The Belt Logo

Rocco Bowling
Feline Entertainment
felinegames@mac.com




About The Belt

No, it's not most feared thing from your youth! Instead the Belt is the only thing keeping your puny base safe from your opponents mighty plasma turrets. Of course, the Belt is also keeping you from destroying those same turrets, isn't it? Well, you know what they say, "Getting there is half the fun!"

The Belt is an arcade game that pits you against another opponent in a battle to the finish. Vaguely reminiscent of old-style games where opposing turrets would fire against the wind to blow each other up, the Belt incorporates more strategy along with senseless destruction and zainy creatures to provide for a unique arcade experience!




How To Play

Game Screen Infomation
Your main goal in The Belt is to destroy the enemy base, and you do this by utilizing your limited arsenal of weapons. Your main weapon is the Plasma Blast, which has a range long enough to damage the enemy's turrets. Your plasma blast has unlimited ammo, but it takes a little bit to recharge between each blast.

Photon Space Charges are bundles of tightly bound photonic energy that explode when struck by a plasma blast. These little bundles of joy have many uses, from clearing large amounts of asteroids at a time to destroying pesky reflector droids. Use them wisely, however, since you only begin each round with two of them!

Relay droids can be used to redirect and extend the range of your plasma blasts. You do this by firing a relay droid out into the asteroid belt. After your relay droid reaches its destination, you can rotate it towards the target you wish to destroy. Then, simply fire a plasma blast from one of your main turrets at the relay droid. The relay droid will capture the plasma blast and send it winging in a new direction and for a longer range.

Reflector droids act as mobile shields that you can place out in the belt to thwart your enemy. Reflector droids bounce plasma blasts off of their energy shields, but are vulnerable to the power of a Photon Space Charge. The Reflector droid also take a considerable amount of time to deploy, so think about sending these out early since they are vulnerable to attack until their shields have developed.




Alien Encounters

Alien Encounters
The belt is not only home to your base, but also to a variety of alien species who may just happen upon your battle against the enemy. These aliens distract, disrupt, and generally annoy you as you attempt to squash the enemy. Destroying an alien will give you additional ammo for your various weapons.

Quartzy

Quartzy is a crystalline entity which usually wanders aimlessly about the asteroid belt it calls home. However, when a Quartzy feels threatened they turn highly volatile, streaking towards a turret base to encase it in solid space quartz. Frozen bases are put out of action for a time, which could be the difference between victory and defeat! While Quartzies are indestructable, shooting them will cause them to be aggressive towards the enemy instead of you!

Saucey

This Unidentified Flying Object is part of a species with highly evolved weaponry and technology, with the ability to quickly destroy any of your droids which it comes into contact with.

Squiggy

Important life forms for the development of the asteroid belt, Squiggies are giant space amoeba whose spore help revitalize asteroids. These little nasties leave a trail of small asteroid wherever they go, so a few Squiggies could undo all of the hard work you put into carving a path through that asteroid belt!





Technical Stuff


A Note about Networked Games

The Belt supports LAN (local area network) games. It does not currently support playing games across the Internet.

To begin a networked game, start The Belt on two different machines which are on the same local network. Then click the "Network Game" button on both computers. The Belt will automatically detect who else on the network is ready to play a game, and will display their name on your computer. Have one person click on the other person's name to begin the networked game.


A Note about uDevGame 2002

This version of The Belt is an entry in the uDevGame 2002 Mac Game Programming Contest. The contest focuses on the need for more communication and education for those beginning Mac development or those switching from another platform to developing on the Mac. All entries in the uDevGame 2002 contest agree to release their source code (under any of a number of licenses) for the betterment of the Mac Game Programming community.

Why a Windows compatible game in a Mac Game Programming Contest, you might ask? For many reasons, but the most prominent being the lack of good source code which shows how easy it is to create a cross-platform game from the ground up... without relying on third party cross-platform APIs such as SDL or GLUT. Many Windows developers feel the need to switch, but don't for fear that all that they have learned in the past will now be wasted by moving to a different platform. The Belt demonstrates the ability to create a single Metrowerks CodeWarrior project which compiles the same source code for both Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows.


Features

  • Fast-paced head to head arcade action
  • Smooth OpenGL accelerated graphics
  • Single or Multiplayer games
  • Cross-platform Rendezvous support
  • Computer vs Computer demo play
  • Infinite levels
  • Multiple weapons to eradicate the enemy with
  • Multiple aliens which come out to play
  • Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows






Version 1.02
  • Fixed a memory leak which caused the following symptoms
    • Caused the game to crash after many level advances
    • Caused aliens to stop being spawned after a few level advances
  • Fixed the plasma blast/droids cheat... no longer can the game crash from it
  • Added slightly bigger explosion for final destruction of turrets
  • Increased the speed of the text between levels
  • Load some textures on demand to keep texture memory usage down
  • Made the AI more aggressive at higher levels
  • Added scoring and a high scores listing for single player games
Version 1.01
  • Fixed networking issue which caused games to go out of synchronization
  • Added an error dialog when you try to do a network game but are not connected to a network
  • Modified the AI to be more challenging in later levels
  • Made a few cosemetic improvements
Version 1.0
  • Initial Release