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Okay, I guess all of you know how to play breakout basically. Ball bounces around -->
paddle keeps ball in game -> all bricks destroyed --> next level ;-D The chosen difficulty level (see Options) has some influence on the size of the paddle, the speed of balls and the score gained.
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| A destroyed brick may release a bonus or malus which will move down slowly. It's used as soon as it is collected by paddle. | |||
| Name | Time (in sec) | Picture | Description |
| Extra Score | - | | Gives you the score written on it. |
| End Of The Rainbow | 20 | | If you destroy a brick with no bonus assigned it will release 1000 points extra score! |
| Expand Paddle | - | | Expands your paddle about one tile (the maxium size depends on the chosen difficulty level). |
| Extra Life | - | | Gives you one extra life (paddle). |
| Sticky Paddle | 20 | | Balls touching the paddle will keep attached until you press fire. |
| Energy Balls | 10 | | Balls won't be reflected at a brick but go directly through it. |
| Extra Ball | - | | Creates a new ball. |
| Bonus floor | 20 | | Closes the screen so no balls can get lost. |
| Weapon | 10 | | Adds a weapon to the paddle. |
| Speed Down | 20 | | Deccelerates all balls to mimum speed. |
| Joker | - | | Collects all bonus on screen instantly and destroys all malus. Doubles score and time of the collected bonus! |
| Explosive Balls | 10 | | When hitting a brick balls will cause an explosion destroying all surounding bricks. |
| Bonus Magnet | 20 | | While this bonus is active the paddle will attract other bonuses. |
| Reset | - | | All active bonuses and maluses will be reset. |
| Time-Add | - | | All active bonuses and maluses will last seven seconds longer. |
| Random Extra | - | | Gives you any of the listed extras. |
| Speed Up | 20 | | Accelerates all balls to maximum speed. |
| Frozen Paddle | 1 | | Freezes the paddle (no movement possible). |
| Shrink Paddle | - | | Shrinks your paddle about one paddle tile (18 pixels). |
| Lights Out! | 20 | | Total darkness. All you see is a shade of paddle, balls and extras. |
| Chaos | 20 | | Balls are reflected randomly at bricks. (but not at paddle) |
| Ghostly Paddle | 20 | | Paddle disappears when not moving and won't reflect any balls then. (nor does it collect bonuses) |
| Malus Magnet | 20 | | While this malus is active the paddle will attract other maluses. |
| Weak Balls | 20 | | With this malus active there is a 40% chance that a ball won't damage a brick. |
| Name | Picture | Description |
| Shielded Brick |  | This brick is indestructible even for energy balls. |
| Metal Brick |  | This wall is indestructible except for energy balls. |
| Chaotic Brick |  | Similiar to the Chaos Malus the ball is reflected randomly at such a brick. |
| Strong Brick |  | These walls take up to three shots before destruction and grow darker with every hit. NOTE: to this series belongs a forth brick which is invisbile. |
| Regenerating Brick |  | This brick will regenerate one point durability within four seconds if not hit again. |
| Explosive Brick |  | This bricks destroys its neighbors on destruction. |
| Growing Brick |  | If this brick is destroyed it creates up to 8 new bricks. |
| There are some predefined keys for LBreakout: | |
| h or F1 | Display quick help. |
| Escape | Quit LBreakout (after confirmation). |
| r | Restart level. If more than player the next one will get his chancebefore this player may play the restarted level! |
| w | Warp to next level after required percentage of bricks was cleared. (can be modified in menu Advanced Options) |
| p | Pause game. |
| f | Switch Fullscreen and Windowed mode. |
| a | Change animation level (off/low/high). |
| s | Turn on/off sound. |
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You can play LBreakout2 against another human via network. Therefore you'll have
to connect to a server or run a server and have your friends connected. Start A Server After you started the program lbreakout2server with any of the following options
Connect To A Server There are no permanent internet servers at the moment so you'll have to spread the word to your friends if you run a server. When you know the IP and port you can connect by entering this information in the submenu Network Game. The Chatroom After you successfully connected to the server you'll find yourself in a chatroom. Type '/help' for a list of useful commands. To the right-hand side you'll see three lists. The first contains the players in this chat channel (see the lower left-hand side for the channels), the second contains the levelsets you have available (sets with an ~ in front are located in your home directory) and the third box contains the settings for a network game. All multiplayer levelsets start with an MP_ to separate them from normal levelsets and each one can contain a mix of two level types. Deathmatch: levels contain no bricks and the goal is to score points against your opponent by making him loose balls while you try to keep'em all at your side. All balls lost can be instantly fired back to game by the one you lost them! Normal: These levels contain bricks and such a level is finished when all bricks are cleared. The one who gained more score wins the round. If you loose a ball you'll loose 10% of your score and if your opponent hits you with the gun (s)he'll drain 1000 points from you, so beware. Make A Challenge After you selected another user, a levelset and modified these options to your likings
The Duel After (s)he accepted your challenge the game starts. Each player has to send a ready (click when reading Get Ready!) before a round starts. After all rounds where played some statistics are shown and you'll get back to the chatroom. While you're playing you can contact your opponent by pressing p. This will pause the game and you'll enter a private chat. Pressing Escape will bring back the action. You can check each player's wins to the right-hand side (next to the small trophy) and the frags or score for the current level to the right-hand side. New Playing Grounds You can build new levelsets combining deathmatch and normal ones which will be available for network games if the name begins with an MP_. The user you play with do not need the data in advance as each level is send when getting ready. However, if (s)he likes the levelset you can send it to him/her by the '/transfer' command. |
| Options in menu Local Game: | |
| Start Game | Start non-networked game with up to four alternating players and the specified options. |
| Levelset | This is the levelset you actually want to play. LBreakout parses the installation path and ~/.lbreakout/levels for valid levelsets. Levelsets found in the home directory have an '~' in front of the actual name. |
| Difficulty | Difficulty is either easy, medium or hard. See the Basics for more info. |
| Players | How many players? Four at maximum. |
| 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th | Names of the players. |
| Options in menu Network Game: | |
| Server | The IP of the remote computer you want to connect to. Note: If you connect to localhost you won't be able to challenge other players so use the IP of your computer instead. |
| Port | The port at which the LBreakout2 server is running at the remote system. |
| Name | This will be your nickname while you are online. |
| Connect | Connect to the server. |
| Options in menu Controls: | |
| Left, Right, Turbo | Keys for paddle movement. Turbo doubles the speed while pressed. |
| Left Fire, Right Fire | Fire the ball to either of these directions. |
| Return | When Return Balls in Advanced Options is not Auto you'll return balls by pressing this key. |
| Grab Mouse | Keep mouse in window. Useful for windowed mode. Grab is turned off when confirming something or having a break. |
| Relative Motion | Invert and motion modifier to only work for this option enabled. But note: enabling this option already slows down the mouse so you'll have to play around with the motion modifier to fit your needs. |
| Motion Modifier | Slows down or speeds up mouse motion. |
| Invert Motion | Invert paddle motion. |
| Options in menu Graphics: | |
| Animations | Animation level. Using no or low animations will increase frame rate a lot. |
| Shadow | Shadow of frame, bricks, balls, bonus and paddle. |
| Bonus Info | Display time left for active bonuses at the right side of the screen. |
| Display | Either Fullscreen or Window. Is switched directly after changing this option. |
| Frame Rate | Either 100 FPS or Unlimited. Unlimited is recommended for best performance, but if you got any jobs running you should limit the frame rate to prevent LBreakout from consuming 100% CPU time. |
| Select Theme | Here you may select another theme for LBreakout2. |
| Options in menu Audio: | |
| Sound | Enable/disable sound. |
| Speech | Enable speech samples (might get on your nerves so I added this option). |
| Volume | Sound volume between 1-8. |
| Options in menu Advanced Options: | |
| Convex Paddle | If this options is enabled the paddle's surface is treated as convex which simplifies aiming a lot. If this option is disabled the original paddle physics are used. Influencing the ball's direction does only work with the paddle's hemisphere at each end and friction by paddle movement. Very difficult. |
| Balls | Either Below Bonuses or Above Bonuses. Below Bonuses is default but with lots of bonuses on screen balls may be hard to spot so switch to Above Bonuses then. |
| Key Speed | This is the speed with which the paddle moves when using keyboard for input. |
| Return Balls | If a ball does not damage a brick within ten seconds it is allowed to return to the paddle. If this option is set to Auto it will automatically return and if this option is set to By Click you'll have to press the middle mouse button or the 'back'-key (default is Backspace). |
| Use Hints | Enables/disables the quick hint system. |
| Warp Limit | You may warp to the next level after you cleared this percentage of bricks in the current level. |
| Options in menu Editor: | |
| Set | The set file in your config directory '~/.lbreakout2/levels' you want to edit or delete. If you select '<CREATE SET>' and hit edit you'll be asked for a set name and then this set will be created. |
| Edit Set | Edit (or create) this set. |
| Delete Set | Delete this set. |
| All files you edit are saved to ~/.lbreakout2/levels. This '~' you see in front of the name when choosing levelset for playing is not part of the file name but added afterwards to separate the files in the installation path from the files in the config path (these you may edit). |
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Actions like quit, save, load, clear, add, insert, remove require a confirmation for safety.
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| Very simple. Select a brick or a bonus by left-click (right-click into the section to switch between the brick and the bonus set) from the bottom of the screen (red-yellow selection frame) go to the editable part and left-click. Right click will remove a brick (any brick and its bonus if a brick's selected) or bonus (any bonus without touching the brick if bonus selected). You may move the mouse while having left or right buttom pressed. To parse/add/remove any levels or save/load this set use the buttons as explained above. You may use the cursor keys, too (UP - first level, RIGHT - next level, LEFT - previous level). Pressing ESCAPE leaves the editor after confirmation. |
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If you want to run LBreakout2 with other graphics and sounds you can create a theme which allows you to modify all game graphics and sounds. The use of new backgrounds is also allowed. The following list contains all editable graphics and sounds. What you have to do to edit them is explained below. Editable graphics:
Editable sounds:
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