## GNOME Robots II Manual

2001
Patanjali Somayaji, Mark Rae

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found here.

Many of the names used by companies to distinguish their products and services are claimed as trademarks. Where those names appear in any GNOME documentation, and those trademarks are made aware to the members of the GNOME Documentation Project, the names have been printed in caps or initial caps.

This is version 1.0 of the GNOME Robots II manual.

## Introduction

GNOME Robots II is a development of the original Gnome Robots game which was itself based on the text based robots game which can be found on a number of UNIX systems, and comes with the BSD games package on Linux systems.

This new version includes two types of robots, movable junkheaps, multiple game configurations, user definable keyboard layouts, sound using ESD if you have it, as well as all of the other features which were present in the original Gnome Robots game.

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

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

## Gnome Robots II Objective

The objective of Gnobots2 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.

If supported in the game configuration you have chosen, 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 you can have a number of safe teleports which will place you out of immediate danger. 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 II

GNOME Robots II 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 II.

### Basic usage

Starting GNOME Robots II opens the Main window, shown in .

#### GNOME Robots II Main Window

GNOME Robots II 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 II.

  - 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:

  - Help— shows this manual.

  - About— shows basic information about GNOME Robots II, 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.

### Standard Keys

These standard keys are normally used for playing all versions of the robot 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

### Set 2

In Set 2, the keys are laid out on the main part of the keyboard in star shaped pattern for people who don't like the HJKL layout.

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

### Set 3 - Using the Numeric Keypad

In Set 3, you use the Numeric Keypad.

#### 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

## Customizing GNOME Robots II

You can modify the behaviour and appearance of the game by selecting the properties dialog by clicking on Preferences of Settings. There are three pages to the dialog:-

- Configuration — 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 choos from a number of predefined games, and the list-box below it shows the settings for that game.

  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. If you do not have ESD installed the game will beep using the computer speaker only on invalid moves.

  4. The 'Splats' checkbox selects whether you want and 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 will get a preview of the graphics below it.

- Keyboard — This screen allows you to define your own keyboard controls.

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 II 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