alex4(6)

📦 version 1.1, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

🦋 alex4(6) — NAME 🦋

okay so bestie, welcome to alex4(6) — it's a page from the Games Manual, and it's literally all about:

alex4 — Alex the Allegator 4, a retro platform game 👑

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

alex4 [gamefile]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So the whole plot is giving main character energy: you guide Alex the Allegator through the jungle to save his girlfriend Lola from some evil humans who literally want to make a pair of shoes out of her 😭💀 (not the shoe pipeline bestie, NOT today).

alex4 is a platform game in the style of old Gameboy games ✨ You can play it with a keyboard or a joystick 🕹️

On the keyboard, these are the keys, no cap:

  • Arrow keys — Movement 🏃
  • Alt — Jump 🦘
  • Control — Shoot (only when you've found eggs to fire!) 🥚🔥

And when you're on the menu screen, you can choose the window size with these keys:

  • 1 — 160x120 window
  • 2 — 320x240 window
  • 3 — 640x480 window
  • 4 — full-screen

🌈 CUSTOM MAPS 🌈

The Alex the Allegator homepage links to so many user-contributed maps 🗺️ Each set should contain several ".map" files and a text file describing the collection. To play the maps, you literally just start alex4 with the name of the text file as the argument. slay.

If you wanna create your own maps, you can use the built-in map editor (described below 👇), but heads up: you'll need to create the description file yourself. It's a plain text file that needs to list the file names of your maps between #start# and #end# markers (these markers are not optional — do not skip them bestie 🙈). You can include a description of the maps outside these markers. For example, for a collection of three maps:

In this game, Alex must rescue the Yellow Tetris Piece from the
pirates of Ching Shih.
#start#
journey.map
sea-of-despair.map
endgame.map
#end#

🧚 USING THE MAP EDITOR 🧚

Use the map editor to create your own maps 🎨 You can enter the map editor from the menu screen, or by pressing F1 while playing a custom map.

The basic editor commands are:

  • Shift+L — load an existing map
  • Shift+S — save the map
  • Insert+Left/Right — widen the map
  • Delete+Left/Right — shorten the map
  • F1 — change the map's properties, e.g. its name.

Maps are composed of tiles 🧩 Tiles can contain scenery, enemies, items and other game objects. The mouse cursor shows the currently selected tile. To draw tiles, use the left mouse button. You can cycle through the available tiles by using the z and x keys, choose a tile from a palette using the p key, or pick a tile from the screen using the right mouse button.

✨ Tiles can be given special behavior using the following commands ✨

  • q — instant death 💀
  • w — map exit 🚪
  • e — roll activator
  • r — breakable block 🧱
  • t — submerged in water 🌊
  • y — on the water surface 🌊
  • a — Alex' start location (facing left) ⬅️
  • Shift+A — Alex' start location (facing right) ➡️

🍓 Use the following command to place items and enemies 🍓

  • 1 — extra life 💚
  • 2 — star bonus ⭐
  • 3 — cherry bonus 🍒
  • 4 — egg 🥚
  • 5 — extra heart 💗
  • Shift+Q — grunt
  • Shift+W — spear grunt
  • Shift+E — crusher
  • Shift+R — spike fish 🐟
  • Shift+T — jellyfish 🪼
  • Shift+Y — cannon 💥
  • Shift+U — spike truck boss
  • Shift+I — ground pounder boss 👑

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

The Alex the Allegator series homepage ⟨http://allegator.sourceforge.net/⟩ 🫶

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Alex the Allegator 4 was written by Johan Peitz, Free Lunch Design 🎮

This manual page was written by Peter De Wachter <pdewacht@gmail.com>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others) 💌

okay that's the whole page bestie, go save Lola 💅✨

and that's a wrap on alex4(6), dated 2008-02-07 — iconic behavior fr fr 🎀🌈💖

📦 where this page comes from