bionic (6) matanza.6.gz

Provided by: matanza_0.13+ds1-6_amd64 bug

NAME

       matanza - space war multiuser ascii game

SYNOPSIS

       matanza [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

       Matanza  is a multiplayer game.  In it, every player controls a ship cruising in space, aiming to destroy
       the other players (and, eventually, ships controlled by the computer). You connect to the server using  a
       telnet client.

OPTIONS

       The first thing you must do is connect to the server.
              You  must  connect  to the TCP port `7993' (unless you specified a different port when you ran the
              server) of the host running the server.

       I won't tell you how to do this, Luke.

       Umm.

       Don't look at me like that!

       Ok, you win.
              It's probably 'telnet localhost 7993'.

       Once connected, you'll see some nice (c'mon give us some credits) introduction.

       You must hit <RET> (that's <Enter>) to go to the game's main screen.

       At the main screen, you must enter your name.
              That's right, it can't have more than 8 letters.  Oh, and it can not begin with a  number.   Enter
              your name and hit <RET> a few times.

       If  you  are in Windows' stupid telnet client, the widgets there will look awful.  No colors or anything.
       We are going to fix that eventually, but...  well, you'll have to learn to live with that for the moment.
       I'm  sure  you can, Luke.  After all, you could stand it when that stupid kid at school used to beat you,
       remember?

       But back to our game, you'll see a ship in the middle of screen.
              Yes, I said ship.  Okay, I know it looks more like fire effects than a ship, but with a couple  of
              practice it's going to look better.  You just need to train your self to recognize it.

       Or you could think of it as a big moth and of the bullets as moth-spit and the goal of this game would be
       to cover your enemies in your spit.

       Now, that thing in the middle of the screen is YOUR ship.
              To control it you can use the following keys:

       `h' and `l'
              Make the ship rotate.  If you are wondering why I used `h' and `l', get a life  (in  other  words,
              learn to use Vi).  It's a matter of style.  Actually, I got so many complaints from lukes like you
              that I added support for arrow keys.

       `+' and `-'
              These allow you to zoom in and out.

       `j' and `k'
              Accelerate the ship.  Yes, it can move!  Yes, at different speeds!  Okay, `j' may  not  work  (see
              --brake and --fly-back).  More on that latter.  Again, arrows key works as well.

       ` ' (that's space, dude)
              Shot.   Yay!   Bullets!   Or (depending on your point of view) Moth-Spit!  Sorry, dude, the telnet
              protocol doesn't support sound so there's no BZZZING when you shot.

       `b'    Shot bullets backwards.  Sometimes this doesn't work.  More on that in section 6.

       `m'    Do you see two little imperfections on your ship's wings?  Those are the MISSILES.  Yoy  can  shot
              them with `m'.  They do a lot more damage than the bullets, but you have only two, so be careful.

       `n'    You can also shot SMALLER missiles.  You have ten of these.

       <Ret>  If  you  hit <Ret>, you'll be able to write a message to send it to all the other players.  That's
              correct, you can use Matanza as a full featured chat and all.  You could even have  net.sex  using
              it, but don't even get me started on the subject.

       `z'    Shows you stats about the game.

       `c'    Removes the last message from the list of messages.

       `C'    Cleans the list of messages.

       `s'    Swaps the position of the list of messages.

       `p'    Pauses the game.

       `v'    Toggles whether or not you see the messages.  Sometimes you'll want to disable them.

       `i'    Make  your ship invisible!  But beware, you may only make it invisible for a short period of time,
              after that it becomes visible again and you can't become invisible anymore.

       `q'    Quit the game.

       The following is a list of important command line arguments; this was last
              updated for version 0.12, though some are still missing.

       --help This shows the list of command line arguments and exits.

       --version
              Use this to know the version of the server.

       --max-players=NUM
              If you want to make it so the server will allow at most NUM players to  enter  the  world  at  any
              given moment, use this option.

       --bold This  instructs the server to use bold characters when rendering images to ASCII art.  It improves
              the quality of the rendering (as of version 0.9 it still has some bugs).

       --imgwidth=NUM
              This changes the default image width (for the zoom).  The default is 320.

       --health=NUM
              Use this option to set the maximum damage a ship can take before it is destroyed.  It defaults  to
              1000.

       --mapsize-x=NUM --mapsize-y=NUM
              These  options allow you to change the map size.  If you make it smaller, players will come across
              each other more often.  On the other hand, if you plan to have a lot of players, you might want to
              increase the size.  The default is 1200 x 1000.

       --lives=NUM
              With  this option you can change the number of lives each player (or team: see --no-share) gets at
              startup.

       --angles=NUM
              During its initialization, Matanza calculates rotations  for  all  its  images  (ships,  missiles,
              asteroids, etc.).  It uses 64 different angles by default.  You may change this number to increase
              its quality or decrease its memory consumption.

       --no-chat
              If you use this option, you will disallow the chat feature.  The  only  reason  I  can  think  why
              someone  would want to do that would be to keep newbies from entering the chat buffer and becoming
              unable to control their ships.  Or perhaps to make some team games more exciting by preventing the
              players to exchange information (though I know it would be very easy to cheat).

       --team=STR
              If  you  want  to play in teams mode, you will use this option once for every team, specifying its
              name.  Before joining the game, all players must select the team they will play in.

       --password[=STR]
              You can instruct the server to only accept players who know the password.  This might be good  for
              some tournaments.

       --teams-safe
              This  option  is  only  meaningful  in  teams  mode.  By default, bullets from a given player hurt
              everyone, not only players from the other teams.  This option changes that behaviour and makes  it
              so bullets from a given player won't hurt players in the same team.

       --no-share
              This  option  is  only  meaningful in teams mode.  By default, all the teams have a pool of lives;
              when a player dies, he comes back to play and the team has one life less.   When  this  option  is
              specified, the lives are no longer shared so each player has its own pool of lives.

       --ang-speed-max=NUM
              Maximum angular speed for ships (try 0)

       --fly-back
              If this option is specified, players will be acelerate backwards.

       --brake
              Players will be able to brake using `j' (or the down arrow).

       --air  Ships' speed depend on their direction.

       --speed-max=NUM
              Set the maximum speed for the ships to NUM.  A value of 0 makes this unlimited.

       --asteroids=NUM
              With  this  option you can specify how many asteroids you want at a given moment.  If you use `0',
              you will disable this feature and the memory requirements will decrease.

       --limits
              Give the world limits; make it end

       --no-radar
              When enemy is away, don't show the direction

       --invisible=NUM
              Allow players to become invisible for NUM rounds

       --ppc=NUM
              PPC stands for Players Per Connection.  With this option, you will be able to set  the  number  of
              ships  each  connection  will  have.   For the moment, the only supported values are 1 and 2.  The
              keyboard bindings change and those for a value of 2 are not yet documented.

       --bg=PATH
              PATH should be the path to a JPEG file.  Matanza will load the information in the file and use  it
              as  the  background,  rather  than showing the dots.  This will only work if libjpeg was installed
              when you compiled Matanza.

       --mapsize-img
              This option will be ignored unless `--bg' is also used.  It tells Matanza to set the map's size to
              be  the  width  and  height  of  the  background  image.  When used, the options `-x' and `-y' are
              ignored.

       --ship-img=FILE
              Through this option you can specify a file name for Matanza to load the images for the ships  from
              it.  The format for the file is very simple, consult ship.txt for more details.

SEE ALSO

       Please read the extensive README file for more documentation.

       telnet(1)

BUGS

       Alejandro Forero Cuervo <alejo@bachue.com>

                                                                                                      matanza(6)