ack3d/example

Example ACK-3D Application

Source files and assets for a simple example project utilizing the ACK-3D engine. Uses art assets found on the CD included with the book "Amazing 3-D Games Adventure Set" by Lary Myers, published in 1995.

The purpose of this project is to provide a very simple application that helps illustrate things discussed in detail in chapters 11 and 14 of the book. Chapter 14 in particular goes through the process of creating an ACK-3D application from scratch, but it is Windows-specific. This project aims to be somewhat of a DOS-equivalent of the project presented in that chapter.

Requirements

To build you will need Watcom C++. I used Watcom C++ 10.0a, but you should be able to build with a newer version (maybe even a slightly older version too).

You must build ACKLIB.LIB prior to building this project. Please check the /ack_lib directory at the root of this repository first.

Building

Within this directory, run

> wmake

This will build using the included makefile using a debug build settings.

To build using a release configuration:

> wmake target_config=release

In either case, you should get an output artifact EXAMPLE.EXE on successful build.

Editing the Map

You must build the DOS map editor. Please check the /map_edit directory at the root of this repository first.

Once you have a working DOS map editor, run:

> \path\to\mapedit.exe \path\to\example\assets\example.med

To try out your map alterations you will need to rebuild the pics.dtf resource file.

To add/remove bitmaps you will need to edit the example.med file for the map editor. However, you ALSO need to modify the example.dat and example.inf files to successfully rebuild the pics.dtf resource file. See Appendix A and the last section of Chapter 15 in the book for more information on ACK-3D resource files and using the DOS map editor. Please make sure you are well familiar with these chapters, as getting all these files exactly right can be quite tricky!

Rebuilding pics.dtf

You must build the BPIC tool. Please check the /bpic directory at the root of this repository first.

If you wish to make changes to the assets used by this project (bitmaps and/or map), make whatever changes you like to the example.dat file (which just lists the files to be included in the resource file) and example.inf file. Then to build a new pics.dtf run:

> \path\to\bpic.exe \path\to\example\assets\example.dat \path\to\example\pics.dtf

See Appendix A and the last section of Chapter 15 in the book for more information on ACK-3D resource files and using the DOS map editor. Please make sure you are well familiar with these chapters, as getting all these files exactly right can be quite tricky!