# &app; Manual V&manrevision;

2001
Patanjali Somayaji, Mark Rae
GNOME Documentation Project

&legal;

Patanjali
Somayaji

     patanjali@mindless.com

Mark
Rae

     m.rae@inpharmatica.co.uk

&appname; Manual V&manrevision;
&date;

Patanjali Somayaji patanjali@mindless.com

GNOME Documentation Project

Full title of previous manual.
Release date of previous manual.

Mark Rae m.rae@inpharmatica.co.uk

GNOME Documentation Project

This manual describes version &appversion; of &appname;.

## Feedback

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page.

## Introduction

GNOME Robots is a game where you try and avoid a band of marauding robots which are, for no adequately explained reason, trying to kill you. It is based on the text-based robots game which can be found on a number of UNIX and Linux systems.

This new version includes two types of robots, movable junkheaps, multiple game configurations, user definable keyboard layouts, and sound, as well as all of the features which were present in the original GNOME Robots game.

To run GNOME Robots, select games GNOME Robots from the Main Menu, or type `gnobots2` on the command line.

GNOME Robots is included in the `gnome-games` package, which is part of the GNOME desktop environment. This document describes version &version; of GNOME Robots.

## GNOME Robots Objective

The objective of GNOME Robots is quite simple. You are surrounded by a number of robots or other hostile adversaries. As you move about they will move directly towards you for every move that you make. Their goal is to kill you. Your goal is to kill all the robots on the board by taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.

Robots are vulnerable because they will be destroyed if they collide into each other. They will also be destroyed if they collide with the debris of some other collision.

In some of the game configurations (you can choose from between five different sets of rules), you can push the junkheaps around to form barricades to protect you. Also if you are daring enough you can Splat! the robots by pushing junkheaps on top of them for an additional bonus.

You can also save yourself by teleporting yourself to a random location. Unfortunately, randomly teleporting means that there is a chance that you might end up being right next to a robot so they can kill you when they make their move. All is not lost however, as there are also safe teleports which will place you out of immediate danger, but there are only a limited supply of these. You can earn more free teleports as you go along, how you gain them depends on the chosen game, but typically you get one for each robot that is destroyed while you are 'waiting', up to a maximum of 10. If you don't want to waste your saved up safe teleports you can choose to randomly teleport if you think it's safe enough.

If you press the 'Wait' key (see below) you will no longer be able to move until either all of the robots, which still move towards you, are gone or you are killed. Doing this may earn you extra safe teleports as described above.

If you manage to reach the point where more than half of the screen is occupied by robots, the number of robots will be reset to the starting amount, allowing you to continue.

## Using GNOME Robots

GNOME Robots is extremely simple to play. You make your moves by using your keyboard. You can even decide which keys are used for the moves. This section describes basic usage of GNOME Robots.

### Basic usage

Starting GNOME Robots opens the Main window, shown in .

#### GNOME Robots Main Window

GNOME Robots Main Window.

To start a new game, click on New Game in the Game menu.

## Menus

The menu bar, located at the top of the game board, contains the following menus:

Game

  This menu contains three items:

  - Ctrl-N New Game — starts a new game of GNOME Robots.

  - Scores... — shows the scores.

  - Ctrl-Q Exit

Settings

  The Settings menu contains only one item:

  - Preferences which brings up the preferences dialog box.

Help

  This menu contains:

  - Contents— shows this manual.

  - About— shows basic information about GNOME Robots, such as the author's name and the application version number.

## Using the keyboard

There are three predefined sets of keys for controlling your player. You can select which set to using the Keyboard tab in the Preferences dialog.

### The Keypad

When you select this set, you use the numeric keypad on the right hand side of the keyboard (not the separate arrow keys).

#### Switch on the NumLock Key

You may need to switch on the NumLock to make these work.

1. Up Left: 7

2. Up: 8

3. Up Right: 9

4. Left: 4

5. Stand Still: 5

6. Right: 6

7. Down Left: 1

8. Down: 2

9. Down Right: 3

10. Teleport: +

11. Ramdomly Teleport: -

12. Wait: Return

### Left Hand Keys

These keys are laid out on the left hand side of the keyboard.

1. Up Left: Q

2. Up: W

3. Up Right: E

4. Left: A

5. Stand Still: S

6. Right: D

7. Down Left: Z

8. Down: X

9. Down Right: C

10. Teleport: T

11. Ramdomly Teleport: R

12. Wait: Return

### Original Keys

These keys are the controls used in the original robots game. They will be familiar to people who have played other older text-based games.

1. Up Left: Y

2. Up: K

3. Up Right: U

4. Left: H

5. Stand Still: . or space

6. Right: L

7. Down Left: B

8. Down: J

9. Down Right: N

10. Teleport: T

11. Ramdomly Teleport: R

12. Wait: W

## Customizing GNOME Robots

You can modify the behaviour and appearance of the game by selecting Preferences under the Settings menu. This brings up a dialog with three tabs:

- Game — This page allows you to choose the type of game you want to play. The drop-down box at the top of the page allows you to choose from a number of predefined games, and the list-box below it shows the settings for that game. You can't change these options in the middle of a game, so they will be disabled then. There are also several options at the bottom of the dialog:

  1. The safe moves option will help you to avoid being killed due to a mistake. If you try to make a move that would lead to your death when there is a safe move available you will not be allowed to procceed. But be warned if there was no safe move available, other than teleporting, the move will be allowed to proceed.

  2. There is also a ``super safe mode''. If you select this, you get beeped when there is no safe move and your only option is to teleport out.

  3. If you select the sound check-box the game will play sounds for various events throughout the game.

  4. The 'Splats' checkbox selects whether you want the sound played and a small 'Splat!' to appear on the screen.

- Graphics — This page allows you to select the graphics used throughout the game from the list in the dropdown-box. You can also select the background colour from this tab.

- Keyboard — This screen allows you to define your own keyboard controls. The three pre-defined sets at the bottom have been described in the previous section. To select a different key for a command, click on the button for that command and then press the key you want to use.

Any changes you make take immediate effect and are automatically saved.

You can design your own graphics for the game if you want. The graphics files are found in `$PREFIX/share/pixmaps/gnobots2` , where $PREFIX depends on where GNOME was installed, usually either `/usr` or `/usr/local`.

Each character is 16x16 pixels and there are 14 of them arranged in a PNG file which is 224x16 pixels in size. You can look at the existing files to see the order in which they must be arranged to produce the correct animated sequences.

Any graphics files which are placed in the directory are auto-detected so you don't need to alter any configuration files. You can also define your own game configurations by creating extra `.cfg` files which are stored in the `$PREFIX/share/gnobots2` directory.

## Known Bugs and Limitations

This application has no known bugs.

## Authors

GNOME Robots was written by Mark Rae (m.rae@inpharmatica.co.uk). Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the GNOME bug tracking database. (Instructions for submitting bug reports can be found on-line.) You can also use Bug Report Tool (`bug-buddy`), available in the Utilities submenu of Main Menu, for submitting bug reports.

This manual was written by Patanjali Somayaji (patanjali@mindless.com), from the original HTML documentation by Mark Rae. Please send all comments and suggestions regarding this manual to the GNOME Documentation Project by sending an email to docs@gnome.org. You can also add your comments online by using the GNOME Documentation Status Table.

## 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.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to

            Free Software Foundation, Inc.
            59 Temple Place - Suite 330
            Boston, MA 02111-1307
            USA