Reindeer Joyride
================

About
-----

Reindeer Joyride is a good old classic "mode 7" style arcade racer, created
for Krampushack 2019. It was heavily influenced by classic NES / SNES games
like Mario Kart and F-Zero, as well as the PC Mario Kart lookalike, Wacky
Wheels, all of them among my favorite games of the era. There's also some
influence from the top-down-ish third-person 3D racer "Ignition", another
classic game I've played to pieces.

When Santa is out of town (or whatever they call the dwelling he inhabits on
the North Pole with his elves), the elves and/or the reindeer (I haven't quite
made up my mind) organize little reindeer races for fun. Of course all of this
is highly illegal, and super dangerous. Or so I've been told. Anyway. I didn't
quite get to put in all the features I wanted; heck, I didn't even manage to
create sounds or music for this game (if you want, consider it a pretentious
symbol of protest against the cacophony of modern society; if you don't want to
do that, then that's fine too).

Oh, and by the way, Santa's reindeer can fly, so make sure you use this ability
to your advantage.

Building
--------

- Install Allegro 5. I used 5.2.4 from Debian, but the current release should
  also work. If you're on Debian, `apt install liballegro5-dev` should do the
  trick.
- You will also need GNU make (or a compatible replacement, I haven't tested it
  against anything else), a working C compiler (I tested against gcc 8.3.0),
  and a working Python 3 install.
- In the source bundle's root directory, type `make` (or `make release`) to
  create a release build, or `make debug` to create a debug build.
- A `joyride` binary will be built in `bin/{debug,release}/joyride`, and
  symlinked into the project root, from where you should run it.

Running
-------

The `joyride` binary takes one optional argument: `--fullscreen`. Without it,
it will run windowed, with it, it runs in a fullscreen window.

Controls
--------

Cursor keys control "rudder" (turn left / right) and "elevator" (pitch up /
down). Just like in an airplane, the "up" arrow corresponds to "pushing" the
nose down, and the "down" arrow "pulls" the nose up. If you don't like this,
tough luck, because I didn't have enough time left to give you configurable
controls.

Left Shift accelerates, Left Control brakes (though this is a racer, so you
probably want to avoid that).

Note that the reindeer's movement has some quirks:

- On the ground, you have much better traction, so you can make tighter turns.
- Over water, you will be very slow, unless you are flying.
- When you fly too slow, you will sink to the ground, a bit like stalling in
  a real aircraft (though modeled rather inaccurately on purpose).

Krampushack
-----------

My original giftee had posted the following wishlist:

* Arcade. Can be action, adventure, puzzle or whatever, but think about
  good-old arcade games, you insert a token, press 1P and start to play. And
  also simple input: a joystick and a couple of action buttons.
* It would be cool if it is moddable. I mean, a way to modify or add content
  (levels, characters, items) to the game without modifying the sources. If
  you'll add scripting, make it simple (no C#, JavaScript or similar). A list
  of commands or a definition file are enough in a lot of cases. (I like
  QuickBASIC *wink* *wink*).
* Fun.

I think I've captured these quite well - the controls are as simple as it gets,
one directional input and two buttons.

The game is moddable, in the sense that you can provide racing tracks as ASCII
files (they are all in `./data/maps`). I had originally planned to also have
similar file formats for "series" (with a knock-out system, point rankings,
and an unlocking mechanism) and individual reindeer "personalities" (the
game physics already come prepared for modifying various reindeer performance
characteristics like top speed, climb rate, accelerations, grip, etc., and I
had envisioned that each of the 8 classic reindeer would have a personality of
its own).

Hopefully, it's also fun; if I had managed to make more time, I could have done
more - the AI players are ridiculously stupid and routinely get stuck, the
existing tracks need better tweaking, and there have to be more of them. A
reindeer stat system, an unlocking mechanism, race series, etc., would probably
also have made it more fun. I hope it's still plenty of fun - in any case, I
drew inspiration from some of the most fun games I've ever played.

However, my original giftee pulled out, and I got another one assigned on short
notice; his wishlist:

* Has a wonderful moving story, that takes place in some mysterious place, and
  follows the basic theory of "the hero's journey"
* Uses a tile map of some kind.
* Has dialog between multiple characters.
* Involves a robot who wishes the best for his master.

The engine was already tile based, so yay for me; but with only 3 days to go, I
utterly failed at hitting any of the others. Well, at least I can have Santa's
ASCII robot in the README:

      o
      |       ___________________________________
    +---+    /                                   \
    |O O|  <  I wish all the best for you, Santa! |
    |===|    \___________________________________/
 +--+---+--+
 |  |   |  |

So, have fun, enjoy, and maybe I'll keep working on it after the competition
ends. Bugging me about it might very well help with that.

Cheers,

Tobias

[email protected]