TwigMan

27 February 2008 ---- New Version! 1.0.1!

TwigMan is the second full fledged CSCI 321 demo game.  It is designed to have the same feel as a '80s arcade game.  I spent a lot of money in the '80s on video games, so I guess it's not surprising that now I make class demos of them.

TwigMan started as a fairly simple jumping game meant to demonstrate gravity and platform games.  Because of chemicals released into the building air ducts, it morphed into this.

The goal of TwigMan is for Twig to re-collect the cable testers at the end of CSCI 221 (Computer Networking).  Sadly, over the course of the years, a number of them have 'disappeared'.  Interestingly, the students do have a remarkable tendency to leave their textbooks in the lab.  And of course, Dr. Terwilliger is never far from his beverage of choice.  I'm still not entirely certain how he convinced the University to move the vending machine outside the lab.

  The standard keys for TwigMan are as follows:
  5 - Insert Coin (MAME standard)
  1 - Player 1 start (MAME standard)
  Left - Move left
  Right - Move right
  Up - Jump
  F11 - Toggle Fullscreen [Mac users may need to change this to toggle FullScreen]
  P - Pause (only during normal gameplay)

These keys can be re-mapped to any keys on the keyboard by changing the default values in the file 'twigman.conf'.

With TwigPower, TwigMan can double (and triple, ...) jump.  He is also immune to the FabbriCar and Falling Boger.

You have to land on the students head to squash them (and get the points).  No, you don't get any cable testers they stole back (already sold on ebay).

Every five levels, there is an intermission.  The intermissions chronicle  the arrival of the four CS faculty in the MA/CS department. 

There are twenty-one different level patterns, the Twenty-second level is an identical board to the first, and so on.
 
Level 63 is the last level, when you complete it, you restart level 63 again.  You will be treated to a random intermission each time that you complete level 63 (hey... it's not easy to get that far!  You deserve a reward!).

It is possible to insert additional coins and continue from the spot that you ran out of lives.  You have 9 seconds to insert additional coins and press Player 1 start to do this.  It is useful if you are just short of the next intermission. 

TwigMan has a save/restore feature built in. If you exit the game (via the ESCape key, or killing the window normally), it will save your current game state to a file. TwigMan will always check for this file on startup, and if it exists, restore you to the same place that you left. You are always re-started on pause so that you can get your bearings.

The savefile is deleted after it is loaded, you can't reuse it.

If you exit at the end of a level where you would see an intermission, or you exit during an intermission, the game starts from the beginning of the next level (you miss the intermission).

This game contains dozens, if not 100 inside jokes to the department.  If you really want to know what they all mean, come up for a visit.  You can find us in Sault Ste. Marie, MI!  Or, you could send in an application.  Check out the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science while you are at it.   After all, you've already met us!





This game has been successfully compiled on (without source code changes):
       Linux (using gcc)
       Windows (cygwin gcc)
       Windows (Dev-Cpp)
       Solaris (using gcc)
       Mac OS X (using gcc)
       Nokia N810 (using gcc in scratchbox)

If you successfully compile it for some other platform, please let us know!

Note: You will need to install the libraries for 


See the README file for copyright and author information on the graphics and sound samples.

Version 1.0.1 Downloads:





Older Version Downloads: