2001-2002 Timothy Musson &legal; Timothy Musson

trmusson@ihug.co.nz

&appname; Manual V&manrevision; &date; Timothy Musson trmusson@ihug.co.nz This manual describes version &appversion; of &appname;. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &appname; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page. &app; is a four-in-a-row game for the GNOME Project. The object of the game is to build a line of four of your marbles while trying to stop your opponent (human or computer) building a line of his or her own. A line can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal. To run &app;, select &appname; from the Games submenu of the Main Menu, or type gnect on the command line. &app; is included in the GNOME-games package, which is part of the GNOME desktop environment. This document describes version &version; of &app;. Once you've started &app;, select New game from the Game menu to begin playing. The game board consists of seven columns and six rows. Above it, a special row indicates the current player. To make a move, select a column using your pointing device or keyboard. Your marble will drop into the topmost empty row of that column. &appname;'s Main Window &appname;'s Main Window The game's won when one of the two players manages to line up four of his or her marbles horizontally, vertically or diagonally. If the board fills up without a win, the game ends in a draw. The menu bar, located above the game board, contains the following menus: Game This menu contains five items: Ctrl-N New game — This resets the board and starts a new game. Ctrl-Z Undo move — If you're playing against a friend, this will undo one move. If you're playing against the computer, this will undo the computer's last move and then yours. Repeating this will return the board to its initial state. Hint — This'll give you the computer's best suggestion for your move. Scores… — This opens a small window containing a tally of wins and draws for the current playing session. The scores will be reset to zero if Player Selection is changed in Preferences. Ctrl-Q Exit — This quits the game. Settings This menu contains four items: Toolbar — This toggle switches the tool bar on and off. Enable sound — This toggle switches the game's sound effects on and off. Draw grid — This toggles the display of grid lines over the game board. Themes that specifically disable grids will not be affected. Preferences… — This opens the Preferences Dialog, allowing you to configure the game. Help This menu contains: F1 Contents— Opens your help browser and shows this manual. About — Opens the About Dialog, showing basic information about &app; such as its version number and the names of its authors. To change the game's settings, select Preferences… from the Settings menu. This opens the Preferences Dialog. Configuration options in the Game tab are: Player One and Player Two These two columns tell &app; who's playing and, if it is the computer, how hard they play. To play against a friend, select Human for both Player One and Player Two. Theme The theme menu lists available themes and lets you choose your favourite. Enable Animation Here you can toggle the game's animation on or off. Finally there is a Controls tab to change the keyboard controls. To change a control, click the appropriate button and then type the new key. This section's included in case you'd like to make your own themes for &app;. It assumes you're familiar with basic text editing, graphics software and the command line. &app;'s tile sets contain six tiles of equal size, lined up horizontally. From left to right: Player One's marble as it appears on the game board Player Two's marble as it appears on the game board The game board's background The top row's background Player One's marble as it appears on the top row Player Two's marble as it appears on the top row

This image shows the six tiles in a tile set

Tiles three and four will be repeated over the game board and top row unless a full window background image is specified in the theme file. PNG format is recommended for tile sets. The first, second, fifth and sixth tiles should contain some transparency if you want the background to show through. The third and fourth tiles should be solid, with no transparency, even if you'll be using a full window background image with your theme. Tiles can be square or rectangular, and any size you like. Most of the tile sets that come with &app; use square tiles measuring 50 pixels by 50 pixels. For a full window background image, there's a bit more work to do. Let's say your tiles measure 50 by 50 pixels each. The game's display measures 7 by 7 tiles, including the top row, so the ideal background image for your tile set measures 350 by 350 pixels. &app; will automatically scale the background image if it doesn't match the tile set. This means you can make "large" and "small" versions of your theme, both using the same background image, just by having a large and a small version of your tile set. So, you now have a tile set and perhaps a background image to go with it. The next step is to put them in the right place. The last step is to put your image(s) where &app; can find them. You could put them in Gnect's install directory (which will depend on your particular system), but your home directory's probably a better idea. Make a ~/.gnect directory, and a ~/.gnect/pixmaps directory. Those names are important, as &app; won't look anywhere else. Copy your image(s) into the pixmaps directory. If you start &app; from the command line, it'll give you clues about about any problems it has with your new theme. If it has none, you'll find your new theme listed the Preferences Dialog. Have fun! Occasionally a marble-dropping animation doesn't look as smooth as it should. &app; was written by Timothy Musson (trmusson@ihug.co.nz) and David Neary (bolsh@gimp.org). Various others have taken the time to help in many ways since work on &app; began. The Velena Engine, &app;'s main computer player, was written by Giuliano Bertoletti. We're grateful to him for allowing us to include his work, without which &app; wouldn't be nearly as worthwhile. Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the GNOME bug tracking database. 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 Timothy Musson. 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. 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

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