2 .\" Copyright (c) 2009, Charles McGarvey
3 .\" All rights reserved.
5 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
6 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
8 .\" * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
9 .\" this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
10 .\" * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
11 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
12 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
14 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS
15 .\" IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
16 .\" TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
17 .\" PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR
18 .\" CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
19 .\" EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
20 .\" PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
21 .\" PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
22 .\" LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
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27 .TH YOINK 6 "July 24, 2009"
29 Yoink \- An alien-smashing action game.
31 .B yoink [-h|--help] [-v|--version] [OPTION=VALUE]...
35 Leap tall buildings! Crush stupid robots beneath your feet! Wield your
36 extra-terrestrial powers in the defence of humanity, and send those alien
37 invaders back from whence they came! This is Yoink.
39 You play the part of a flying alien heroine who must defend her home on Earth
40 from other airborne alien invaders. The game draws inspiration from classic
41 arcade games like Joust, Bombjack, Rampage, and Defender--simple, fast-moving
42 action. Basic arguments include:
45 display this help and exit
48 output version information and exit
52 To attack, you must dive on the enemy at high speed. If you're going too
53 slowly, you'll just drift harmlessly by. Diving from above gives different
54 results from swooping in and hitting them from the side. If you're too close to
55 attack, try to build up speed by running away and bouncing off a nearby
58 By charging your special alien powers, you can throw fireballs. The orange bar
59 at the top of the screen represents your power level--at maximum, you can
60 destroy almost anything. Aiming can be tricky, but with a little practice it's
61 quite easy to launch them in the right direction. Try doing a little swoop or
62 circle in the air to line yourself up before releasing your fireball.
64 The heroine has limited energy, measured by the blue bar at the top of the
65 screen. When it runs out, it's game over! She can regain lost energy by
66 picking up bonuses dropped by enemies.
68 To complete the current attack wave, you must destroy all the enemies. Hunt
69 around, especially in the sky, if you can't find the last few.
73 There are a plethora of options available for tweaking various aspects of the
74 game. All options can be set either from a configuration file or by passing
75 them as arguments. Some of the more common options can be set from within the
80 configuration file ("yoinkrc") consists of key-value pairs organized in a
81 logical hierarchy. The format of the file is human-readable, so you can get in
82 there with your favorite text editor if you like to work under the hood.
84 looks for configuration files and loads them in this order, with the options in
85 prior configuration files taking precedence over the same options if they exist
86 in multiple configuration files:
89 This is an optional environment variable.
92 This is a specific user's configuration file.
95 This is the system-wide configuration file.
98 This is the base configuration file which should be considered read-only. Look
99 to this file as an example of the format used for configuration files.
101 Options that are passed as arguments take precedence over options loaded from
102 the configuration file(s). This mechanism is good for running the game with a
103 temporary setting which you do not intend to retain. Keep in mind that if you
104 edit and save options in-game, any options you have passed as arguments during
105 the invocation of the game will be saved to the
107 configuration file. You may have to go into that file and remove any options
108 you didn't intend to set. When passing options as arguments, you must use the
109 fully qualified name of the option if it exists in a subgroup. For example:
112 yoink video.fullscreen=true
115 to true. This will run the game in full-screen mode.
117 yoink video.maxfps=60
120 to 60. This will cap the display rate at 60Hz.
122 You can also set options with array values. Arrays can be passed on the command
123 line by surrounding all the parts with square brackets and separating each part
124 by a comma. For example:
126 yoink video.mode=[1024,768]
129 to an array with numbers 1024 and 768. The video size will be 1024x768.
131 Here is a list of some of the options available:
134 The amount of time in seconds between each update of the physics state. A value
135 of 0.01 or lower is ideal for accurate physics approximations. Values that are
136 much higher cause the CPU to do less work, but accuracy will suffer. Errors
137 could be introduced in the game with extremely high values.
140 The level of detail. Possible values are high, medium, and low. This effects
141 the number of objects drawn to the screen. A high level of detail will draw
142 everything but could cause poor frame rates if the graphics driver can't keep up
143 with the load. Lower levels will omit certain details which aren't crucial for
144 playing the game with the benefit of higher frame rates. See the Notes for more
145 ways to get good performance.
148 Takes a boolean (true or false). If true, the cursor pointer will be "stuck"
149 within the area of the window, and many key combinations which would otherwise
150 be handled by the window manager will instead be dropped. This is a low-level
151 option of limited usefulness.
153 .B video.colorbuffers
154 This takes an array of four number values which represent the number of bits to
155 use for red, green, blue, and the alpha channel. This is a low-level option of
156 limited usefulness. The default value is almost always preferable.
159 This option effects the visibility of the cursor while it is "hovering" over the
160 window. If the value is true, the cursor will be visible. Otherwise, the
161 cursor will be hidden.
163 .B video.doublebuffer
164 If true, double-buffering will be used to render animations with minimal
165 distortions. Otherwise, a single buffer will be used. The recommended value is
169 If true, the window will capture the display and render the game in full screen
170 splendor. A value of false means the game will run in a window.
173 The maximum number of frames to be drawn per second. A value of 50 is pretty
174 good. If your computer is pretty old, can get away with decreasing this value
175 and still have reasonably smooth animation. You can set this to a very high
176 number to effectively render as many frames as is possible, but the actual rate
177 could be limited by vertical display synchronization, depending on the X11
178 driver and settings used. You should not set this option higher than the point
179 where the vertical synchronization effectively limits the draw rate or else the
180 game may not be able to update the physics on schedule which could actually
181 significantly lower the quality of the animation.
184 The resolution or size of the window. The value is an array with three number
185 elements representing the width, height, and bits per pixel that make up the
186 video mode. A typical value is [800,600] for a size of 800x600 pixels with
187 millions of colors (the third number is optional).
189 .B video.multisamplebuffers
190 The number of multisample buffers used.
192 .B video.multisamplesamples
193 The number of multisample samples used.
196 If true, the current number of frames being draw per second will be printed to
197 the console. This is usually off by default, but you can set this to true if
198 you're interested in the draw rate you're actually getting.
201 If true, the window will be resizable by the window manager. This option is
202 meaningless if the game is drawing to the full screen.
205 If true, drawing will take place at a time which will minimize distortion caused
206 by the vertical refreshing of displays. The recommended value is true.
211 responds to some variables in the environment:
214 If set to a path of a valid directory (presumably a user's home directory),
216 will load options from the configuration file at $HOME/.yoinkrc, if it exists.
217 Saving options within the game will cause this file to be over-written with the
222 uses this variable to guess the user's nickname, for a high score entry or
226 If set to a path of a valid configuration file,
228 will load the options from that file, and those options will take precedence
229 over options loaded from other configuration files. Any in-game saving will
230 cause this file to be over-written by the new options rather than the file at
234 If set to a path of a valid directory,
236 will look in this directory first when it is loading game assets. Set this
237 variable if you move the game's assets to another directory or want to load your
242 Yoink may or may not be playable with acceptable frame rates without a hardware
243 accelerated OpenGL driver installed and working, depending on how fast your CPU
244 is. Yoink is really not all that heavy on graphics, but it doesn't take much to
245 overload a software implementation. If you're stuck without hardware
246 acceleration, there are some things you can do to get better frame rates:
248 1. Decrease the resolution with the
250 option. Due to the nature of the graphics in the game, you can go as low as
251 320x240 and not notice a large reduction in image quality. You can take
252 advantage of this by decreasing the resolution and running full-screen (so the
253 window is not so itty bitty on your monitor). This will help out a lot. Try
256 yoink video.mode=[320,240] video.fullscreen=true
258 2. Decrease the level of detail with the
262 On the other hand, if you already get high frame rates, you may also want to cap
263 the rate so that your computer doesn't do more work than it really needs to.
264 This may be useful when you run
266 on your production server at work. You can get reasonably smooth animation at
267 around 30fps, but you can probably tell a difference between that and a higher
268 rate like 50fps. The latter will look noticeably smoother and nice, while the
269 former is just "acceptable." See the
275 No sound yet. The original game never had sound, but it would probably be a
278 The pixelated graphics are actually intentional. It adds to the charm of the
279 game, don't you think?
281 Send bug reports, patches, and love notes to:
283 Charles McGarvey <onefriedrice@brokenzipper.com>
286 Neil Carter was the original creator of Yoink, his winning entry in the
287 uDevGames 2003 Mac game development contest. Charles McGarvey rewrote the game
288 with SDL and is the current maintainer.
projects / chaz / yoink / blob