This is for anybody that cares to know how....


The Snake
---------
Possibly  the  most complected  and  tricky thing  I  have ever  done!  The most
important part of the snake is the neck.  How to get it under the player all the
time was tricky! It is a custom element (CE) that  is "walkable over".  When you
exit this  CE  it  creates itself  one step  ahead, so  by the  time the  player
(Rockford)  has   arrived  at  his   destination,  he   already  has   this neck
underneath  him.    The neck  is  a multi-purpose   CE.    It's   used   for   a
"Roller  death"   collision,   it  moves "Chesster"  the chess  piece, but  most
importantly it is a universal flag for the entire game telling it that the snake 
is in motion.

The body of the snake is just a  non-moving CE which is left behind by the  neck
piece.  If I move up it leaves  an "up body part"....now the clever bit...  if I
was previously moving up then turn right, it leaves an "L-bend body part". There
are two CEs for each body part, animating and still. For each part I also had to
have clockwise and anticlockwise, and it  takes a massive amount of CEs! (I  ran
out of CEs towards  the end!)  All of  these non-moving body parts  only animate
when the player leaves the neck, so  it gives the illusion that the whole  snake 
is moving.

The tail was the easy part,  it's another non-moving CE that simply  follows the
snake body, eating it up!  Again it only moves when the player leaves the neck.

Where is the snake rattle?  you may ask..... to do  this I would need two  tails
that followed the snake... too much to do, and another set of 20 CEs wasted.  So
I opted for the stumpy snake look ;-)


Getting bigger and smaller
--------------------------
When you eat a red  mushroom the neck is destroyed!   This is so I can  move the
head whilst keeping  the body still  (remember the body  moves if you  leave the
neck) This is a bit like stretching  the snake!  So the body stays still  whilst
the  head keeps  moving, making  you 1  snake piece  larger. Then  the neck  is
reconstructed  and you  carry on...  I was  amazed that  it worked with rows  of
mushrooms!  This is also why you can't snap mushrooms.

Shrinking is  the exact  opposite.  When  you move  onto a  green mushroom,  the
snake's head is  locked into position  (like the neck  but with no  exits).  But
this time the body  keeps moving, and this  makes you 1 snake  piece smaller. If
the end of  the tail touches  a green mushroom,  then you must  of been a  small
snake when eating  it.....resulting in death!   (it's how Sid's  younger brother
died btw)


Graphics
--------
I first made the snake by hand... but when it came to bending the snake around a
corner I got   a little stuck!  It's one of  those things you  don't think about
until you try it...  say the snake has  a circle on the  right side of his  body
(like he does now). What happens when  this circle has to go around a  bend?  OK
if it's on the outside of the bend (it just moves around with the body) but  the
inside.....

It wasn't enough that the texture had to go around a bend, it had to fold around
a bend....

3D to the rescue! ;-)

I had to construct  a special type of  3D model for the  body.  It looks like  a
rectangle with rounded edges  made of pipes.  I  then applied a texture  to this
model (which had to  be seamless).  Now the  nasty bit...  I zoomed  the  camera
up close to each "joint" (the  four L-bends, horizontal and vertical pipes)  and
then rendered it. Now   I go back  to  PaintShopPro and  shift this  texture  up
one pixel (and  wrap  it  around   to)  Now  back   to  the  3Dmax   and  render
again. This moves  the  texture around   the  3D  model  perfectly,   giving the
illusion  the snake  body   is  moving.   I  had   to  do  this   8  times  for
clockwise  and then another 8 times for anticlockwise!

All that effort!  But it gives a  great smoothness to the animation, as well  as
bending the texture around a corner.  If  you look at the circles on the  inside
of  the  snake  body, you  see  they  shrink and  expand  around  corners..... I
challenge anybody to draw this by hand!


Death
-----
There  are  no R&Ds  explosions  at all  in  Snakebite!  They  are  all made  by
me.....why? Well,  what happens  if say  a R&Ds  dynamite explodes  next to  the
snake?  Nothing that's what!

Let us run through a typical SnakeBite death:-

1 You drop a bomb...  but you don't escape in  time because you are too  long! 
2 The bomb changes into  a pre-explosion single CE  checker (apex of explosion)  
3 The snake body checks to see if this  is near it.  If it is then that  must 
  mean you  are in  the area  of a  "soon to  happen" 3+3  explosion...start the  
  death sequence 
4 Where Rockford  was,is replaced by a  fake snake head (his  eyes wide open and 
  head shaking!)  
5 Rockford is then  transported to the impact  area and locked  in  place 
6 This  area (by  the  bomb) is  deadly  to touch. Rockford explodes! 
7 Rockford  leaves behind yellow diamonds.....very handy! 
8 Any snake body part that touches a yellow diamond explodes (including the fake 
  head)
9 No snake left.....ever!  Even if the death was in a doorway (the yellow diamonds 
  always fall on both sides of the door)

Other special deaths include:  Spike hitting you,  your own venom hitting you,
and being crushed by a Doorway or a Crusher



You said you ran out of CEs... but there's a 2x5 CE statue!
-----------------------------------------------------------
I did.  Then  how did I  manage to squeese  in 4 destructible  bevel sets, and 2
indestructible bevel sets?   Using all the  R&Ds elements I  couldn't use that's
how!  BD2K3 had 1 bevel set for  the steel and 1 for destructible... no  gravity
makes things  like the  conveyor belts defunct, and  so we  have more  walls and
decoration.  Also  there  are  no  pushable  items  at  all  in  Snakebite!  All
(seemingly)  pushable  items  are  started  by  the  player  "pressing"  and not
"pushing"....why? Well because of the neck jumping ahead when moving, it ate all 
pushable items like boulders! (and sometimes decapitated the snake!)

Another new  technique I  found out,  CRUMBLED!  Notice  every destructible wall
when exploded leaves a jagged edge?   (instead of a normal flat edge)  By making
every wall have a copy of itself but in a crumbled fashion, I could have it look
like the wall is broken.


Jungle and Hieroglyphics must use lots of walls?
------------------------------------------------
Nope!  The  jungle  uses  144  different  graphic  definitions......but  only  9
elements!   (and   not  CEs   just  normal  EMC  walls).    How?   Using  random
animation in the graphicsinfo.conf with a delay of 1,000,000 means you never get
the same   jungle twice.  This goes  for the  hieroglyphics to  (notice how they
change every time you play Necropolis?)



Detatching the head from the body
---------------------------------
Is it possible?  Not likely!  If you do manage to do this, send  me  a tape  and 
you will have my respect.  ;-)


Alan.