Executing

If it's installed properly, you should just be able to type "excido" from a terminal.

If something strange happens when you start Excido, pay attention to the console output, it probably contains endless repetitions of the same complaint. If you can't make sense of it, send it to John!

The textures/sounds/config are looked for first in ~/.excido/ then in PREFIX/share/excido. Exception - ttf font files cannot be used from ~/.excido/: there's a deficiency in the SDL_ttf library that prevents it from interfacing with PhysFS easily.

excido.conf is written to ~/.excido/.

See excido -h for command line options.

You may use VSYNC to avoid unsightly flickering. Linux/nvidia users can enable this by issuing the comment "export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=1" in the shell that you're going to launch excido from. Please could you disable this setting (by setting it to 0) when reporting framerates.

Controls

User-unfriendly customization is possible by altering excido.conf, with reference to keyguide.txt. The defaults are:

Strafe left: A
Strafe right: D
Go forward: W
Go backward: S
Respawn: Return
Toggle Fullscreen mode: F
Grab/Ungrab input: G
Change camera view: Non-keypad numbers (1,2,3,4,0) In-game menu: Esc

The mouse is to be used for turning and firing. Try both buttons!

I would recommend against using the arrow keys for in-game controls, because there is some room for weirdness due to the menu system using these keys. Basically, if you push a key down, and then bring up the menu, then the KEYUP event goes to the menu not the game, and the game thinks you're still pressing the key down. But if you have the presence of mind to just not hold down your movement keys while invoking the menu you're fine.

Remember that the excido.conf in your home directory takes precedence over the default one that comes in the data directory.

Esc gets you your in-game menu. Menus are used either with the mouse, or with the arrow keys and the Return key.

Gameplay

Shoot the nasty enemies with your rayguns. Collect the powerups that appear as your score increases.

When you die, press Return to respawn.

Notes

G400 users: Your drivers may not be OpenGL 1.4 compliant, resulting in a stream of GL_INVALID_VALUE errors on the console.