Your world has been infested by
an aggressive army of space critters. Overrun and
unprepared, your government was unable to defend
its precious resources. As a last effort to
recapture some of the 'goodies', you have been
placed into a tiny spacecraft and sent after them. Critical Mass (aka
Critter) is a shoot'em up (smup) similar to Galaxian. The basic idea is simple: you move your ship back and forth at the bottom of the screen, shooting up, while bad guys fly around and shoot at you.
Running:
If you haven't already done so, just run Critter! A
config file will be created the first time you exit the game.
Mac OS X
The config file is called config.txt and will be
created in your $(HOME)/.critter/ directory.
Double
clicking on GoConfigDirectory.command will automatically open the
config directory in the Finder. You can then open the config.txt
file in your favorite text editor.
LinuxThe config file is called config.txt and will be
created in your $(HOME)/.critter/ directory.
A note about sound in RedHat and FedoraCore: If you find sound to be
lagging, start Critter with the SDL_AUDIODRIVER set to "alsa" or "dma"
(for bourne shell: "export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa"). Unfortunately, some
distributions ship with a patched SDL library that is not game
friendly. Note the the binary zip package from SourceForge contains all
the original non-patched libraries.
Windows
The config file is called config.txt
and will be created in the directory where Critter is started.
You
can edit the config.txt file to change resolution,
fullscreen mode, etc. Or you can specify it on the command line. When
Critter exits it will write the current configuration to the config
file. Many of the settings can also be changed within the game (See
Config menu).
Video Resolution:You can select the most
common video resolutions via the in-game config
menu. It is possible to run Critter at any resolution by editing the
config.txt file. By default the game will reject resolutions that that
don't have
an aspect ration of 4/3 e.g. widescreen displays. Non 4/3 resolutions
can be enabled in the config menu. The downside is that things may look
a little
stretched. In the latest version, the game will automatically add all
resolutions supported by SDL (OpenGL/fullscreen). To add a new
resolution, simply add it to the end of the line
containing "set resolutions =
1600x1200,1280x960,1152x864,1024x768,800x600,640x480,512x384". After
saving the file and restarting Critter, the new resolution will be
available in the in-game config menu. Be careful not to switch to a resolution you monitor does not support! You have been warned.
Keyboard/Mouse Controls:
The default action bindings are:
PrimaryFire
|
SPACE
|
Fire!
|
PrimaryFire
|
MOUSEBUTTON1
|
Fire!
|
| SecondaryFire |
LALT
|
Fire! |
SecondaryFire
|
MOUSEBUTTON2
|
Fire!
|
| TertiaryFire |
LCTRL
|
Fire or Bark! |
TertiaryFire
|
MOUSEBUTTON3
|
Fire or Bark!
|
Motion
|
MOTION
|
Move via Mouse
|
MotionUp
|
UP
|
Move up
|
MotionRight
|
RIGHT
|
Move right
|
Confirm
|
RETURN
|
Confirm selection
|
EscapeAction
|
ESCAPE
|
Cancel selection
|
CritterBoard
|
TAB
|
Show/Hide CritterBoard
|
Snapshot
|
F12
|
Take snapshow (snapNN.png)
|
PauseGame
|
p
|
Pause game
|
ChangeContext
|
c
|
Toggle locked-in / Mouse-look style
(for developer)
|
Go to http://criticalmass.sourceforge.net/
for the latest news, email info, etc.
Have fun,
Frank (crittermail2005 at telus dot net).
|