You are the ‘x’. Your immediate goal is to beat the level by reaching the right side. Press D to walk right one step. You can press A to step back left, but there is never a reason to do so.
The ‘~’ and ‘.’ are obstacles; you will die if you walk onto them normally. To safely step onto the obstacles, press W or S to turn your x temporarily into the same character as the obstacle – W for ‘~’, S for ‘.’. Then, when you move right onto the obstacle, it will be removed, and your character will be an ‘x’ again.
When you walk past the right edge of the level, you are arrive at the left side of a new level, with randomly-generated obstacles and spaces. When you die, your score is equal to how many steps right past the start you are.
If you are careful not to step right unless you’ve transformed yourself to match any obstacle to your right, you cannot lose the game. Beating the last level, level 10, is simply a test of perseverance and thinking before you step.
Some tips:
Resize your terminal window to change the length of each level. Note that beating a level provides no bonuses to your score. The maximum possible score is the width of a level times 10, so make your window wide if you’re aiming for that.
It does no harm to transform yourself before stepping on an empty space. Thus, if you have a series of obstacles such as ‘~ ~~ ~’, just repeatedly press WD to safely step across. This is easier than deciding whether to press D or WD before each step.
Oh god, rupa's most popular repos are named z, j, sprunge, j2, and v. His blog domain is un.ix.io and his email is @lrrr.us. He sounds like a great developer, but I wouldn't want him naming my variables for me :)
My only objection is that it is unfairly hard for people with wide screens. I've made a narrower terminal because I got annoyed with having to play such a long level in order to make attempts at advancing the level (I've done it once by accident but not sure what I did).
EDIT: I've now figured out how to do it. Thinking I'd found all of the special rules I read through the source. There are some real gems in there :).
EDIT2: Huh, it looks like I was overthinking the level-advancing. There is no code for the problem I thought I was solving; I must have imagined it.
I thought you had to do some magic involving walking left for a little while before reaching the right edge. I'm sure a few times I reached the right edge only to be told I was dead.
It looks as though that was a bug which is now fixed. If your current level started with a . or a ~, you would die when you finished it (but that one wouldn't kill you at any other point). Now all levels start with a ' '.
Really? I read the source and it really is as simple as it looks, although there are some clever optimizations such as SCORE also being used to keep track of your current location.
~ is like a bird and . is like a rock. I should move down to escape the bird and up to jump the rock :p ...well, back to work...thanks for the game, a good refresh
Speaking of ASCII games I found out that there are tons of rogue-likes, but no C&C/starcraft-like games. Or I couldn't find one except for very old DOS games maybe.
You are the ‘x’. Your immediate goal is to beat the level by reaching the right side. Press D to walk right one step. You can press A to step back left, but there is never a reason to do so.
The ‘~’ and ‘.’ are obstacles; you will die if you walk onto them normally. To safely step onto the obstacles, press W or S to turn your x temporarily into the same character as the obstacle – W for ‘~’, S for ‘.’. Then, when you move right onto the obstacle, it will be removed, and your character will be an ‘x’ again.
When you walk past the right edge of the level, you are arrive at the left side of a new level, with randomly-generated obstacles and spaces. When you die, your score is equal to how many steps right past the start you are.
If you are careful not to step right unless you’ve transformed yourself to match any obstacle to your right, you cannot lose the game. Beating the last level, level 10, is simply a test of perseverance and thinking before you step.
Some tips:
Resize your terminal window to change the length of each level. Note that beating a level provides no bonuses to your score. The maximum possible score is the width of a level times 10, so make your window wide if you’re aiming for that.
It does no harm to transform yourself before stepping on an empty space. Thus, if you have a series of obstacles such as ‘~ ~~ ~’, just repeatedly press WD to safely step across. This is easier than deciding whether to press D or WD before each step.