Item description:

zblast 1.3 - shoot the thingies for Linux console, or X.
Copyright (C) 1993-2003 Russell Marks.

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, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.


Description
-----------

zblast is a simple but fairly manic shoot-em-up. There are versions
for both svgalib (the original) and X.


Installation
------------

For zblast (the svgalib version) you need svgalib (surprise :-)) - any
reasonably recent version should be ok. If you don't have X on your
machine, use `make vga' to avoid trying to compile xzb.

For xzb (the X version) you should only need a Unix box with X11R5/R6
and usleep(), but it's only been tested on a Linux (x86) box with gcc
and X11R6 (XFree86). It might actually need a POSIX box with an ANSI C
compiler, I haven't checked. If compiling on a non-Linux box or one
without svgalib, be sure to do `make x' as plain `make' will try to
compile zblast too.

Edit the Makefile as required. For an average Linux box, you won't
need any edits. Do note that you'll need a `games' group - but that
shouldn't be a problem. (I think most distributions have one.)

As usual, `make install' (as root) installs it after you've compiled
whichever versions you want (vga or X or both).

Once it's installed, do `man zblast' for further documentation.


Speed/flicker tweaks
--------------------

On anything remotely modern it'll run quite comfortably. If you have
problems with slower machines, try running with `-small'. That should
speed things up a certain amount. If that's not enough, try `-small
-nomusic'.

By default, both versions use a fast but slightly flickery unbuffered
line drawing style. If you run it with `-dbuf', you get a slower but
flicker-free version. Personally, I don't think the slowdown is worth
it on my machine, but if you have a fast enough box (or a mono X
display, in xzb's case) you might want to try it. (The title animation
is always drawn unbuffered, so don't worry if that still flickers.)

Contacting me
-------------

You can email me.

Have fun,
-Rus.