Xdeathlord: (hardts@athena.mit.edu) "If it moves, it's a threat. If it doesn't move, it's a potential threat." Dr. Pain Overview ======== Xdeathlord is a fast-action, kill everything that moves, type of game. The game can be played against one or more human players or against machine players. There is no time limit on the length of a game, but, in general, games are very short. Each player has a different color, with all the computer players being brown. The mouse is only used to make menu selections. All vehicle controls are done with the keyboard. I Hate Reading Docs =================== If you just want to play the game without reading any more, just type xdeathlord at the prompt. When the window appears, turn on the [Show Vehicle Controls] option in the [Game] menu. Then hit the [New Game] option. A window will appear showing you how to control your current vehicle. HINT: To get the hang of things, use the [Number of Human Players] and [Number of Computer Players] menu items to set two human players and no computer players. Also set [Next Game Style] to "Humans vs. Humans." You can then practice killing something that doesn't fight back. Play ==== Games are quick and dirty. At the beginning of the game, all players (human and computer) and other objects are placed on the screen. Everything in Xdeathlord can be destroyed if you hit it enough. The variables each player should be most concerned with are the energy and health of his vehicle. When your health goes below 0, your vehicle is destroyed. If you are are not in a vehicle, this means you are dead. Energy is necessary only for firing weapons and for some special abilities. Regular movement is unlimited. Different weapons cost different amounts of energy to fire. Energy slowly builds up over time. The rate of energy replenishment also varies from vehicle to vehicle. The end of the game is determined by the game style. (See "Game Style" below.) Ejection / Changing Vehicles ============================ During a game, you are not restricted to the vehicle you started out with. At any time, you can eject from your vehicle and run around as a human. As a human, you can get into unoccupied vehicles and Gun Emplacements and you can use New Vehicle Buildings. If an object is colored white, then it is unoccupied, and you can take it over. (If you only have a black & white display, then you will not be able to tell.) If you are in a vehicle and it gets destroyed, you will automatically eject in a random direction. This gives you a second chance at life as you are not completely helpless as a human. You can use the Light Gun that a human carries, get into an unoccupied vehicle or Gun Emplacement, or you can use a New Vehicle building. Also note that, in order to kill a non-computer player, after destroying the vehicle, you must kill the human. Show Vehicle Controls ===================== An option which, if set, pops up windows for all human players showing which keys do what. There are a number of boxes, roughly corresponding to the physical layout on the keyboard. For each box, the physical key is on the left with its functionality is on the right. If only some of the players want to see their controls, turn this option on and then click the [Hide Controls] button for all the players that already know the controls. NOTE: This option has some quirks. (Bugs? Nah... They're features.) For one thing, when you select this option, the controls windows will not come up until you start a new game. Also, if you change the number of players, the old control windows are destroyed and new one appear. There also may be some problems when you deal with multiple displays. Overview of Controls ==================== This section tells which keys on the keyboard are relevant to game play. The physical keys used are the same for all vehicles, but their meanings differ from vehicle to vehicle. You must repeatedly tap keys for them to be meaningful. Holding a key down is no different than tapping it once. I have tried to make the key-mappings as similar as possible for the different vehicles. In particular, movement is almost exactly the same for all vehicles except the Hovercraft. But, to learn all the specific mappings, the best thing to do is just play the game with [Show Vehicle Controls] turned on. There is space on the keyboard for two players per display (computer). See Multiple Displays for details on setting up which players are where. I made the layout of keys almost the same for a player using the right side of the keyboard as for one using the left. (The right side is slightly easier to use.) In general, you use your right hand to control the movement of your vehicle and your left to fire weapons. (Don't even try to play with just one hand.) For all vehicles except Hovercraft: Left Side Right Side Functionality ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- w e Weapon 1. (varies) a Weapon 2. (varies) s Weapon 3. (varies) d Weapon 4. (varies) p [ Go faster in forward direction. l Rotate counter-clockwise. ; Go slower/stop. ' Rotate clockwise. . / Go faster in backward direction. Special ability. (varies) Eject. I.e. Leave your vehicle. For Hovercraft: (Movement does not depend on the direction you are facing.) Left Side Right Side Functionality ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- w e Tracking Missile. a Rotate counter-clockwise. s Straight Missile. (Does not track.) d Rotate clockwise. p [ Move faster north l Move faster west. ; Go slower/stop. ' Move faster east . / Move faster south. Shields. Eject. I.e. Leave your vehicle. NOTE: ';' For the left side and '5' for the right side are the "brakes" for all vehicles. That is, repeatedly tapping this key will always bring you to a stop. Game Style ========== There are several different types of game that you can play in xdeathlord. Use this option to make your choice. The settings for number of human and computer players determine how difficult the game will be. E.g. In a "Humans vs. Computer Players" game, one human against one computer is an easy game for an experienced player. One human against ten is generally suicide. Not all numbers of human and computer players are allowed for all game styles. For example, you are not allowed to play a "Humans vs. Computers" game if the number of computer players is 0. Even if another player is technically on your side, your weapons can still hurt him. Most importantly, your Missiles will track after your allies just as well as after your enemies. i) Humans vs. Computer Players (default) This is the battle of carbon vs. silicon. In this scenario, all human players fight against all computer players. The game is over when all members of one (or both) sides are dead. ii) Humans vs. Humans Human players battle each other to the death. The game ends when only one (or no) humans are left alive. You can have computer players running around, but only human players can win the game. iii) Team Play This is slightly more interesting. It is a variant of "Humans vs. Humans." The difference being that each computer player in the game is allied with a human player. The computer players are evenly distributed (+/-1) among the human players. In order to make a game fair, the number of computer players should be an integer multiple of the number of human players. Otherwise some human players will have one more computer "buddy" than some other human players. The computer players are given the color of their human leader. Therefore, you cannot immediately tell which players are human and which are computer. Note that in "Team Play" you can win even if you do not survive. Your team may achieve victory even after your bloody, painful, and messy death. iv) Every Man for Himself This is as it sounds. All players, human and computer, are pitted against each other. The name of the game is to get the hell out of the way and stay alive until the fray is over. The game ends when only one (or often no) player is left alive. PC NOTE: I know that the phrase "Every Man for Himself" discriminates against female and computer players. But "Every sentient being for her/him/itself" just does not have the right ring to it. (PC == Politically Correct, not Personal Computer, you nerd.) Players ======= There are two options here, "Number of Human Players," and "Number of Computer Players." Selecting one of these will pop up a selection window. Just enter the desired number of players there. You can have a maximum of 10 human and 20 computer players. This, along with "Game Style" determines what type of game you will play and how difficult it will be. The new values will take effect at the beginning of the next game. Options ======= These are the options that you can select using the buttons in the [Options] menu. Options will take effect when the next game is begun. i) Walls: If set, when the game begins, a random number of wall segments will be placed in the arena. Like everything else in xdeathlord, wall segments will be destroyed if you do enough damage to them. Vehicles moving on the ground and weapons will take damage when they hit walls. Flying vehicles will travel over walls. Humans can climb over walls, but only slowly. If you are a human, you must keep tapping the appropriate movement key to get through the wall. NOTE: If scrolling is turned on, wall segments will be automatically generated around the perimeter of the arena to show where the borders are. ii) Installations: Installations are square, grey buildings that occasionally spit out humans. The humans that come out are not allied with any human or computer players. They are mean little bastards who will fire at all players, human or computer. (They don't usually do that much damage, but they are lots of fun to kill.) Installations do damage if you touch them. If you are a human, do not walk into one. Unlike the friendly New Vehicle buildings, Installations will kill you. iii) Gun Emplacements: Gun Emplacements are immobile round turrets that shoot at whatever player is closest. If you are a human, you can walk into any unoccupied turret, even one owned by another player, and take it over. While you are in the Gun Emplacement, you can control it. After you eject, it remains loyal to you. It becomes your color and will not shoot at you. However, if another player takes it over later, it becomes his Gun Emplacement. Note that unmanned Gun Emplacements will not fire at humans. iv) New Vehicle Buildings: If your vehicle is destroyed, New Vehicle building are usually your best hope at success. As a human, you can walk into a New Vehicle building and get a randomly chosen vehicle. These vehicles are not as good as any of the initial vehicles, but are all better than nothing. I leave it up to you to see what type of vehicles are available. v) Random of Above Selected Options: Each game, the options that are used will be randomly selected from i) through iv). Only selected options will be considered. Unselected options will not be used. Options listed below this one in the pulldown menu are not affected by the setting for [Random of Above Selected Options]. vi) Limit Number of Shots on Screen: This is to be used on slower computers where the game becomes unplayable when there are too many objects on the screen at once. The maximum number of shots that can be fired by a player at one time varies from vehicle to vehicle. vii) Delay Before Game Starts: If set, after you start a new game, there will be a short delay between the time that everything is set up and the start of the game. The main purpose of this option is to give humans a chance to figure out where everything is on the screen before the mayhem begins. viii) Scrolling: If set, the actual playing field is much larger than one screen. You will move from one screen to the next if all human players on that display push against the same edge of the screen. The size of the arena is actually 3x3 screens. Vehicles ======== You can choose your vehicle for the next game using the [Next Vehicle] selector button on the right side of the screen where the statistics for your player are. Choosing [random] will give you a randomly selected vehicle each game. i) Tank: This the "standard" vehicle. Tough, well-armed, medium-fast, and with a good amount of energy. This is the first vehicle you should learn. Weapons: Heavy Gun and Tracking Missiles mounted in front, Flamer and Mines in the rear. (See Weapons.) Special Ability: Turbo Speed. The Tank can put out a sudden burst of speed for a short period of time. Useful for head-on, charging attacks as well as for getting away quickly when things are not looking too hot. Be careful, turbo speed is an energy hog. ii) Hovercraft: The Hovercraft moves differently than any of the other vehicles and is the hardest vehicle to control. It has very little health so cannot take much of a beating. However, it is the most maneuverable vehicle and one of the fastest. A Hovercraft pilot must survive by avoiding enemy fire and by judicious use of his shields. The Hovercraft does not have a huge maximum amount or energy, but it regenerates extremely quickly. Equipped with strong automatic repulser fields, the Hovercraft can bounce of of walls and buildings without taking any damage. As it is lying on a cushion of air, it floats around a great deal and twitches a bit even when it is standing still. Although, technically, not touching the ground, the hovercraft is still low enough to be considered a ground vehicle. I.e. It can run into mines, walls, people, etc. The greatest advantage of the Hovercraft is that it can move independently of which direction it is facing. In particular, you can be running away from an opponent while still facing him and, therefore, able to fire directly at him. You control the Hovercraft using the perspective of the background, not of your vehicle. I.e. Pushing the "move north" key always causes you to move towards the top of the screen, irregardless of which direction you are facing. (The round fat end of the Hovercraft is the front.) Weapons: Missiles, Missiles, and more Missiles. This is the only weapon of the Hovercraft, but it can fire a lot of them. It has tracking and non-tracking Missiles. They cost the same amount and do the same damage. The Hovercraft actually uses the same machinery to create and launch both types. It just configures the Missile appropriately at fire-time. The reason for having non-tracking Missiles is so that you can fire at objects that the trackers cannot lock on to without having to worry about your Missiles chasing something else. Special Ability: Time-limited shields. With shields activated, the hovercraft cannot be damaged. Movement is normal, but weapons cannot be fired while the shields are on. Each use only lasts a very short time, so wait until you are just about to be hit before activating them. Warning: Shields cost a lot of energy. iii) Land Air Mech (LAM) The LAM is a cross between the powerful weaponry of the Tank and flight ability of the Helicopter. It can quickly transform between land and air modes, each mode with its strengths and weaknesses. In land mode it is slow, but very well-armed. In air mode it can move fast and fly over many obstacles, but only has one weapon. It is very important to note that the LAM cannot regenerate energy while it is flying. This, along with its somewhat slow replenishment rate, makes the LAM very prone to running out of juice at critical times. Fortunately, transformation takes no energy, so the LAM can always switch to air mode and make a hasty retreat. Weapons: Land Mode -> Heavy Gun and Tracking Missiles mounted in front, Flamer and Mines in the rear. Air Mode -> Napalm firing backwards. Special Ability: Transform. iv) Juggernaut The Juggernaut is simply a massive hulk of armor and weaponry. If you see one coming, just get out of its way. Juggernauts have ridiculous amounts of health and energy. It is extremely dangerous at short range as it has flamers mounted on the sides and back and the most powerful gun in the game mounted on the front. Disadvantage? Slow as a turtle. Everything except a human on foot can outrun a Juggernaut. (A regular human goes the same speed as a Juggernaut.) This can be a fatal flaw as even its thick layers of compounded titanium will eventually melt from Missile and shell bombardment.) Weapons: Super Heavy Gun mounted in front, Heavy Flamer in the rear, Side Flamers (both sides fire at once), and Mines. Special Ability: Launch Drone. v) Helicopter The fastest vehicle in Xdeathlord. The Helicopter can fly at either high or low altitudes. High in the air, it can fly over most obstacles, such as walls or other players, but is slower. Low to the ground, the Helicopter can move much more quickly but must worry about hitting walls and such. (I know there is no real reason why a helicopter would fly so much faster at low altitudes. But, it just makes the game better that way.) The only way in which you can tell at what altitude a Helicopter is flying is that the rotors move faster when it is flying low. The Helicopter's greatest strength is as an aggressive hunter. It has a strong front weapon and it can fly over walls to get to its prey. In the air, it is unaffected by flamers which are often used defensively to get rid of a pursuer. Weapons: Heavy Gun mounted in front, Napalm in the rear, and Mines dropped directly below it. Special Ability: Launch Drone. vi) Human: If you leave your vehicle (or it is destroyed), you must run around on foot. Needless to say, this is not a very admirable position as your flesh and bones can easily be crushed and ripped to a bloody pulp by the treads of a 50-ton tank. You are not completely helpless, however, as you do have a Light Gun with which to defend yourself. But, watch out, you only have enough energy to fire one shot at a time. After that, you must wait for the E-Pack on your back to regenerate power before you can fire again. Humans have some unique abilities. They can climb walls, take over unoccupied vehicles, and use New Vehicle buildings. To climb over a wall, just walk into it and keep tapping the move-forward key. To use an unoccupied vehicle (anything colored white) or a New Vehicle building, just walk into it. Weapons: Light Gun. (An E-Bazooka with a backpack energy unit.) Special Ability: None: NOTE: All the vehicles in the game are equipped with "Mr. Fusion" Energy Converters. This allows them to convert human flesh into readily usable energy. So, running over and "eating" humans is a good way to jack up your energy. You must actually get close and touch a live humans, as hitting one with a tank shell does not leave much usable material. Weapons ======= i) Gun (Light, Medium, Heavy, Super Heavy): A highly-energized shell fired from a Gauss Gun. The different guns are rated from "Light" to "Super Heavy" in terms of the amount of damage inflicted by the weapon. Cost: 10 Energy units per shell. Damage: Light -> 50 Medium -> 75 Heavy -> 100 Super Heavy -> 150 ii) Missile: Missiles may be tracking or straight. Tracking Missiles lock on to a target when they are fired and follow the target until they hit something or run out of fuel. Missiles can only lock on to human or computer players inside vehicles. They are unable to seek after people on foot. Tracking Missiles that do not acquire a lock when they are fired and Straight Missiles simply go straight until they hit something or run out of fuel. Hovercraft fire slightly different Missiles than the rest of the vehicles. Hovercraft misslies are slightly faster, slightly less maneuverable, slightly cheaper, and do a little bit more damage. Cost: Regular -> 20 Hovercraft Missile -> 10 Damage: Regular -> 40 Hovercraft Missile -> 50 iii) Flamer (Regular, Side, Heavy): Flamers are extremely useful as a short-range weapon and defense. Flamers are generally used to torch opponents who follow a little too close on your tail. They are also excellent defenses against enemy fire, as any Shell, Missile, Mine, or Drone caught in the stream of super-heated particles will quickly be destroyed. Flamers may be mounted on the rear or sides of a vehicle. They are never put in front as this would result in a vehicle running into its own flame. Note that, unless you are going extremely slowly, firing a rear flamer while going backwards is a bad idea. Heavy flamers are the same as regular ones except longer. Side flamers fire from both sides of a vehicle at once. They are much shorter and wider than the other types of flamers. Cost: 25 Damage: 120 iv) Napalm This is th air-to-ground version of the standard flamer. It deploys slower, and leaves a longer, thinner trail of death. Cost: 35 Damage: 120 v) Mine The poor man's weapon. Mines are dropped from the rear of your vehicle or directly below if your vehicle is in the air. They just sit there and explode if someone runs into one it. The biggest advantage to using mines is that they are dirt cheap. Cost: 1 Damage: 100 vi) Drone: Drones do not do damage. Instead, they chase after enemies and steal energy. They are smarter than missiles as they know somewhat how to avoid obstacles. Cost: 100 Damage: 0 Multiple Display (Multiple Computers) ===================================== Xdeathlord has the capability to run with different players on different machines. Choose one machine to be the master and the rest as slaves. The master does all the computation. The others just act as X displays. The networking for xdeathlord is somewhat inefficient and shitty. I decided to add it in only after I did everything else and it would require rewriting almost the entire game to really do it right. It is usually only worth playing on two or three computers at the most. If I make another game I will use sockets and will distribute the computation instead of just having one machine open windows on the others. To play with multiple machines: i) Run xdeathlord on the master. ii) On all the slaves, type: xhost + iii) On the master: Click the [Open New Display] option of the [Display] menu. A prompt will appear asking for the internet address of the new machine. Enter the internet address of the slave being added followed by ':0.0' If the slave machine has more than one display, or more than one screen, this may be something other than ':0.0' (See the section on DISPLAY NAMES in the man pages on X.) Do this for all the slaves. Example: Master is named 18.100.0.0. One slave named kill.main.destroy.edu . i) master types % xdeathlord ii) slave types % xhost + 18.100.0.0 ii) master clicks [Open New Display] and types kill.maim.destroy.edu:0.0 (Note the :0.0 at the end.) NOTE: When you are typing xhost + on the slave, you do not include the ':0.0'. But when you are telling the master which display to open, you must include a ':0.0' or whatever display and screen numbers are appropriate. Match Players with Displays and Keysets ======================================= After you have opened whatever displays you want, you must tell xdeathlord which players are playing where. For each display, there are two possible keysets, the keys on the left side of the keyboard and those on the right. This allows two human players per display. The game will default to having all players controlled by the keyboard of the master. Click on the [Match Players with Displays and Keysets] button in the [Display] menu pulldown. This will give a popup with all the players listed. (Sometimes you have to start and end a game before xdeathlord will recognize that the number of players has changed.) Click on the player whose controls you wish to set. Then click on the display you would like him to be on. Then click on whether this player should use the keys on the left or right side of the keyboard. When you have chosen for all the players click [Ok]. Stats ===== After the game is over, you are given the option to look at some statistics of the previous games. There is a bunch of random information here, such as total wins and losses and how many objects have been destroyed. Bugs ==== There is some funny behavior associated with opening multiple displays. If you can't get open a new display, try interchanging the roles of the master and the slave. When you change the number of human players, this change will not take effect until the next game is started. This is only annoying when you want to [Match Players with Displays and Keysets], as you must start and end a game before the correct number of players will be shown. For [Show Vehicle Controls], the windows showing a players controls are sometimes destroyed and recreated when they don't really need to be. X Resources =========== Most of the values are hard-coded. But one useful thing to know is that if you are having problems with the delete key, you can try adding the following lines to your .Xresources (or .Xdefaults) file. *XmText.translations: #override\ osfDelete:delete-previous-character() *XmTextField.translations: #override\ osfDelete:delete-previous-character()