Donut Quest

From Pigasoftware

Donut Quest is game for Microsoft Windows made by Piga Software for the Brogo web comic strip released on October 30th 2006. It features the Brogo character Ed Donut (Michelle the mechanic's lazy, dim-witted, and donut obsessed assistant who is also known to have confrontations with spiders), as he fights his way against spiders in a donut factory. The game was made using Game Maker 5, on Windows 98 Second Edition. They game has been successfully tested on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, and it should run on all versions of Windows from 95 onwards except possibly Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Story 3 Items and Enemies 4 Credits 5 Reception 6 GNU/Linux and WINE 7 Version 1.5 8 Proprietary Tool and Source Code Availability 9 External Links

Gameplay

The game is typical of the top-down scrolling genre. Enemies and collectibles come down at the player from the top of the screen, much like a downwards treadmill, this simulates a sense of the player's own movement upward. The player can move left or right to avoid spiders or collect donuts, ammunition, or health packs. The player can also move limitedly up or down for additional control.

If the player has collected a spray can of insecticide it may be used to fire clouds of it upwards to any incoming spiders, if hit the spiders will cough and fall onto their backs dead, no longer able to harm the player. The player must collect more spray cans in order to continue firing and repeated hitting of the fire button will create rapid fire.

If the spiders, while alive, collide with the player than Ed will shout out and and his health bar will decrease. If the health bar reaches zero than it will be brought back to full health at the cost of a life. If the player is out of lives, than the player's dies. The collection of health packs will bring Ed's health back up. The player must continue up through the level, which due to the way it is rendered is slightly different each game, until he reaches a yellow and white finish line. This will take the player to the next level.

Old Hairy, the final boss, appears at the top of the boss level. Once encountered, the game stops to scroll and Old Hairy and Ed's positions remains constant. The giant spider will then fire collections of large black cobwebs down at the player, which will inflict serious damage if they hit Ed. If the player reaches a high enough score by collecting donuts than the bonus level will load up. This level contains no enemies but lots of donuts.

Story

One day Ed Donut is watching the news, when he hears that a donut factory is closing. As anyone would expect, Ed rushes over to the factory. Ed finds hundreds of donuts but he also finds thousands of spiders. He gets a spray can and battles the spiders for the donuts (how Canadian).

-- Spoiler Alert! Plot's ending listed below --

After fighting through spiders and collecting many a donut (and poison spray cans), Ed enters the wrecked and structurally insecure interior of the factory. Ed looks around for more donuts but then encounters the largest spider ever seen by man: he is "Old Hairy" the master spider. There is a long battle of hominid to arachnid which Ed eventually wins after much struggle. Outside he hears the sound of work men approaching the building to begin the demolition. "5, 4, 3, 2, 1!", Ed jumps out of a closed window just as the building implodes, covering him with ash and knocking out some teeth. Ed then considers his previous actions, "Maybe I should not have done that.... Nah!!!"

Items and Enemies

Frosted Donut

The lowest form of donut, provides the least points.

Frosted Sprinkled Donut

Better then the frosted but not as good as the others.

Chocolate Donut

The second best donut in the game.

Chocolate Sprinkled Donut

The best donut in the game, providing the most points.

Med Pack

Heals spider bites.

Spray Can

Provides Ed with a weapon to spray the incoming spiders with, if the spray contacts donuts they disappear contaminated.

Spider

Spiders descend towards the player and cause massive health damage if contacted with by Ed.

Old Hairy

Old Hairy swivels from side to side shooting out massive webs that can injure Ed.

Credits

• Malcolm Rex Peter Wilson: head designer, Brogo cartoonist, Malcolm Wilson Multimedia head and creator of the graphics and sounds.
• Graham Lawrence Wilson: programming.
• Hamish Paul Wilson: programming.
• Iain William Duane Wilson: writing, Download.com publishing.

Reception

As of August 20, 2009 Donut Quest has been downloaded 415 times from Download.com, including one time that very week. TechRepublic claims that it was downloaded twice. ZDNetAsia claims five downloads. Donut Quest related results show up on the first page when the game's name is entered into Google, only being distorted by by both Donut Quest and Donut Quest II, games created in TI Basic, "Cider Donut Quest", an article about finding cider donuts in Seattle, and Donut Quest, a 2008 comedy film. The following pages are much more distorted. xantan51 commented that the game was too easy, which lead to some changes already added to the in development 1.5. This comment also influenced the design of Windys.

GNU/Linux and WINE

Donut Quest has been successfully run from Fedora GNU/Linux 7 onwards using various recent versions of WINE. All parts of the game seem to run well, except for the background music. This may be caused by the fact that is in Midi format and in a later version there will be the option to select WAV files instead of MIDIs for better WINE support, the fire work menu effects also occasionally cause troubles or slow downs. They will also be optional in 1.5.

Game Maker 5 also runs in WINE, and has loaded up the Donut Quest project file (.gmd).

Version 1.5

On December 22, 2007, Piga Software alongside Brogo and Malcolm Wilson Multimedia announced that a version 1.5 of Donut Quest is going to be released. It is to feature bug fixes, new features, license upgrade to version 3.0 of the GPL, and add-ons that make it more compatible with WINE. No release date has been given, but notes of further development did occur throughout July of 2008 and it is still a priority project (the development more recently slowed down due Flitwick experiencing power problems). In December of 2008 more work was done on 1.5 and there was an attempt of a release by Christmas, which was hurdled by needed system administration work on Flitwhick.

Proprietary Tool and Source Code Availability

Donut Quest is released under the GNU General Public License (version 2), however it was built in the proprietary software creation application: Game Maker 5. With the demo version you can only edit it with restrictions and you may need to remove some features such as the menu fireworks in order to compile or interpret the program. Piga Software allows modifiers of Donut Quest to send their modified versions to them, contacting them either through e-mail or on the forum, so that they can compile it. However all modifications have to be under the GPL as stated in the Donut Quest license. The source code (Game Maker project file) is included with the program.

External Links

1. Donut Quest on the Brogo Webcomic's Website
2. Download Donut Quest
3. Donut Quest on Download.com
4. Donut Quest on Brogo's Comixpedia article
5. Donut Quest on the Libregamewiki