GFingerPoken 0.25 January 14, 2000
Code, text by Martin Hock (oxymoron@cmu.edu)
[all content except that specified below]
Copyright 1999-2000 Martin Hock.
GFP-specific graphics by Jason Reed (godel@cmu.edu) 
[represented by iconpix.h, marblepix.h, and tilepix.h]
Copyright 1999 Jason Reed.

Borrowed from GNOME (used with permission of author):
Button icons by Tuomas Kuosmanen (tigert@gimp.org) downloaded from
http://tigert.gimp.org/gnome/gnome-stock/
[represented by barpix.h]
Copyright 1999 Tuomas Kuosmanen.

All of this software (i.e. everything in this archive) is distributed
under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or higher.  It has NO
WARRANTY.  Please read COPYING for more info.  Stated again in more words:

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307 USA


INTRODUCTION:

Suddenly, you attain consciousness.  You are faced by a grid of tiny
squares, all alike, and a sign, which reads as follows:

ACHTUNG!  ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das rollenballenmachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und widgetmoven.
Ist easy flippen der mirrorwerk, losenballen und shovenmirroren mit
slippensliden.  Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.  Das
rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets
muss; relaxen und watchen das rollenballen.

Unable to decipher it, you begin rolling balls at the grid, having nothing
better to do. And thus begins your pathetic adventure deep into the bowels
of Nihilism.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

0) Why "GFingerPoken" anyway?  And what was that above narrative all
about?

See "blinkenlights" in the Jargon File.

1) How does one pronounce "GFingerPoken" properly?

guh-FIN-ger-poh-ken.

Kind of like GNOME ("guh-NOME") or anything else that
begins with G for that matter.  Free software people are weird.

2) Is this a sanctioned FSF thing?

No.  This is Me (Martin), writing Free Software, so I can pat myself on
the back repeatedly and hopefully meet chicks.

As an aside, if you are a hot chick in the Pittsburgh area who's into free
software, send me an e-mail.

NOTE: I do not actually expect any takers.

3) Are you going to continue this Q/A format any longer?

No.  It tires me.


I got the idea for this game from a Windows game called "Marble," by
Analogue Software.  GFingerPoken is basically Marble, rewritten from
scratch for GTK.  With much better graphics, I might add, due to Jason's
POV-Ray prowess.  The graphics are what I like best about this game.
Though now, a close second is the network play.  Yay Network!


HOW TO PLAY a one player game:

Start it up.  Marvel at the delicious configuration dialog.  Just click OK
to continue as the default setup should suffice.  Later you'll want to
tweak.  (The tweaks you do make will be saved to ~/.gfpoken.)  You can
also save and restore your game from here.  Restoring is fairly
straightforward.  To save a game, first one must be in progress.  Simply
click on the New icon, and then the Save icon, and then save it wherever
you'd like with the OK button.  You can then Cancel out of the
Configuration dialog to continue working on the level.  Slightly
counterintuitive but I thought the icons worked better here than
cluttering up the main window even more than it already is.

Click around the edges.  You throw in your various balls.  There are 4 of
them, but they all work the same way.  You'll see your ball roll through
the empty corridor, then you'll see a white in arrow and an out arrow. 
Your job is to drag that crap from the side into the maze and set up your
maze to be the same as the output indicates, i.e., so your ball always
goes out where the arrow says it should.   You have to use all of the
stuff on the side.  If an item has a yellow circular indicator, it is
flippable; click on it, and it will change between its states.
Furthermore, every time these items are hit within the maze, either yours
or the computer's, they will be flipped also.  So your maze must be
synchronized with the invisible one.  Wow, that's pretty damn devious.
When you think that your maze perfectly matches the output, click the
check button and see if you were right.

If you right-click on a grid square, you will cycle through a picture
that appears in the corner: a circle, a triangle, a square, and nothing.
These symbols do nothing, but you can use them to indicate what you think
may be in the square.  For example, a circle could mean you think
nothing is there, a triangle something is there, and a square that you're
pretty sure whatever's there is right.

Ron Popeil Sez: But Wait, There's More!

Yes, that's right, there are tons of (where "tons of" is defined as 32)
different objects, ranging from the less annoying to the more annoying.  
For one low price, you get:

Simple mirrors: The ball rolls toward it.  The ball hits it.  The ball
rolls in a different direction.  Very simple.  They are shaped / and \ .

Flipping mirrors: The ball hits it and rolls in a different direction, but
then the mirror changes shape according to its little yellow indicator.
There are two cycle mirrors which go between / and \ shapes, and four
cycle mirrors which cycle this way: / o \ o .  (The little "o"
representing a box, coming up next.)

This is where the game begins to get devious.  Your setup must match the
functionality of the invisible one exactly.  Meaning you have to get the
alignment of these precisely perfect.  To change the alignment of one,
click on it.

Box and sink: Basically they are opposites.  A box will repel the ball in
the opposite direction that it came from, and a sink will "eat" the ball,
resulting in NO output arrow.

There is actually one other instance where you can get no output arrow,
which is when you have a grid so horribly complicated that the ball simply
goes in the cycle.  When the game detects this (through a nifty little
structure found in history.c) it will also eat up the ball.  The
explanation being that if the ball traveled that way for an infinite
amount of time, it would eventually get worn out and disappear anyway.

Axial mirrors: Though the original game had these, they didn't have a
separate category.  Anyway, they will let the ball come through on one
axis (i.e. vertically or horizontally) but bounce it back on the other.
There are both simple and flipping axial mirrors for your amusement.

Rotators: These are quite similar to normal mirrors, only they redirect
the ball in a different sort of way.  There are clockwise and
counterclockwise varieties as well as a flipper.  Strangely, the clockwise
variety is shaped counterclockwise and vice vera.  See if you can figure
out why.  Hint: When the ball is coming from the TOP, it is coming in a
DOWN direction.  Perhaps you will begin to realize what sort of garbage I
had to deal with while writing this POS.  Perhaps you will then feel
inclined to send me bits of currency or other tokens of appreciation.
Contact me via email if you feel moved to perform such an arbitrary act of
kindness.

One Way Mirrors: Only one order away from pure evil, one way mirrors will
boggle the mind for centuries if used liberally.  They are just like
normal static mirrors, only they only let the ball travel right through it
in two (perpendicular) directions and bounce it off in the other two.
These can cause an infinite loop if used wrecklessly, which the random
computer is fairly likely to do.

PURE EVIL: Marked as "Formidable" in the original game, these widgets are
the terror that lurks inside men's souls.  There are two varieties:
fllipping one way mirrors, and moving mirrors.  Flipping one way mirrors
can flip in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.  Moving
mirrors, when hit, will travel one square in the direction they were hit,
after being hit, so your ball will travel as if a simple mirror had been
where the mirror was just sitting.

All right, now for the dialog box: "Width" and "Height" dictate the size
of the grid.  "Density" indicates the overall density of pieces within the
grid.  "Fuzz" indicates how fuzzy the above Density rating is, i.e. a +/-
percentage of how much the Density could vary.  So a Fuzz of 10 and a
Density of 30 would mean that Density will be somewhere between 20 and 40
percent.  Each individual category has its own density rating, which is
relative.  For example, two categories set to the same relative density
(we'll just say 20) will both appear with approximately the same
frequency.  If one is set to 10 and the other to 20, about 1/3 of the
pieces will be of the first type and 2/3 of the second type.  Get it?
Hopefully.  This game ain't for the faint-hearted, as you've probably
figured out by now.


HOW TO PLAY a network game:

First, we'll assume you know how to play a normal one-player game.  We'll
also assume you have located some opponent, presumably one you will
obliterate, leaving nothing remaining but a scorched, bloody carcass.  A
good place to try is Open Projects IRC (opirc.nu), channel #gfpoken,
though as of this writing this channel does not actually exist in any real
form.

OK.  Click on the network setup button.  You can leave the type at "Auto"
unless you've picked out who you want to be client and server.  Auto 
will try client first, and if it doesn't work it will go to server.  Server
gets to choose the level layout and also gets to go first, so you could
give it to your opponent if you want to be nice.  Going first isn't really
an advantage though, as you'll soon find out.  You should probably leave
the port unless it's used so it can become a defacto standard.  If you are
server, the address restricts connections to only ones originating from
this address; if you are client, it will connect to this address.
Similarly, server sets the port to listen on and client connects to this
port.

Also, you'll have to choose the game type.  The server overrides whatever
the client has.  With "Shared board," both players manipulate the same
board and both see changes made immediately.  (It's graphically much
cooler.)  Players take turns manipulating the board.  With "Individual
boards," each player has his own board and cannot see the other player's
board.  Players each perform one manipulation to their board
simultaneously.  Otherwise, the games are similar.

What is a manipulation?  It consists of these steps:
1) Rearrange the pieces however you'd like.  (This includes moving them in
and out of the sidebar.)  This may be zero rearrangements.
2) Perform exactly one test (i.e. click along the border to toss in a
ball)
3) Again perform as many rearrangements as you'd like.
4) Click on the right arrow to indicate that you're done.

Either before or after a manipulation, if the board is potentially
solvable, you may click the check button if you think it's solved.  If
you're right, you win; if you're wrong, you lose.

Note that you *must* perform a manipulation during each of your turns,
which should discourage a standoff in shared board mode.

Also, I don't know if network play is actually fun.  I hope so.  I'm sure
some nuts out there will like it.  I don't think I'll make any severe
changes to it as it was way too much work to begin with.  (GFingerPoken is
now about twice as large in terms of lines of .c source as it was in
0.11.)


OK, that's about everything.  Oh there's probably one last question you
have.

Q: What's with those weird half-balls that appear as I'm playing?

A: That's your history.  The whole reason for the 4 different ball colors
is to differentiate your last 4 moves in the history.  So the black in
arrow superimposed atop the purple ball half should have a corresponding
black out arrow also superimposed atop a purple ball half.  If not, that
part of the history must have been erased because another out move went on
top of it, or perhaps because the ball was eaten somehow and thus never
came out.  If you're truly anal, you'll keep track of every move on a
piece of paper.  I just play this game for the hell of it with the default
settings most of the time.  That's why I didn't include a high score list.
Well that, and because it's so difficult to rate a level's difficulty.
Well that, and because I'm a lazy SOB.

All right, I'm out of here.  I live for praise, so if you like this thing
please mail me at oxymoron@cmu.edu.  And if you find some bugs, go ahead
and tell me also.

I'm planning to update this thing a little more, clean up the interface a
bit and hopefully the cruddy code as well.