ChinaIII

Short:        China Challenge III
Author:       Dirk Hoffmann, Gunther Nikl <gnikl@informatik.uni-rostock.de>
Uploader:     kas mink ping dk (Klaus Alexander Seistrup)
Type:         game/think
Architecture: m68k-amigaos


                             China Challenge III
                             -------------------

                               Written 1991 by
                                Dirk Hoffmann

                              Rewritten 1993 by
                                 Gunther Nikl

                          This program is Freeware !



New features of Version III:
----------------------------

This is an improved version of the game China Challenge. The original program
by Dirk Hoffmann lacked some features and disturbed the mutitasking heavily.
China Challenge III - short called CC3 - is a completly rewritten version of
the old program. CC2 was written in 'C' but CC3 had been written in assembler
for shortness.

Below all changes made since release 2:

 Fixed:	The busy wait loop for menu handling has been removed. Also the dircet
	hardware access to control the mouse events has been removed. Now the
	event handling belongs to commodores programming guidelines. It is
	totally multitasking friendly.

 Fixed:	The two-screen technique has been removed. CC3 uses an invisible screen
	for its graphic rendering. Then the blitter moves the whole date to the
	real screen.

 New:	The sound replay uses now the audio device instead of directly hitting
	the hardware. The sound file is NOT nessecary to play the game unlike
	in CC2. There exists a menu item 'Play Music' so you can switch the
	music on or off. If the sound stuff couldn't be initialized the item
	is anavailable. Music play can be controlled at startup see below.

 New:	The intro picture has been included in the program. When CC3 starts
	this picture will be displayed and all other initilization stuff
	follows. If you don't want this picture you can switch it off at
	startup see below.

 New:	CC3 supports two CLI and Workbench arguments to control the program
	at startup.

	 NOMUSIC - This argument disables the music. However CC3 tries to
		   initialize its audio stuff and to load the sample. If this
		   fails the music is disabled during the whole game play.
		   Otherwise only the sound output is disabled so you can
		   switch the music on later. By default the music is on.

	 NOINTRO - This argument disables the intro picture. By default you
		   will see this picture and all initialization stuff is done
		   at this time. This picture shall only show CC3 is alive
		   while loading the sample from a floppy disk. If you don't
		   want the picture suppress it with this argument.

	NOTE:	When started from workbench CC3 needs the 'icon.library' to
		examine the tooltypes. If the library couldn't be opened it
		will use its internal defaults. With the kick 1.2/1.3 icon
		library the equation sign '=' at the end of a tooltype is
		nessecary !!!

 New:	For loading and saving the filerequester of the arp.library is used
	now. So you need this library installed in libs: to use these option
	but this shouldn't cause any propblems I hope.
	Please note that the file structure of a saved game has changed. It is
	no longer an ascii file because the current game state is also saved.
	This was easier to do when saving an binary. Sorry about this.

 New:	The generation of a dragon is much improved. The new algorithm requires
	always only 120 random numbers instead of about 500 as the old one did.
	So it can be estimate that it is faster than before. The random number
	generator has also changed. Now CC3 uses the Tausworth algorithm for
	creating the random numbers. The full description of this algorithm can
	be found in:

		"A Comparision of the Correlation Behavior of Random Number
		 Generators for the IBM 360"
		Communication of the ACM 11/1968 page 641-644


I want to thank Dirk Hoffmann for the original program and Torsten "Stoffel"
Christophel for his suggestion to improve the dragon generation to make it
really random.

	You can reach me: gnikl@informatik.uni-rostock.de