Seņor Bomber Multiplayer Build A

Table of Contents

Instructions to Start a Game (read this if you don't know what an IP is)
Introduction
Version Info
System Requirements
Basic Controls
Getting your IP address & Using the Quick Save system
Connect!
The Powerups
The Scoring System
A Little About the Producer
Known Bugs
Submit a Bug/Comments
Legal Stuff

Quick Start
Ok here's 5 steps to getting a game started:

1. At the Main Menu, select Multiplayer Game
2. First scroll to the option that says "Your IP:", and press enter
3. After it's done seeking your IP, tell this number to the person you're playing
4. Get the other player's IP, then select the option "Other Player's IP", and enter the other player's ip
5. Select "Connect"
6. Either select "Create Session" (choose your room first) if the other player hasn't done so, otherwise select "Join Session"

There are many ways to get someone else's IP to play a game with them. Here's a list of chat services to get you started:

AOL Instant Messenger - Quite possibly a lot of your friends use this. It's among the most populer chatting software.
ICQ - Another highly popular chat program
mIRC - An IRC chat program

Introduction
First off, I'd like to thank you for downloading this game. I created all of the images in the game myself and wrote all the code myself. Any thoughts, comments, rants or other wise words are welcome, send them all over to p_krecker@yahoo.com. Before mailing me, visit my site www.pretendinc.cjb.net for the latest version, and if you know you have the latest version, hell, visit it anyways!


Version Info
Your version of Seņor Bomber is 2.0 Multiplayer. Your build is A. There are 2 builds of Seņor Bomber, build A and build B. Build B isn't out yet, but it will be a version designed for those with a high bandwidth connection. It will have better graphics, more sounds, more options, more of everything. It will likely be a 6-10 Mb download though. Build A is the normal version, and I have worked to keep it as small as possible. Note: Version 2 is not compatible with version 1.x or version 3.x (when it comes out). Version 2 is compatible with 2.0-2.9, just as version 1 is compatible with 1.0-1.9.

Version List:

    Beta
    Initial Release
    Version 1.0
    Fixed a couple minor bugs and removed some debugging that I had built in.
    Version 1.1
    Fixed some bugs with the movement, and added better safeguards for the game sync.
    Version 1.2
    Fixed some problems with the multiplayer sync. The game can now run in secure mode without problems. There's no longer an issue with an I/O Error because of a DLL provided by Martin Rijks.
    Verion 2.0
    Added more improvements to the multiplayer engine. I also added 3 more multiplayer rooms, and a new scoring system. And there's a new IP List feature that saves the IP addresses of the last 10 different IP addresses you connected to.
System Requirements
 I tried to keep these as low as possible, but these are the requirements:

Pentium 200 Mhz (233 recommended)
16 Megabytes of RAM (32 recommended)
Microsoft Windows 95 or higher
800x600 Resolution
DirectX 5.0 or Later (if you own any games made within the past 4 years or have Windows 98 or higher, you probably have it)
Sound Card (OK, it's not required, but I worked hard on the sounds and music. If you don't have one, you should buy one)
Modem or LAN. Any speed modem will do. The game only needs about 10 bytes at any time.

Note: Even with lots of system resources, running too many programs at once will cause Seņor Bomber to run out of resources. I strongly suggest you have no more than 2 programs running at one time while running Seņor Bomber.

Basic Controls
 

Left........Left
Right.......Right
Up..........Hmm, I wonder?
Down........Push and and see!
Spacebar....Lay a bomb
F...........Switch to fullscreen
S...........Scale the game in fullscreen (Don't use this if your computer's under 300Mhz)
Ctrl+R......Restart the game
Ctrl+S......Take a screenshot
Right Click.Options menu
Esc.........Exit/Go back
IP Address Junk
Version 2 has a new method of getting your IP. It is automatically detected when you go to the multiplayer configuration menu. IF you aren't connected when you go into the menu, just select the menu option where your IP address would normally be listed, after connecting. If you select the option and your IP address is detected normally, you can save it to a file.

There is also a new Quick Save feature in version 2. Every time you enter in someone elses IP address, it's saved. Up to 10 IP addresses can be saved, and then entered right clicking on the menu option to change the connecting IP address, then selecting the IP address you want. Note that some people have dynamic IP address anigment, that is, their IP address changes every time the connect to the internet. They can check this by simply connecting to the internet, copying down their IP address, disconnecting, then reconnecting and copying down their IP address again. If the two are different then the person had dynamic IP address assignment.

Connect
In Seņor Bomber there's 2 different ways to connect to another player.

1. TCP/IP
This is most likely the protocol you use to connect to the internet. To use a TCP/IP connection you need only 1 thing, the other user's IP address. An IP address is sort of like the address for your computer when it's on the internet. Seņor Bomber can will your IP automatically. It is listed under the cultiplayer configuration menu. It should look something like "Your IP: x.x.x.x". In place of the x's there will be numbers. That's your IP. Select the menu option to save your IP address to a file so you can copy and paste it. Under the "Connecting IP" enter the other user's IP address.

2. IPX
IPX is another internet protocol, but is used to network other computers together. For this you don't need an IP address.

The Powerups
 Bomb Plus
Adds the to the number of bombs you can lay at once.

Fire Plus
Adds to the length of the fire the bomb creates.

The Scoring System
The scoring system in Seņor Bomber works like this: the person who is player one gets a medal if (s)he kills player 2 or if (s)he dies. The same goes for player 2. Player 1 is always the person who creates the session, player 2 is always the one who joins the session. So if you're player one the first time, and player two the second, then you just switched scores with the other person!

A Little About the Game (and the author, and some other people)
Well, the game was created almost completely using free programs. I used:

Notepad (for writing this) which is simply the best word processing program ever
IrfanView - The best graphics program ever
Adobe Photoshop 5.5 - Yeah, this is the only commercial program I used.
Game Maker 4 - Written entirely in GML
MS Paint - Would be the best if it wasn't made by Microsoft...
ModPlug Tracker - My favorite music software
Sound Recorder - Yeah, this is the best sound program
Batchcom 1.1 - Made IPFinder with it, it's a BASIC type language
AOL Instant Messenger - I know it's aol, but I used it to beta test with my friends

And that's it. All of them were free, except for Photoshop, but I'm sure you could accomplish the same task with IrfanView and Paint, but Photoshop is faster and has better Jpeg compression.
As for the development computer:

Created on:
Celeron 333 Mhz with
64 Megs of RAM
33.6 Kbps Modem
A REALLY SH*TTY Packard Bell Monitor (800x600 max resolution)
20 Gig Hard Drive (there are 498 files for Seņor Bomber, toaling in 62.4 Megs)

I know the computer isn't all that great, but my parents won't give me any money to put into it and I had to build it myself.

Tested on:
K62 300 Mhz with
64 Megs of RAM
DSL Modem
Dell Trinitron Monitor (max is > 1024x768)

Intel Pentium III 833 Mhz with
64 Megs of RAM
28.8 Kbps Modem
ViewStar Monitor (mex res is 1024x768)

And that's it for this section. So read on to the Legal information, it's really important!

The Object of the Game
The object of the practice room is to blow up all the blocks in 60 seconds.
The object of the game in multiplayer is to... I'll let you figure it out...

Known Bugs

Problem:
Multiplayer Game is slow

Solution:
This is cause by a couple factors. One could be the speed of your computer or the other players computer. If either is below 166 Mhz, the multiplayer game may run jerky at first. Another is having a slow connection. Even if your connection is 56k, if you have many programs using it at once, the game may run slowly. One of the main causes of a lagged connection is having a download running. Another culprit is an instant messenger (i.e. MSN, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ).

Problem:
I die randomly, my bombs blow up as soon as a lay them, or other weird thngs happen during a multiplayer game

Solution:
This is caused then the two games get out of synchronization (sync). There are several countermeasures against this happening, but it may still happen. If it does, please email me with your problem (or use the form below) and I will try to install more countermeasures against it happening.

Submit Something

Your Email Address (simply put none if you don't have one):

Your homepage:

Your Country (for survey purposes only):

Your comment/submission/bug report:

Legal Stuff
This program is copyright 2001,2002 Patrick Krecker, Pretend Software. Don't decompile this program or reverse engineer it because you may not do so. Selling this is also against the rules. You may give this freely to anyone you please for the charge of the media it is transferred on and no more. The price charged for the media may not exceed $5 (US). If this program beats you, destroys your computer, eats your family, or causes any other damages it's not my fault. If you'd like to request source code you may. I will not give out certain parts of the source code or any of the images in the game. All requests will be honored within one week of my recieving them.