Read Me

MISSION AMALTHEA
================

Installation
------------

I distribute binaries and source in one build. It's not worth 
separating them because most of the data is textures, sound files, 
etc. anyway.

WINDOWS:
The Windows build comes with .libs and .dlls. There is NOTHING TO 
INSTALL! Just unzip the package and doubleclick on Amalthea.exe.
The same applies for developers: everything is complete, opening 
the .vcproj file with VS.NET should get you started.

LINUX
The Linux build does not include SDL, SDL_mixer, GL and GLU. It 
is assumed that you are able and happy to install these yourself. For
developers there is a makefile. They will also need the devel
versions of the above libraries.


Game help
---------

In-game help is practically non-existant. The best help documents are
the two posters found in version 1.0 on SourceForge. I recommend to 
look at them despite their size, it's the only way forward to success 
and enjoyment.


History
-------

I developed this game at CERN (www.cern.ch) as a summer student at the
CERN openlab, which is involved in GRID development and GRID
technology evaluation. The design goal for my project was: to develop
a 3D game that was both entertaining and educative. The game was
presented and played at the CERN 50th anniversary open day. Many
people won T-Shirts.


Future
------

The future is uncertain, as always. First I'm considering a Mac OSX
port, just to see how difficult or easy it is. After that Jasenko and 
I will start thinking about an entirely new version of the game which 
is more biased towards entertainment while trying to not completely 
drop the educative aspect (we want to keep the CERN logo). But there 
definitely have to be some evil viruses and alien killer programs.


Credits
-------

I am responsible for gameplay, world layout and 99% of the code. 
Other people have made contributions to this game:
- Alexei Sergjev designed the 3DS models and textures.
- Silvano De Gennaro came up with the original background story
  and contributed the teaser.
- Jasenko Zivanov tweaked my code a bit here and there and is the only 
  other developer with CVS access on the SourceForge project. He also
  designed the posters we used at the CERN exhibition.
- Francois Grey, Matti Heikkurinen and many others make the openlab
  possible.


18-11-2004  Michael Keller