| Last edited: 29 September 1998. |
Registering:
Registering is important for so many reasons: firstly, it gives me a measure of the real interest in what I'm doing (if you're not interested enough to part yourself from a few dollars then you can't be all that interested); secondly, it means that I don't have to spend time to find means to put food on the table, and I can instead spend that time programming.
Registering is important for you in that it means that you will recieve an unlocking key that allows you to play maps that are larger than 20 by 20 hexes in size - but please be patient, it may take about a week for me to respond after I get notification from Kagi that your payment has been processed.
To register, you need to go through the following steps:
Firstly, you need to start Bushfire and select About Bushfire... from the Apple menu. If you have an unregistered version of Bushfire you should see a red bordered About box. Click on the Registering button to bring up the registeration code dialog:
Instead of the ?????????? you should see some string of letters unique to your computer. Select and copy the entire string from the topmost selectable text area, and click the Not Yet button to make the dialog go away. Click the OK button to make the About box to go away.
The next step is to actually send your registeration through to Kagi - not forgetting to include that string that you copied from above (it should look something like 01-?????????? ... just make certain that you include the entire string - the 01 at the begining tells me which application you're trying to register).
To do this, you need to start up the Register application that comes with Bushfire, and fill in your personnal details. Most of the fields of the register dialog speak for themselves. Type in 1 for a single user registration. (Make certain that you include an email address so that I can email you your registration code. I will not post you your registeration code by surface post - I simply don't have the time or money for such an extravagance.) Don't forget to fill in your payment method and details.
Finally, paste the 01-?????????? string into the Comments field. The Comments dialog can be reached by clicking the little ballon next to the string "Bushfire by Single Brain Cell". It is vital that you include this string, because it is the only way that I have of sending the code that will unlock Bushfire.
After maybe a week, you should recieve an email from me with your registration code. It should be a ten character long string (I've used ???JUNK??? in the following, but you should see something quite different), which you then paste into the lower selectable text area of the registeration dialog box that you encountered via the About box above:
Click on OK to enter your registration code, and click OK again in order to make the About box go away. You can check to see if the registeration worked by looking at the About box again. This time the horrid red border should have gone. If everything has worked, you should now be able to play maps of whatever size that you care to (RAM and inclination depending).
The above process of going through Kagi is the only way that I will accept registeration codes. Do not email me asking for an address to send a letter to me, for I will not respond. Do not email me directly to convert a registration code - I will only convert those codes that Kagi passes onto me. Do everything through Kagi. (If you have some comments about the actual product - ideas, bug reports, etc - then I'm interested in what you have to say - but registeration goes through Kagi only!)
Thanks for supporting Single Brain Cell.
Basic Game Design:
Bushfire was setup from the very begining to be a very simple hex-based strategy game. The basic theme is that you must guide fire-fighters to fight fires that have sprung up around your urban areas. There are two distinct turn phases: the first is where the fire-fighter gets to move his tiles, and the second is where the fire gets a chance to grow. The game progresses by alternating between these two phase types. During a fire-fighting phase, the player can only move one tile at a time and then only while that tile has enough movement points for it to move. There are two possible endings to the game: the first is where you lose all of your fire-fighter tiles, while the second is where the fires either completely burn out or have been put out by your fire-fighters.
Working With The File Menu:
The File menu is all very familar, and there are only a few things to note.
The menu items Open, Close, Save and Quit work as you would normally expect.
The menu item New brings up the following dialog, which is used for setting up the random map generator:
There are a variety of options. The first is the difficulty level of the game - basically, the variation is that the harder the game the less fire-fighters you start off with and the more fires start on the map. I've scaled the Even difficulty level to that which I can win within a reasonable amount of effort, but other people might be more comfortable with other difficulty settings. The second choice is that of the map dimension. All maps are square and the dimension is the number of hexes that lie along each side of the map. The larger the map, the more that you have to deal with, and the harder the game becomes.
The Open Edited Map... menu item is a little difference. This is a means where you can open maps that have been made by other people. That I've given it a separate menu location to the standard Open is so that the user might keep in mind that opening an edited map is a little different from opening a saved game. The main thing that a user should keep in mind is that maps that have been edited need to be compiled by Bushfire Editor before Bushfire can read them. If the map isn't pre-compiled, Bushfire will complain appropriately.
Even the Preferences menu item is a familar sight in other applications.
With the Preferences, there are a variety of choices that you can make:
Working With The Map Windows Menu:
When Bushfire opens up a new window in which it displays a map, it will try to make the window as big as possible and still fit in the main display area. If the monitor you are using is larger than the map, then the window is sized to fit. You cannot, at any time, resize the window for yourself - this arose out of consideration about how to keep with the Mac GUI guidelines and still locate the movement arrowpad in the lower right corner, with the Mac GUI losing out (the lower right hand corner is where the Mac resize square is meant to be located).
Like other familar Mac applications, the windows work just like any other windows that you are familar with. Clicking in the titlebar of a window and dragging will move the window about the screen. Clicking in a window's close box will cause the window to close (after doing the familar checking to see if the file needs saving). If a window is in the background, clicking on it will bring it to the foreground and cause it to be updated. Note that clicking on a background window won't result in any actions happening within that window - for example, clicking on a background window where the close box is located won't close the window, it will only bring the window to the foreground.
To help work with windows that might be hidden behind other windows, Bushfire has a Window menu which can help you chose which window you want in the foreground. If you have only one window open, then it will be dimmed and you can't select anything from it. But once you do have 2 or more windows open, then you can select items from the Window menu. Basically, you have a list of open windows and you can either page through them one at a time by using the Next Map menu item, Or you can work your way backwards through the list by chosing the Previous Map menu item. If you have a lot of maps open, you can go directly to the map that you want by selecting the menu item from the list attached to the bottom of the Window menu. The tick tells you which window is currently in the foreground.
Navigating About The Map:
Navigation around the map is very simple, and is based completely on the movement arrowpad located in the lower right hand corner of the map window. There are two things that you can do with the arrowpads - you can either click quickly on one if the arrowpads which will cause the map (if it can move at all) to move one hex in the chosen direction, or you can hold down the mouse on a particular arrowpad and after a slight delay the map will move an entire screen size in the chosen direction.
In Bushfire there is something called the "active unit". The active unit is the single tile that is presently able to recieve commands. Sometimes, it happens, that you have scrolled the map such that you can no longer see your active unit, and clicking the center pad on the arrow pad will call the map to center as best it can on the active unit.
What The Map Is Made Of:
Those who have played V4Victory or World At War will be familar with the look and feel of the graphics used for the maps. The first component of the map graphic are the terrain hexes:
 |
Lakes - no unit can enter this hex. This hex is meant to represent an unpassable body of water. |
 |
Clear Field - this is what a flat field of grass looks like. Putting out fires on this kind of terrain is very easy. Grass also doesn't have much flamable material and burns out quickly. Grass fires can never be more than moderately sized. |
 |
Light Forest - this is what a field of grass with a light sprinkle of trees and bushes looks like. |
 |
Forest - this is what a fully grown forest looks like. Trying to put out a fire in this can be nearly impossible. Once alight, heavy forests have so much burnable material that they can burn for a long time. Fires in this hexes can grow to enormous sizes. |
 |
Village - this is basically a grassy field with a scattering of buildings. |
 |
City - this is a heavily built up area. |
On top of the terrain, we add some details to the map.
 |
Roads - this is meant to make moving the fire-fighter tiles easier. |
 |
Hillsides - in this image, we are going uphill as we move from the left hex into the right hex. Fighting fires uphill is harder than downhill. Fires also travel faster up a hill than down. |
 |
River - this is difficult for all tiles to cross. |
After the terrain, there are the units that get to move about the map.
 |
This is the tile that the player moves about the hex map. The most number of fire-fighters that can appear in a single hex is always 4. |
 |
This is the tile that represents fire. The more fire tiles there are, the bigger the fire that is meant to be represented. The maximum number of fire tiles that can appear in a hex varies with the hex type. |
Working With The Fire-Fighter Tiles:
If a fire-fighter tile is able to move (that is that it still has some movement points left and is not asleep) then a green highlight will appear around the hex edge in which the tile in question is located. This is called the active unit, and it is always the topmost tile if the highlight ever appears in a hex where there is a stack of fire-fighter tiles. You can move the mouse near the active tile and if it can move into a neighbouring hex, then the cursor will change into a narrow arrow shape pointing the direction of possible movement. If you then click the mouse the unit will move. If there is not enough movement points available for a fire-fighter tile to move into a hex, then the cursor will remain the familar default cursor.
 |
A fire-fighter who is able to move into an adjacent hex. |
Having a fire-fighter try to put out a fire is very much the same as in moving the fire-fighter tile. If your fire-fighter is adjacent to the hex with the fire tile, then you can move your mouse over the hex and if you have enough movement points to enter that hex then you will be allowed to fight the fire, which you can see by whether the narrow arrow cursor replaces the default cursor.
 |
A fire-fighter who is able to attempt to put out a fire. |
When you then click on the hex that you want to fight fires in, you will be shown which fire-fighters contribute to putting a fire out. This is conveyed by the cursor being hidden for a moment, during which little arrows are drawn on the map corresponding to those fire-fighters that are making a contribution. From this is becomes obvious just how important it is that your fire-fighters give each other support in the face of fire. It is important to note that when several fire-fighters are used at once, only that tile that you are moving will experiance any changes to its state, that is the active unit will expend its movement points on putting out the fire, but those fire-fighters that are playing a supporting role will experiance no changes. This is a useful trick, for even a tile that has expended all of its movement points for that turn phase will, for a moment, act as if it is fully mobile if it is supporting some other tile that is trying to put out a fire.
 |
What you see during an attempt to put out a fire. Notice how there are little arrows showing which fire-fighters took part in the attempt. |
There are three outcomes to an attempt to put out a fire:
Sometimes, you don't want to use the present active fire-fighter tile, so you can page through the list of fire-fighters by chosing the Next button from the display at the bottom of the map window. This means that latter on in the present turn phase, you will have to return to that tile and decide what to do with it. Those tiles that have used up their movement points or are asleep are not returned by clicking on this button. (A note on the button graphic: I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, so what you see on the button is a graphic that I used while trying to figure out how to work the linked lists that contain the tile infomation. It's a graphic that came out of the design stage of programming and was the best that I could come up with that represented what I wanted it to represent - so tell me if you have problems with the graphic being confusing or such.)
 |
The Next button - this pages through the list of fire-fighter tiles that are free to move. |
Sometimes, you don't want to use a fire-fighter tile at all for the rest of the present turn phase. To prevent the present active unit from becoming active again during the present turn phase, you can select the Defer button from the display at the bottom of the map window. When the next turn phase comes around, the unit will be a one of those units that can become active.
 |
The Defer button - this defers a tile's possible actions until the next turn phase. |
Sometimes, like towards the end of a game when you might have surplus tiles, you might want a more permanent solution then being able to defer the tile's actions until the next turn phase. You can select the Sleep button from the display at the bottom of the map window and this will mean that that unit will not become active again during latter turn phases, although it will still have a presence on the map (affecting other units that might want to move into the hex that it is in, for example).
 |
The Sleep button - this puts a tile to sleep. |
 |
The Wake button - this can be used to wake all the tiles in a hex. |
 |
What you see when you are about to wake a fire-fighter. |
Comments About The Game-Play:
Life's not easy for fire-fighters. There are two types of problems (other than fighting fires) that a fire-fighter has to contend with. The first is that in the face of out of control fire one must retreat from it. In Bushfire, like in real life, you have no real control over where fire will push your fire-fighters:
 |
 |
If retreating in the face of uncontrollable fire isn't bad enough then there is worse. If a fire-fighter can't retreat then the fire overruns him and he gets killed. Once you lose a fire-fighter tile this way you can never get him back - so in other words treat your fire-fighters like a great treasure.
 |
 |
There are a few things to keep in mind, and which should help you to fight fires:
Comments About Icons:
There are a few icons that you probally should be familar with.
 |
The Bushfire application icon. |
 |
The icons for games saved by Bushfire. |
 |
The icons for maps saved by Bushfire Editor. |
Out of laziness, I didn't bother adding support for Bushfire to open maps that have been either double clicked on, or have been dragged and dropped onto the Bushfire icon. Depending on interest and comments by users, these features may or may not be added in the near future.
Comments About Memory Usage:
Bushfire is a game that can get away with not needing much memory. To play a single 40*40 hex map you need slightly under 2 meg of RAM to run the whole application. Smaller maps use less memory, while larger maps can use more memory. In fact, the default memory allowance is set at 10 meg since you need at least this much to open a 100*100 hex map - it also gives you the option of opening several maps, of a smaller size, if you so chose.
The amount of memory used is ultimately up to you. If you need to change the amount of RAM that Bushfire will be allocated, then you can use the Finder to change how much memory Bushfire uses by first selecting the Bushfire icon, selecting the Get Info menu item from the File menu, and then changing the Prefered Size text field - remembering that the value that you are typing is in kilobytes.
The Origin Of The Term "Bushfire":
Some people might be wondering why I chose to call my game "Bushfire" instead of something like "Forest Fire" which people might be more familar with. The reason is rather simple: the term "bushfire" is something that is commonly used in Australia to describe what others might call a "forest fire". Australians don't use the term "forest fire" very much because we don't really have much that can actually be called forests, with "bushland" being a more accurate description of our landscape.
I'm probally wrong about this, but the reason that we don't have forests is a nationwide ecological practice that the Australian Aboriginals have practiced for around 50,000 years and which the flora and fauna have adapted themselves to. This practice was the periodic burning of enormous tracks of land. Only Aboriginals, who were very aware of the environment around them, could have done something so radicle, at such an enormous dimension, and yet not cause an environmental catastrophe. There are many reasons why the Aboriginals did this, but one effect is that Australia doesn't have thick forests that other countries have, and hence we don't have forest fires like other lands, but instead have bushfires.
Recent intervention has prevented the Aboriginals from continuing their practice of burning off large sections of the Australian landscape, and so without the regular burnoffs we are finding that the unburnt plantlife is creating huge stockpiles of flamable material. Inevitably there are fires (thunderstorms are the greatest cause of bushfires in Australian - which is probally the same as in other countries), and when there are fires, these are much fiercer than they would have once been under Aboriginal practice. Is the neglect of this ancient practice a good thing? I suspect that it might not be, but I better shut up before I start saying something really political and offend somebody.
All that I'll say is that bushfires are something downright terrifing - as a child, I remember living out in the country and experiancing a massive bushfire season. My home was in the bottom of a valley and at night the hills glowed an evil orange, with the ocasional tree exploding in a loud blast of sparks. During the day the whole family fought fires to prevent our home from being burnt. Breathing was difficult and painful, with the heavy smoke making a horrid black fluid continuously drip from our noses. Sweating resulted in patches where black ash would settle, and having a bath become pointless.
No body bothered fighting the fires elsewhere because the fires had gotten so completely out of control that all that you could do was hope that you would live through it. In the end we were forced by the black smoke to abandon our home, but we were very lucky for on returning we found that the fires had burnt their way to the fence surrounding our home before stopping - others weren't so lucky. For a young boy, on the onset of puberty, this was simply the greatest excitment ever, and from what I saw then I've since always had a strong respect for anyone who risks their lives fighting fires - it is vainity to think that human hands can stop the power of an enormous fire, and yet there are people with the courage to try.
Known Bugs:
Comments About Version Numbers:
I have a convention about the use of version numbers that give information about the edition of a certain piece of software. I use three numbers separated by dots, in the form of: A.B.C. The number A is the major version number - this changes whenever I do a complete rewrite of the application source. The number B represents a large change to the application that doesn't involve a complete rewrite of the source but still adds features to the application that the user can detect. The number C represents a minor bug fix, where no functionality is added, but one of those inevitable bugs that arise in software is fixed.
When it comes to registering and changes in version numbers, I only ask that people re-register after the change of the first number A, as this is a massive amount of work and really should be rewarded. Changes to the other numbers (B and C) won't result in the need to re-register.
Application History:
The existance of Bushfire begins. It is a bit rough and needs a little cleaning up but it is a start.
The ability to read edited maps is added.
This is a massive re-write. Technically, the version number should change into 2.0.0, but who's checking?
Documentation History:
Disclaimer:
If, for whatever reason, there is a system crash, or there is loss of data, or there is some other situation from which a complaint can be raised against Bushfire, then no body but the user shall be responsible. Although the quality of the Bushfire application and its documentation is set as high as the developer can get it, he shall not be held responsible for anything either related in connection to any software that he writes, or the related documentation that he creates, or any other aspect of his life in general.