ack3d/fdemo

FDEMO

Source code and assets for the FDEMO project contained on the CD that was included on the book "Amazing 3-D Games Adventure Set" by Lary Myers, published in 1995. The source code has been fixed up a little bit. A Watcom makefile has been added, replacing a build script for Lary's custom MK.EXE build tool.

Requirements

To build you will need Watcom C++ and Borland TASM. I used Watcom C++ 10.0a and Borland TASM 4.0, but you should be able to build with newer versions (maybe even slightly older versions too).

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

To hear the background music you will need a Sound Blaster compatible sound card. This project is hard coded to use address 220h, IRQ 5, DMA 1. However you can adjust these settings in the StartBGmusic function found in fdemo.c.

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 FDEMO.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\fdemo\assets\fdemo.l01

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 fdemo.l01 file for the map editor. However, you ALSO need to modify the fdemo.dat and fdemo.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 fdemo.dat file (which just lists the files to be included in the resource file) and fdemo.inf file. Then to build a new pics.dtf run:

> \path\to\bpic.exe \path\to\fdemo\assets\fdemo.dat \path\to\fdemo\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!