1ROCKSNDIAMONDS(1L) ROCKSNDIAMONDS(1L)
2
6 Rocks'n'Diamonds - A game for Unix/X11
7
9 This is a nice little game with color graphics and sound for your Unix
10 system with color X11. You need an 8-Bit color display or better. It
11 is not recommended on black&white systems, and maybe not on gray scale
12 systems.
13 If you know the game "Boulderdash" (Commodore C64) or "Emerald Mine"
15 (Amiga), you know what "ROCKS'N'DIAMONDS" is about.
16
20 You can see eight blue circles on the left side of the eight green menu
21 texts; these are buttons to activate the menu commands by simply click‐
22 ing on them with the left mouse button. The button will then change to
23 red. (You can control the menues over the keyboard or joystick, too.
24 Just use the arrow keys and the 'Return' or 'Enter' key or, if you use
25 a joystick, the appropriate direction and the fire button.)
26
29 When you start the game the first time, your login name will appear in
30 the 'NAME:' field. If you want to use a different name for playing, for
31 example a funny player name or a name for cheating, you can click on
32 the button and enter a new name.
33 If you choose a certain special name, you will be in a cheat mode where
35 you can choose all levels without playing the lower levels before... :)
36
39 If you have played some levels of this game, you can choose the already
40 played levels at any time, but you cannot choose the higher levels.
41 This means, you can choose levels from level 0 to the highest level
42 that you have ever won. This is known as your 'handicap'.
43 If the level number is red, you have choosen a 'ready' level, if it is
45 yellow, you have choosen a 'user' level, which is blank and can be
46 edited by yourself with the built-in level editor (see below).
47 To choose new level series, click on the button on the left and choose
49 the new level serie.
50
53 Click on this button to see a list of the best players of this level.
54 Click again to go back to the main menu.
55
58 This brings you to the level editor, if you have switched to a 'yellow'
59 level, which are empty and can be filled by yourself. See below.
60
63 This screen shows you all elements which appear in the game and
64 presents you the background music loops which you can listen to while
65 playing the levels (only available on Linux and FreeBSD systems).
66
69 This will start the game.
70
73 To change some things in the game, use the setup menu. You can
74 enable/disable "Sound" (enables/disables _all_ sounds in the game),
75 "Sound loops" (only allowed on Linux and FreeBSD systems with
76 VoxWare[tm] sound driver; don't worry if you never heard of it -- it's
77 the name of the standard Linux sound driver), "Game music" (can always
78 be enabled on very fast systems [exception: you don't like it], on
79 slower systems it will take some percent of CPU time which will slow
80 things down a bit) and "Toons", which will forbid/ permit the little
81 animated toons.
82 "Buffered Gfx" can be set to "off" on slower systems, "Fading" gives a
84 nice fading effect when displaying new screens, but unfortunately I
85 haven't found a system which is fast enough to display it so far.
86 (Maybe this works better on highly accelerated X servers.) Better set
87 this to "off" if you have a normal system...
88 Set "auto-record" to "on" if you want to automatically record each game
90 to tape.
91 If you have a Linux or FreeBSD system with a joystick, you can choose
93 the "1st" or the "2nd" joystick port and use "Cal. Joystick" to cali‐
94 brate it. Use "Save and exit" after calibration to save it for later
95 playing sessions.
96 "Exit" quits the setup menu without saving the changes, "Save and exit"
98 will save and then return to the main menu.
99
102 Exit the game.
103
107 When the game has started, you can see the playfield on the left side
108 and a control field on the right side. The control field contains the
109 following elements:
110 Level indicator
112 Tells you which level you are playing.
113 Emeralds
115 Shows you how many emeralds you still need to win the current
116 level.
117 Dynamite1
119 Shows you how many dynamite bombs you have.
120 Keys Shows you which keys you have in your inventory.
122 Score Shows the current score. In some levels there are some extra
124 items giving extra score points.
125 Time The seconds you have still left to play the level.
127 Stop/Pause/Play
129 Game controls to stop the game, pause it and go on playing. If
130 the tape recorder is recording your game, it is stopping/paus‐
131 ing/playing as well.
132 Music buttons
134 The three music buttons can be used to control the background
135 music loop, the 'looping' sounds and all other sounds. The lit‐
136 tle red light shows you if it is enabled or disabled. On slower
137 systems (and a 486DX33 with Soundblaster _is_ a slower system)
138 it increases the game speed to turn off background music. You
139 can completely turn off all sound effects in the setup menu,
140 although it is much more fun to have them enabled when it
141 doesn't eats up to much speed.
142 (A little note: The sound server currently needs about 10% CPU
144 time on my 486DX/33/SBPro system when playing background music.
145 I wonder if this would get better with a better soundcard, like
146 Gravis Ultrasound, or if only pure CPU power helps in this
147 case...)
148
152 Of course you know Boulderdash, so you will know how to play the game.
153 :) If not: You can move your playing figure (the smiley) with the arrow
154 keys or with the joystick (if you have no joystick and even no arrow
155 keys on your keyboard, you can use the keys 'i', 'j', 'k' and 'm' for
156 the directions. To 'snap' a field near you without moving to it, you
157 can use the left fire button on your joystick (hold it down, move the
158 stick to 'snap' the field, release the button) or the keys 'e', 's', on
159 your joystick or use the 'b' key (and, after placing the dynamite, bet‐
160 ter see to move away from this field...).
161 Just try the levels from the 'tutorial' level serie to see what most of
163 the elements do or have a look at the info screen!
164 Note: It is *highly recommended* to use a joystick for playing this
166 game! It is possible to play it with the keyboard, but it is *much more
167 fun* to play with a joystick, and some levels are very difficult to
168 solve with the keyboard. So, the best platform for this game is a Linux
169 or a FreeBSD system (which gives you background music, too).
170
173 To build your own levels, just choose a 'yellow', empty level. If you
174 cannot find any 'yellow' levels, choose a different level serie or
175 choose the higher level numbers (if you have a small 'handicap' number,
176 the higher levels will be skipped to reach the 'empty' levels.
177 Another way is to create your own level series. Just add a line to the
179 file 'levels/ROCKS.levelinfo' with the following entries:
180 - the name of the level directory (create this directory under 'lev‐
181 els')
182 - the name of the level serie (don't use any whitespaces within the
183 name)
184 - the 'ready' (red) levels (start with zero)
185 - the 'empty' (yellow) levels (set this to some number of blank levels)
186 To edit a level, you can use all three mouse buttons to draw in the
188 level window. Click into the elements field with one of the three but‐
189 tons to remap it to the new element. Use the arrow widgets to scroll
190 around in the level. Use the 'flood fill' field to init exactly ony
191 flood fill operation in the level field (you will be prompted). Click
192 on 'control window' to switch to the control window.
193 In the control window you can modify different parameters like the size
195 of the level playfield, the name of the level, the scores for different
196 elements and something like that. The four 3x3 field on the upper left
197 can be edited like the level field and indicate the 'contents' of
198 smashed crunchers (just try it out with some crunchers in one of your
199 own levels).
200 have done to the level. will be deleted).
202
206 You can use the tape recorder to record games and play tapes of previ‐
207 ously played games. Just use them like a normal video recorder.
208 Recording a game on tape:
210 Just press the 'record' button (the one with the red point on
211 it) and either press 'Start Game' or press on 'record' or
212 'pause' to end the pause mode and start playing and recording.
213 If you have set "auto record" in the setup menu to "on", you
215 just have to press 'Start Game' as usual.
216 Saving a game tape:
219 To save a tape to the tape file corresponding to the level (that
220 means that you can only save one tape file for each level), just
221 press the you really want to replace the old tape (if an old
222 tape exists).
223 Playing a tape:
226 Just press 'play' and then either 'play' or 'pause'.
227 While recording or playing, you can press 'pause' to stop the
229 recording or the playing of the tape and continue by pressing
230 'pause' again. You can use either the tape recorder buttons or
231 the game control buttons for this purpose.
232
236 Have fun playing the game, building new levels and breaking all high
237 scores! ;)
238
241 If you have any comments, problems, suggestions, donations, flames,
242 send them to
243 info@artsoft.org
245 Have fun!
247 20 November 1995 ROCKSNDIAMONDS(1L)