battalion

monsters, explosions, and senseless destruction.
You've seen the movies, you know what to do.

Version 1.2 (5/17/96)

(thanks to Johan Hagman - Johan.Hagman@mailbox.swipnet.se - for his help with porting battalion to Solaris)

battalion is a giant monster game where you are a giant monster fighting to survive against the military while causing as much destruction as you can.

legal stuff

battalion is provided free of charge. There is no registration fee.

Permission to copy and distribute battalion in its entirety, for non- commercial purposes, is hereby granted without fee provided this copyright notice appears in all copies.

If you redistribute battalion then the ENTIRE contents of this distribution must be distributed.

Note that distributing battalion in with any product is considered to be a 'commercial purpose.'

This software may be modified for your own purposes, but modified versions may not be distributed without prior consent of the author.

This software is provided 'as-is' without any express or implied warrenty. In no event shall the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use or misuse of this software.

Should you want to do something with this software that is prohibited by the above copyright, please contact the author (email please) as he is very likely willing to sell out for the almighty dollar.

This distribution includes a version of battalion compiled with the Mesa 3-D graphics library which is (c) Brian Paul.

a bit of history

battalion was originally writen in GL(r) on a Silicon Graphics Indy workstation. This version won 'best Indy game' in the 3rd Indizone Contest, and a slightly modified version of the game is currently shipping with all Silicon Graphics Indy and Indigo2 workstations. I then converted battalion to OpenGL(r) and ported it to other flavours of UNIX (SunOS, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, AIX) and to the Macintosh. These versions are available from the battalion home page at the link given below.

see the help screens

The original help files for battalion were created in Showcase(r) which unfortunately only runs on Silicon Graphics workstations, so I have converted those screens to GIF files which are viewable from these pages.

The Help screens

quick reference

STARTUP HINTS

  The script "battalion" starts the game.

  Press space to select your monster with keys 6 to 9 (Googelon, Techs, the
  Vapour or Flutter), then press 1 to enter monster's view. Move using the
  mouse or arrow keys, shoot with the left button or Ctrl and press Esc to
  exit. The a and z keys tilt the monster's head.

  The s key toggles sound effects and g toggles pointer grab, useful to keep
  the pointer inside the window.

  In demo mode (before and after a game), press h to view the on-screen
  help and H to see the high scores.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

  -a(lone)	    Fight alone.
  -b(ackdrop)	    Hide the overlays.
  -d(etail) n	    Set graphics level-of-detail to 0,1,2. The Mesa version
		    defaults to 0 (low) and OpenGL version to 2 (high). The
		    d key changes the detail level while the game is running.
  -m(usic)	    Initially turn on the background music.
  -s(ound)	    Initially turn on sound effects.
  -lscoresš	    Use local high scores file (in /var/tmp), even if startup
		    script has been set up to access a global high score file.
  -mesaš	    If OpenGL˛ is installed, use this option to tell the
		    startup script to run the Mesa instead of OpenGL binary.
  -help		    Shows game version and a list of command line options.

DEMO MODE COMMANDS

   Space	    Selects your monster (keys 6,7,8,9).
   h		    Displays the on-screen help.
   H		    Displays the high scores.

PLAY MODE COMMANDS

   Mouse/arrows	    Moves the monster.
   Left button/Ctrl Shoot!
   1, 2, 3	    Selects monster view / overview / army view. Use the
		    i,j,k,l keys to rotate the battlefield in overview mode.
   a, z		    Tilts monster's head.
   d		    Steps through detail levels 0, 1, 2.
   g		    Toggles pointer grabbing, which locks the mouse pointer
		    into the battalion window. Gives you better control if
		    you move using the mouse.
   m		    Toggles background music.
   p		    Pauses the game.
   s		    Toggles sound.
   ESC		    Exit.

ABOUT SOUND

   The volume is initialized to a low level by audioplay, called from the
   startup script. Change the level/comment out as appropriate.

ENVIRONMENT

   BATTALIONSCOREDIR  Defines directory for high score file (default /var/tmp).
		    This variable is already defined in the startup script, but
		    the line is commented out.

   BATTALIONSCOREUNIQUE  Setting this variable limits the number of high score
		    entries per user to one (only the top entry). To enable
		    this behavior, uncomment the line in the startup script
		    that defines this variable.

----
š) The -lscores and -mesa options are handled by the startup script.
˛) The Sun OpenGL 1.0 runtime packages must be installed in order to use the
   battalion.opengl binary. OpenGL 1.0 supports only the Creator 3D framebuffer.

battalion links

The main resource for information on the game, FAQ list, and the latest downloadable versions is the battalion Home Page

Andy Johnson's Home Page

3rd Indizone Contest Home Page
Japanese Monster Movie Jump Page

how to reach the author

ajohnson@eecs.uic.edu
http://www.eecs.uic.edu/~ajohnson

Andrew Johnson
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (M/C 154)
University of Illinois at Chicago
851 South Morgan St. Room 1120 SEO
Chicago, IL 60607