XBUBBLE(6)

📦 version 0.5.11.2, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 XBUBBLE 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to xbubble — it lives in section 6 of the Games Manual, aka the fun zone 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

xbubble — an X Window based puzzle bubble clone 🫧

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xbubble [OPTION]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So XBubble is a Puzzle Bubble (PB) / Bust-A-Move (BAM) clone for Unix/X11 platforms, and it's giving absolute legend behavior 💅

It was written from scratch with no real intent to exactly reproduce the original game. It's not a copy, it's a vibe 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -d DISPLAY — sets the X display to DISPLAY. tell it where to show up, it shows up 🪟
  • -s <scale> — sets the game window size, and the value has to be between 5 and 100. normally your game window size is automatically scaled to your screen size, but this option is lowkey useful when you wanna reduce load on slow/loaded systems. also see the -f option 👀
  • -f <framerate> — adjusts the frame rate, in frames per second. the usual values are 100 (that's the default), 50, 33, 25, etc. ngl the actual frame rate may be different from the one you specified, depending on your system timer resolution 😭 you can use this to reduce load on slow/loaded systems (like, if sprite animation is jerky). also see the -s option ✨
  • -r <resource path> — tells XBubble to look for its graphics files, fonts, etc. in the directory <resourcepath> 🎨
  • -t <theme name> — uses the given theme. the possible values are: plain, frozen, fancy 🌸

✨ PLAYING ✨

The goal is to clear all bubbles from your board and avoid bubbles dropping below the line at the bottom of the screen 🫧⬇️

You can rotate and fire a canon that launches colored bubbles. Bubbles bounce against the walls until they get stuck to another bubble. If you get three or more adjacent bubbles of the same color they all explode 💥, while any bubble left hanging free falls down.

In single player mode, the ceiling goes down every 12 launches, so that you must clear the board before the ceiling touches the ground 😳 fr fr, the pressure is real.

In multi-player mode, the ceiling does not move, but a fresh row of bubbles is added on top of the board while all bubbles are lowered by one row. Additionally, each time you explode three or more bubbles, all extra bubbles are sent (with random colors) to your opponent, as well as all falling bubbles. You win the round when your opponent loses (has bubbles dropping across the bottom line) 👑💀

After a few seconds delay, your canon launches its bubble anyway. You can tune this delay when selecting your handicap. The higher the handicap, the shorter the delay ⏱️

✨ GAME CONTROL ✨

The game is entirely controlled using the keyboard ⌨️ — no mouse mains allowed, sorry bestie.

🕹️ Player 1

  • Left arrow / Keypad 4 = Rotate canon left
  • Right arrow / Keypad 6 = Rotate canon right
  • Up arrow / Keypad 5 = Launch bubble

🕹️ Player 2

  • x = Rotate canon left
  • v = Rotate canon right
  • c = Launch bubble

🌈 General

  • Up arrow / Keypad 8 = Menu navigate up
  • Down arrow / Keypad 2 = Menu navigate down
  • p = Pause
  • Escape / q = Abort
There is no command-line option for changing control keys yet. yeah. we know. 😭

✨ PLAYER VS COMPUTER MODE ✨

You can choose between 5 levels of difficulty 🤖

Beware of the highest level if you have a slow machine, as it is quite CPU consuming 🔥💀

✨ BUGS ✨

Please report any bugs you find to one of the authors whom address in indicated below 📬

✨ LICENSE ✨

xbubble is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL) 🫶

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

frozen-bubble(6) 🧊🫧

✨ AUTHORS ✨

  • Ivan Djelic <ivan@savannah.gnu.org>
  • Martin Quinson <martin.quinson@tuxfamily.org>

and that's the whole XBUBBLE(6) page, bestie — Games Manual, section 6, served fresh 💅✨ slay, go pop some bubbles for me 🫧👑

📦 where this page comes from