NAME

       Rocks'n'Diamonds - A game for Unix/X11

INTRODUCTION

       This is a nice little game with color graphics and sound for your Unix system with color X11. You need an
       8-Bit color display or better.  It is not recommended on black&white systems, and maybe not on gray scale
       systems.

       If  you  know  the  game  "Boulderdash"  (Commodore  C64)  or  "Emerald  Mine"  (Amiga),  you  know  what
       "ROCKS'N'DIAMONDS" is about.

The Menues

       You can see eight blue circles on the left side of the eight green  menu  texts;  these  are  buttons  to
       activate  the  menu  commands by simply clicking on them with the left mouse button. The button will then
       change to red.  (You can control the menues over the keyboard or joystick, too. Just use the  arrow  keys
       and  the  'Return'  or  'Enter'  key  or,  if  you use a joystick, the appropriate direction and the fire
       button.)

The menu 'name'

       When you start the game the first time, your login name will appear in the 'NAME:' field. If you want  to
       use  a  different name for playing, for example a funny player name or a name for cheating, you can click
       on the button and enter a new name.

       If you choose a certain special name, you will be in a cheat mode where you can choose all levels without
       playing the lower levels before... :)

The menue 'level'

       If you have played some levels of this game, you can choose the already played levels at  any  time,  but
       you  cannot choose the higher levels. This means, you can choose levels from level 0 to the highest level
       that you have ever won. This is known as your 'handicap'.

       If the level number is red, you have choosen a 'ready' level, if it is yellow, you have choosen a  'user'
       level, which is blank and can be edited by yourself with the built-in level editor (see below).

       To choose new level series, click on the button on the left and choose the new level serie.

Hall of fame

       Click on this button to see a list of the best players of this level.  Click again to go back to the main
       menu.

Level creator

       This brings you to the level editor, if you have switched to a 'yellow' level, which are empty and can be
       filled by yourself. See below.

Info screen

       This  screen  shows you all elements which appear in the game and presents you the background music loops
       which you can listen to while playing the levels (only available on Linux and FreeBSD systems).

Start game

       This will start the game.

Setup

       To change some things in the game, use the setup menu.  You can enable/disable "Sound"  (enables/disables
       _all_  sounds  in  the  game),  "Sound loops" (only allowed on Linux and FreeBSD systems with VoxWare[tm]
       sound driver; don't worry if you never heard of it -- it's the name of the standard Linux sound  driver),
       "Game  music"  (can  always  be  enabled  on  very fast systems [exception: you don't like it], on slower
       systems it will take some percent of CPU time which will slow things down a bit) and "Toons", which  will
       forbid/ permit the little animated toons.

       "Buffered Gfx" can be set to "off" on slower systems, "Fading" gives a nice fading effect when displaying
       new  screens,  but  unfortunately  I  haven't  found  a system which is fast enough to display it so far.
       (Maybe this works better on highly accelerated X servers.) Better set this to "off" if you have a  normal
       system...

       Set "auto-record" to "on" if you want to automatically record each game to tape.

       If  you  have  a  Linux or FreeBSD system with a joystick, you can choose the "1st" or the "2nd" joystick
       port and use "Cal. Joystick" to calibrate it. Use "Save and exit" after calibration to save it for  later
       playing sessions.

       "Exit"  quits the setup menu without saving the changes, "Save and exit" will save and then return to the
       main menu.

Quit

       Exit the game.

How To Play The Game

       When the game has started, you can see the playfield on the left side and a control field  on  the  right
       side. The control field contains the following elements:

       Level indicator
              Tells you which level you are playing.

       Emeralds
              Shows you how many emeralds you still need to win the current level.

       Dynamite1
              Shows you how many dynamite bombs you have.

       Keys   Shows you which keys you have in your inventory.

       Score  Shows the current score. In some levels there are some extra items giving extra score points.

       Time   The seconds you have still left to play the level.

       Stop/Pause/Play
              Game controls to stop the game, pause it and go on playing. If the tape recorder is recording your
              game, it is stopping/pausing/playing as well.

       Music buttons
              The three music buttons can be used to control the background music loop, the 'looping' sounds and
              all  other  sounds. The little red light shows you if it is enabled or disabled. On slower systems
              (and a 486DX33 with Soundblaster _is_ a slower system) it increases the game  speed  to  turn  off
              background  music. You can completely turn off all sound effects in the setup menu, although it is
              much more fun to have them enabled when it doesn't eats up to much speed.

              (A little note: The sound server currently needs about 10% CPU time on  my  486DX/33/SBPro  system
              when  playing  background  music.  I wonder if this would get better with a better soundcard, like
              Gravis Ultrasound, or if only pure CPU power helps in this case...)

About the game itself

        Of course you know Boulderdash, so you will know how to play the game. :) If  not:  You  can  move  your
       playing figure (the smiley) with the arrow keys or with the joystick (if you have no joystick and even no
       arrow  keys  on your keyboard, you can use the keys 'i', 'j', 'k' and 'm' for the directions. To 'snap' a
       field near you without moving to it, you can use the left fire button on your  joystick  (hold  it  down,
       move  the  stick  to  'snap' the field, release the button) or the keys 'e', 's', 'd' and 'x'. To place a
       piece of dynamite, use the right fire button on your joystick or use the 'b' key (and, after placing  the
       dynamite, better see to move away from this field...).

       Just try the levels from the 'tutorial' level serie to see what most of the elements do or have a look at
       the info screen!

       Note:  It is *highly recommended* to use a joystick for playing this game! It is possible to play it with
       the keyboard, but it is *much more fun* to play with a joystick, and some levels are  very  difficult  to
       solve  with the keyboard. So, the best platform for this game is a Linux or a FreeBSD system (which gives
       you background music, too).

The Level Editor

       To build your own levels, just choose a 'yellow', empty level. If you cannot find  any  'yellow'  levels,
       choose a different level serie or choose the higher level numbers (if you have a small 'handicap' number,
       the higher levels will be skipped to reach the 'empty' levels.

       Another way is to create your own level series. Just add a line to the file 'levels/ROCKS.levelinfo' with
       the following entries:
       - the name of the level directory (create this directory under 'levels')
       - the name of the level serie (don't use any whitespaces within the name)
       - the 'ready' (red) levels (start with zero)
       - the 'empty' (yellow) levels (set this to some number of blank levels)

       To edit a level, you can use all three mouse buttons to draw in the level window. Click into the elements
       field  with  one  of  the  three  buttons to remap it to the new element. Use the arrow widgets to scroll
       around in the level. Use the 'flood fill' field to init exactly ony flood fill  operation  in  the  level
       field (you will be prompted). Click on 'control window' to switch to the control window.

       In  the control window you can modify different parameters like the size of the level playfield, the name
       of the level, the scores for different elements and something like that. The four 3x3 field on the  upper
       left can be edited like the level field and indicate the 'contents' of smashed crunchers (just try it out
       with some crunchers in one of your own levels).

        'Undo & Exit' leaves the level editor, throwing away all the changes you have done to the level.
        'Save & Exit' leveas the level editor and saves the new level (the old one will be deleted).

The Tape Recorder

       You  can  use  the tape recorder to record games and play tapes of previously played games. Just use them
       like a normal video recorder.

       Recording a game on tape:
              Just press the 'record' button (the one with the red point on it) and either press 'Start Game' or
              press on 'record' or 'pause' to end the pause mode and start playing and recording.

              If you have set "auto record" in the setup menu to "on", you just have to press  'Start  Game'  as
              usual.

       Saving a game tape:
              To  save a tape to the tape file corresponding to the level (that means that you can only save one
              tape file for each level), just press the 'eject' button (the very left button). Then you will  be
              prompted if you really want to replace the old tape (if an old tape exists).

       Playing a tape:
              Just press 'play' and then either 'play' or 'pause'.

              While recording or playing, you can press 'pause' to stop the recording or the playing of the tape
              and  continue by pressing 'pause' again.  You can use either the tape recorder buttons or the game
              control buttons for this purpose.

And Now Have Fun!

       Have fun playing the game, building new levels and breaking all high scores! ;)

AUTHOR

       If you have any comments, problems, suggestions, donations, flames, send them to

            info@artsoft.org

       Have fun!

                                                20 November 1995                               ROCKSNDIAMONDS(6)