A3DX Alpha 2

A3DX (Artillery 3D Xtreme) is a 3D, turn-based, artillery game.

Running the server

To play the game, you need to have a running server. If you want to connect to an existing server, you need to know it's IP address. If you want to play locally or want to host a game, you will need to start the server. Here is how (This is still an alpha version. As a consequence, there isn't a GUI for the server (yet!)):

There are 2 ways to start the server:

- you can start the server by cd to the “server” directory and ./A3DXServer;
- double-click on the A3DXServer executable located in the “server” directory.

Now, you should have a running server. The server will print a bunch of things. The last line should be:

Waiting for first player...

If something else is displayed, go to the troubleshooting section at the end of this document.

Configuring the server

In the “server” directory, there is a “data” directory containing 2 configuration files: map.ini and server.ini.

In map.ini, you can set the number of players and the number of cannons each player has (map_side is set to 129 and should stay at that value.)
For map_side, the only allowed value is 129.

For max_player, the allowed values are the values between 4 and 8 (included).

For max_cannons, the allowed values are the values between 2 and 4 (included).

Once you have set these values, you will need to restart the server.
In server.ini, you can set the time the server will wait between two games (in seconds) and the maximum number of turn in a game (ai_lvl is unused at the moment). You can set these values as you which.

The server will reload this file at the beginning of each game. Thus, they will take effect as soon as a game is started.

Running the client

To start the client, go to the “client” directory. You should see 2 applications: A3DXConfig & A3DXClient.

If it's the first time you start the client or want to change your settings, start A3DXConfig.

In A3DXConfig, there are several sections:

- Player: where you can change your nickname;
- Connections: where you can change the IP address and port of the server you want to connect to;
- Display: where you can change the screen resolution and the mode (fullscreen/windowed);
- Keys: where you can change the keys used to move the camera.
- Graphics: where you can toggle 3 options:
- Geomipmapping: if on, itmay ease the rendering on some machine, but there will be some visual artifacts.
- Water reflection.
- Use shaders: the shaders are used to improve the look of the water.

Once you have finished, you can start the game by clicking “Play”. It will save your settings and start A3DXClient.

Now, the client should be started. It will directly try to connect to the server. If it fails, go the troubleshooting section.

What's New in This Release:

· Addition of geomipmapping: it may accelerates the rendering of the landscape, but right now, it also adds visual artifacts.
· New water rendering: now the water reflects the world and, with shaders, has some waves.
· Compatibility between little-endian and big-endian machines.
· Small improvements in the configuration tool.
· Concerning the Mac OS X version, it was compiled under Leopard. As a result, Panther is no longer supported (we will try to maintain Tiger support, although we don't have any Tiger machines anymore).



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