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1995-07-25
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XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
NAME
xboing - An X Window System based blockout clone. V1.7
SYNOPSIS
xboing [-version] [-usage] [-help] [-sync] [-display
<displayName>] [-speed <1-10>] [-scores] [-keys] [-sound]
[-setup] [-nosfx] [-nograb] [-maxvol <1-100>] [-startlevel
<1-MAXLEVELS>] [-usedefcmap]
-speed <n> - The game speed, 1 - 9. 9=Fast
-maxvol <n> - The maximum volume as percentage
-startlevel <n> - The starting level for game.
-help - Produce this help message.
-sync - Turn on X synchronisation.
-usage - Print a brief help message.
-version - Print out the current version.
-scores - Print out current highscores.
-keys - Use keys instead of mouse control.
-sound - Turn audio ON for game.
-setup - Print setup information.
-nosfx - Turn off special effects.
-nograb - Turn pointer grabbing off.
-usedefcmap - Use the default colourmap.
-display <display> - Set the display for the game.
DESCRIPTION
XBoing is a simple blockout type game where you have a
paddle which you control to bounce a ball around the game
area destroying blocks with the proton ball.
Each block carries a different point value. The more blocks
you destroy, the better your score. The person with the
highest score wins.
The play area is filled with blocks and other objects. You
have a paddle that can move from left to right at the bottom
of the arena. You move the paddle so that the proton ball
bounces around blowing up blocks does not go past the paddle
and out the bottom, much like a pinball game.
The blocks exhibit different behaviour. The bomb block when
hit will explode all blocks around it. If another bomb is
beside it then it will go off also. The solid wall brick
will not explode unless next a bomb. The ammunition block
will give you four bullets and so on. Special blocks such as
reverse and machine gun will only last for one level.
There are random blocks that change their colour and
therefore their points every now and then. They add a bit of
change to the levels.
Page 1 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
There is a pirate symbol that will kill your ball if
touched. You can shoot this block 3 times to kill it but you
will lose 1000 points. Keep away from the Death block, it
kills your ball!
The walls off block will turn the wall bounce off on both
the left and right side of the playing area. This will mean
the ball will not bounce off but continue through the wall
and wrap around to the other side respectively.
The reverse block will when hit reverse the controls to the
paddle. This block should be avoided as it makes the game
really hard. Hitting another reverse while already in
reverse mode will turn it off.
The teleport block will teleport the ball somewhere else on
that level. It will not place you too close to the bottom of
the screen or on another block.
The sticky paddle block will stick the ball to your paddle
each time it is hit and wait until you press space to shoot
it off again. This can be a #$%$#@! and also useful for
lining up shots for hard bricks.
There is a machine gun block that allows you to shoot much
faster. Note that you will also go through your bullets at a
great rate. Can be fun to let off a burst every now and
then. Erases counter blocks very fast.
An extra ball symbol may appear and when shot or hit with
another ball it will give you an extra ball!
There is a shrink paddle block that will shrink you paddle
to a smaller size for the level. If you currently have the
smallest paddle then it has no effect.
There is an expand paddle block that will grow you paddle to
a larger size for the level. If you currently have the
largest paddle then it has no effect.
You can use the bullets to shoot the last pesky blocks or to
collet lots of You can use the bullets to shoot the last
pesky blocks or to collet lots of bonus coins. You will be
given 4 bullets when a new level starts. If you lose a ball
you will be given a token 2 bullets. Use bullets wisely as
you will hate yourself when there is one brick left and the
ball is missing it for ever.
Throughout the game the bonus coins will appear. Collect
these for bonus points when the level is finished. Sometimes
the coin may appear as a x2 or x4 symbol which will indicate
that the scoring from now onwards will be multiplied by 2 or
Page 2 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
4 respectively. Note: if you get a x2 then x4 then x2 you
will go back to x2 mode. Also note that this x2 or x4 mode
will be disabled after each ball death.
If you collect more than 10 bonuses during a level the
killer mode is activated which will turn the ball red and
the ball will plough through all blocks except the solid
ones and finish off the level very quickly. You will also
receive the SUPER BONUS on the bonus screen.
The bonus screen will tell you how you went in the last
level. Your bonuses will be added and the bullet and level
bonus will be added. You get 500 points for each bullet not
used. You get 3000 points for each bonus and if you get more
than 10 bonuses you get a SUPER BONUS of 50000 points. You
also get a new ball every 100,000 points. Pressing space
will skip the bonus animations when the bonus screen
appears. Your bonus score will still be added.
There is a level timer that counts down while playing the
level. If you don't complete the level in time you will not
get the time bonus which is 100 points per second remaining.
You will also miss out on the level bonus if your time runs
out.
The ball will be automatically shot off the paddle after
about 5 seconds unless you press the space bar. You can
always press P to pause the game.
If the ball gets stuck in an infinite loop it will
automatically tilt the board if the ball hasn't hit the
paddle after a certain time span. The time span is about 8
seconds I think.
XBoing was started like many other projects to learn Xlib
better. I had the XPM library and was already using it in a
Motif application. I thought that it would be cool to have
nice colour pictures/animations in an Xlib game. So I did.
Without the XPM library I would be still playing with the
colours I think.
OPTIONS
The speed option will adjust the speed of the overall game.
It will except integer numbers between 1 and 9. This option
is a little dodgy. The speed of the game can be changed from
within the game as well. See Game Control. The default value
is 1.
The maxvol option allows you to adjust the maximum volume to
be used for the sound effects if sound is supported. It
doesn't mean all sounds will be this volume but they will
Page 3 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
use that volume as the top volume to scale against.
The startlevel option allows you to set the starting level
for your games. Note that when your score is placed in the
highscore table the level number is the number of levels
completed and not the level number attained. Also, in the
bonus screen your level bonus will be the number of levels
completed multiplied by the level bonus value and not the
current level number!
The help option will display a brief one line description of
all the command line options used with xboing.
The sync option will turn on the X Window System
synchronisation of all Xlib calls which means that all calls
are flushed by the X server before continuing. This will
cause the game to become slower but enable some debugging.
The default is OFF.
The usage option will print a very brief synopsis of all the
command line options and there value ranges.
The version option prints the version of xboing that you are
running.
The scores option will print both the roll of honour and
your personal best scores to standard out. This can be
useful if you are not running the program on an X window
display and still want to see what the scores are.
The keys option will enable the use of the keyboard for game
control. Within the game you may press <g> to toggle between
mouse and key control. The default is MOUSE control.
The sound option will enable sound to be turned on if
possible. The default is OFF.
The setup option is useful when you have just compiled the
program. It will display the paths of the level & sound
directories and also give you some information on other
things.
The nosfx option will turn OFF special effects. The special
effect in question at this stage is the explosion shake.
Turning it off will speed the game up a little bit. The
default is ON. Servers without backing store will have it
turn off automatically as the shaking is shocking.
The nograb option will make xboing not grab the pointer when
the game is visible. Pointer grabbing has the effect of
stopping you move the pointer outside the game window. This
is useful as it constrains the mouse and you don't get
Page 4 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
colourmap flashes. The default is ON.
The usedefcmap option will make xboing try to use the
default colourmap. This will be fine if the default
colourmap is reasonabily empty. If you have a complex
picture on your background then this option will not work
and xboing will be unable to allocate enough colours.
The display option will allow you to force the game to be
viewed on another display. The format of the display name is
<xserver:0.0> like most other programs where xserver is the
name of the display. The default is your display of course.
You may also set three environment variables used by xboing.
They specify the location of the level files, sounds and the
highscore file. They are listed below.
XBOING_SCORE_FILE = the highscore file to be used.
XBOING_LEVELS_DIR = the directory containing the levels.
XBOING_SOUND_DIR = the directory containing the sounds.
They will override the settings that are compiled into the
program.
GAME CONTROL
You must have specified "-keys" on the command line to use
the keys for the paddle control. The default is to use the
mouse control method.
J = Paddle Left
LeftArrow = Paddle Left
K = Shoot bullet
L = Paddle Right
RightArrow = Paddle Right
All Mouse Buttons = Shoot Bullet/Start ball
Use the mouse to move the paddle left and right by moving the mouse
left and right. The paddle will follow the mouse pointer. This is
the best method and easiest to use by far.
Space = Start game
Escape = End game and return to introduction.
i = iconify the game and pause.
H = View roll of honour.
h = View personal highscores.
p = Pause game.
d = Kill the ball.
a = Toggle audio on/off
s = Toggle special effects on/off
c = Cycle through the intro screens.
Page 5 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
1-9 = Game speed where 9 is fastest.
q = Quit XBoing
Note: Highscores are saved at the end of each game.
SCORING
Each blocks has a certain point score. Some blocks such as
the counter block will have more than one score associated
with it.
red = 100
blue = 110
green = 120
yellow = 140
tan = 130
purple = 150
bomb = 50 plus the surrounding blocks points
wall = 0
pirate = 100
reverse = 100
ammo = 50 plus bullets
counter = 200 (each number).
Each time the paddle is hit with the ball your earn 10
points. I'm nice.
There are death symbols (a pirate) that when hit by a ball
will kill the ball. You can shoot them but you will lose
1000 points.
The bonus coins are 3000 points - but only added to score if
you reach the end of the level and go through the bonus
screen.
If you collect more than 10 bonus coins you get a Super
Bonus of 50,000 points. Each remaining bullet after a level
is worth 500 points.
At the end of each level you are awarded a level bouns which
is level <n> x 1000 points. So for level 20 you get 20,000
points! If you fail to complete the level in the time
allotted you will not receive a level bonus.
There are now two highscore files. One displays the global
scores which will be your best score to date. The other is a
personal high score table with all your attempts.
SOUND SUPPORT
Xboing has limited support for sound. It has sound code for
the following machines :-
Page 6 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
HP, SUN, NCD Xterminals, LINUX PC Soundblaster, RPLAY sound
system.
Most support and use the SUN .au format sound files. The
linux version just sends the data down to the audio device
which may cause slight clicking sounds due to the audio file
header. Future versions of xboing will support other
machines if patches are sent to me or if I learn the sound
format. SGI will be next but they have their own format,
argghh. I am not going to have heaps of converted files all
over the place in different formats as the archive would be
HUGE.
LEVELS
The levels are not increasingly harder to play - some are
but some are easy. This is because it takes ages to create
and design levels. The paddle does get smaller as the game
goes on. This makes it REALLY hard. I may also add a ball
speedup feature.
The level data is a simple ASCII file format that can be
edited. The levels are loaded when required from the
directory specified when the game was made.
You can create more levels if you like making sure that they
are in the correct format and that they have a correct
filename format.
Copy level0.data to level??.data and use that for the
editing of new levels.
level format: (case sensitive)
w = wall block
r = red block
g = green block
b = blue block
t = tan block
p = purple block
y = yellow block
X = Bomb
B = Ammo
. = blank
D = Death
R = Reverse
H = Teleport
L = Extra ball
M = Machine Gun
W = Walls off
? = Random block
m = Multiple balls
Page 7 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
s = sticky block
< = Shrink paddle block
> = Grow paddle block
The format of the level is shown in the newlevel.data file
in the source distribution in the levels directory.
Make sure you have a level title and a time bonus in
seconds.
NOTES
Obatin all new versions from ftp.x.org or a mirror site.
REDISTRIBUTION
(c) Copyright 1993, Justin C. Kibell, All Rights Reserved
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
software and its documentation without written agreement is
hereby granted. You cannot sell this software without
written permission from the author. This entire copyright
notice must appear in all copies of this software.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR
DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS
DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
THE AUTHOR SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE
SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE
AUTHOR HAS NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT,
UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.
AUTHOR
Justin C. Kibell - Systems Programmer - CATT Centre CITRI
Melbourne - Victoria - Australia. email: jck@citri.edu.au
SnailMail: 1/17 Albert Road, North Warrandyte, Victoria,
Australia, 3113
Computer Science Graduate - Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology (RMIT) - Australia
BUGS
See README documents in source distribution for list of bugs
and bug fixes.
Page 8 (printed 9/2/93)
XBOING(6) X Version 11 (August 1993) XBOING(6)
Mail all bug reports/suggestions to jck@citri.edu.au
specifying the version and machine type you are using. Use
'uname -a' to explain the machine type. Please note the
version of X11 that you have installed as well, ie: X11R5,
X11R4, etc.
Please note that xboing will run like a pig on the xnews X
server distributed with Sun machines. Please try to use the
MIT X Server that comes with the X Window System.
Page 9 (printed 9/2/93)