inertia - puzzle game

NAME

       inertia - puzzle game

SYNOPSIS

       inertia  [--generate  n]  [--print  wxh  [--with-solutions] [--scale n]
       [--colour]] [game-parameters|game-ID|random-seed]

       inertia --version

DESCRIPTION

       You are a small green ball sitting in a grid full  of  obstacles.  Your
       aim is to collect all the gems without running into any mines.

       You can move the ball in any orthogonal or diagonal direction. Once the
       ball starts moving, it will continue until something stops it.  A  wall
       directly  in  its path will stop it (but if it is moving diagonally, it
       will move through a  diagonal  gap  between  two  other  walls  without
stopsâ; when the ball moves on to a stop, it will stop moving no matter what direction it was going in. Gems do not stop the ball; it picks them up and keeps on going.
       stopping).  Also,  some  of the squares are â.PP Running into a mine is
       fatal. Even if you picked up the last gem in the same move  which  then
       hit a mine, the game will count you as dead rather than victorious.

       This  game  was  originally  implemented  for  Windows  by Ben Olmstead
       (http://xn13.com/), who was kind enough to release his source  code  on
       request so that it could be re-implemented for this collection.

Inertia controls

       You  can move the ball in any of the eight directions using the numeric
       keypad. Alternatively, if you click the left mouse button on the  grid,
       the  ball  will  begin  a  move  in  the general direction of where you
       clicked.
       If you use the â.PP All the actions described below are also available.
       In  particular, if you do run into a mine and die, you can use the Undo
       function and resume playing from before the fatal move. The  game  will
       keep track of the number of times you have done this.

Inertia parameters

       These  parameters  are  available from the â.IP "Width, Height" Size of
       grid in squares.

Common actions

       These actions are all available from the â.PP (On Mac OS X, to  conform
       with  local user interface standards, these actions are situated on the
       â.IP "New game (âStarts a new game, with a random initial state.

       Restart game
              Resets the current game to  its  initial  state.  (This  can  be
              undone.)

       Load   Loads a saved game from a file on disk.

       Save   Saves the current state of your game to a file on disk.

              The  Load  and Save operations preserve your entire game history
              (so you can save, reload, and still Undo and Redo things you had
              done before saving).

       Print  Where  supported (currently only on Windows), brings up a dialog
              allowing you to print an arbitrary number  of  puzzles  randomly
              generated  from the current parameters, optionally including the
              current puzzle. (Only for puzzles which make sense to print,  of
 it’s hard to think of a sensible printable representation of Fifteen!)
              course  â.IP  "Undo  (âUndoes a single move. (You can undo moves
              back to the start of the session.)

       Râ, Ctrl+âRâ)                                                      Redo
       (â.
              Redoes a previously undone move.

       Copy   Copies  the  current state of your game to the clipboard in text
              format, so that you can paste it into (say) an e-mail client  or
              a  web  message board if you’re discussing the game with someone
              else. (Not all games support this feature.)

       Solve  Transforms the puzzle instantly into its solved state. For  some
              games  (Cube) this feature is not supported at all because it is
              of no particular use. For other games  (such  as  Pattern),  the
              solved  state  can be used to give you information, if you can’t
              see how a solution can exist at all or you want  to  know  where
              you  made  a  mistake.  For still other games (such as Sixteen),
              automatic solution tells you nothing about how  to  get  to  the
              solution,  but it does provide a useful way to get there quickly
              so  that  you  can   experiment   with   set-piece   moves   and
              transformations.

              Some  games  (such as Solo) are capable of solving a game ID you
              have typed in from elsewhere. Other games (such  as  Rectangles)
              cannot  solve  a  game  ID they didn’t invent themself, but when
              they did invent the game ID  they  know  what  the  solution  is
              already.  Still  other  games  (Pattern) can solve some external
              game IDs, but only if they aren’t too difficult.
              The â.RE

              Qâ,
              Ctrl+âQâ)
              Quit (â.
                     Closes the application entirely.

Specifying games with the game ID

There are two ways to save a game specification out of a puzzle and
recreate it later, or recreate it in somebody else’s copy of the same
puzzle.
The â.PP You can enter either of these pieces of text back into the
program (via the same â.PP The difference between the two forms is that
a descriptive game ID is a literal description of the initial state of
the game, whereas a random seed is just a piece of arbitrary text which
was provided as input to the random number generator used to create the
puzzle. This means that:

â.
Descriptive game IDs tend to be longer in many puzzles (although
some, such as Cube (cube(6)), only need very short
descriptions). So a random seed is often a quicker way to note
down the puzzle you’re currently playing, or to tell it to
somebody else so they can play the same one as you.

â.
Any text at all is a valid random seed. The automatically
generated ones are fifteen-digit numbers, but anything will do;
you can type in your full name, or a word you just made up, and
a valid puzzle will be generated from it. This provides a way
for two or more people to race to complete the same puzzle: you
think of a random seed, then everybody types it in at the same
time, and nobody has an advantage due to having seen the
generated puzzle before anybody else.

â.
It is often possible to convert puzzles from other sources (such
"
as â.IP "âRandom seeds are not guaranteed to produce the same
result if you use them with a different version of the puzzle
program. This is because the generation algorithm might have
been improved or modified in later versions of the code, and
will therefore produce a different result when given the same
sequence of random numbers. Use a descriptive game ID if you
aren’t sure that it will be used on the same version of the
program as yours.
(Use the â.RE

A descriptive game ID starts with a piece of text which encodes
the parameters of the current game (such as grid size). Then
there is a colon, and after that is the description of the
game’s initial state. A random seed starts with a similar string
of parameters, but then it contains a hash sign followed by
arbitrary data.

If you enter a descriptive game ID, the program will not be able
to show you the random seed which generated it, since it wasn’t
generated from a random seed. If you enter a random seed,
however, the program will be able to show you the descriptive
game ID derived from that random seed.

Note that the game parameter strings are not always identical
between the two forms. For some games, there will be parameter
data provided with the random seed which is not included in the
descriptive game ID. This is because that parameter information
is only relevant when generating puzzle grids, and is not
important when playing them. Thus, for example, the difficulty
level in Solo (solo(6)) is not mentioned in the descriptive game
ID.

These additional parameters are also not set permanently if you
type in a game ID. For example, suppose you have Solo set to
â.SH "The â.PP The â.PP The â.SH "Specifying game parameters on
the command line"

(This section does not apply to the Mac OS X version.)

The games in this collection deliberately do not ever save
information on to the computer they run on: they have no high
score tables and no saved preferences. (This is because I expect
at least some people to play them at work, and those people will
probably appreciate leaving as little evidence as possible!)

However, if you do want to arrange for one of these games to
default to a particular set of parameters, you can specify them
on the command line.

The easiest way to do this is to set up the parameters you want
using the â.PP If you run the game with just that parameter text
on the command line, it will start up with the settings you
specified.

Octahedronâ from the âTypeâ menu, and then go to the game ID selection, you will see a string of the form âo2x2#338686542711620â. Take only the part before the hash (âo2x2â), and start Cube with that text on the command line: âcube o2x2â.
For example: if you run Cube (see cube(6)), select â.PP If you
copy the entire game ID on to the command line, the game will
start up in the specific game that was described. This is
occasionally a more convenient way to start a particular game ID
than by pasting it into the game ID selection box.
(You could also retrieve the encoded game parameters using the
â.SH "Unix command-line options"

(This section only applies to the Unix port.)

In addition to being able to specify game parameters on the
command line (see above), there are various other options:

--game

--load These options respectively determine whether the command-
line argument is treated as specifying game parameters or
a save file to load. Only one should be specified. If
neither of these options is specified, a guess is made
based on the format of the argument.

--generate n
If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being
displayed, a number of descriptive game IDs will be
invented and printed on standard output. This is useful
for gaining access to the game generation algorithms
without necessarily using the frontend.

If game parameters are specified on the command-line,
they will be used to generate the game IDs; otherwise a
default set of parameters will be used.

The most common use of this option is in conjunction with
--print, in which case its behaviour is slightly
different; see below.

--print wxh
If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being
displayed, a printed representation of one or more
unsolved puzzles is sent to standard output, in
PostScript format.

On each page of puzzles, there will be w across and h
down. If there are more puzzles than wÃh, more than one
page will be printed.

If --generate has also been specified, the invented game
IDs will be used to generate the printed output.
Otherwise, a list of game IDs is expected on standard
input (which can be descriptive or random seeds; see
above), in the same format produced by --generate.

For example:

net --generate 12 --print 2x3 7x7w | lpr

will generate two pages of printed Net puzzles (each of
which will have a 7Ã7 wrapping grid), and pipe the output
to the lpr command, which on many systems will send them
to an actual printer.

There are various other options which affect printing;
see below.

--save file-prefix [ --save-suffix file-suffix ]
If this option is specified, instead of a puzzle being
displayed, saved-game files for one or more unsolved
puzzles are written to files constructed from the
supplied prefix and/or suffix.

For example:

net --generate 12 --save game --save-suffix .sav

will generate twelve Net saved-game files with the names
game0.sav to game11.sav.

--version
Prints version information about the game, and then
quits.

The following options are only meaningful if --print is also
specified:

--with-solutions
The set of pages filled with unsolved puzzles will be
followed by the solutions to those puzzles.

--scale n
Adjusts how big each puzzle is when printed. Larger
numbers make puzzles bigger; the default is 1.0.

--colour
Puzzles will be printed in colour, rather than in black
and white (if supported by the puzzle).