xscorch(6) xscorch(
Contents
1. 8 6 5 SYSTEM a ee e 10 6 6 Al PLAYERS 11 6 7 CONFIGURATION OPTIONS 12 6 7 1 Players Rounds 13 6 7 2 Economics 13 6 7 3 Physics 15 6 7 4 Landscape 16 6 7 5 Weapons 17 6 7 6 Graphics 18 6 7 7 Gameplay Options 19 6 7 8 AI Controller 19 6 7 9 Sound Setup 20 6 8 COMMAND LINE OPTIONS 21 SP TRAC AIL ITY MATR ee 22 Rscorch 2 1 Credits A majority of the following manual pages were composed by Justin David Smith lt justins at chaos2 org gt and are copyright c 2001 2000 A few isolated paragrap2. Rseorch 22
3. a RS CoOrcn US Memnu Project XScorch Team Core Dump January 29 2003 Change Record Date Version Changes Additions Responsible Person 1 29 03 1 0 Created document Alon Gotesman 1 31 03 1 1 Fixed formatting of document Alon Gotesman 2 4 03 2 0 Fixed up all the issues stated in Jeremy Stolarz correction form did more formatting and wrote battle section 3 12 03 3 0 Removed mention of Team Alon Gotesman functionality Updated user interface illustration Nscorch 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 CREDITS 3 2 OVERVIEW n ne nn nnn nnn nnn nnn nnn nn 3 DATORN eee enn eee ee eee ee 3 di DEFINON ee 3 5 GETTING STARTED es 3 6 USER S MANUAL 4 6 1 GAMEPLAY 4 6 2 INVENTORY 4 6 2 1 Weapons List 6 6 2 2 Accessories List 7 6 2 3 Tank list 7 63 ABATI D e a Se nS rer ea ae Se ee ee eee Ee eee 7 6 3 1 Tank Controls
4. start playing Rscorch 12 6 7 1 Players Rounds Player Setup DOR Number of players 4 Number of rounds 10 B Al type Player name Tank style Human Player 1 Standard Human Player 2 Standard Spreader Player 3 Standard Calculater Player 4 Standard Annihilater P ayer 5 Standard Shooter Player 6 Standard uman MI Player 7 Standard uman P ayer 6 Standard uman M P ayer 9 Standard p uman H P aye 10 Standard ig Number of Players integer 2 10 Set the number of players participating in the game Number of Rounds integer gt 1 Set the number of rounds to play for this game AI Type list Select the AI type Human players are Human the remaining AI s are documented above Player Name string Give a unique name for each player Tank Style list Select the type shape of the tank for each player 6 7 2 Economics Rscorch 13 Economy Setup Scoring Standard Initial Cash 100000 Interest Rate 0 050 Dynamic Interest Computers Can Buy Computers Buy Aggressively Free Market The Lottery Scoring list Specifies in what manner each player scores points money at the end of each round BASIC scoring Players receive points only for killing tanks and surviving a round STANDARD scoring Players get less points for actually killing a tank but get points every time they damag
5. to purchase the item or item has a higher arms level than the player is allowed then the item is grayed out and cannot be purchased Items that can be bought will appear with an arrow pointing to the right and items that can be sold will appear with an arrow pointing to the left Xscorch item description are listed in the following two sections 6 2 1 Weapons List Baby Missile A small triple turret capable missile that tanks have in near infinite Missile A fairly large and inexpensive triple turret capable conventional missile Baby Nuke A missile with a miniature tactical nuclear warhead Nuke A missile with a tactical nuclear warhead Leap Frog When this missile detonates the first two times it shoots out a new one Funky Bomb The funky bomb is a very unpredictable cluster bomb MIRV Multiple Independently targetable Re entry Vehicles Branches multiple missile warheads at apex of trajectory Deaths Head A very large MIRV with nine nuclear warheads Annihilator A missile with a huge tactical nuclear warhead Napalm A small globe filled with jellied gasoline Hot Napalm A large globe filled with jet fuel Black Rain Looking up you see a flock of birds No wait Those aren t birds Branches multiple napalm warheads at apex of trajectory Tracer A missile with no warhead Pretty useless Smoke Tracer A missile with no warh
6. ability percentage Determines the likelihood that a player will speak at the end of a turn Extended Status toggle If set the status bar will contain an additional row of extended information during the game things such as trigger battery parachute and teleporter inventories life and wind Tooltips toggle If set tool tips will be displayed where available 6 7 8 AI Controller Rscorch 19 Al Controller Setup amp Human Target Practice Allow Offset Targetting Always Offset Enable Scan Refinement 0 amp O A No Budget Constraints Ok Cancel Human Target Practice toggle Al s will always prefer human targets to AI targets except for Al s that fire at random When playing against 9 Calculators this can make your day pretty lousy Allow Offset Targeting toggle Generally when a weapon hits a shield it does less damage than an explosion detonating right outside the shield weapons hitting the shield do not have a chance to detonate This changes the AI targeting behavior so they will deliberately aim outside the shield if their intended victim has raised shields Always Offset toggle If the above option is set this option will force the AI to always offset its targeting as if the player had raised shields This allows the AI to compensate for cases where the player may simply not have had their turn yet to raise shields The downside is the AI will
7. e a tank or shield GREEDY scoring Works like STANDARD scoring but the final rankings at the end of each round are based on the Net Worth of your tank e g how much cash you have in the bank plus the depreciated value of all weapons etc in stock He who dies with the most toys wins Initial Cash integer 0 1000000 Amount of money each player should start with Interest Rate float 0 0 30 The interest rate for savings compounded once per round Dynamic Interest toggle If enabled interest rates will change during the game Computers Can Buy toggle If enabled computers are permitted to buy items The Al s are very uninteresting if this option is turned off Computers Buy Aggressively toggle If the previous option is enabled the AI s will buy items conservatively With this option the Al s will allocate larger budgets and buy bigger items early in the game Free Market toggle Rscorch 14 In Free market play Equipment and weapons are affected When the game initially begins the prices are set After the initial round prices begin to adjust depending on what the demand is for the item For example of a person constantly buys Napalms the price every round will go up There are set grounds for the prices the price of an item will not go less then this set price The Lottery toggle If the lottery is enabled there will be a random drawing at the start of each round A random player will receive a bundle of a ra
8. e used smoke tracers or have Trace Paths enabled then this option will clear all smoke trails from the sky Retreat This feature is not yet implemented Rscorch 10 Resign Game Resigns from the current round and all remaining rounds This option ends the entire game and will take you back to the intro screen Sound Setup Takes you to the Sound Options window This will allow for both sounds music while the user is in the menu option screen It will also allow sound effect during game play 6 6 AI PLAYERS Human The humans believe they are the superior mind The AI s rather disagree with that sentiment Keep this in mind when you are wondering why 9 AI s would want to simultaneously target your tank Moron This AI fires at random Of all the Al s this one has by far the highest suicide rate An alternate name is Cannon Fodder Shooter This AI goes for targets it has a line of sight to It s not a great player otherwise This AI buys weapons that have the best economical yield but during the game it will select weapons that have the highest yield Spreader This AI is similar to the Shooter except a Spreader buys weapons with the highest yield without regard for the price Chooser This AI chooses a victim Once chosen the victim is attacked until they are dead or the Chooser loses the ability to reach the victim This AI does not need line of sight but fortunately it cannot compensate for wind Calculator Thi
9. ead that leaves a trail of smoke Shield Sapper A missile with a warhead designed to drain shields it hits directly Baby Roller A weapon that rolls downhill and then detonates a small warhead Roller A weapon that rolls downhill and then detonates a warhead Heavy Roller A weapon that rolls downhill and then detonates a large warhead Riot Charge Riot Charge Riot Bomb A bomb that clears dirt instead of damaging players Heavy Riot Bomb A bomb that clears lots of dirt instead of damaging players Dirt Clod Drop a small chunk of dirt on someone Dirt Ball Drop a chunk of dirt on someone Ton Of Dirt Det aro Rseor cs Drop a large chunk of dirt on someone Liquid Dirt 6 2 2 Accessories List Drop a bunch of mud on someone Baby Magnetic A small low power magnetic shield Heavy Magnetic A large high power magnetic shield Baby Shield A small physical shield layer Shield A physical shield layer around the tank Heavy Shield A large physical shield layer Baby Force A small but impregnable force field Force A force field surrounding the tank Heavy Force A large heavy duty force field Fuel Tank Some fuel for a tank s motor will allow it to move around Triple Turret A triple turret can shoot three of some missiles at once Auto Defense Allows you to bring up shields at
10. ect the next weapon available in your inventory Shift Tab Select the previous weapon available in your inventory B b Activate a battery A single battery can restore 5 of damage done to your tank and therefore restore the maximum firing power by 5 when you are damaged You must have a battery to discharge in your inventory to exercise this option E e Activate or energize the currently selected shields F f Activate your fuel tanks A window will be displayed indicating the amount of fuel you have available As long as you have fuel you may use the Left and Right arrows to move one unit to the left or right respectively In general you cannot move your tank up a steep hill Immobile tanks will not be able to exercise this option Force a redraw of the screen Toggle the currently selected shields The currently selected shields are the shields that will be used when you energize Shields are classified by a power number with a type suffix M for magnetic shielding F for force shielding and S for your standard run of the mill shields If no shields are available 0 is displayed Toggle contact triggers on off This is only meaningful if you actually have some contact triggers of course and when tunneling is enabled Weapons that are fired after this point will have contact triggers equipped until you run out Activates a teleporter assuming at least one exists in a player s inventory The tank should disappear from t
11. er affect the difficulty of the game note that the default options make for a reasonable level of game play Most of the game configuration is controlled using menus although a few are command line options which are explained below Once you are ready to begin a new game you may want to select Save Options to save your configuration then select Begin Game and start a new game Game play is divided up into a predetermined player selected number of rounds Each round consists of two phases the Inventory Phase and the Battle Phase In the Inventory Phase you can buy weapons to shoot at your opponents and accessories to help defend your tank See the Inventory section below for information on the weapons and accessories you may buy In the Battle Phase you setup defenses select weapons aim and fire at your opponents For more information refer to the section on Battle below 6 2 INVENTORY Players have the option of buying different weapons and accessories making for more interesting games Weapons are just that an assortment of missiles including ICBM like warheads napalm lasers and a number of custom weapons to bring down specific defenses Accessories increase a tank s chance of survival including guidance systems shields fuel batteries parachutes transporters and other odds and ends Rscorch 4 At the beginning of a round each player is given an opportunity to buy or sell weapons and accessories Each playe
12. he screen and reappear in a random location 0 9 Display information about a particular player 1gives information about Player 1 and 0 gives information about Player 10 Enter Accept your orders Rscorch 9 Ctrl Y Bring up the System Menu this can also be accessed from the menus You can control certain graphics options from the system menu clear the screen of smoke trails and end a round prematurely Ctrl Z Pauses the game Ctrl R Resign from the game This will end the game for everyone You will be asked to confirm the resignation 6 5 SYSTEM MENU System Menu Animation Graphics Are Fast Computers Are Fast C Mass Kill Erase Smoke N A Retreat Resign Game Sound Setup The system menu gives you some control over the game while it is in progress In this menu you will have options to change how the game is displayed e g the Graphics Fast option described below You also have access to a few useful commands described below You can bring this up by pressing Ctrl Y during the game or by using the menus Mass Kill Kills everyone still alive in the round No player gets credit for the kills and none are considered a suicide This option is useful if all human players have already been eliminated from the game but the AI players are making no progress whatsoever in annihilating each other This option ends the current round only Erase Smoke If you hav
13. hs were cited from the Scorched Earth 1 5 tutorial written by Wendell Hicken and copyright c 1991 1995 Team Core Dump enhanced and formatted this final version 2 Overview Xscorch is a clone of the classic DOS game Scorched Earth Xscorch is an exciting artillery combat game where the goal is to destroy enemy tanks using powerful guns and avoid getting killed using shields and other accessories Using money won at the end of each round players purchase upgraded equipment than target enemy tanks by adjusting the angle and firing power of their turrets The goal is to destroy enemy tanks before they destroy you 3 Platform System Requirements Linux Machine GTK 1 2 or better Optional Recommended Libraries MikMod for sound and GNOME 4 Definitions AI Artificial Intelligence Computer players are capable of varying degrees of intelligence The lowest AI level is Moron the highest is Insanity and in between there exist five separate and distinct difficulty levels Auto Defense An accessory item that can be purchased that allows the activation of defensive accessories at the beginning of a round rather than during a player s turn This allows a player to have shields parachutes and other accessories set up before shooting starts and therefore before possibly getting damaged or destroyed 5 Getting Started To obtain Xscorch visit the official website located at http www robotarmy com jeremy cs115 and downl
14. ies are not always concrete this specifies how the sides and ceiling behave None The sides and ceiling are open Concrete All sides are solid Weapons hitting any boundary will explode Padded Weapons hitting the sides and ceiling will bounce off although at a reduced velocity Rubber Weapons hitting the boundary will bounce off at exactly the same velocity Springy Weapons hitting the boundary will bounce off with an additional kick to the velocity Wraparound The ceiling is open Weapons going off one side will reappear on the opposite side Explosions will also wrap around the screen if they detonate near an edge Random One of the above types of walls is selected at random Wind is Dynamic toggle Normally the wind remains constant through a round If this is enabled the wind will change once per turn 6 7 4 Landscape Landscape Setup Land Generator Valley Bumpiness 57 300 Sky Night Hostile Environment O Ok Cancel Apply Land Generator list Specify the generator to use to create the land Bumpiness percentage Ns corch 16 Specify the noise on the generated landscape Sky list Specify the background sky Hostile Environment toggle When selected hostile environments in the form of meteors or lightning bolts These hazards appear random times and hit random spots producing the same amount of damage as baby missiles to both land and tanks Shields act o
15. made to tanks is recorded and if a player s tank is destroyed that player gets no more turns until the next round Simultaneous In simultaneous mode each player takes his or her turn individually but the turns are all resolved at once In other words a player will input commands to the tank but will not immediately see the results When everyone has inputted their Dea ope RNseor Ca commands then all commands are resolved simultaneously Thus all the tanks will fire their weapons at the same time Game Network Help No Weapon 0 Fuel 0 Para O Tele 0 Wind The main game screen shows tank locations and has a status bar on the top that shows turret angle shot power what shield is selected and current power of the shield what weapon is selected current life the amount of batteries contact triggers fuel parachutes and teleporters in the inventory wind direction and strength the current round and whose turn it is This information is also colored to match the player s tank color 6 3 1 Tank Controls Left Right Change the turret angle This will adjust the turret angle in increments of 5 degrees For finer control hold Shift to adjust the angle in increments of 1 degree Up Down Change the firing power in the range of 0 to 1000 This will adjust the firing power in increments of 20 For finer control hold Shift to adjust the firing power in increments of 1 Rscorch 8 Tab Sel
16. n environmental hazards just as they do on any other projectile 6 7 5 Weapons Weapon Setup Arms Level 4 Bomb Icon Size 1 Scaling 1 000 Tunneling Trace Paths Useless Items Cancel Arms Level integer 0 4 Specify the maximum arms level for the game Only weapons with this arms level or lower may be purchased by any player under normal circumstances Bomb Icon Size integer 0 4 Specify the size of the bomb icons while they are traversing their path in the sky This does not affect the size of explosions or the size of the smoke paths if trace paths is on Scaling float Scale the size of explosions by this value If playing on a very large or very small playing field you might want to adjust this value Tunneling toggle If set weapons are allowed to tunnel through land If you enable this you will want to buy contact triggers if you want a particular weapon to always detonate on impact instead of tunneling through land Trace Paths toggle If enabled all weapons leave a smoke trail to reveal their trajectory If this option is off you can still use Smoke Tracers to determine the path a weapon will take Rs corch 17 Useless Items toggle Some weapons are not useful given the current configuration e g contact triggers are irrelevant if tunneling is disabled If this option is enabled then weapons that will have no effect are not listed in the inventory scree
17. nd effects You may also use S nosound Disable music and sound effects You may also use s hqmixer Enable use of the high quality mixer if sound is enabled This may use a lot of CPU power on older machines nohqmixer Rscorch 21 Disable use of the high quality mixer if sound is enabled name Set the name of your player if you are initiating a network game By default your user name is used port Set the port number to use in a network game This option is only relevant if you also specify client or server The default is dependent on the protocol number but is some large port number client server Start Xscorch in client mode and connect to server which should already be running If name and port are not specified reasonable defaults are used Server Start xscorch in server mode and wait for connections from the clients name may be used in conjunction to specify the name of this player 7 Traceability Matrix Requirement Manual Section s Comments 1 1 1 5 6 6 2 1 2 6 6 7 2 2 2 2 5 N A Programming issues rather than feature issues 3 1 3 2 6 7 2 3 3 3 4 N A Must code new calculation and display methods 4 1 4 2 N A Technical issues 5 1 5 5 6 7 4 6 1 6 3 6 2 2 6 4 N A GTK drawing issue 6 5 4 7 1 7 2 6 2 2 7 3 7 5 6 3 1 7 4 N A Coding issue 8 1 8 3 6 7 7 8 4 8 8 N A New programming design and scoring issues
18. ndom weapon for free as the lottery award This is a great way to inject a little extra life into Als who are usually conservative buyers Plus it s always great fun when you get a free Annihilator 6 7 3 Physics Physics Setup N A Air Viscosity 0 000 Gravity 0 500 Ground Damping 0 600 N A Suspend Dirt 0 N A Tanks Fall 100 Borders Extend 2500 Walls Are None A y A A La A y A Y A a Y Maximum Wind Speed 0 050 wind is Dynamic ox Cast Air Viscosity float This feature is not yet supported Gravity float 0 10 Specify the gravity in pixels per cycle squared one cycle is roughly 50 milliseconds Ground Damping float 0 10 Specify the ground damping used in tunneling calculations Maximum Wind Speed float 0 10 Specify the maximum wind speed in pixels per cycle squared The actual wind velocity is initialized once per round to some value in max max Suspend Dirt percentage This feature is not yet supported Rscorch 15 Tanks Fall percentage This feature is not yet supported Borders Extend integer gt 0 This specifies how far off screen weapons should be tracked when you are playing with no walls When this value is zero weapons will disappear as soon as they leave the screen in the horizontal direction even if wind would have brought them back on screen Walls Are list Specify how weapons behave when they hit a boundary Note boundar
19. never attempt to score a direct hit with this option enabled Enable Scan Refinement toggle If set harder Als are allowed to refine their trajectories by computing trajectories that take into account player shielding effect and various other factors they do not normally consider This option could slow down game play a bit but makes the Als much more difficult No Budget Constraints toggle Al s will spend as much money as they can disregarding their budget preferences 6 7 9 Sound Setup i Nscorch 20 Sound Setup Enable Sound x Use HQ Mixer O Ok Cancel Apply Enable Sound toggle When set music and sound effects will be played Use HQ Mixer toggle When set mikmod s high quality mixer will be used 8 COMMAND LINE OPTIONS help Display a brief synopsis of the command line options available insanity This is insanity Max Or what if it s genius yields Display weapon yields and economical yields geometry wxh Specify an initial window geometry for xscorch where _w is the width and _h is the height of the playing field This is useful for displays less than around 800x600 resolution Note this option over rides the settings in the config file but you can save the new options to your config file so you don t have to specify this every time You may also use g config file Load an alternate user config file in file sound Enable music and sou
20. ns 6 7 6 Graphics Graphics Setup Screen Width screen Height Dithering Animation Graphics Are Fast Computers Are Fast Ok Cancel Screen Width integer Set the width of the playing field in pixels Screen Height integer Set the height of the playing field in pixels Dithering toggle If enabled the land and sky gradients will be dithered This option is particularly useful on 16 bit displays where the gradient is very noticeable otherwise This does slow down land generation somewhat Animation toggle If enabled explosions and other effects will be animated This option can also be controlled from the System Menu Graphics Are Fast toggle If enabled all graphics are always as fast as possible This option can also be controlled from the System Menu Computers Are Fast toggle If enabled graphics are fast when there are only computer players alive This option can also be controlled from the System Menu i amp Rscorcl 18 6 7 7 Gameplay Options Options Setup Mode Sequential Order Random Talk Mode Everyone Talk Probability g Extended Status Tooltips N A Interleaved Tracking Mode list Determines if all players will fire at once Synchronous or whether each player will fire independently Sequential Order list Determines the player order Talk Mode list Determines who is allowed to talk Talk Prob
21. oad the latest version of the source code A window will appear at which time you should select the Save option and place the file in the desired directory The code is in tarball form tar gz so it must first decompress it Once this is completed and you have the ability to open all the files type configure to create the make file needed to compile the software If you would like networking capabilities you must compile the code using the command configure enable network instead Next make to compile the file and finally type make install Rscorch 3 to install the file The game is now installed on your system Type xscorch to start the game Please refer to section Command Line Options for more command line options FILES xscorch config User s default configuration for xscorch xscorch txt Copy of this manual page This file is installed to your local share directory and is used by the on line help system copying txt Copy of the GPL This file is installed to your local share directory and is used by the on line help system tankprofiles Profile bitmaps for the tanks usually stored in the local share directory 6 User s Manual 6 1 GAMEPLAY We at Xscorch encourage the beginning user to experiment with the many options in the main menu Most of the options are straightforward and you can begin playing with only a little bit of information A number of options all which are explained lat
22. r is capable of carrying up to 99 of any item at one time with the exception of a few weapons that have an infinite supply for example Baby Missiles These weapons cannot be purchased Weapons and accessories are sold in bundles the price of a bundle is displayed in the inventory and players must buy items as complete bundles The exception to this is when a player attempts to buy more of an item than their inventory can hold in this case the bundles are detached and the weapons are sold on an individual basis with a small markup applied Players may also sell weapons and accessories in their inventory Again items are generally sold as bundles The player will receive a less than retail value salvage amount of money for the sale Game Network Help lt Continue gt In the Inventory screen two panels are displayed listing the weapons and accessories available There are several controls you can use at this point in the game TAB Switches between the various panes UP Arrow Allow the player to scroll up through the list of items DOWN Arrow Allow the player to scroll down through the list of items RIGHT Arrow Buy the highlighted bundle Rseorch 5 Left Arrow Sell the highlighted bundle For each item the name bundle size total price and current inventory are displayed Items that can neither be bought nor sold will still appear However if the player has maxed their inventory for that item or they cannot afford
23. s AI is like Chooser except a Calculator can compensate for the wind These guys are fairly deadly in a fight they also tend to allocate large budgets to defense and offense Annihilator This AI goes for weapons that will cause as much damage as possible without much regard for individual victims This AI prefers spread weapons to the more focused precision weapons A few Annihilators can clear the terrain easily These Al s don t worry about defenses too much With their destructive tendency they won t survive long anyway but neither will anyone else Insanity Rscorch 11 This AI is very much like the Annihilator Economist This AI focuses on a defensive strategy buying the strongest available shields solar panels to replenish shields and sets auto defense so the shields can be raised immediately Offensively the opponent buys missiles and napalm to weaken shields than selects a single opponent preferably one with shields and attacks it until it is eliminated While the opponent still has shields it will aim close to the target rather than on target Once shields are eliminated it will then shoot on target Unknown This selects one of the above AI s at random but you will not be informed which AI was selected 6 7 CONFIGURATION OPTIONS RECA The following options can be set by selecting them from the main menu with either the keyboard or the mouse Once all options have been set select Begin Game to
24. the beginning of a round instead of during your turn Solar Panel Solar Panels recharge shields slightly each turn Contact Trigger With contact triggers missiles will explode as soon as they hit anything Batteries A tank s self repair system needs batteries to run Restores 5 of tanks original health Parachute Prevents tank from taking damage when it falls Teleporter Teleports tank to a new random location 6 2 3 Tank list Standard Mobile medium armor medium fuel efficiency medium base size Double Track Mobile light armor high fuel efficiency smaller base size Fortification Stationary heavy armor larger base size 6 3 BATTLE In its simplest form the battle stage is when the players take turns inputting their tank commands see 6 3 7 Tank Controls in attempts to destroy one another A player s turn lasts until he or she fires a weapon Each round a random turn order is established and it repeats until the end of the round when only one tank is left or when no tanks are left Exactly what occurs after a turn depends on whether sequential or simultaneous game play has been selected see 6 7 7 Gameplay Options Sequential In sequential mode each player s turn is resolved individually In other words all inputted commands will take place when inputted and the shot fired will be immediately resolved Any changes the weapon causes to the landscape and or damage
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