NAME

xbubble - an X Window based puzzle bubble clone

SYNOPSIS

xbubble [OPTION]

DESCRIPTION

XBubble is a Puzzle Bubble (PB) / Bust-A-Move (BAM) clone for Unix/X11 platforms. It was written from scratch with no real intent to exactly reproduce the original game.

OPTIONS

-d DISPLAY: Set X display to DISPLAY.
-s <scale>: Set game window size (between 5 and 100). The game window size is normally automatically scaled to your screen size. This option is useful to reduce load on slow/loaded systems. See also the -f option.
-f <framerate>: Adjust frame rate (in frames per second). Usual values are 100 (default), 50, 33, 25, etc. The actual frame rate may be different from the one you specified, depending on system timer resolution. You can use this option to reduce load on slow/loaded systems (e.g. if sprite animation is jerky). See also the -s option.
-r <resource path>: Tell XBubble to look for its graphics files, fonts, etc. in directory <resourcepath>.
-t <theme name>: Use the given theme (possible values are: plain, frozen, fancy).

PLAYING

The goal is to clear all bubbles from your board and avoid bubbles dropping below the line at the bottom of the screen. You can rotate and fire a canon that launches colored bubbles. Bubbles bounce against the walls until they get stuck to another bubble. If you get three or more adjacent bubbles of the same color they all explode, while any bubble left hanging free falls down.

In single player mode, the ceiling goes down every 12 launches so that you must clear the board before the ceiling touches the ground.

In multi-player mode, the ceiling does not move but a fresh row of bubbles is added on top of the board while all bubbles are lowered by one row. Additionally, each time you explode three or more bubbles, all extra bubbles are sent (with random colors) to your opponent, as well all falling bubbles. You win the round when your opponent loses (has bubbles dropping across the bottom line).

After a few seconds delay, your canon launches its bubble anyway. You can tune this delay when selecting your handicap. The higher the handicap, the shorter the delay.