Apus

About

This retro shoot ’em up throws you directly into the cockpit of the valiant ship Apus, just moments after a devastating surprise attack cripples your systems. Now, you’re scrambling to repair vital engines while waves of relentless enemy forces swarm you. Rebuild your defenses and ready your counter-attack!

Apus is a designed as a short but fun showcase for NRender, my custom cross-platform gaming and multimedia middelware. It works on most PCs, retro or modern, on Windows, DOS and browsers. Also works on the classic PSX! See the system requirements below.

Third-party copyrights

This game uses sound effects, music tracks and and fonts provided under various free licenses. See Credits in-game for detailed information.

This game makes use of multiple free software libraries under various free licenses. See Licenses in-game for detailed information.

No licensing-restricted documentation, tools, libraries or drivers have been used to make this game. This includes the PSX version, which utilizes custom GPU/SPU/CD-ROM drivers, a custom firmware interface and other auxiliary components.

System requirements

Windows version

	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system	Microsoft Windows 3.1 with Win32s 1.30c or Microsoft Windows NT 3.1	Microsoft Windows 95 or higher or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 or higher
Processor	80486 compatible	Intel Pentium 100 MHz or better
RAM	4 MiB	8 MiB or more
Graphics card	Any VGA-compatible	VGA + 3dfx Voodoo or better
Sound card	None	22.5 khz + CDDA compatible
CD-ROM	Any Windows-compatible drive	2x speed or better with CDDA
Mouse	None	Any Windows-compatible 2 or 3 button mouse

Software renderer vs. hardware acceleration

This title comes in both a software rendered variant as well as hardware accelerated ones.

Software rendering will work on any system, but usually needs to run at a lower resolution to produce acceptable framerates.

Hardware accelerated variants, either using OpenGL 1.1 or Glide, will provide the best performance and picture quality. They do, however, require compatible video cards as well as properly set up drivers.

The DOS Glide-accelerated version comes with a set of drivers based on 3dfx’ original open-source driver release, updated and modernized by sezero. You will need to provide your own for all other variants.

DOS version

	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system	Microsoft MS-DOS 3.1 / IBM PC-DOS 3.1, DR DOS 5.0, FreeDOS 1.x or IBM OS/2 2.0	Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 / IBM PC-DOS 6.1, Novell DOS 7.0, FreeDOS 1.x or IBM OS/2 2.1 or higher
Processor	80486 compatible	Intel Pentium 100 MHz or better
RAM	128 KiB free conventional memory + 4 MiB free extended memory	256 KiB free conventional memory + 8 MiB free extended memory
Graphics card	Any VGA-compatible	VBE 2.0 compatible with LFB modes or 3dfx Voodoo
Sound card	None	Creative Sound Blaster 1.5 (or higher) or compatible
CD-ROM	Any DOS-compatible drive, MSCDEX-compatible CD extensions 1.25 or better	Any DOS-compatible drive with CDDA, MSCDEX-compatible CD extensions 1.25 or better
Mouse	None	Any Microsoft-compatible 2 or 3 button mouse

PSX version

Please note: This title is not licensed, produced or endorsed by Sony Group Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment or any of their subsidiaries, partners or other affiliates. You will need a machine capable of running such software. This title does not make any attempt to provide this functionality on it’s own.

All original grey models (SCPH-1xxx, SCPH-3xxx, SCPH-5xxx, SCPH-7xxx, SCPH-9xxx) as well as all white/slim/“PSone” models (SCPH-1xx) are supported. PS2 hardware should work as well, but this is mostly untested.

Most emulators should work fine as well. However, HLE BIOS implementations will mostly not work. You will need to either use a firmware re-implementation such as OpenBIOS or resort to using a firmware dump of your actual machine (in jurisdiction where either of these can be done legally).

This title works with original SCPH-1010 digital gamepads as well as the modern analog SCPH-1200 (marketed as “DualShock”). It does not support using more than one controller or the use of memory cards or any other peripheral.

Changelog

1.2.1:
- Significant performance improvements on PC platforms
- Fixed janky mouse after stage transition
1.2.0:
- 3dfx Voodoo hardware acceleration support
- DOS configuration dialog. Run via setup.bat
- Fixed stuttering audio on stage transitions
- Performance improvements
1.1.1:
- Lowered DOS memory requirements
1.1.0:
- Support touch-only mobile devices (phones, tablets)
1.0.2:
- Fixed benchmark mode on Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 3.1
1.0.1:
- Restored full pre-boss sequence
- Fixed boss background in software rendering
- Restored boss camera angle
- Tweaked boss model for less polygon fighting
- Added benchmark mode (see --help)
1.0.0:
Initial release!