Windys

From Pigasoftware

Windys is a free software action arcade game by Piga Software, released on August 12, 2009. It utilizes the Gambas Platform Engine and is designed in a deliberately retro style, featuring ASCII graphics and simulated PC speaker beeps. It is the second Piga game to be released for GNU/Linux, the first being Alexei: Part IX.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Plot 3 Development 4 Features 5 Download 6 Trivia 7 External Links

Gameplay

The game is a simple arcade game. The player "('_')" must run through a level, climbing up or down ladders to get to various floors, the end goal being to reach the level exit. The players way is obstructed by zombies "{'O'}", who prowl from left to right on some floors, killing the player if encountered (sending him to beginning of the level and removing one of his lives). To get past these menaces, the player may fire a glob of ketchup "#" at them. The ketchup is only a short-range weapon however, so the player must get close to the Zombie to hit it. Zombies eventually regenerate. The player needs to keep a supply of ketchup packets "[]" in order to fire. The player may also collect bonus items such as burgers "(||)", soda "\_/", or fries "[||]". There are some areas that are closed off with doors, inside of which are usually decorative items. Victor, the final boss, has no attack, except for generating Super Zombies. Super Zombies can climb down ladders a the player and regenerate immediately after being shot, or after reaching the bottom of the level. There are nine levels plus a boss level and a secret level.

Plot

After a particularly strenuous day at work, the player returns to his own personal refuge in the form of the Windys fast food restaurant. Not all is as it seems however, a new and unconventional manager has taken control, bringing with him an army of undead zombies. The player ignores anything unusual and orders his normal burger, which he gets with one small difference; it is laced with tranquilizer.

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

After regaining conciseness, the groggy player makes his way through the hidden back rooms of the restaurant, defeating several zombie hoards along the way. The player has to then travel through the store rooms, where various ingredients and condiments are stored behind closed doors. After passing through several more foreboding hallways, the player reaches an odd room where members of the undead army are kept locked away. After passing through several more back halls, the player reaches the corporate offices and finally Victor's kitchen, where the new manager with the raven dark hair lurks and brews trouble. A battle ensues, with our player eventually being declared the winner, defeating Victor's tracking super zombies. The player finds a stash of specially marked "Zombie Burgers", revealing that the whole undead army's purpose was for a new item on the menu and a flashy new marketing campaign.

Development

The game has a long history. It started of as idle character doodles by the Piga staff on an old VT131 terminal, before they knew how to program. The game idea developed was a restaurant themed ASCII art game named after one of their favourite restaurants Wendys, the theme was due to them realizing that "(||)" looked like a sideways hamburger. When they actually considered developing it with their since acquired knowledge they named the project "Windys" for trademark reasons. A short lived attempt was tried on Game Maker in 2006, before that system was deemed to graphically-oriented to truly create the envisioned game. In March 2008 work begun on it in Gambas, which more text oriented display suited the project perfectly.

Malcolm Wilson Multimedia composed the game's soundtrack, recorded on the SoundBlaster 16 MIDI synthesizer for added retro feel. Like Donut Quest, the soundtrack was composed as MIDI files using AnvilStudio, however it was then converted to Ogg Vorbis using Audacity in order to make the soundtrack consistent on all machines, regardless of synthesizer. This was particularly important given the SoundBlaster 16 note mentioned above (Gambas does however support MIDIs). Using Ogg Vorbis also offered the advantages of file tagging and that Vorbis simply can be played with more player programs.

The larger ASCII graphics had to be rendered as picture boxes rather than labels, to make them draw properly. There is an advantage to this slight loss of authenticity though, as picture boxes have less compatibility problems on multiple machines (to combat this the game had to be tested on a number of computers to see if the labels were large enough throughout, often they had to be resized). The sounds were found by the Piga staff scouring the web for the most appropriate sounding beeps, except for the VT131 beep which was actually recorded from the terminal. The base engine was mostly complete by June 2008 and plans were made to finish it by the end of the summer, however, due to various issues, this did not come to pass. Due to xantan51 mentioning that Donut Quest was too easy, the game was designed with difficulty in mind. There are however, several gameplay tricks than can make the game easier, but the player has to learn them.

Later that year and in early 2009 the games levels were completed, and all that remained was the addition of various final touches. This mostly happened in development spurts, one in December 2008 (which produced most of the levels), one in March 2009, and finally one in July-August. A coding rush ensued after the release date of the fith anniversary of the founding of Piga Software was chosen. The first possible release candidate was completed on August 4, and the game was successfully launched on August 12. The final code check took five hours to complete. The 12th was also decided to be the release date of the modern draft of the Malcolm Wilson Multimedia website, as such to include content from the new joint MWM/Piga venture. The site has been uploaded, but the host is giving scripting errors to any patrons. Once running it will offer the original MIDI versions of the Windys soundtrack.

Development on version 1.2.0 began immediately, with several test runs and playthroughs to find bugs. From there each bug was addressed as it was found, as well as several minor additions. After three weeks of occasional work, the version was released on September 1, 2009. The Piga staff are still trying to correct a problem in the music channel prohibiting the building of RPM install packages.

Features

• Ten levels.
• Secret level featuring popular culture references, some obscure, some less so.
• Three collectibles - burgers, fries, and soda.
• Use spurts of ketchup as a weapon!
• Two enemy types - Zombie and Super Zombie
• Varying level design.
• ASCII graphics and PC speaker-like beeps for retro feel.
• Dark humour plot.
• Original soundtrack by Malcolm Wilson Multimedia.
• Accessible console allowing the entering of easter eggs/cheat codes.

Download

Due to problems with the music channel, we can only offer the Gambas Project available for download. A complied executable is included in the Project Archive for those of you who want to run it as an independent application.

• Gambas Project

Trivia

• The release of the modern website for Malcolm Wilson Multimedia was synchronized with the release of Windys.
• The Zombie's ability to regenerate was an accidental feature, starting out as a bug in the zombie death code.
• The Windys menu track was originally intended to play when the Player ran out of lives.
• The "List of Piga characters" was created due to the new influx of characters in the game.

External Links

• Windys on LibreGameWiki