Orb

INSTRUCTIONS

This is Orb, a clone of Sokoban with some extra features.
Copyright 1999 by Mario Becroft.

License: this program is freeware and, as such, may be distributed freely 
provided that the original archive is distributed complete and in 
unmodified form. This program may not, however, be distributed as part of 
or together with any product that is being sold on a commercial basis 
without the permission of the author. 


ABOUT THE GAME

If you have played Sokoban then you will know how to play this game. The 
map file supplied with Orb is, in fact, a duplicate of the original Sokoban 
maps.

For those unfortunate enough never to have heard of the game, here is an 
explanation of the rules.

The player controls a character which moves about a grid-shaped map by one 
square at a time. The arrow keys are used to navigate the player's 
character around the map. The map includes walls which cannot be moved past.

Also scattered around the grid are boxes/jewels which must be moved onto 
specified destination squares. Does this sound easy? It's not!

The catch is that the boxes may only be pushed, and thus the player's 
character must be able to get behind a box in order to move it along. The 
maps are so deviously devised that, while they are all solvable, it is 
extemely difficult to find the solution especially at the later levels.

Fortunately each level has a code which is shown to the player when the 
level is reached. By entering this code, the player may start at any level 
which he has reached in the past. This feature is indispensable since it 
is practically impossible to solve all the levels in one session.

There are also a few other features to help the poor game player. The Undo 
key will revert the state of the game to what it was prior to the player's 
last action. There are also four memory slots which may be used to store 
the current state of the game. It is easy to revert to one of the stored 
positions if the situation deteriorates. To store a position hold down the 
shift key and press F1, F2, F3 or F4 each of which corresponds to one slot. 
To restore a position, press one of the above keys without shift.

There is also a time-saving automatic path finder. A click of the mouse on 
any part of the map will move the player's character there, if the point is 
reachable without moving any boxes. If no possible path exists then the 
move will fail. A double click has the same effect except that the boxes 
may be pushed along on the way - but that is no guarantee that a path will 
be found, as the computer can only find simple paths that do not involve 
pushing the boxes except directly in the path of the player's character! 
Otherwise the game would be no fun since the computer could solve it all.

The two zoom icons allow a close or distant view of the map. The close view 
is good for large screens, but the distant view will fit onto small screens 
without any scrolling. Double clicking on the zoom icons additionally 
resizes the window to fit the whole map (if possible).


OTHER FEATURES AND BUGS

Orb includes many features not found in the original Sokoban game. These 
include arrow squares which can only be moved over in the direction of the 
arrow, teleportation squares which transport the player to another part of 
the board, and variously colour boxes which must be matched up with the 
same colour destination squares, and more.

Unfortunately, the map files supplied, being the original Sokoban maps do 
not make use of any of these features. And with me being busy on so many 
more important projects, I have not had time to design maps that utilise 
the new features.

If you are interested in designing new maps please contact me and I will 
send you the map design tools and documentation. Designing maps is quite 
easy.

There is also a lack of good monochrome graphics. (In fact all the graphics 
could be better, but I am not an artist...) If you want to draw improved 
graphics, the icons are all stored in the file icons.rsc which can be 
edited with a standard resource editor such as Interface. If it exists, a 
colour icon palette stored in the Interface format will be loaded from the 
resource file and used for the colour icons.

Of course I would also be pleased to hear from anyone who plays the game, 
whether or not you want to design maps. My address is below.


CONTACTING THE AUTHOR 
 
Mario Becroft, the author of Asteroids may be contacted at the following 
addresses: 
 
Email: mb@gem.win.co.nz 
WWW: http://gem.win.co.nz/ 
Telephone: +64 9 412 9700 
Post: 
P.O. Box 332 
Kumeu 
Auckland 1250 
NEW ZEALAND