NAME

XInvaders - Shoot-em-up them nasty little bugs.

AUTHOR

Jonny Goldman (jonathan@think.com)

SYNOPSIS

xinvaders [-all_those_groovy_xtoolkit_switches]

DESCRIPTION

xinvaders is an implementation of the old Atari Space Invaders game, on top of the X11 window system.

PLAYING XINVADERS

The game will start with all the invaders drawn. Press 'p' to play, and you're off, or use the newly provided buttons.

The controls are:

z: Fire a shot. You will only be able to fire one shot at a time, so be careful.
,: Move left. Pressing this key will start you moving to the left, releasing it will make you stop.
.: Move right. Pressing this key will start you moving to the right, releasing it will make you stop.
p: Pause or Play. Pressing this will either pause the game, or play it. Remember, you must press it to start the game (either at the very beginning, or between new games).
q: Quit the game. Do this and you will end the game. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

The mouse controls are active, and rather obvious:

Left

Move left, as above

Middle

Fire, as above

Right

Move right. ditto.

SCORING

The lowest monsters are worth 10 points, the next are worth 20, and the highest are worth 30. Space ships are worth anything from 50-300 points (in 50 point increments, of course).

CUSTOMIZING COLORS

As with all standard X applications, xinvaders may be customized through entries in the resource manager. This game also works on monochrome screens, but the colors don't mean anything (surprise!).

Scale: A switch that allows for multiple resolutions. 1 for normal resolution, 2 for 2x zoom (the default).
BaseColor: The color for the Base (you). Default is white.
BuildingColor: The color for the buildings that shield you. Default is yellow.
Vader1Color: The color for the highest invaders. Default is blue.
Vader2Color: The color for the middle invaders. Default is orange.
Vader3Color: The color for the lowest invaders. Default is red.
SpacerColor: The color for the Space Ship. Default is gray.
ShotColor: The color for your shots. Default is green.
VshotColor: The color for their shots. Default is pink.
ScoreColor: The color for the score. Default is cyan.

Here's an example of some of the resources you can set (this would be in your .Xdefaults file):

Vaders*Font: 9x15 Vaders*Scale: 2 Vaders*defaultfore: black Vaders*defaultback: white Vaders*Vader1Color: blue Vaders*Vader2Color: green Vaders*Vader3Color: red Vaders*BaseColor: cyan Vaders*BuildingColor: yellow Vaders*SpacerColor: gray Vaders*ShotColor: lavender Vaders*VshotColor: orange Vaders*BaseWait: 10 Vaders*VaderWait: 300 Vaders*SpacerWait: 50 Vaders*ShotWait: 10 Vaders*VshotWait: 30

NOTES

There are lots of resources. You can change all the timings involved. Have fun with it.

Although you can resize the gamewindow, I don't recommend it.

BUGS

The buildings aren't as good as the arcade, but hey, whatdayawant for free? It also doesn't handle auto-repeat very well, so you should probably turn it off.

COPYRIGHT

This is mine. I'm only letting you use it. Period. Feel free to rip off any of the code you see fit, but have the courtesy to give me credit. Otherwise great hairy beasties will rip your eyes out and eat your flesh when you least expect it.

CREDITS

I'd like to give a lot of credit to Terry Weissman for his roids games. It gave me the guidance on how to do something like this.