseconds per frame

Bugs

Since this is merely an engine test release, there are bound to be bugs. Some bugs are more important than others. You can tell me about bugs if you want, but chances are I already know about most of them. However you do not know about them, so here are the most important bugs that I can remember:

Mission editing

Death Dawn fully supports custom mission scripts and game data. Documentation and utilities for creating custom missions are available from the games website at http://www.quote-egnufeb-quote-greaterthan-colon-hash-comma-underscore-at.info/riscos/deathdawn.php

The source code

Source code is freely available from my website at http://www.quote-egnufeb-quote-greaterthan-colon-hash-comma-underscore-at.info/riscos/deathdawn.php

Credits/Legal

All program code and most game assets were created by Jeffrey Lee. Other people who helped out in notable ways, either directly or indirectly, include:

Mayang Adnin - For the plethora of free textures on his website (http://www.mayang.com)
Michael Drake - For the Ellie sprites
Rob Davison - For the excellent Variations
Also 'special' thanks go out to everyone in The Playpen. Especially me.

Game engine

The DeathDawn game engine is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
The DeathDawn game engine is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
A copy of the GNU General Public License should have been supplied with the DeathDawn install, and is vieweable here. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Sound samples

The sound samples used in the DeathDawn game were obtained from The FreeSound Project, and thus are licensed under various versions of the Creative Commons licenses permitting them for modification and distribution with the game. Full attribution info is below, listing both the original and renamed file names:

Fonts

Apart from the standard RISC OS fonts, DeathDawn makes use of the following fonts, collected from Acorn User CD 9. I've tried to determine to the best of my ability that the fonts are indeed freeware/PD, so if you know otherwise then let me know!

Jeffrey Lee, 1/3/08
me@phlamethrower.co.uk
http://www.quote-egnufeb-quote-greaterthan-colon-hash-comma-underscore-at.info/