# LBreakout2 Manual

maintained by Michael Speck
last change: 02/02/17

## Table Of Contents

- Game Play
  - Basics
  - Bonus/Malus
  - Special Bricks
  - Keys
- Options
  - New Game
  - Controls
  - Graphics
  - Audio
  - Advanced Options
  - Editor
- Editor
  - Miscellany
  - Editor Layout
  - How To Edit
- Themes
  - Miscellany
  - How To Make A Theme

## Game Play

### Basics

Okay, I guess all of you know how to play breakout basically. Ball bounces around --> paddle keeps ball in game -> all bricks destroyed --> next level ;-D
The chosen difficulty level (see Options) has some influence on paddle, ball and score. The harder the smaller is the paddle, the faster move the balls, the less lives you have and the more costs a continue but you'll earn a bonus of 20% (medium) or 40% (hard) score when the game's over.
If there is more than one player the next player will get his/her chance when the current one restarts the level or looses all balls. The name of the current/next player is displayed in the right top corner of the screen and before each turn.

### Bonus/Malus

A destroyed brick may release a bonus or malus which will move down slowly. It's used as soon as it is collected by paddle.
Name | Time (in sec) | Picture | Description
Extra Score | - |  | Gives you the score written on it.
End Of The Rainbow | 20 |  | If you destroy a brick with no bonus assigned it will release 1000 points extra score!
Expand Paddle | - |  | Expands your paddle about one tile (the maxium size depends on the chosen difficulty level).
Extra Life | - |  | Gives you one extra life (paddle).
Sticky Paddle | 20 |  | Balls touching the paddle will keep attached until you press fire.
Energy Balls | 10 |  | Balls won't be reflected at a brick but go directly through it.
Extra Ball | - |  | Creates a new ball.
Bonus floor | 20 |  | Closes the screen so no balls can get lost.
Weapon | 10 |  | Adds a weapon to the paddle.
Speed Down | 20 |  | Deccelerates all balls to mimum speed.
Joker | - |  | Collects all bonus on screen instantly and destroys all malus. Doubles score and time of the collected bonus!
Explosive Balls | 10 |  | When hitting a brick balls will cause an explosion destroying all surounding bricks.
Bonus Magnet | 20 |  | While this bonus is active the paddle will attract other bonuses.
Reset | - |  | All active bonuses and maluses will be reset.
Time-Add | - |  | All active bonuses and maluses will last seven seconds longer.
Random Extra | - |  | Gives you any of the listed extras.
Speed Up | 20 |  | Accelerates all balls to maximum speed.
Frozen Paddle | 1 |  | Freezes the paddle (no movement possible).
Shrink Paddle | - |  | Shrinks your paddle about one paddle tile (18 pixels).
Lights Out! | 20 |  | Total darkness. All you see is a shade of paddle, balls and extras.
Chaos | 20 |  | Balls are reflected randomly at bricks. (but not at paddle)
Ghostly Paddle | 20 |  | Paddle disappears when not moving and won't reflect any balls then. (nor does it collect bonuses)
Malus Magnet | 20 |  | While this malus is active the paddle will attract other maluses.
Weak Balls | 20 |  | With this malus active there is a 40% chance that a ball won't damage a brick.

### Special Bricks

Name | Picture | Description
Shielded Brick |  | This brick is indestructible even for energy balls.
Metal Brick |  | This wall is indestructible except for energy balls.
Chaotic Brick |  | Similiar to the Chaos Malus the ball is reflected randomly at such a brick.
Strong Brick |  | These walls take up to three shots before destruction and grow darker with every hit. NOTE: to this series belongs a forth brick which is invisbile.
Regenerating Brick |  | This brick will regenerate one point durability within four seconds if not hit again.
Explosive Brick |  | This bricks destroys its neighbors on destruction.
Growing Brick |  | If this brick is destroyed it creates up to 8 new bricks.

### Keys

There are some predefined keys for LBreakout:
Escape | Quit LBreakout (after confirmation).
r | Restart level. If more than player the next one will get his chancebefore this player may play the restarted level!
p | Pause game.
f | Switch Fullscreen and Windowed mode.
a | Change animation level (off/low/high).
s | Turn on/off sound.

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## Options

### New Game

Options in menu New Game:
Start Game | Start game with the specified options.
Levelset | This is the levelset you actually want to play. LBreakout parses the installation path and ~/.lbreakout/levels for valid levelsets. Levelsets found in the home directory have an '~' in front of the actual name.
Difficulty | Difficulty is either easy, medium or hard. See the Basics for more info.
Players | How many players? Four at maximum.
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th | Names of the players.

### Controls

Options in menu Controls:
Left, Right, Fire | Keys for paddle movement.
Grab Mouse | Keep mouse in window? Useful for windowed mode. Grab is turned off when confirming something or having a break.
Relative Motion | Invert and motion modifier to only work for this option enabled. But note: enabling this option already slows down the mouse so you'll have to play around with the motion modifier to fit your needs.
Motion Modifier | Slows down or speeds up mouse motion.
Invert Motion | Invert paddle motion.
Input | Is either Keyboard'n'Mouse, Mouse Only or Keyboard Only.

### Graphics

Options in menu Graphics:
Animations | Animation level. Using no or low animations will increase frame rate a lot.
Transparency | Use transparency effects?
Shadow | Shadow of frame, bricks, balls, bonus and paddle.
Display | Either Fullscreen or Window. Is switched directly after changing this option.
Frame Rate | Either 200 FPS, 100 FPS, 50 FPS or Unlimited. Unlimited is recommended for best performance, but if you got any jobs running you should limit the frame rate to prevent LBreakout from consuming 100% CU time.

### Audio

Options in menu Audio:
Sound | Enable/disable sound.
Speech | Enable speech samples (might get on your nerves so I added this option).
Volume | Sound volume between 1-8.

### Advanced Options

Options in menu Advanced Options:
Convex Paddle | If this options is enabled the paddle's surface is treated as convex which simplifies aiming a lot. If this option is disabled the original paddle physics are used. Influencing the ball's direction does only work with the paddle's hemisphere at each end and friction by paddle movement. Very difficult.
Balls | Either Below Bonuses or Above Bonuses. Below Bonuses is default but with lots of bonuses on screen balls may be hard to spot so switch to Above Bonuses then.
Key Speed | This is the speed with which the paddle moves when using keyboard for input.
Return Balls | If a ball does not damage a brick within ten seconds it is allowed to return to the paddle. If this option is set to Auto it will automatically return and if this option is set to By Click you'll have to press the middle mouse button or the 'back'-key (default is Backspace).
Use Hints | Enables/disables the quick hint system.
Select Theme | Here you may select another theme for LBreakout2.

### Editor

Options in menu Editor:
Set | The set file in your config directory '~/.lbreakout2/levels' you want to edit or delete. If you select '<CREATE SET>' and hit edit you'll be asked for a set name and then this set will be created.
Edit Set | Edit (or create) this set.
Delete Set | Delete this set.

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## Editor

### Miscellany

All files you edit are saved to ~/.lbreakout2/levels. This '~' you see in front of the name when choosing levelset for playing is not part of the file name but added afterwards to separate the files in the installation path from the files in the config path (these you may edit).

### Editor Layout

Actions like quit, save, load, clear, add, insert, remove require a confirmation for safety.

1. Editable Part
2. Bricks and Bonus
3. Information about location of set file and how many levels you already created, which level your currently on and how many levels more you may create. If you marked a level for swap it's displayed there, too.
4. Click on title to change title of this level.
5. Click here to change author's name for this level.
6. Click here to test this level.
7. Go to first level.
8. Go to next level.
9. Go to previous level.
10. Clear all bricks and bonus in this level.
11. Swap two levels. On first click the current level will be marked (info displayed in region 3), on second click the current and the marked level will be swapped.
12. Insert a level at the end (copies title and author of previously last level).
13. Insert a level at current position (copying current title and author).
14. Remove current level.
15. Reload this level set (discards all unsaved changes).
16. Save this levelset (save all changes).

### How To Edit

Very simple. Select a brick or a bonus by left-click (right-click into the section to switch between the brick and the bonus set) from the bottom of the screen (red-yellow selection frame) go to the editable part and left-click. Right click will remove a brick (any brick and its bonus if a brick's selected) or bonus (any bonus without touching the brick if bonus selected). You may move the mouse while having left or right buttom pressed. To parse/add/remove any levels or save/load this set use the buttons as explained above. You may use the cursor keys, too (UP - first level, RIGHT - next level, LEFT - previous level). Pressing ESCAPE leaves the editor after confirmation.

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## Themes

### Miscellany

If you want to run LBreakout2 with other graphics and sounds you can create a theme which allows you to modify all ingame gfx and sounds. The menu is not themeable (and before you ask: the answer is no ;-). The use of new backgrounds is also allowed. The following list contains all editable graphics and sounds. What you have to do to edit them is explained below.

Editable graphics:

ball.png |
bricks.png |
explosions.png | normal explosions
explosions_dark.png | explosions if darkness malus is active
extras.png |
f_frame.png | font used for score and player name in the right upper corner of the frame
f_game.png | font used for level credits and confirmation
fr_left.png | left part of frame
fr_right.png | right part of frame
fr_top.png | top part of frame
life.png | life lamps displayed in the left bottom corner of the frame
paddle.png |
shine.png | animation running accross bricks
shot.png | shot of the plasma weapon
weapon.png | weapon displayed on the paddle

Editable sounds:

attach.wav | played if ball is attached to sticky paddle | joker.wav | bonus sound
bonus_magnet.wav | bonus sound | looselife.wav | played if you loose a life
chaos.wav | malus sound | malus_magnet.wav | malus sound
click.wav | played if key was pressed (e.g. confirmation) | metal.wav | enery ball sound
dammit.wav | Dammit! speech sample | reflect.wav | ball reflection sound
damn.wav | Damn! speech sample | score.wav | bonus sound
darkness.wav | malus sound | shot.wav | weapon's firing noise
disable.wav | malus sound | shrink.wav | malus sound
excellent.wav | Excellent! speech sample | speeddown.wav | bonus sound
exp.wav | brick explosion sound | speedup.wav | malus sound
expand.wav | bonus sound | standard.wav | standard sound for collecting an extra
expl_ball.wav | bonus sound | timeadd.wav | bonus sound
extraball.wav | bonus sound | verygood.wav | Very Good! speech sample
freeze.wav | malus sound | wall.wav | bonus sound
gainlife.wav | played if you got an extralife | weak_ball.wav | malus sound
ghost.wav | bonus sound | wontgiveup.wav | I won't give up! speech sample
goldshower.wav | bonus sound |

### How To Make A Theme

1. Create a directory in ~/.lgames/lbreakout2-themes with the name of your theme.
2. Have a look at the original graphics and sounds located in the gfx and sounds directory in the source path or in /usr/local/share/games/lbreakout2.
3. Now change a graphic or sound to your liking and save it with the same name to ~/.lgames/lbreakout2-themes.
   Note:
   - You must not change the measurements of a graphic!
   - Do not save it to a subdirectory gfx or sounds but directly to ~/.lgames/lbreakout2-themes/MyTheme!
   - A graphic or sound that can't be found in your theme directory is loaded from the original resources.
   - Handling of backgrounds is special. As long as you do not provide a back0.png file the original backgrounds are used. If you want to use self-made backgrounds you'll have to save them as backindices.png where your first indices must be 0. If this happens LBreakout2 will only use the backgrounds found in your theme directory (six backgrounds at maximum). This means if you only provide one background LBreakout2 will only use this background throughout the game as long as your theme is running.
4. Run LBreakout2 and select your theme in Advanced Options/Select Theme.
5. If everything works fine add a README with credits and a description.
6. Tar.gz your theme directory and send it to kulkanie@gmx.net and I'll add it to the site.
   Please provide the following information (either in the mail or in the README):
   1. Full title
   2. Version number
   3. Your name
   4. Email-address for feedback
   5. Description
   6. A jpg screenshot with your theme in action (press TAB while playing).

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