Piga's Thanksgiving Dinner Hunt By Piga Software November 24, 2010 - November 22, 2012 Version 1.5 - Introduction - The original version of this game was written by me in 2005 during the early days of my use of Game Maker. It was simply a game of several turkey sprites floating across the screen that would turn into roast turkey dinners when clicked on. There was no scoring system or anything like that, it was just a simple small amusement. I first tried to port it Gambas for Canadian Thanksgiving 2007 (October 8), but at that time my programming skill in a language I had just started to learn six months earlier was insufficient to complete it exactly the way I wanted it, and so the idea remained on hold. For the next two years I worked on other projects and worked on my programming skill until came Canadian Thanksgiving 2010 (October 11) and I decided, at 4:00 PM, that I would be interested in trying to code it that day on a whim. I had gotten the program basically done by midnight. Of course, by that point it was too late to release it for Canadian Thanksgiving and was impossible given at this stage we were switching over to our new icculus.org account for web and file hosting. So I decided to plan out what additions I thought could still improve it and then release it for American Thanksgiving (November 25) about two months later, give or take a week or two. I started working on finishing it on the 21st of November 2010 by finding appropriate public domain music, adding some last few features, fixing a few bugs and polishing it up and started uploading it on the evening of November 24. * Version 1.2.0 Note * This is a bug fix release, which also brings in a new feature gameplay feature as well. Most of the bug fixes and improvements will not seem immediately clear to most users, such as flicker-free redraw (more efficient than image tiling as was before), and some of the rearrangements. Major fixes have been done to the turkey code, correcting some rather horrendous bugs with their pattern-based movements and images. Clicking now utilizes the impact image that was in the project file, and the timer clock now makes sounds to accommodate it. Loading up the license screen no longer closes the game menu, and, as with Windys 1.5, the high scores are saved to ".piga" in your home directory. Some more interesting changes is the new time freeze easter egg and of course decoys mode. This mode can be toggled on or off in the game menu, and if selected you will occasionally see your vision correct and notice that some turkeys are not turkeys after all. Do not worry, hitting them just bounces off and only wastes time and not points. Still, skilled players will want to not waste their roasting time hitting decoys! This version was started on October 4, 2011 and is to be released for Canadian Thanksgiving 2011 (October 10), though I will also make a mention of it again on American Thanksgiving (November 20). Anyways, enjoy your turkey hunting! * Version 1.5.0 Note * This began as simply another bug fixing release, but grew to be much larger than I had originally intended. I ended up giving it smooth movement and custom game speed, which allows for both a more fluid and customizable game-play experience. I also rearranged the game's visual layout, and I cleaned up how the easter eggs are used. And of course, this update has continued the trend of porting over the Piga Software catalogue to Gambas 3. Enjoy! - Gameplay - The gameplay is based on but expanded from the original Game Maker version. Within the game area, several turkeys roam hither and dither across the screen, and when they walk off they come back from the other side of the game area. By clicking on them, the player can roast the turkeys into turkey dinners, but this is only half of the challenge, as the player must then click them again to collect them before the turkey's prior inertia slides them off the screen. They are then replaced with another, living, turkey. This latter point changes the original gameplay in an attempt to prevent it from devolving into a click fest, as you have to put some work into actually collecting them. Rather then just clicking furiously and randomly to get a high score, you now need to do it a bit slower as a low discrepancy between turkey's roasted and those collected is just as important as a high amount of turkeys caught. On top of all this, the point is get a high score within the minute allotted each game. All scores are recorded in a high score table. - Compatible Systems - Piga's Thanksgiving Dinner Hunt is built in the Gambas programming language and thus will run on any system that the Gambas 3 run-time will work on. This includes most POSIX systems, such as most versions of GNU/Linux including Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, Debian, Mint and Ubuntu as well as FreeBSD. Sadly at this time the Gambas run-time has not been properly ported to Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X (the latter is in the works), and there are no current plans for Piga Software to create a port to either of those platforms through similar BASIC type languages such as Visual Basic .Net or any given Mac OS X equivalent. Being made in Gambas, and free software, it can be edited, modified and extended on any of the compatible systems stated using the Gambas integrated development environment. Also, if anyone should wish to port the Gambas run-time to Windows or Mac OS X we would be in your debt and if you wish to port any of our programs, including this one, through any means to other platforms we would give you our full support. - Installation - As is stated above, this program can only be ran on certain POSIX compliant systems like GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. There are several different ways to install it onto your system however. Before you try any of this, you should check and see if you have the Gambas run-time properly installed; it is available from most software repositories such as the system ones for Fedora or through extensions such as an Ubuntu PPA, and it can be built for other systems from source code. Afterwards, the first option is to just run the executable "Thanksgiving.gambas" and it should work fine through the run-time. The second option is to download the Gambas project and source code yourself and run it through the development environment. However, if you are running an RPM-enabled GNU/Linux distribution such as Fedora, Mandriva, Mageia or SUSE you may download a select RPM installer from our icculus.org server. This should allow for you easy installation. One day we also hope to offer up DEB installers for Debian, Ubuntu and Mint systems when we have the resources to maintain an installed system upon which to build them on. In the mean-time, if you want an installed copy on those systems you may download the source code, load it up in the development environment, build a DEB yourself and use it. If you do this, do not hesitate to send a copy of these installers back to us. There is also an installer using GNU Autotools and an installer geared for Slackware systems available. - What license is the program under? - As elaborated in "GPL.txt" and the license window within the program, this work is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation. This means that you are free to use, study, modify or redistribute this program however you wish as long as you re-release any, and particularity modified, versions under the same license or, at your option, any later version of the GPL. This applies to this program in its entirety. - Changes - See "CHANGELOG" included in this archive. - Other Notes - At the beginning, a box will ask you your name, which is to allow it to put your name into the high score table after you have completed a round, and from here you can also go and see the presently saved high scores. Clicking on the copyright label will take you to a form that shows some copyright information as well as credits. Right clicking on the game area during play will pause the game and bring the box back to you, in case you wish to take a break or wish to see the score table again. Though note that you can not change your name again after it is first set in during that program load. It is also possible, though we will not say how here, to activate two easter eggs (wrong holiday I know) that allows you rapid fire or a time freeze! Though using these means you can not place down a high score, as does changing the game speed. Fair is fair! The menu background music is a version of the song "Give Thanks", and the game music an incarnation of "Turkey in the Straw", which is apparently an old Thanksgiving folk song. A faster but quieter version is used whilst displaying the pause menu. Inside the program they are in Ogg Vorbis format like the sound effects, but their original MIDI versions, as well as vector SVGs for many of the graphics, can be found in the source code archive. It is actually quite difficult to find decent Thanksgiving music as all you get are rather generic hymns or one or two folks songs. Still the bright happy tune for the game kind of adds a level of dark humour to the mass turkey slaughter within. Actually that is the sort of comedy found in most of the folk songs and poems I cam across: either talking about turkeys running away or being too dim-witted to have ran away beforehand. - Credits - Game Concept, Programming and Editing: Graham L. Wilson Music & Sound Effects: Public Domain Sources Audio Edits & Conversions: Malcolm Wilson Multimedia (http://icculus.org/mwm/) Grass Background: Molotov.nu (archive: http://icculus.org/~graham/Molotov.zip) Sprite Graphics & Decorations: OpenClipart (http://openclipart.org) Special thanks to BenoƮt Minisini and the other Gambas developers. Graham L. Wilson, Technical Director, Piga Software http://icculus.org/piga/ http://piga.tropicalwikis.com/ http://piga.7.forumer.com/