* R E T R O   R I V E R   R A I D *
programmed by CLEBER DE MATTOS CASALI - http://darkphear.cjb.net
specially for the RETRO REMAKES COMPETITION 2004 (I want to win!!!)                   


-What is it a remake of?

This game is a 3D remake of the original Atari 2600 River Raid programmed by Carol Shawn, wich is one of the greatest Atari 2600 games ever. I was pretty surprised to discover Carol Shaw is considered the first woman in game programming ever. I really wanted to contact her to show this fangame but I just couldn't find her at all. My main objective with this project was to recreate River Raid in a 3D environment, as faithful to the original as possible, and it was pretty difficult. How can a Jet fly low enough to hit a ship and high enough to hit a plane? How could I explain this? How could I translate it to a 3D environment? Well, I think I did it. This is my first 3D game ever. I hope you like it.



-What do you have to do?

Shoot'em up! Just like the old 8-bit times, you have to shoot as many enemies as you can, to make it to the hiscore table, and try get as far as you can in the river.



-What about the controls?

Left Key/Joystick Left : Go Left
Right Key/Joystick Right : Go Right
Up Key/Joystick Up: Move Faster
Down Key/Joystick Down: Move Slower
Space Bar/Control Key/Joystick Button 1/Joystick Button 2 : Fire
P : Pause game
ESC : Quit game (prompt first)

Press F1 in the title screen to enter game setup.



-What are the system requirements?

Minimum requirements:

300 MHz Processor
64 MB of RAM
Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
DirectX 9 or higher
DirectX compatible Video Card with 16 MB and Hardware Acceleration
DirectX compatible Sound Card


This game was developed and fully tested with a:

Athlon XP 2.2
256 MB of RAM
Windows 98
DirectX 9.0c
NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 DDR 64 Mb
Creative Sound Blaster 16 ISA

The game can run at a decent speed in an older PC if you set the color depth to 16 BIT, the video mode to FULLSCREEN and the frame rate to POOR.



-Any known bugs you didn't have time to fix?

Sometimes the keyboard doesn't work for about a second when typing your name for the hiscore table. I couldn't find the bug, I'm not sure if it's with my code or if it's DarkBasic's fault. Also, fuel and ships appear inside rocks...



-Any plans for future versions?

Maybe. I'll consider adding a fixed levels mode, more enemies and scenery variations.



-Any other interesting information?

The helicopters are NOT 3D objects, just textured planes. It took me a few hours to write the engine and months to create the graphics. Explosions are made of particles. Water is a transparent plane with the sky reflection textured plane under it. Shadows are textured plains with transparency, positioned under the water plane. The levels are not plain random, they are dinamically calculated, with increasing difficulty.



-What software did you use to create this game?

DarkBASIC Professional - http://www.thegamecreators.com

Autodesk Animator Pro - http://www.autodesk.com

DOSBox (for running Animator on Windows) - http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

Creative WaveStudio - http://www.creative.com

BladeEnc - http://bladeenc.mp3.no

XnView - http://www.xnview.com

Pixia - http://www.tacmi.co.jp/pixia


Part of the included media is royalty-free from the DarkBASIC and DarkBASIC Professional CDs.

RIVER RAID Copyright (C) 1982 Activision, All rights reserved.

ATARI Copyright (C) 1992, Atari Corporation, All rights reserved.

All mentioned trademarks copyright their respective owners.

All other works Copyright (C) 2004 Cleber de Mattos Casali, All rights reserved.
