# LBreakout

## Contents

1. Menu
2. How To Play
3. Extras
4. Keys
5. Creating Own Levels

### Menu

How to use the menu:

- [ESC] will quit the program.
- Enter a submenu by pressing [ENTER] or mouse button.
- Change between entries by pressing [UP] or [DOWN] or move mouse.
- Change entries by pressing [LEFT] or [RIGHT] or mouse button.

Menu:

- [New Game] (submenu)

- [New Game] Starts a new game.
- [Name] Your name used for the hiscore.

- [Hiscore] Shows you the hiscore.
- [Options] (submenu)

- [Game] (submenu)

- [Difficulty] Defines how much lives you'll get in the beginning (easy: 5, medium: 4, hard: 3), how much lives you can get at maximum (easy: 8, medium: 6, hard: 4), the size of your paddle in pixels (easy: 50-100, medium: 40-80, hard: 40-60), the prize for a continue in points (easy&medium: 20.000, hard: 30.000) and the score bonus in the end of the game (easy: 0%, medium: 10%, hard: 20%).
- [Starting Level] The level in which you will start the game.
- [Paddle] Choose between a 'flat surface' or a 'convex surface' behaviour.
  'Flat' means the paddle behaves like it looks like. (more logical but a bit harder)
  'Convex' means the top surface of the paddle behaves like a convex one but it does not look so. (implemented for people who are used to this kind of behaviour).
- [Ball's Starting Angle] Defines if the starting angle of a ball moves in a range between -60° to 60° (with 0 straight up) or if it's always 50° (either -50° when pressing left mouse button or 50° when pressing right button).
- [Play Original/Own Levels] Choose if you want to play the original levels or selfmade ones from a file.
- [Level File] (submenu)

- [Path] Directory of the wanted file.
- [Name] Name of the wanted file.

- [found/not found/not selected] Shows if your file was found.

- [Controls] (submenu)

- [Left] Key for left movement.
- [Right] Key for right movement.
- [Fire] Key for firing weapons or releasing balls.
- [Mouse] (submenu)

- [Warp Mouse] Always centre mouse, hide the cursor and use relative mouse motion which you can be influenced with 'Motion Modifier'. The mouse won't leave the window until you leave or pause the game or move the mouse pointer too fast.
- [Invert Mouse] If this option and 'Warp Mouse' are enabled the mouse' movement will be inverted (mouse left->paddle right; mouse right->paddle left).
- [Motion Modifier] Use between 40% and 100% of relative mouse motion. Note: If 'Warp Mouse' is 'off' the absolute motion will be used.

- [Use] Use Mouse/Keyboard/Mouse&Keyboard for input.

- [Graphics] (submenu)

- [Transparency] Turn on/off transparency effects.
- [Animations] Choose no, low, or more detailed animations.
- [Bonus Information] Show information about active bonuses with limited time on the right side.
- [Background] If you feel disturbed by background graphics you can turn them off.
- [Display] Play the game windowed or fullscreen?

- [Sound] (submenu)

- [Sound] Turn on/off sound.
- [Volume] Set volume of sound.

- [Quit] Quits the game.

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### How To Play

Use your paddle to keep a ball in game. You can influence the way the ball is reflected by moving the paddle when the ball hits it. The ball bounces around and destroys bricks. When there are no more bricks you'll reach the next level (LBreakout has got about 25 levels). If all balls have left the screen you'll loose a live and if it was your last one you'll get the chance to by another one for about 20.000 or 30.000 points of your score. If you don't want to or you don't have enough score the game ends. Most bricks will need one hit to be destroyed but there are some exceptions as well. A gray one can't be destroyed at all, a golden one takes four, a silver one three and a bronze one two shots before it crumbles.
Your lives are displayed as bright green lamps in the left lower corner and your score can be found in the right upper corner.
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### Extras

Of course, there are a lot of extras to get. They will come up after destroying a brick containing one and can be used by catching it with your paddle.
But beware! There are some extras with bad properties:
Frozen Paddle
Freezes your paddle for one second (you can't move).
Shrink Paddle
Shrinks your paddle about 10 pixels as long as it is bigger than 30 pixels).
Fast Ball
For 20 seconds all balls will move at their maximum speed!
All other extras are good and you should collect them:
Score
Collect any of these extras too get the score written on it.
Expand Paddle
Expands your paddle about 10 pixels as long as it is smaller than your maximum size (60 - 100 pixels).
Extra Life
Gives you an extra life. If you can't get any more lives you'll get 10.000 points instead.
Slimy Paddle
Covers your paddle with slime for 10 seconds so balls don't bounce back. You'll have to press the 'Fire' key or a mousebutton to release balls.
Metal Ball
All balls will turn into solid metal for 5 seconds. They won't bounce back from bricks but will go directly trough them.
Extra Ball
Gives you an extra ball.
Slow Ball
For 20 seconds all balls will move at their starting speed.
Wall
Creates a wall at the bottom of the screen for 10 seconds so balls can't leave.
Plasma Weapon
Gives you a plasma weapon for 5 seconds. You can have four shots on the screen at the same time.
!Surprise!
Could be any extra described above.
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### Keys

- [ESC] finishes a current game after confirmation and checks for hiscore entry.
- [TAB] takes a screenshot.
- [s] enables/disables sound.
- [t] enables/disables transparancy.
- [a] changes the animation level.
- [p] pauses the game.
- [f] changes between window and fullscreen. It takes some time to switch so this should be done either when game is paused or all balls are attached to the club.
- [r] will restart the current level but all bricks destroyed will stay destroyed.

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### Creating Own Levels

You'll have to do the following if you want to create your own levels:

- Create a text file. It can be anywhere called anything.
- Write data into this file. How to do this is described below.
- Configure the menu. You'll have to define that you want to load levels from a file and where it can be found.

General rules:

- A level is build out of entries.
- Each entry ends with an ';'.
- Everthing written before the first '[LEVEL];' entry is a comment. (Do not use a ';' in it!).
- Entries in brackets must stand alone.
- [RETURN]s after semicolons are eliminated.
- [RETURN]s within an entry are interpreted as [SPACE].
- Comments are only allowed at the very beginning of the file.
- If you use an unknown brick or extra it will be ignored and a warning will be displayed.
- A level's width ranges between 14 and 18.
- A level's height ranges between 18 and 28.
- The last 4 lines MUST stay empty for the paddle needs to move somewhere.

Structure:

- Every level starts with this line:
  [LEVEL];
- The following entries describe these things:
  author of this level;name of this level;ball's initial velocity (pixels per millisecond);velocity change (per millisecond);ball's velocity limit (pixels per millisecond);width of level;height of level;
- This is the next line:
  [MAP];
- The next 'height' entries must be the length of 'width' and contain only one of these valid stones:
  # - indestructible wall
  a,b,c - two, three or four shots
  d,e,f,g,h,i - only one shot
  The frame is added automatically. You don't need to draw a frame of walls by yourself.
- Next line is:
  [EXTRAS];
- The next 'height' entries must be the length of 'width' and contain only one of these valid extras:
  0,1,2,3,4,5 - score (200, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000)
  + - expands paddle
  - - shrinks paddle
  s - covers paddle with slime
  b - extra ball
  l - extra life
  m - metal balls
  w - wall
  f - frozen paddle
  p - plasma weapon
  ? - surprise
- The last line is:
  [END];

Example:

This test level is included as 'test.lbr' in the release.

    Hi! This is just a comment and will be completely ignored as long as you don't use semicolons!
    [LEVEL];
    michael speck;level 00;
    0.2;0.0000015;0.35;
    14;18;
    [MAP];
                  ;
    dddddddddddddd;
    dddddddddddddd;
     eeeeeeeeeeee ;
     eeeeeeeeeeee ;
      ffffffffff  ;
      ffffffffff  ;
       gggggggg   ;
       gggggggg   ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
    [EXTRAS];
                  ;
      +  0   b    ;
     1     -      ;
      p      w    ;
        -  0    2 ;
            +     ;
         b   2    ;
       1  + m     ;
        s  0      ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
                  ;
    [END];

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Contact
Copyright (C) Michael Speck 2000
Last Update: November 3rd 2000