NAME

       frozen-bubble - arcade/reflex game

SYNOPSIS

           frozen-bubble [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION

       The Frozen-Bubble game is a free software implementation of a popular arcade/reflex game.
       The game mainly consists of firing randomly chosen bubbles across the board. If the shoot
       ends up having a clump of at least 3 bubbles of the same color, they all pop. If some
       bubbles were sticked only on the popping clump, they fall. In 1-player mode, the goal is
       to pop all the bubbles on the board as quickly as possible. In 2-players or network mode,
       you have to get your opponent to "die" before you.

CONTROL

       The default controlling mechanism is through the keyboard, but you can play with a
       joystick or a joypad if it is supported by the system (use the commandline option -ji to
       make sure frozen-bubble detected your joysticks). A key (or a joystick direction or
       button) is needed for moving the aim to the left, moving the aim to the right, center, and
       fire.

1-PLAYER GAME

       In single player mode, as a beginner the best training is to choose Play Default Levelset,
       which lets you run through 100 levels of an increasing difficulty. Pop all the bubbles of
       each level to advance to the next level.

       If you want to train for multiplayer, choose Multiplayer Training which reproduces the
       conditions of 2-player or network mode; the only difference is that created malus bubbles
       are counted in your score, and you must get the highest score you can in 2 minutes.

2-PLAYERS GAME

       In 2-players mode, you can play against a friend (or a foe, actually) on the same
       computer. The board is populated with random bubbles, and your goal is to make big clumps
       to send malus bubbles to your opponent.

NETWORK GAME

       If your computer has networking, you can choose LAN GAME to play games against others on
       your local network (up to 5 players).  Frozen-Bubble will look for a game server on the
       local network with a UDP broadcast, connect to it if found, or start a new game server if
       not found.

       If your computer is connected to Internet, you can choose NET GAME to play against others
       on Earth (or beyond?). Frozen-Bubble will retrieve the server list from the master server
       and propose you to choose between available servers. The flag in front of a server
       indicates the preferred language for chatting with others before the game is started. The
       ping is the roundtrip when talking with the server, choose a low ping when possible.

OPTIONS

       --help
           show command-line options summary

       --fullscreen
           start the game in fullscreen mode

       --no-fullscreen
           don't start the game in fullscreen mode

       --no-sound
           disable music and sound effects

       --no-music
           disable music (but not sound effects)

       --no-sfx
           disable sound effects (but not music)

       --playlist directory
           use all files of the given directory as music files and play them

       --playlist file
           use all files listed in the given file as music files and play them

       --slow-machine
           use this option if frozen-bubble runs too slowly on your machine (disables a few
           animations)

       --very-slow-machine
           same as before, if it is not enough (disables all that can be disabled)

       --solo
           directly start solo (1p) game, with random levels

       --direct
           directly start 2p game (don't display menu)

       --gameserver host[:port]
           directly start NET/LAN game connecting to this game server (if port is omitted,
           default port is used)

       --chain-reaction
           enable chain-reaction

       --level number
           start directly the game, at level number

       --colour-blind
           use special bubbles for colourblind people

       --no-time-limit
           disable time limit for shooting (e.g. kids mode)

       --player-malus number
           add number malus to the left player (can be negative - doesn't work in network mode)

       --mp-training-difficulty number
           set the average duration between receiving malus bubbles in 1 player multiplayer
           training (default 30 (= every 30 seconds on average), the lower the harder)

       --joysticks-info
           print information about detected joystick(s) on startup (if Frozen-Bubble doesn't see
           your joysticks/joypads, try loading the joydev module with modprobe joydev as root,
           then retry)

       --no-echo
           when sound is enabled, disable echoing each typed character with a typewriter sound
           (it may get on your nerves)

       --my-nick nick
           for NET/LAN games, use this nick instead of username (max 10 chars, ASCII alphanumeric
           plus dash and underscore only) - notice that the /nick command is also available when
           connected to a server to set your nick

       --private
           after connecting to a server for a NET game, don't use http://hostip.info/ to retrieve
           your geographical position to send it to other players

       --record directory
           specify the recording directory (normally, records are saved in the directory
           '.frozen-bubble/records' down your home directory)

       --auto-record
           automatically record all applicable games (normally, a record is triggered by hitting
           the Print Screen key during a game)

       --comment '...'
           add the comment enclosed between simple quotes to records (must not contain anything
           else than ASCII), it will be shown on console when playing back the record later

       --replay record_file|URL
           playback the specified record file

       --save-frames directory
           specify a directory where all (game) frames will be recorded; as the game is slowed
           down, can only be used with --replay; warning, output is huge as 50 frames of each 900
           KB are saved per second (e.g. 43 MB per second); a typical use case is then to build a
           video out of the frames with e.g. this kind of command:

               mencoder mf:///tmp/fbframes/frame* -mf fps=50 -o /tmp/output.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4

AUTHOR

       Written by Guillaume Cottenceau.  This manual page was originally written by Josselin
       Mouette <josselin.mouette at ens-lyon.org>.

       Visit official homepage: <http://www.frozen-bubble.org/>

SEE ALSO

       frozen-bubble-editor

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright X 2000-2010 The Frozen-Bubble Team.

       This is Free Software; this software is licensed under the GPL version 2, as published by
       the Free Software Foundation.  There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
       FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.