This is the readme file for xarman.
The projects home page is at http://www.sf.net/projects/xarman
* CONTENTS
- Credits
- Story
- The game & controls
- License
- Requirements
- Building xarman
- Running xarman
- Bugs
- Final Notes
* CREDITS
Xarman was made by the members of ECC, with Xar as the coder, and Firimar as the artist.
Ported to Linux (svgalib) in June 1999, by Mads Bondo Dydensborg <madsdyd@challenge.dk>. Sound module under Linux by Mads Bondo Dydensborg.
Ported to SDL in February 2002, by Mads Bondo Dydensborg.
* STORY
The Great War (World War IV) destroyed all life on planet Earth. Two revival clans got away in large space stations. Now 50 years after, both clans want to reconquer the Earth. But the ground is covered with mines. The clans send specially designed cyborgs to conquer terrain. These cyborgs are equipped with a mine scanner. They always know how many mines there are in a short radius. And they can find the mines, but that takes time. The red and the blue team fights to get the land first. Only one clan can move back to Earth.
* THE GAME AND CONTROLS
The game is a 2 player cross between Minesweeper and Dyna Blaster. Red player is controlled by ASDW and Q, and blue player is controlled by JKLI and U. You are placed in one corner of the screen, and you have to walk around conquering land. The numbers are the amount of mines in a radius of 1 square from the point. You can use Q or U to scan for where the mines are, but this takes time. You win by marking half the squares with your flag, you can not take the other players squares. You die if you step on a mine. Race against a friend.
During play, you can press F11 to toggle fullscreen mode.
* LICENSE
Xarman is released under the GPL.
Copyright (C) 1999-2002 Mads Bondo Dydensborg <madsdyd@challenge.dk> (Parts may be (C) ECC)
Please see the file "AUTHORS" for a list of contributers
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
* REQUIREMENTS
SDL, SDL_mixer, SDL_image
Xarman have only been tested on Linux, using version 1.2.2 of SDL and 1.2.0 of SDL_mixer and SDL_image with X as the target.
* BUILDING XARMAN
Xarman uses the GNU autotools, and configuration and installation should be quite straightforward.
- Bootstrapping (only relevant for cvs users)
If you have checked out the sources from cvs, you should run the shell script "bootstrap", which will create the script "configure" for you. For reasons not understood by the developer, it may be necessary to run this script twice to get the necessary files created.
- Configuration
If you have downloaded a tar ball, the configure script should already be in place. Run "./configure --help" to get an overview of the options.
The file "INSTALL" provides generic installation instructions for the configure script.
If configure fails, it is most likely because you are missing needed libraries. The configure script will try to identify all missing libraries when run, and will let you know what is missing.
- Compiling
After a successful configuration step, you can compile xarman like this:
$ make
You will most likely get a number of warnings (mostly from compiling the SDL_console source, which is provided as part of xarman).
Compiling xarman takes about 1 minute on a PIII 666 with 256 MB ram.
If the installation fails and it is during the linking stage, it is most likely because you have discovered a dependency on a library, that the configure script does not take into account. A likely cause is that you need a "devel" package for some library on your Linux system. Please install the necessary package and "make" again.
You are very welcome to write the developer, if you have problems with the xarman build process.
- Installing
You do not need to install xarman to test it out. But if you wish, you can issue the command
$make install
to install xarman to the location you configured for (default /usr/local/). Xarman does not follow the LSB directions of installing games to /usr/local/games/bin/xarman, but instead installs to /usr/local/bin/xarman. Shared files are installed into /usr/local/share/games/xarman however.
* RUNNING XARMAN
After building xarman, you can either issue the command
$src/xarman
or, if you have installed xarman
$/path/to/xarman
to run xarman.
For mostly selfexplaining options run xarman with the --help option.
* BUGS
Why, of course. Look at the TODO file for some of the known ones.
Please report bugs and/or send patches to the developer - it will make you fell all warm and fuzzy inside....
* FINAL NOTES
You read this far? Amazing....