flying
NAME
flying - pool/snooker/carrom/hockey/curling simulator
SYNOPSIS
flying [-options ...]
DESCRIPTION
flying was actually meant to be a test program to implement
some classes to control flying objects on the screen. After
the classes were implemented there was the need of some real
tests and a game of billard was just the first idea. By now,
many subgame-classes are already more or less completely
defined. They can either be selected by the options or by
making a link to the original with a special name.
Unfortunately having so many subclasses means that the
classes themselves can't be too complicated. (There's just
too less time in the world :( ) Therefore the games don't
have any rules yet. This means you have to play fair and
watch your opponent.
Anyway, the main thing was animation and controlling and
that works fine, especially with the -deluxe version of
pool-billard. Since the main intention was to get an
excellent billard game, I will mainly describe the pool-
version in the following pages. The other subgames are
similar to control (and there are no special rules anyway).
STATUS
The flying package contains many subgames, that are more or
less in an experimental stage. Here is a tiny summary of
version 6
Pool, Snooker, Cannon
As already mentioned above, pool is the most comprehensive
subgame, especially due to the deluxe version. It is very
playable even though spin is not implemented. Rules will
have to be added in later revision.
Carrom
Very similar to pool, just with another background (and more
friction)
Hockey
experimental air-hockey implementation (see option -in2 to
set the display for the input-pointer for the second
player), which is worth looking at because of the
unconventional control mechanism. The players have to select
one of the big discs before they can play.
Curling
experimental curling implementation, which is even more
worth to look at because of the control: Hold the left
button to take one curl. Move it in the right direction and
let it go...
CONTROLS
The pointer (or pointers) run fully simultaenously and are
like the hand of the players. At every time it's possible to
pick one of the objects to select it as the cue-object (It
should better be the cueball, if you don't want to lose some
friends). After you have aimed in the desired direction
there are 2 ways to play the ball:
easy: Press and hold down the left button to increase
the strength of your shot. Release the button to
shoot. There is a maximum power! If you hold down
the button too long, you will just make a very
poor shot as a penalty.
tricky: You might notice on that the queue stays on the
table for a moment. This is a problem, if you are
very close to the cushion. Then, the cueball might
hits the queue again. Therefor you can
alternatively gather power by pressing the right
pointer button and shot by simultaenously pressing
the left button. When you release the left button
after the shot, the queue is removed from the
table and you can therefore remove it earlier.
After shooting, you can only wait and see what will happen.
By the way, there actually are some tiny rules implemented.
The billard classes know, that cueballs shouldn't stay in
the pocket after a shot. When they are back on the table,
you can roll them to the position you like by using the
right pointer button.
By the way, if you picked the wrong ball as the cue-object,
you can get rid of it by just clicking the right button
once.
Summary
left select cueball
introduce easy shot
pick ball from pocket
right deselect cueball
introduce tricky shot
move ball
Additional Key-Controls
Q quit game
R reset game
OPTIONS
X11
-size n window size
-root full screen (the default)
-display name
the output-display (default is contents of $DISPLAY)
-in1 name
name of the main display for input (default is: same
as the output display)
-in2 name
name of a second input display. If given, a second
pointer object will be installed in the program and
can be controlled by the pointer of the given
display. (The pointer will get invisible on that
display as it is grabbed anything)
As for every display connection, you have to make
sure that all displays are accessible from your
host. (by using xhost ...)
-sound a subprocess is started, which gives some clicks
when balls hit together, but the smooth motion gets
distorted in that way, at least on my workstation.
ADDITIONAL
-nohints
the hinting arrows are not drawn (for the experts)
-deluxe a special version of the pool with animated balls by
using hundreds of precalculated pixmaps. The
construction of the pixmaps at game start is very
time consuming. Therefore the computed pixmaps are
cached in files fly*-*.dta in a special data-
directory for reusability.
-ft n sets the size of the table in pool-billard to n
foot. The value should be in a range of 6 to 9 feet.
If not given, the size is selected randomly, except
in the deluxe-version, where it default to 8 feet.
This was done because every size would need other
pixmaps for the balls.
-red -green -blue
select color of the billard table. If not given, a
random table is selected.
DEBUG
-time s stop process after s seconds
-demo demonstration (without pockets). By the way, there
are some tiny meters on the bottom of the screen
(when using the full screen), which have the
following meanings:
rate: shows the number of cycles per second. A
cycle means the loop for doing collision
detection and recomputing the corrent
position of all objects.
moves: show the number of ball moves, that were
neccessary in one seconds. If all objects
are moving, this would be <object number> x
<rate>
offset: if shown, it tells you, how much the real
time has gone ahead of the current internal
calculation time. It should never light up
during the game, except probably at the
first shot into the triangle.
-maxspeed
the collision calculation is done only in those
moments, when a collision takes place. In the
intermediate time, only the motion graphics are
updated as fast as possible. The switch disables
that intermediate calculation to get measures for
the speed of the collision calculation. (Good
combinations to check the speed of your machine
would be: -demo -maxspeed -time 10)
-presets
shows the current internal values of static
variables on stdout. The values can be dynamically
altered by setting them in the file presets.txt with
the same syntax as in this output.
There are many additional debugging options, when the
executable was compiled for debugging. They are shown when
no argument or -h is given at the commandline. You can try
flying -pool -deluxe Intro (if you're lucky) to see the some
information about the pixmap-usage.
FILES
presets.txt file to overwrite internal static values
fly*-*.dta files containing the pixmaps for the ball
animation in deluxe-pool. They are created
automatically when they are missing.
SEE ALSO
X(1), xhost(1)
BUGS
As I told, this is a very uncompleted version without any
rules, but you can perfectly play billard, so why worrying
...
The friction is not exactly integrated in the computations,
since that would have cost too much performance. Instead the
objects move without friction for a given amount of time.
Then their speed is re-adjusted. When the granularity gets
smaller, the friction gets more exact. But that works
against a caching-mechanism and therefore would extremely
increase computation time, if many objects are on the table.
Spin is not implemented
There seem to problems, when moving objects directly with
the pointer (like in hockey or curling or with the right
button in billard) when the host is not fast enough. At
least I can not use it on my 386.
There are some minor problems when drawing static parts of
the screen. Sometimes they are misplaced for 1 pixel, e.g.
there is a one pixel gap below the line representing the
pocket
The program constantly produces a load of one and grabs the
pointer, since it was not meant to run it simulaenously with
other programs.
There is a problem in the start-shot of carrom. Due to the
weight of the striker, the other stones might get pushed so
close together, that the collision detection will fail and
objects will overlap (or the algorithm gets stuck in a loop,
only to be escaped by entering 'q'). Sorry for that.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 93-95, Helmut Hoenig, Mettmann/Bad Camberg
email (for any comments):
Helmut.Hoenig@hub.de
smail (for gifts):
Helmut Hoenig
Hopfenstrasse 8a
65520 Bad Camberg
GERMANY
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* *
* By the way, I am collecting banknotes! If you want *
* to join into my collection, get any bill of your *
* country, sign it on the backside and send it to me *
* so I will pin it on my world map. *
* (Don't forget the exact location for the pin :-) *
* *
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Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
software for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
provided that the above copyright notice appear in all
copies.