%ents; ]> Martin R. Jones

mjones@kde.org

Philip Rodrigues

philip.rodrigues@libertysurf.co.uk

2000 Martin R. Jones 2001 Philip Rodrigues &FDLNotice; 11/01/2001 2.0.1 &kasteroids; is, predictably, the &kde; clone of the popular asteroids game. KDE games linux asteroids The objective of &kasteroids; is to destroy all the asteroids on the screen to advance to the next level. Your ship is destroyed if it makes contact with an asteroid. When your ship is first launched, it has only basic abilities: Turning, Thrusting and Shooting In order to move your ship, rotate it to face the direction you wish to travel and press the thrust key. Of course the ship has momentum, so you will have to compensate when you select the angle of the ship. Thrusting uses fuel, so you should not use your thrusters more than necessary. You have an unlimited amount of ammunition, so shoot away. Only limited number of shots can be active at once, though. If you repeatedly shoot and miss, you will find that you are unable to shoot until some of the shots have expired. Your ship has a limited amount of fuel. When all the ship's fuel has been consumed it is unable to thrust anymore. This leaves you immobile, but not defenseless - you can still rotate and shoot. Fortunately the asteroids occasionally release fuel when they are shot. Fly your ship into the fuel symbol to collect it. Fuel Upgrade Fuel Upgrade Occasionally when you shoot an asteroid a symbol will be produced. These symbols represent upgrades to your ship. Fly over the symbol to install it in your ship. The upgrades have a cumulative effect, up to a maximum of 5. The improvements available are: Brakes Brakes stop your ship as quickly as possible. The more brake upgrades you have the faster you can stop, with lower fuel usage. Shields Shields absorb the collision with asteroids, but use a lot of fuel. You need at least two shield upgrades to survive a hit from a medium sized rock, and 3 to survive a large rock. You will also need to have enough fuel to maintain the shield during the strike. The key-bindings are configurable via the OptionsConfigure Keys menu. The defaults are: Rotate Anti-Clockwise - Left Arrow Rotate Clockwise - Right Arrow Thrust - Up Arrow Shoot - Space Bar Shields - S Pause - P Brake - X Here's some tips that may help: If you want to stop your ship, use the brakes rather than stopping manually. The brakes stop you faster, with less fuel usage. Shields are expensive. They should be used as a last resort. Try to use your thrusters to avoid collisions when practical. Avoid the edges of the playing field. It's more difficult to see asteroids approaching from the opposite side of the field. &CtrlN File New Starts a new game of &kasteroids; &Ctrl;H File Show Highscores Shows the High Scores for &kasteroids; &Ctrl;Q File Quit Quits &kasteroids; &Alt;SK Settings Show Highscores Shows the High Scores for &kasteroids; &Alt;SP Settings Preferences Displays &kasteroids; preferences Martin R. Jones Martin R. Jones mjones@kde.org Philip Rodrigues philip.rodrigues@libertysurf.co.uk &underFDL; &underGPL; &kasteroids; is part of the &kde; project http://www.kde.org. &kasteroids; can be found in the kdegames package on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main ftp site of the &kde; project. All required libraries can be found on The &kde; &FTP; site. In order to compile and install &kasteroids; on your system, type the following in the directory of the kdegames distribution: % ./configure % make % make install Since &kasteroids; uses autoconf and automake you should have not trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the author.