Apricots- Old school, side-scrolling fighter jet game!

kofrad · 2011-06-12 20:40:03

Sometime ago, maybe five or six years, I stumbled upon a game by chance. Just looking through the package list in Gentoo and trying out games with interesting names. The game was instantly a favorite and still is to this day. Fellow Archers, I introduce you to Apricots, available in extra!

A little history...

The original version of the game dates back to around 1991. The very first version of the game was written on an Amiga, using the AMOS language, and the game was called 'Planegame'. This was a very simple affair with simplistic landscapes, no guns or shrapnel, and very limited computer AI. It was also dreadfully slow. The AMOS compiler improved things somewhat at a later date. A couple of years later I obtained the BLITZ language for the Amiga, and ported 'Planegame' carefully over to that, resulting in a huge speedup. Impressed by the capabilites of BLITZ, in 1995 I proceeded to rewrite the game entirely from scratch, even using completely new graphics and sound. The result was 'Planegame2', which, for various reasons also got dubbed 'Apricots'. This new version of the game added anti-aircraft guns, shrapnel, trees, towers, water, better airbases and a huge improvement on graphics, sound, and intelligent computer AI. Slightly later, in 1996, the Draks were added as a bit of amusement. The result was a highly playable game, which I distributed to a few of my friends. A few years later and I now use a PC, which can run Linux. Having learnt C++ by this time, at the beginning of 2002 I felt ready enough to port 'Apricots' cross platform from BLITZ on the Amiga to C++ on a Linux PC. What you see here is work in progress on that port. The game has been tweaked slightly while being ported over, so is not identical to the Amiga version. Apricots homepage

For as simple of a game as it is, it really can be loads of fun. It almost seems to follow the Dwarf Fortress strategy of "Losing is Fun", as I don't think I've ever really won a game. Even then, the city is fully destructible. As you play, buildings will fall, homes will burn and trees will be blown to pieces. I think that blowing up objects on an enemies airstrip prevents them from re-loading when they land.. I'd have the check the source to be sure. There is a configuration file with loads of options, further ensuring you can get the most out of the game

I've also just loved the fact that the game is open source, as simple as it is. I enjoy browsing this games source code and at one point got to know it pretty well. If anyone is interested, I'd enjoy reviving this project. Maybe add some new features, fix some bugs.

Just wanted to share this great game and see if anyone else has or still does play it.

Protip: Point the plane towards the ground if you happen to stall to recover from it.

To Install:

sudo pacman -S apricots

To tweak:

sudo $EDITOR /usr/share/apricots/apricots.cfg

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-12 20:40:03

Apricots- Old school, side-scrolling fighter jet game!

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