Liquid War (v5.6.1) - Menus and hot keys




Introduction
============


  This section describes how the GUI works. Since programming advanced GUIs
  with Allegro is not so easy - standard C programming definitely lacks
  flexibility -, and also since it's somewhat hard for me to figure out what is
  user-friendly and what's not, Liquid War's menus are not always
  self-explanatory. I'll just try and do something better next time!



Menus
=====


  Map menu
  --------

    The map menu allows you to choose the map you are going to play on. A map
    is defined by 3 things:

    * A frame. The frame can be chosen with the slider which is below the
      preview. The frames are automatically sorted by alphabetical order.

    * A texture for walls.

    * A texture for the zone where fighters are allowed to move.

    In the middle of the screen, there is a preview of the level. In this menu,
    the values of the parameters can be independently changed by:

    * Moving a slider.

    * Clicking on a "+" or a "-" button.

    * Typing a number.

    On each side of the preview, sliders allow you to choose the two textures.
    There is also a preview of each texture. Below this preview there are 128
    little buttons which allow you to choose single colored textures.

    The name of the map and its resolution are displayed in the lower part of
    the screen.

    You'll notice that on some maps the texture selection zones simply
    disappear. This is because these maps are associated with a texture, so
    choosing a different texture is often not recommended for it won't look as
    nice as with the right one. If you still want to override this behaviour
    you can click on the "on/off" button just right to the "Use default
    texture" label. This is a toggle button which will allow you to use your
    own textures even on maps that normally come with their own skin.

    You'll also notice that a "Random map" button is available. This button
    generates a new random map using an external program, "lwmapgen",
    developped by David Redick, available on
    http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~dredick/lwmapgen/

    This program supports many command line options, and if you want a very
    precise control on the generated maps, you'll need to run it separately.
    Looking at LW's log file you should be able to see the commands LW issues
    when calling this program, this can give you ideas on how to launch it
    manually. Alternatively using the "--help" option (for instance
    "liquidwar-mapgen --help" under UNIX) should describe how to use it.

  Teams menu
  ----------

    This menu allows you to choose the teams which are going to play. There are
    6 square zones in this menu. Each of them is associated to a team.

    Each team can be either:

    * Disabled ("Off")

    * Controlled by a player ("Human")

    * Controlled by the computer ("Cpu")

    The computer plays poorly, so remember that Liquid War is basically a
    multiplayer game, and that the cpu control is dedicated to beginners only.

    You can also choose the color associated to each team by clicking on one of
    the 12 colored buttons.

    Below the 12 colored buttons, there are four buttons which allow you to
    choose your keys. Click on one of these buttons and then press the key you
    want to define. Joystick movements and buttons are considered as keys. You
    can disable the joystick with the button which is at the bottom left of the
    menu. Mouse input is also possible, and mouse movements are considered as
    keys too. To define mouse control, click on the button associated to the
    direction you want to control, and then move the mouse. Then the button
    should display something like "M->". Mouse sensibility can be set with the
    little slider at the bottom right of the menu.

  Graphics menu
  -------------

    Here you can choose the graphic options of the game.

    The "Video mode" button allows you to switch between fullscreen and
    windowed mode. This button is not available under DOS.

    The "Brightness" slider allows you to set the brightness of the game.

    The "Menu res" slider allows you to set the resolution used by the menus.
    There are currently 5 possible values, which depend on which platform
    you're running the game on.

    I personnaly think the menus look best with the 640x480 resolution, but
    some may prefer higher resolutions. Lower resolutions should only be used
    if you have problems using SVGA video modes.

    The "Game res" slider allows you to set the resolution used during the
    game. The allowed values are the same than those for the menus. I recommend
    that you don't use resolution higher than 640x480, unless you have a
    Pentium VIII running a 10GHz.

    Page flipping can be toggled. It is up to you to decide wether you keep
    this option or not. The main disavantage of turning page flipping off is
    that the info bar and the battlefield can look rahter ugly if they overlap.
    But if you turn page flipping on you will not easily reach the 166 frames
    per second I sometimes get on small levels with my K6-225. I personnaly
    always turn page flipping off.

    The viewport size defines how much of your screen will be used by the
    battlefield.

    * If you set the slider on its left position, the batllefield will not be
      stectched at all. Or if is strechted, it will be by a x2 or a x4 factor.
      So this is the mode wich allows the fastest display.

    * If you set the slider ont its right position, the game will run in
      fullscreen mode.

    * With all the other positions of the slider, the battlefield will keep its
      general proportions but it will be stretched.

    The "Waves" button allows you to toggle the wave effect. You can also do
    this while playing, by simply pressing F4.

  Sound menu
  ----------

    This section allows you to set the sound volumes. There are 4 sliders,
    which are:

    * "Sfx": sets the volume of all the sfx sounds, thats to say'the sounds you
      hear when the game starts, when you loose etc...

    * "Click": sets the volume of the click, this nasty noise you hear each
      time your press on a button.

    * "Game water": sets the volume of the blop blop blop sounds which are
      played continuously while you are playing.

    * "Menu water": the same thing than "Game water" except that it concerns
      the sounds played while your are choosing options.

    * "Music": general music volume.

  Rules menu
  ----------

    This menu is the one where you can change the rules of the game.

    The "Time" slider controls the time limit. The game will stop after this
    time is elapsed. You can pause the game by pressing the "F3" key.

    By the way, an info bar can display the time left while you are playing.
    This info bar can be toggled during the game by pressing the "F1" key, and
    you can change its location by pressing the "F2" key. It also displays how
    many fighters there are in each team.

    The "Army size" slider controls the amount of fighters there will be on the
    battlefield. The position of the slider reflects the amount of fighters of
    all the teams together. If there are 4 teams, then each player will have
    half as many fighters than if there had only been 2 teams.

    The "Cursor x" slider controls the speed of your cursor.

    * If it is set on the left, the cursor goes at the same speed than the
      fighters.

    * If it is centered, the cursor goes twice faster than the fighters.

    * If it is set on the right, the speed of the cursor is multiplicated by 3.

    Below is a "Min 160x100" box with a slider on its right. This means that
    maps will automatically be magnified so that they have a size of at least
    160x100. Indeed, some of the maps that come with Liquid War were designed
    in 1995 when 486 Intel computers were common. Therefore the maps were
    smalls. Today, these maps are not really fun to play on fast computers, so
    Thomas Harte suggested this automatic magnifying feature, and that was IMHO
    a smart idea. You can move the slider to the right to make maps use a
    higher resolution - ie magnify them.

    The "Defaults" button of the "Rules" menu will reset rules to their
    defaults. This way you can tweak rules and then come back to the default
    rules whenever you want. Note that there's also a "Defaults" button in the
    main "Options" menu, but it will reset *all* options, including player
    names... The advantage of the "Defaults" button in the "Rules" menu is that
    it will only reset rules parameters, and keep the rest of your
    configuration options untouched.

  Speeds menu
  -----------

    The "frames/s" slider allows you to limit the number of frames per second.
    If this slider is set on the left, there won't be any limit, so Liquid War
    will repaint your screen each time the fighters move. But this can be a
    weird behaviour if your machine is really fast, for no one cares about 100
    fps per second, one can not even see them... So this paramters limits the
    refreshment rate, so that there can be several logical moves of the
    fichters for only one screen refreshing. If it is set on its right, the
    display is limite to 10 fps, so you'll have to find your setting. I
    personnally set it right in the middle, and get 40 fps. If you press "F5",
    you'll get the number of frames per second, and if you press "F6", you'll
    get the number of logical moves per second. You can also press "F7" or
    "F8", and you will get the percentage of time your computer spends on
    calculating or displaying the level.

    The "rounds/s" slider allows you to limit the number of rounds per second.
    If this slider is set on the left, there won't be any limit, so Liquid War
    will run as fast as possible. This setting will be of no use if you use
    Liquid War on a slow computer or if you play with hudge maps, but
    sometimes, with a high-end Pentium class computer, it's simply impossible
    to play on small maps because things simply go too fast. So this parameter
    is here to help you and avoid the "10000 moves per sec" problem.

  Waves menu
  ----------

    This is where the wave parameters are set. The waves are just a graphic
    effect, which is not really usefull. I don't often use waves, but I still
    think they can sometimes look nice. Change these parameters if you really
    mean to do it, but if you don't understand what they mean, it is really
    OK...

    There are 4 different types of waves, each of them being defined by:

    * An "Ampli" parameter, to define how big the waves have to be.

    * A "Number" parameter, to define how many waves should be displayed at the
      same time.

    * A "Speed" parameter, to define how fast the waves should move.

    If you want to undestand what the "WX", "HY", "WY", and "HX" codes mean,
    try to pay with only one type of wave, the "Ampli" parameter of the 3 other
    types of wave being set to 0 (that is to say the slider is on its left
    position), and sea how it looks like.

    The wave effects can be toggled during the game by pressing the "F4" key.

  Advanced menu
  -------------

    This menu allows the user to change the behaviour of the fighters.

    The "Attack" slider sets the agressivity of the fighters. If it is set on
    the right, fighters eat each other very fast. If it is set on the left, it
    takes ages to fighters to change teams.

    The "Defense" slider sets the capacity that the fighters have to regenerate
    themselves. The more it is on the right, the faster fighters regenerate.

    The "New health" slider sets the health of the fighters which have just
    changed teams. The more it is on the left, the weaker these fighters will
    be.

    The "Winner help" slider controls a parameter which causes fighters to
    attack with various strength depending on how many fighters belong to their
    team. Not very clear... Let's just say that:

    * If this slider is set on the right, the more fighters you have in your
      team, the more aggressive they will become.

    * If it is centered, all the fighters of every team will always attack with
      the same strength.

    * If it is set on the left, the less fighters you have, the stronger they
      will be. In this mode, games usually never end.

    The "Cpu strength" parameter never makes the computer more intelligent than
    a monkey. But if you set it on the right, it advantages the machine
    outrageously and fighters controlled by the cpu will be really strong. So
    to get rid of them you'll definitely need to be clever. Again and again,
    don't forget that Liquid War was conceived as a multiplayer game and that
    playing against the computer is not really an interesting thing to do.

    The "CPU vs human" parameter allows you to control how aggressive CPUs are
    towards humans.

    * If set to "Always", CPUs will always attack humans and will never try to
      attack another CPU, unless there are no humans left. This used to be the
      default behavior in previous Liquid War versions, but some players
      remarked that it was rather unfair, so now this is an option.

    * If set to "Random", CPUs won't care wether their opponents are CPUs or
      humans, they'll attack anybody. This is the default behavior.

    * It set to "Never", CPUs will attack each other before bothering human
      players.

    The "Algorithm" parameter allows you to force the algorithm to standard C
    mode. There's no real good reason you would like to do this, since the C
    algorithm is slower than the ASM one. Moreover, the ASM algorithm is
    automatically disabled if you play against a computer which does not have
    ASM enabled. Think of this as a testing/debugging option.



Hot keys
========


  Here's a list of keys you might use while playing:

  * F1: toggles the "info" zone where the game time and the state of each team
    is displayed.

  * F2: moves the "info" the zone arround, possible positions being top, right,
    bottom and left.

  * F3: pauses the game. This function is disabled during network games.

  * F4: toggles the "wave effect". Without this "wave effect", which is turned
    on ny default,the game will run faster.

  * F5: displays the number of frames per second (*).

  * F6: displays the number of rounds per second (*).

  * F7: displays the precentage of CPU spent on the game logic, calculating
    where fighters must go for instance (*).

  * F8: displays the precentage of CPU spent on graphics (*).

  * F9: turns on/off the "capture" mode. In this mode, screenshots of each
    frame are taken, and written to the hard drive as bitmaps.

  * F10: quits the game right away without any confirmation prompt, also known
    as the "my boss is coming here!" function.

  (*) all these figures tend to be clearly false as computer go faster and
  faster. Basically, the time required for "logic" and "display" operations is
  getting shorter and shorter, and the tools I use to measure it are not
  precise enough. Therefore I get approximations which might by plainly wrong.

