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Pakoon is a never-ending project which has now produced three games. I wanted to code something on my own and learn some OpenGL graphics programming. This is how Pakoon got started. The game is now in it's third incarnation. First there was a rather simple prototype called PAKOON! v0.03a, which included one flower car (with auxiliary jet and rotor). The game map/world consisted of a small island, with hills, water and a bridge to jump on. Then came PAKOON! v1.ONE, which was the "ultimate desert pizza delivery game". It included four vehicles (3 cars and an airplane). The game map/world was expanded to immense proportions (9043 times bigger than the surface of the earth). The goal of the game was to deliver pizzas to desert inhabitants and raise some money to buy new vehicles. With this version I also published a developer package (to create new vehicles, objects and scenes) and the source code was also made publicly available. Now the final game in this trilogy is ready. It's called "Downhill PAKOON! 2.Many Unlimited 2009". As the name suggests, it is a downhill racing game with built-in multiplay option. The game is based on the previous version but has changed a lot and most of the old ideas have been replaced with new ones. These are some of the highlights of the new version:
What kind of a computer is needed to play PAKOON? Recommended System Requirements
Operating System: Windows
2000 or later Minimum System Requirements
Operating System: Windows
98 What is the red arrow doing in the race? The red arrow indicates the best race driven on that location. If you make a new track record, your drive path will be recorded and the red arrow will show that next time you race on that location. What do I need to play the multiplay? To play the multiplay game mode, you need to have DirectX 8 or later from Microsoft. To download it, go to address http://www.microsoft.com/directx and look for the DirectX 9.0a End-User Runtime or later. When you start the multiplay mode, your computer can be the server or the client. If you select the server, other players will be able to connect to your computer. If you select the client, you need to know the server's IP address. In order for the multiplay to work smoothly, it's better the faster network connection you have. I haven't tried, but I assume multiplay will also work with a 56K modem. NOTE: Multiplay has been tested on Local Area Network only, In case you are playing via internet, firewalls and other security stuff might have an impact. The port Pakoon is using for multiplay is 2345. If you want to change this, edit your <machinename>Settings.dat file in your Pakoon root directory and look for the MultiplayPortNumber keyword. Why my selection wasn't accepted in the multiplay? I selected speedrace but slalom was selected anyway. Why? In multiplay mode, every player is going to play the same game mode (i.e. speedrace, slalom or airtime) and on same location. The game mode and location that has the most selections wins. If two or more selections have been selected by as many players, the selection that the host player has made wins. Note that each player can still choose their own car. The multiplay sucks, cars go through each other and jitter like crazy. Why? Gimme a break. I know that the collision detection on multiplay sucks and the cars jitter like crazy. I'll try to make better games in the future. How can I submit my highscores? The hiscore page has been closed and new hiscores can not be sent. Since the release of the complete source code (on the 17th of August, 2004), the hiscore-page was frozen and the names of the best drivers at that time will now go down to history. Why my highscores aren't always updated? The file highscores.dat is protected with a checksum and must not be modified by hand. If you modify the file and the checksum doesn't match, I will not update your highscores in the PAKOON Hall of Fame. The vehicle and scene files are also checksum protected. If you're using a modified car or scene your highscores.dat file will not be updated even if you make a new record. These checksum protections have been made to enable reliable and fair comparison of players' skills around the world. How do you ensure that the race times on different computer are comparable? The race times are not measured using a real time clock. The race times are measured using a simulation clock, which will tick at the same pace on every computer running the PAKOON2 game. The game tries to maintain a one-to-one relationship between the simulation clock and real time clock so that 1 second in the PAKOON2 is as close as possible to 1 second in real time. However, sometimes the simulation is frozen for a short while (for example when the game needs to generate more terrain during game). This kind of "lost time" is not recorded in the race time and thus each race driven in the same way takes the same time, no matter if the computer has a 500MHz or a 2GHz CPU. Note that in the multiplay mode a common simulation clock is not used. Because of this the server/host machine decides who enters the goal in which order and what is the final position for each player. Can I play my own music (MP3 files) on the background? Yes you can. You can configure which music plays during the main menu and during game. Here's how:
Will the old vehicles made for PAKOON1 work in the new PAKOON2? Yes and no. All cars will work but the airplane and helicopter rotor features will not work. When I started PAKOON2, I wanted to simplify the code and got rid of all airplane and helicopter code (since they don't make too much sense in the downhill racing game). Vehicles that don't use airplane or helicopter features will work in PAKOON2. For example, all the extra cars made for PAKOON1 will work also in PAKOON2. See the last question to check those out. However, if you're using a car other than one of the original PAKOON2 cars, your highscores will not be updated. You will see a message "unverified car" in the start of the race if you're using a modified car. Can I modify the original cars of the PAKOON2 game? Yes you can but I would advice you didn't. If you modify an original .vehicle file, your car will become unverified and you will not be able to record highscores with that car anymore. A better idea is to copy the .vehicle file and modify the copy. This way you can play with the car and still preserve the verified original car. Please note that the original PAKOON2 cars use a new 3D file format (i.e. ".Pakoon3D" extension). This is an encrypted file format and is not supported by 3D modeling software. I bought the 3D models for the game and their license prohibits a free distribution of the original 3D files. However, the Wavefront OBJ file format is still supported by the .vehicle files. Will the old scenes work with PAKOON2? They might work in a sense that they don't crash. But since the terrain engine has been changed the world will look completely different and objects will be placed in wrong places. I don't plan to support the old scenes. I miss the old homepage. Is it still available? The old homepage is still available in the original address (http://www.nic.fi/~moxide) but I don't update the pages anymore (I might upload new vehicles there but don't count on that). The old version can still be downloaded from there. |
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