2001 Patanjali Somayaji, Mark Rae GNOME Documentation Project &legal; &appname; Manual V&manrevision; &date; Converted from the original HTML by Callum McKenzie, who doesn't speak Danish. This manual describes version &appversion; of &appname;. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this game or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page. GNOME Robots Gnome Robotter er en udvikling af det originale Gnome Robot spil, som was itself based on the tekst baserede robot spil, som kan findes 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. When you start the game you will find yourself surrounded by a number of robots, or some other strange but equally hostile adversaries if you have chosen a scenario other than the default. As you move about, the robots will move directly towards you with one goal in mind - killing you. As if that wasn't bad enough there are two types of robots, one of which can move twice as fast as you! Luckily you have two ways to avoid this unfortunate outcome. Firstly, the robots have not been blessed with a great deal of intelligence, and will be destroyed if they crash into each other, or any other debris which has been left around from previous collisions. Secondly, if you do find yourself in a tight spot, you have the ability to teleport randomly to another spot on the screen. And, 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. 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. When you select this set, you use the numeric keypad on the right hand side of the keyboard (not the separate arrow keys). You may need to switch on the NumLock to make these work. Up Left: 7 Up: 8 Up Right: 9 Left: 4 Stand Still: 5 Right: 6 Down Left: 1 Down: 2 Down Right: 3 Teleport: + Ramdomly Teleport: - Wait: Return These keys are laid out on the left hand side of the keyboard. Up Left: Q Up: W Up Right: E Left: A Stand Still: S Right: D Down Left: Z Down: X Down Right: C Teleport: T Ramdomly Teleport: R Wait: Return 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. Up Left: Y Up: K Up Right: U Left: H Stand Still: . or space Right: L Down Left: B Down: J Down Right: N Teleport: T Ramdomly Teleport: R Wait: W Of course if you don't like any of the above keyboard layouts you can define your own. Select the box for the required movement and the press the key you want, the text representation of that key should then appear in the box. The properties dialog allows you modify the behaviour and appearance of the game. There are three pages to the dialog: 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. 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. 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. 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. The 'Splats' checkbox selects whether you want and sound played and a small 'Splat!' to appear on the screen. 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. This screen allows you to define your own keyboard controls as described if the Keys section. 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. 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.