Introduction
============
X-Moto is a challenging 2D motocross platform game, where physics play
an all important role in the gameplay. You need to control your bike to
its limit, if you want to have a chance finishing the more difficult of
the challenges.
First you'll try just to complete the levels, while later you'll compete
with yourself and others, racing against the clock.
System Requirements
===================
For this Amiga port, any system running AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1 with 64MB
of Video RAM. 128MB VRAM recommended to avoid any issues with complex
levels.
Installation
============
Simply extract xmoto.lha to a destination of your choice on the HDD.
Running this game from the RAM Disk will load a lot more slowly.
The first time the game is ran, the Level Cache will be built. This will
take a couple of minutes.
Bugs
====
Network multiplayer is broken on AmigaOS4. It might work between two OS4
machines, if the stack is set high enough.
It will not connect successfully to the main game server.
Basic Gameplay
==============
A number of strawberries are spread around each level, which generally
consists of a complicated landscape seen from the side - i.e. much like
islands in the sky. You need to collect all these berries to
complete the level - when you've got the last one, you should find
the sunflower which will complete the level when you touch it.
Variations to this basic gameplay may be found around some of the
levels.
Your motocross bike is likewise seen from the side,
and you control its throttle, braking, and simple changes to the
attitude by jerking the bike back and forth. Additionally you can change
the direction of your driving, by rotating on the spot.
Controls
========
You control your bike using the keyboard:
Up arrow - Accelerates
Down arrow - Brakes
Left arrow - Rotates it counter-clockwise
Right arrow - Rotates it clockwise
Space - Turns around and drives in the other direction
Note that the above keys can be configured to something else to suit
your needs.
Additionally, some other keys can be pressed while playing:
Escape - Pauses the game, and opens the in-game menu
F12 - Takes a screenshot (saved in the game directory on Windows,
otherwise in the ~/.xmoto directory)
Command-line Options
====================
X-Moto supports a range of options you can specify on the command
line when starting the program:
-res WIDTHxHEIGHT This forces X-Moto to use a resolution of
WIDTHxHEIGHT. Note that this resolution must be
supported by your video card and monitor if -res
isn't combined with -win, in which case you can
specify any weird resolution you'd like.
Note that this option overrides the settings you
have specified inside the game.
-bpp BITS Sets the display bits per pixel to BITS. When
running in windowed mode this option has no
effect at all. If BITS is 0 the current display
setting is used.
Like with -res, this option overrides the
in-game setting.
-fs Forces the game to run in fullscreen mode
regardless of the setting specified inside the
game.
-win Like -fs, but forces windowed mode instead.
-q Enables quiet mode, in which no messages is
written in the log or to the console. This
overrides the -v option.
-v Enables verbose mode.
-noexts Disables the use of OpenGL extensions. Try this
option if you experience weird graphical errors
inside the game. Expect the use of this option to
lower the framerate a bit, especially when
playing large levels.
-level ID Jumps directly into a specific level identified
by ID. Built-in levels are identified by their
number, i.e. use -level 16 to play level #16.
External levels are identified by their IDs.
-replay NAME Plays the given stored replay. NAME is the name
of the replay file in the Replays/ sub-directory,
with or without the .rpl extension.
-profile NAME Play the game using the given player profile.
This is useful when combined with the -level
option.
-listlevels Outputs a list of all available levels, and then
quits. Useful if you want to use -level to jump
right into a level, but you don't want to go into
the game to see what the level IDs are.
-listreplays Like -listlevels, but with replays instead.
-timedemo Disables framerate throttling, i.e. the game will
run at maximum framerate.
-fps This will display the current framerate in the
upper left corner of the screen.
-ugly Enables "ugly" mode. This will increase the game's
framerate significantly, but it will also make
the graphics look very ugly - most things inside
the game will be drawn with lines, the rider for
instance being a simple stick figure.
This option is very useful if your system doesn't
have a proper OpenGL-capable video card (like
for instance if you have a laptop with on-board
video card).
If you have the right amount of CPU power, it
should even be possible to run X-Moto in OpenGL
software emulation mode (MesaGL on linux, Windows'
OpenGL fallback driver, etc).
-benchmark When combined with -timedemo and -replay, the game
will simply run the replay as fast as possible,
write the average framerate to stdout, and then
quit.
Note that this list is not complete, several obscure ones have been
left out. This is mostly due to not all of them being completely
implemented and workable.
Letting X-Moto Access The Web
=============================
Alpha version 0.1.14 of X-Moto comes with a new feature that allows
the game to connect to the web and download high-scores (world
records) and extra levels.
The first time you run X-Moto you'll be asked about whether you want
to allow the game to access your Internet connection; if you don't
have one, simply click "No". Then you'll be asked to specify your
proxy settings. X-Moto supports HTTP proxies, SOCKS4 proxies, and
SOCKS5 proxies. If you're behind a firewall, you most likely need to
specify a proxy; ask your network administrator for guidance if
you're in doubt.
Replays
=======
As of alpha version 0.1.8, X-Moto supports recording and playback of
replays. These are always stored in the Replays/ directory, which on
Windows is located in the game installation directory, and on
Linux-like systems is located in the .xmoto/ in the user directory.
One should be aware that replays can take up quite a large amount of
harddisk space - on average you can expect a single minute of replay
to equal around 50 kilobytes. If you want to disable recording of
replays, you can set the 'StoreReplays' variable to 'false' in
config.dat, which on Windows is located in the game directory, and
on Linux is located in .xmoto/.
Other things to be aware of regarding X-Moto replays:
- Due to the way they are stored, they seem a bit less smooth
than the actual game.
- If you want to exchange replays with other people, you should
keep in mind that the replays are already automatically
compressed, so doing it again will probably just add extra
overhead to the file size.
- Replay can't be recorded if the level make use of scripting.
- Don't expect exchange of replays between computers with
different endianness, i.e. X-Moto on PPC (Mac, etc) won't be
able to run replays crated by X-Moto on x86 (Intel, etc). This
will probably be fixed in the future.
- No fancy dirt particles from rear wheel spinning.
Advanced Configuration Options
==============================
Options are saved in a file called config.dat. On Windows the file is
saved in the game directory, while on Linux it is saved in ~/.xmoto.
It is a plain XML text file, so it should be straight-forward to modify
in any text editor. In addition to the options accessible from inside
the game, there's a couple more, which is not interesting enough to
get included in the menus:
WebHighscoresURL The URL from which public high-scores should be
downloaded. Please consult the high-scores website
for information about how this is used to make
your own "private" high-score lists.
WebLevelsURL Place on the web to look for extra levels.
DefaultProfile Specifies which player profile should be active
when the game starts.
ScreenshotFormat The format in which screenshots should be saved
in. Can be either jpg or png.
NotifyAtInit If true, a message about the game release is
shown at startup. Automatically set to false
afterwards.
StoreReplays If true, replays will be automatically recorded
during the game. When the player dies or
finishes the level, he can then choose to save
the replay. If set to false, no replay saving
will be possible.
Recording replays have a theoretical impact on
the framerate of the game, but practically you
shouldn't be able to notice anything.
ReplayFrameRate Specifies the framerate at which replays will
be recorded at. The higher it is, the smoother
the replay will seem to be, but it will also
cause the replay file to be much larger. Never
set this option to higher values than 50, as it
could cause unforeseen consequenses.
The default value of 25 seems to be a good
compromise between smoothness and file size.
CompressReplays If true, replays will be compressed with zlib.
This is the default behaviour. Set this to false
if you experience replay saving to take too long.
LevelCache Levels are cached in the LCache/ directory for
faster loading. If this variable is set to false,
the feature will be disabled.
You'll also find a number of obscure controller configuration
options in config.dat, but I'll leave them undocumented as the plan
is they're going to be modifiable from inside the game.
License
=======
The game and its source code is released under the terms of the GNU
General Public License. See COPYING for details.
Some of the source code origining from various third parties is not
released under the same license. Please consult the appropriate
license material for more information.
Generally you're free to copy and reproduce both X-Moto and the
source code in any way you like, even to modify the source and release
your own version of the game, as long as you comply with the
above mentioned licenses.
Authors
=======
See the in-game credits under "Help".
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