TICKLE
Copyright (c) 1997-2003,2004 Alessandro Scotti
http://www.ascotti.org/

Tickle homepage: 
http://www.ascotti.org/programming/tickle/tickle.htm

Note to the "Rebound" edition: the Makefile won't compile
neither the "dce" nor the "rebound" directories, you have to
add those yourself. Besides, switching from ATTRACT to PLAY
mode requires changing an #ifdef and recompiling. The paddles
don't move because their analog part isn't connected to
any user input. Yes... there are many unemulated parts, but
this is a step closer!

Version 0.92

Tickle is an object oriented framework I wrote to develop
hardware emulators, but it can also used to write simple games and
similar stuff.

Tickle is composed by a portable library of functions and
interfaces, and by an OS-dependent front end that provides
access to system input and output devices (keyboard, mouse,
joystick, sound, video and so on).

What's new in version 0.92
--------------------------

The most important feature of this release is a complete emulation
of the Galaxian platform, including sound generation. So, no samples
are needed to play!

I have also fixed a few minor bugs and added a third stage to the
F2 option to select the maximum window size (Windows only).

As usual, some new ROMs are supported:
- Black Hole
- Eyes
- Frogger
- Galaxian
- Gingateikoku No Gyakushu (same as UniWarS but cool name!)
- Jump Shot
- Moon Cresta
- UniWarS
- War of the Bugs

What's new in version 0.91
--------------------------

I have ported Tickle on Linux using the Qt libraries (KDE). While
this version is far from being perfect it is fully functional
and should work just fine if not stressed too much.

Joystick support has been improved.

Force feedback devices are supported on Windows using DirectX.
At present this feature is experimental and has been added to only
two games: Space Invaders (explosion) and Pinball Action (bump).

Configuration parameters can be specified in the file "tickle.ini".
See the file itself for a description of the supported options (it
will grow in the future.)

The window title now changes when execution is paused.

The following games have been added:
- Crush Roller
- Make Trax (practically identical to Crush Roller)
- Scramble
- Amidar (on Scramble hardware)
- Mars
- The End
- Battle of Atlantis

Version 0.90 (April 17, 2004)
-----------------------------

Tickle supports the following games:
- Lunar Rescue
- Ms. Pacman
- Ozma Wars
- Pacman
- Pacman Plus
- Pinball Action
- Pooyan
- Puckman
- Space Attack II
- Space Invaders
- Space Invaders II

Many of the analog sound circuits of the Space Invaders hardware are emulated in
software, see http://www.ascotti.org/programming/side/soundboard.htm for more details.

System requirements
-------------------

The Win32 executable needs DirectX 7.0 or better and a working
sound card. It is recommended that the video runs in True Color
(32-bit) mode. Actually, the program has only been tested in this 
configuration.

Emulated games usually require a copy of the corresponding ROM
files. For ease of operation, Tickle uses the same files as the MAME 
emulator (www.mame.net). These files must be placed in a properly
named ZIP file in a subdirectory names "roms" (if sound samples are 
needed, they can also be placed in a subdirectory named "samples").
Again, the names of the ZIP files are compatible with MAME (last
checked with version 0.78).

If one or more of the required files are missing the program will
display an error message but will also offer a choice to continue: this 
may be used to emulate errors or such, a feature that will be probably
tested more in later releases.

Please remember that the ROM files are usually copyrighted material
and are not included with this program. Furthermore, they must
be *never* bundled or distributed together with this program in
any format or media.

How to compile
--------------

Currently Tickle compiles under Windows and Linux. Make sure to edit
the top level Makefile and select the proper PLATFORM before trying
to compile (that's really easy and there is more info in the Makefile
itself).

- Windows

Tickle compiles in the same MinGW environment used by MAME. Actually 
you can download files and instructions directly from the MAME site
(www.mame.net, click on "Download", select "Main downloads" from the
left sidebar and go to the "Win32 compile utilities" section).

Edit the top level Makefile and set PLATFORM to "win32", then run
"make". At the end of the process, an executable named
"tickle.exe" is created in the "obj\win32" folder.

- Linux (with Qt libraries)

You need the Qt libraries and tools to compile, as well as the standard
GCC suite for C++. (The Qt libraries are those used by KDE, but
you only need the basic libraries as there are no features that depend
on KDE itself.)

Edit the top level Makefile and set PLATFORM to "linuxqt", also make
sure that the QTDIR variable is set correctly. Run "make".
At the end of the process, an executable named "tickle" is created 
in the "obj/linuxqt" folder.

Acknowledgements
----------------

The ZLIB library is copyright (C) 1995-2003 
by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler

LICENSE
-------

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
