Introduction
Deluxe Snake is a clone of the classic arcade games Nibbles and Snake, with improved gameplay, including bonus items, mushrooms, bricks, tail-bite, and other fun stuff. Play on multiple arena sizes, with borders on/off, in 4 different gamemodes. There's a top 20 high-scores list for each combination of settings, which also stores gamelengths and dates, and can be merged with friends' lists.
You can also submit your high-scores to the on-line scoreboard.
Deluxe Snake is available for Windows, Linux, BeOS, and QNX. You can find the latest versions of it, and other stuff, at my site www.dascdev.net. Oh, and please sign my guestbook! :-)
Please report bugs to support@dascdev.net. Try to describe the problem as best you can, and attach the dsnake.log file found in the main game directory.
Disclaimer
Deluxe Snake (the "Product") is provided "AS IS", and without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Product is with the user. Should the Product prove defective, the user assumes the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction. In no event shall the author Daniel Schlyder be held liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, exemplary, punitive, loss of business profits or special damages) arising out of use or inability to use the Product, even if Daniel Schlyder has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
Copyright / Permissions
Deluxe Snake is Copyright (c) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Daniel Schlyder. All rights not specifically granted below are reserved. Copyrights on the MIDI files are held by their respective composers (see credits below).
Deluxe Snake may be freely used and distributed subject to the following terms:
- Deluxe Snake may not be sold or resold, distributed as a part of any commercial package, used in a commercial environment, used or distributed in support of a commercial service, or used or distributed to support any kind of profit-generating activity, even if it is being distributed freely, without prior written permission from the author Daniel Schlyder.
- The integrity of the original Deluxe Snake distribution, as distributed by Daniel Schlyder, is essential. Deluxe Snake and all of its related files must be distributed together in the original format. The Deluxe Snake distribution may not have files added to it or removed from it, and none of its contents may be modified, decompiled, or reverse engineered.
- Daniel Schlyder retains the right to modify these terms at any time, and without prior notice.
Requirements
- Windows 9x/Me/NT4/2000/XP (with DirectX 5.0 or higher), Linux (x86), BeOS R5 (x86), or QNX 6.1
- Pentium or better processor
- Graphics card that supports 640x480 in 15bit or higher colour depth
- Allegro 4.1.4 (Linux only -- see install notes)
Install
To install the Windows version double-click the executable and follow the on-screen instructions. The other versions must be manually decompressed to a directory of your choice. Please note that you can keep your old config.dat, hiscores.dat, and stats.dat files. If a new version breaks compatibility (see changes), they will be overwritten.
To use the Linux version you must first download and install Allegro 4.1.4. You can find it on Allegro's homepage.
How to play / Gamemodes
Your goal is simple: eat the numbered food to gain points. Game ends when you eat yourself, or crash into a brick.
UltraBasic
In this gamemode, only one food is spawned at any given time, and it remains in the arena until eaten.
Basic
In this gamemode, up to three food may spawn at once, and food will disappear, or turn into bricks (40%), if not eaten quickly enough. Bonus points equal to 1 + length / 50 are awarded every second.
Deluxe
This gamemode is like Basic, but with a lot of extra elements to make it more fun.
- Frogs and gifts
- Eating a frog or a gift gives you a bonus item. Frogs move around randomly, so they're not as easy to catch as gifts, but much more common.
- Bonus items
- Antidote
- protects against mushroom effects
- Candy Canes
- eat the candy for bonus points
- Diet Pill
- food eaten reduces length
- Doubler
- 2x scores, 1.5x lengths
- Dynamite
- collect three sticks to assemble a bomb. Then use the bomb to blow up (i.e. remove) all blue, or four grey, bricks.
- Reverse
- use to reverse direction travelled in (i.e. tail becomes head)
- Shield
- survive crashing into a blue brick
- Tripler
- 3x scores, 2x lengths
- Mushrooms
- There is a 30% chance of food turning into red or blue mushrooms if not eaten quickly enough. Eating a red mushroom will poison the snake causing control keys to be reversed for a short period of time denoted by the poison bar at the bottom right corner of the screen. Eating a blue mushroom will cause two blue bricks to be spawned in random locations.
- Mushroom generator
- When number of mushrooms increases to ten and above a mushroom generator will eventually be spawned. It will spawn red mushrooms at a slow rate until it is removed. You can remove it by eating it, which will spawn 3-6 new mushrooms, or reducing the number of mushrooms to less than ten, which will make it disappear.
- Tail-bite
- Tail-bite is achieved by making the ends of the snake overlap. When this happens the snake's length is cut in half, all blue bricks turn grey, and 3-6 mushrooms are spawned in random locations.
- Megafood
- A food item with a plus sign on it is called a megafood. It is worth more than regular food, and increases snake length quite a bit. (Tip: It is never any easier to bite tail than when you've just eaten a megafood.)
- Stone food
- Stone food are round and grey, and count upwards from 1 to 9 before turning into grey bricks. Luckily, they only spawn when number of bricks is above three, and you can eat them safely while they're counting.
Antidote, Diet Pill, Doubler, Tripler, and mushroom effects last 15 seconds with normal gamespeed.
Deluxe Cash
In this variant of the Deluxe gamemode, you get cash when eating frogs and gifts, and can then buy the bonus items you need, when you need them. You can have a maximum of six cash symbols at any time. Eat more frogs, and you'll get candy canes instead. Buy bonus items using the blow up bricks and reverse keys plus the special buy keys. Bonus item costs:
| Antidote | 2 |
| Bomb | 4 |
| Diet Pill | 2 |
| Multiplier | 2 (can be 2X or 3X) |
| Life | 6 (only in 3 lives games) |
| Reverse | 2 |
| Shield | 1 |
3 Lives
The Deluxe modes can be played with three lives for longer games. When you die, the snake will slowly shrink to start size and be placed in starting position. You will then be granted a special version of the antidote bonus item that protects you against everything except border and snake tiles for a short time. In Deluxe Cash mode you can buy back a lost life if you have collected 6 cash symbols.
Scoring (points & lengths)
| Points | Length | |
|---|---|---|
| candy cane | 50 | 1 |
| diet food | 10-90 | - 1-9 |
| food | 10-90 | 1-9 |
| megafood | 150-250 | 15-25 |
| mushroom (if immune) | 10 | 1 |
| red mushroom (if poisoned) | 20 | 1 |
| mushroom (else) | 30 | 1 |
| mushroom generator | 40 | 1 |
| stone food | 0 | 1-9 |
| tailbite | length | - length/2 |
Controls
Default control keys
You can change these in the options menu.
| Left Arrow | Left |
| Right Arrow | Right |
| Up Arrow | Up |
| Down Arrow | Down |
| Left Control | reverse direction travelled in (only if you have the Reverse bonus item) |
| Space | detonate bomb, blowing up all blue bricks |
| Left Shift | detonate bomb, blowing up 4 grey bricks |
| A | buy Antidote bonus item |
| D | buy Diet Pill bonus item |
| X | buy Multiplier bonus item |
| Enter | regain a lost life (only in Deluxe Cash mode) |
Other keys
| P | Pause game |
| F4 | Toggle FPS counter on/off |
| F8 | Updates the screen (use it if you get a black display after task switching) |
| F11 | Take a screen-shot (saved in TGA format) |
| ESC | Return to menu |
Joystick support
You can also use a joystick to control the snake. Make sure it's connected before you launch the game. Go to the Options menu, and change the Controller option. Note that you can not use the joystick to navigate the menus.
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | detonate bomb, blowing up all blue bricks |
| 2 | detonate bomb, blowing up 4 grey bricks |
| 3 | reverse direction travelled in (only if you have the Reverse bonus item) |
| 4 | buy Antidote bonus item |
| 5 | buy Diet Pill bonus item |
| 6 | buy Multiplier bonus item |
| 7 | regain a lost life (only in Deluxe Cash mode) |
Custom MIDIs
You can add and remove files from the midi directory. If the "Preload MIDIs" option is disabled, new tunes will be loaded as needed. This may cause a loss of framerate while a new tune is loaded. To avoid this, set the option to the number of tunes you want to preload. Only the preloaded MIDIs will be played in the game (a new set will be loaded for each new game). Don't set this too high! You may run out of memory!
Command-line options
-b, --bpp <n>
Set the colour depth. Use <n> bits per pixel (<n> must be 15, 16, 24, or 32).
-m, --merge <file1> [file2]
Merges high-scores files. On success the files will contain the top 20 of the combined lists' high-scores. If only one file is specified, then the default hiscores.dat file will be used to merge with.
-w, --windowed
Start the game in windowed mode. (Use desktop colour depth for best performance).
Troubleshooting
QNX: Changing workspace while in fullscreen crashes the program
This is a known bug in the Allegro library. I'll release a new version of the game as soon as this has been fixed in the library.
Windows: S3 based graphics card fails to set graphics mode
Setting hardware acceleration to max may help. You'll find this option under: Settings->Control Panel->Display->Settings->Advanced.
Windows: "DCOM missing" warning message
The original Windows 95 distribution lacks DCOM. You can download an update from Microsoft's site.
Windows: Game crashes when trying to change colour depth on a Voodoo 3 graphics card
Try using the command-line option '-bpp' to specify desired colour depth.
Windows: Alt-Tab'ing out of a full screen game in Windows NT/2000 causes crash
This is a bug in the nVidia Detonator 3 6.50 driver that affects the Riva TNT and TNT2. The 6.31 driver works fine.
Windows: display is black after task switching
Try pressing F8 to update the screen.
Windows: "MSVCRT.dll missing" error message
Deluxe Snake uses the Microsoft runtime library MSVCRT.dll. If you're using Windows 95 Release 1 you won't have this. It should be available for download somewhere on www.microsoft.com.
Credits
- Design, Programming, and Graphics
- Daniel Schlyder
- Music
- Fredrik Sand (Fall and Partille)
- Jay Baron (The Jayomon Beat)
- Explosion Animation
- Jan Evensen
- Testing
- Eivind Johan Smedholen (RIP)
- Bernt A. Linge
- Ole Anders Hove
- Trond Refsnes
- Massimiliano Lussana
- Allegro logo, sfx, textures, and fonts
- Unknown (Contact me, and I'll put your name here!)
- Special Thanks to
- Jani Utriainen
- Ole Theill Sørensen
- Christian Weinert
- The Allegro Community
- Michael Bukin
Executable compressed using UPX (upx.sourceforge.net).
Version history
3.1.1 | 2002-10-26
- Fixed dsnake.log not stored in game directory
- [Windows] Fixed short-cuts created by installer to launch game in windowed mode do not work
3.1.0 | 2002-10-25
- upgraded Allegro to 4.1.4
- [BeOS] Fixed crash caused by switch-in event during start-up (Might also have affected other ports)
- Will try installing only digital sound driver if MIDI driver was the cause of initial sound initialisation failure
- Implemented log file (please submit this with any bug reports!)
- HTML-ified readme and improved parts of the text (no images, though; sorry, I know I promised them)
- Converted configuration file to plain-text
- Fixed high-scores and statistics save routines do not check whether files are successfully opened
- [Windows] Program icon used in Add/Remove Control Panel
- Included a stripped down allegro.cfg that you may use to override some settings (especially useful if, for some reason, the program crashes while trying to initialise sound)
- [Windows] Removed command-line option -gdriver (in the rare case you might need to override the default, you can do this using the allegro.cfg file)
- A series of code improvements intended to improve stability slightly
- Command-line switches have been renamed, and short versions added
- Note: High-scores and statistics files saved with this version can not be opened in older versions!
3.0.1 | 2002-06-27
- using Allegro 4.0.1
- linking Windows version statically to reduce size of installer and installed game a bit (you can safely delete any old Allegro DLLs)
- high-scores displayed in-game show six digits
- fixed: in-game clock always displays 0 hours
- fixed: broken links in Start menu
3.0.0 | 2001-12-22
- using Allegro 4.0.0
- added support for Linux
- added support for QNX 6.1
- recoloured blue, and brightened purple and red, backgrounds
- midi dir moved out of data dir
- replaced shield and bag of gold sprites, and removed Darren Hebden from credits (to avoid copyright problems)
- changed colour of poisoned bar to green
- readded relative controls option for the crazy among you (you know who you are! ;))
- added option to Windows installer for creating desktop icon to launch game in windowed mode
- added program icon to BeOS version
- pressing F8 updates the screen (use it if you get a black display after task switching)
- cleaned up part of the sourcecode (might accidentally have fixed a bug or two :))
- fixed: time not recorded correctly for games lasting an hour or longer
- fixed: average and total time played displayed are wrong
- fixed: switching workspace when running the game in fullscreen mode crashes BeOS (was Allegro bug)
- fixed: game icon replaced by Windows default program icon
- fixed: site URLs in ReadMe.txt and Windows Start Menu
2.9.13 | 2001-07-09
- added crude joystick support (you can't navigate the menus, and buttons are hard-coded)
- removed steering option (you'd have to be crazy to use relative controls :))
- fixed: MIDIs played too slow (fixed in the new Allegro 3.9.37 DLL)
- note: broke config.dat compatibility
2.9.12 | 2001-06-21
- fixed: high-scores above 65535 not saved correctly (if you have a file with a messed up score, send it to me, and I'll fix it)
2.9.11 | 2001-05-19
- fixed: MIDI volume bug should be fixed in the new Allegro 3.9.36 DLL included (as always, you can safely delete any old DLLs)
- fixed: files fail to load if 'å' or other ASCII characters above 127 are used in file path
2.9.10 | 2001-04-26
- proper Windows installer using Inno Setup
- replaced '1st place beaten' sound (with the one to be used in DS2)
- very little processor time should be used when in menus or paused
- UPX used to reduce size of executable and Allegro DLL
- all sound effects resampled at 22050 Hz mono (next BeOS version should benefit from this, at least they sound better using an SBLive card)
- when initializing graphics mode program will always cycle through supported colour depths in optimal order
- colour depth can be changed in windowed mode (use the same as desktop for best performance)
- fixed: game freezing trying to spawn new object when arena is full
- fixed: game exiting from high-scores menu or unpausing when user Alt-Tabs away
- fixed: game crashing when run in windowed mode using same colour depth as desktop under Windows 2000 (was bug in Allegro)
- fixed: random freezing in Windows 2000 (another Allegro bug)
- fixed: more bugs
- note: new version of Allegro used. You can safely delete any old DLLs
2.9.9 | 2001-02-13
- first version released for BeOS
2.9.9 | 2001-01-27
- all versions compiled using new version of Allegro library (3.9.34) (Windows version should benefit from many bug-fixes and improvements in the library)
- fixed: game will no longer run windowed if desktop colour depth is lower than 15 bit
- note: old 'config.dat' files are not compatible with this version
2.9.8 | 2001-01-06
- added command line option '-gdriver' to specify graphics driver for use in Win32 version. See readme.txt for more info
2.9.7 | 2001-01-04
- fixed: game timers started before preloading of MIDIs. Might prevent lag at game start on slow computers
- fixed: 'Set All Keys' option. It no longer sets all keys to default values :)
2.9.6 | 2001-01-01
- specify colour depth using new command line option '-bpp <n>'
- to merge high-scores lists you must now use the command line option '-merge'
- since keyboards from many countries don't have the Alt Ground key, Left Shift is now the default key to detonate a "grey bomb"
2.9.5 | 2000-12-27
- support for custom MIDI music. Place your files in the data/midi directory
- experimental support for windowed mode in Windows version using new command line option "-win". ("Colour Depth" option disabled. Desktop depth is used.)
- default "Detonate Grey Bomb" key moved from ALT to ALT GR to work better in windowed mode
- last high-score name remembered between program runs
- brown background texture looks more brown :)
2.9.3 | 2000-11-22
- game distributed as self-extracting archive
- snake's head is marked while game is paused
- note: datafiles are not compatible with older versions (this only affects the files in the data directory!)
2.9.1 | 2000-09-14
- increased chance of Tripler slightly
- multiplier power-ups no longer affect length removed by biting tail
- tailbite always cuts visible length in half (minimum length is five though)
- uses new Allegro DLL version 3.9.33 (you can delete 3.9.32)
- minor speed optimization (maybe?)
- fixed: a few very minor bugs
2.9 | 2000-08-11
- added support for longer games with 3 lives for the Deluxe modes
- added support for 4 different gamespeeds (easy, normal, fast, and too fast)
- changed costs of power-ups in Deluxe Cash mode. (Shields cost 1 and bombs cost 4, all other power-ups cost 2). So it's harder now, and impossible to go on forever just buying Diet Pills. Warning: Old Deluxe Cash hiscores-lists will be deleted. Hiscores-files from version 2.8.4+ can be loaded in this version, but saved files won't be compatible with older versions.
- added power-up Tripler (triples scores and doubles lengths). Rare.
- lots of minor stuff you probably won't notice
- fixed: a few minor bugs
2.8.6 | 2000-07-15
- added soundfx for end of poison and antidote effects, stonefood spawning, eating mushroom generator while protected by antidote, and removing mushroom generator
- replaced sounds for spawning and eating mushroom generators, stonefood countdown, get powerup reverse, and action failed
- changed display to show next hiscore on list, instead of always first place
- last game's score displayed below hiscores, if not high enough to enter list
- awards for mushrooms and mushroom generator increased slightly
- added fade in/out effect to dynamite frame
- fixed: merge hiscores-files error message not displayed if number of parameters is above two
2.8.4 | 2000-07-01
- fixed: a couple of serious bugs in the hiscores code. Unfortunately I had to break hiscores-list compatibility again. (I'll fix your old hiscores-file if you email it to me!)
- fixed: changed stats fileformat to fix a stupid bug. Old stats will be lost.
Information on older versions is available here.