xscorch(6)

📦 version 0.2.1, in debian bookworm, fedora 43, fedora 44, ubuntu jammy

xscorch 💥🎀

okay bestie, this is the xscorch(6) manual page, straight out of the Games Manual section. it's giving "blow stuff up but make it a vibe". sit down, hydrate, let's go 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

xscorch — annihilate enemy tanks using overpowered guns. 😌💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xscorch
xscorch [options]
xscorch --help

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So Xscorch is a clone of that classic DOS game, "Scorched Earth" 👑. The whole point?? Annihilate enemy tanks using overpowered guns :). Literally that's the goal. You buy weapons 💸, you aim your turret by messing with the angle and the firing power, and then you just hope you blow up their tank before they blow up yours. no cap. 🎯💀

🌸 GAMEPLAY 🌸

First things first: go fiddle with the options in the main menu 🎛️. There's a whole bunch of them (they're described below), and they can make the game easier or harder depending on your mood. The default options give you a reasonable level of gameplay, so honestly you can just vibe with those. Most of the game config lives in the user interface, but there are a few command-line options too, mentioned below. Once you're ready to start a new game, you might wanna Save Options to save your configuration, and then select Begin Game to start a new game. ✨

Gameplay is divided up into several rounds. Each round has two parts: the Inventory phase and the Battle phase. 🛍️⚔️

  • In the Inventory phase, you can buy weapons to shoot at your opponents, and accessories to help defend your tank. (Peep the Inventory section below for info on what you can buy!)
  • In the Battle phase, you set up defenses, choose a weapon, aim, and fire at your opponents. (Peep the Battle section below for more!)

🛍️ INVENTORY 🛍️

The player has the option to buy weapons and accessories to make the game more interesting 💖.

  • Weapons are just that: an assortment of missiles, including ICBM-like warheads, napalm, lasers, and a number of custom weapons to bring down specific defenses. 🔥
  • Accessories are ways to make gameplay easier for the player and increase their chance of survival — guidance systems, shields, fuel, batteries, and other odds-and-ends. 🧚

At the beginning of a round, every player gets a chance to buy or sell weapons and accessories. Each player may have up to 99 of any item in their inventory. A few weapons have an infinite supply (for example, Baby Missiles) — those ones cannot be purchased. 🚫

Weapons and accessories are sold in bundles; the price for the bundle is displayed in the inventory, and you must buy items as a complete bundle. The exception 👀 is when a player tries to buy more of an item than their inventory can hold — in that case the bundle gets broken and the weapons are sold on an individual basis, with a small markup applied. (the audacity 😭)

Weapons and accessories may also be sold from a player's inventory. Again, items are generally sold as a bundle. The player will receive a reduced amount of money for the sale — hey, the middleman has to make money somewhere :) 💸

In the Inventory screen, two panels are displayed, listing the weapons and accessories that are available. Here's the controls situation:

  • Tab switches between the various panes.
  • Up Arrow and Down Arrow let the player scroll through the list of items.
  • Right Arrow buys a bundle.
  • Left Arrow sells a bundle of the currently highlighted item.

For each item, the name, bundle size/total price, and current inventory are displayed. 📋

Items which can neither be bought nor sold will appear darkened. If the player has maxed their inventory for that item, or they can't afford to purchase the item, or the item has a higher arms level than the player is allowed, then the item cannot be purchased. Items which can be bought appear with an arrow pointing to the right ➡️, and items which can be sold appear with an arrow pointing to the left ⬅️.

The items that are available are listed in the next two sections. 👑

🔫 WEAPONS LIST 🔫

This list will be added once the weapons list is reasonably stable. (bestie it is not stable yet. we wait. 🫶)

🎀 ACCESSORIES LIST 🎀

This list will be added once the accessories list is reasonably stable. (same energy, we wait. 🧚)

⚔️ BATTLE ⚔️

This overview is sadly, incomplete. 😭 (iconic of them tbh)

🕹️ TANK CONTROLS 🕹️

  • Left, Right — Change the turret angle. This adjusts the turret angle in increments of 5 degrees. For finer control, hold Shift to adjust the angle in increments of 1 degree. 🎯
  • Up, Down — Change the firing power, in the range of 0 to 1000. This adjusts the firing power in increments of 20. For finer control, hold Shift to adjust the firing power in increments of 1. 💥
  • Tab — Select the next weapon available in your inventory. 🔫
  • Shift+Tab — Select the previous weapon available in your inventory. ↩️
  • B, b — Activate a battery. A single battery can restore 5% of damage done to your tank, and therefore restore the maximum firing power by 5% when you are damaged. You must have a battery to discharge in your inventory to exercise this option. 🔋
  • E, e — Activate or energize the currently selected shields. 🛡️
  • F, f — Activate your fuel tanks. A window will be displayed, indicating the amount of fuel you have available. As long as you have fuel, you may use the Left and Right arrows to move one unit to the left or right, respectively. In general, you cannot move your tank up a steep hill. Immobile tanks will not be able to exercise this option. ⛽
  • R, r — Force a redraw of the screen. 🖥️
  • S, s — Toggle the currently selected shields. The currently selected shields are the shields which will be used when you Energize. Shields are classified by a power number with a type suffix: M for magnetic shielding, F for force shielding, and S for your standard, run-of-the-mill shields. If no shields are available, 0S is displayed. ✨
  • T, t — Toggle contact triggers on/off. This is only meaningful if you actually have some contact triggers of course, and when tunneling is enabled. Weapons that are fired after this point will have contact triggers equipped (until you run out). 💣
  • 0 - 9 — Display information about a particular player. 1 gives information about Player 1, and 0 gives information about Player 10. 🔢
  • Enter — Accept your orders. ✅
  • Ctrl+Y — Bring up the System Menu (this can also be accessed from the menus). You can control certain graphics options from the system menu, clear the screen of smoke trails, and end a round prematurely. 🌀
  • Ctrl+Z — Pauses the game. ⏸️
  • Ctrl+R — Resign from the game. This will end the game for everyone. You will be asked to confirm the resignation. 🏳️

🌀 SYSTEM MENU 🌀

The system menu gives you some control over the game while it is in progress. In this menu, you'll have options to change how the game is displayed (e.g. the Graphics Fast option described below). You also have access to a few useful commands, described below. 👇

  • Mass Kill — Kills everyone still alive in the round. No player gets credit for the kills, and none are considered a suicide. This option is useful if all human players have already been eliminated from the game, but the AI players are making no progress whatsoever in annihilating each other. This option ends the current round only. 💀
  • Erase Smoke — If you have used smoke tracers or have Trace Paths enabled, then this option will clear all smoke trails from the sky. 🌫️
  • Retreat — N/A
  • Resign Game — Resigns from the current round and all remaining rounds. This option ends the entire game, and will take you back to the intro screen. 🚪
  • Sound Setup — Takes you to the Sound Options window. 🔊

🤖 AI PLAYERS 🤖

  • Human — The humans believe they are the superior mind. The AI's rather disagree with that sentiment. Keep this in mind when you are wondering why 9 AI's would want to simultaneously target your tank... 👀😭
  • Moron — This AI fires at random. Of all the AI's, this one has by far the highest suicide rate. An alternate name is ``Cannon Fodder''. 🪦
  • Shooter — This AI goes for targets it has a line-of-sight to. It's not a great player otherwise. This AI buys weapons that have the best economical yield, but during the game it will select weapons which have the highest yield. 🎯
  • Spreader — This AI is similar to the Shooter, except a Spreader buys weapons with the highest yield, without regard for the price. 💸
  • Chooser — This AI chooses a victim. Once chosen, the victim is attacked until they are dead, or the Chooser loses the ability to reach the victim. This AI does not need line-of-sight, but fortunately it cannot compensate for wind. 🌬️
  • Calculater — This AI is like Chooser, except a Calculater can compensate for the wind. These guys are fairly deadly in a fight; they also tend to allocate large budgets to defense and offense. 🧮
  • Annihilater — This AI goes for weapons that will cause as much damage as possible, without much regard for individual victims. This AI prefers spread weapons to the more focused, precision weapons. A few Annihilaters can clear the terrain easily. These AI's don't worry about defenses too much. With their destructive tendency, they won't survive long anyway — but neither will anyone else. 💥🔥
  • Insanity — No one knows what this AI thinks... 🤯
  • Unknown — This selects one of the above AI's at random, but you will not be informed which AI was selected. 🎲

🎀 CONFIGURATION OPTIONS 🎀

okay bestie, this is where you get to tweak literally everything about the game. it's giving control freak but make it cute 💅 there are a LOT of options, so buckle up. we're going category by category, and we're not skipping a single one. every flag, every range, every vibe. let's go. ✨

👯 Players/Rounds 👯

  • Number of Players (integer, 2-10) — set how many players are in the game. between 2 and 10, no cap.
  • Number of Rounds (integer, >= 1) — how many rounds you wanna play. at least 1, obviously.
  • AI Type (list) — pick the AI type. human players are literally called Human; the other AI types are the ones we already talked about above. iykyk.
  • Player Name (string) — give each player a unique name. make it iconic.
  • Tank Style (list) — choose the type/shape of the tank for each player. slay.

💰 Economics 💰

  • Interest Rate (float, 0-0.30) — interest rate for savings, compounded once per round. make that money grow, bestie.
  • Dynamic Interest (toggle) — if enabled, interest rates will change during the game. spicy.
  • Initial Cash (integer, 0-1000000) — how much money each player starts with. from 0 to a milli.
  • AIs Can Buy (toggle) — if enabled, computers are allowed to buy items. the AIs are super uninteresting if you turn this off, fr.
  • AIs Buy Aggressively (toggle) — if the previous option is on, the AIs will buy items conservatively. with this option, they'll allocate larger budgets and buy bigger items early in the game. aggressive queen behavior.
  • Free Market (toggle) — N/A. not applicable, bestie, just ignore it.
  • Scoring (list) — how scoring works. pick from Basic, Standard, Greedy, or possibly other methods defined in the configuration file:
    • Basic — players only receive money for kills and survival. simple.
    • Standard — players receive less money for kills and survival, but they also get money for damaging an opponent. get that damage coin.
    • Greedy — players are paid as in Standard scoring, but with bonuses for unused inventory at the end of the round. hoard that inventory, get paid.
  • The Lottery (toggle) — if enabled, there's a random drawing at the start of each round. a random player gets a bundle of a random weapon for free as the lottery award. this is a great way to inject a little extra life into AIs who are usually conservative buyers. plus it's always great fun when you get a free Annihilator... 😭

🧪 Physics 🧪

  • Air Viscosity (float) — N/A. not applicable, moving on.
  • Gravity (float, 0-10) — specify the gravity, in pixels per cycle squared (one cycle is roughly 50 milliseconds). physics, but make it fashion.
  • Ground Damping (float, 0-10) — specify the ground damping, used in tunnelling calculations. lowkey important.
  • Maximum Wind Speed (float, 0-10) — max wind speed, in pixels per cycle squared. the actual wind velocity is initialised once per round, to some value in (-max, max). so it's random within that range.
  • Wind is Dynamic (toggle) — normally the wind stays constant through a round. if this is enabled, the wind will change once per turn. chaotic, love it.
  • Suspend Dirt (percentage) — N/A. not applicable.
  • Tanks Fall (percentage) — N/A. not applicable.
  • Borders Extend (integer, >= 0) — how far off-screen weapons should be tracked when you're playing with no walls. when this is zero, weapons disappear as soon as they leave the screen horizontally, even if wind would have brought them back on-screen. so set it higher if you want them to come back.
  • Walls Are (list) — how weapons behave when they hit a boundary. quick note: the ground is always concrete — this is about the sides and ceiling:
    • None — the sides and ceiling are open. free range.
    • Concrete — all sides are solid. weapons hitting any boundary will explode. boom.
    • Padded — weapons hitting the sides and ceiling will bounce off, but at a reduced velocity. soft bounce.
    • Rubber — weapons bounce off at exactly the same velocity. perfect bounce.
    • Springy — weapons bounce off with an additional kick to the velocity. extra bounce, extra fun.
    • Wraparound — the ceiling is open. weapons going off one side reappear on the opposite side. explosions also wrap around the screen if they detonate near an edge. trippy.
    • Random — one of the above types is selected at random. chaos mode.

🌄 Landscape 🌄

  • Sky (list) — specify the background sky. aesthetic.
  • Hostile Environment (toggle) — N/A. not applicable.
  • Land Generator (list) — which generator to use to create the land. pick your terrain vibe.
  • Bumpiness (percentage) — the noise on the generated landscape. bumpy or smooth, your choice.

💣 Weapons 💣

  • Arms Level (integer, 0-4) — the maximum arms level for the game. only weapons with this arms level or lower may be purchased by any player, under normal circumstances. so if you set it low, no big guns.
  • Bomb Icon Size (integer, 0-4) — size of the bomb icons while they're flying through the sky. this doesn't affect explosion size or smoke path size (if trace paths is on). just the icon.
  • Tunneling (toggle) — if set, weapons are allowed to tunnel through land. if you enable this, you'll want to buy contact triggers if you want a particular weapon to always detonate on impact instead of tunneling through land. just a heads up.
  • Scaling (float) — scale the size of explosions by this value. if you're playing on a very large or very small playing field, you might wanna adjust this. big explosions or small, you decide.
  • Trace Paths (toggle) — if enabled, all weapons leave a smoke trail to reveal their trajectory. if this is off, you can still use Smoke Tracers to figure out the path a weapon will take. so you're not totally blind.
  • Useless Items (toggle) — some weapons aren't useful given the current configuration (like contact triggers are irrelevant if tunneling is disabled). if this option is enabled, weapons that will have no effect are not listed in the inventory screens. declutter your life.

🎨 Graphics 🎨

  • Screen Width (integer) — width of the playing field, in pixels. widescreen or not.
  • Screen Height (integer) — height of the playing field, in pixels. tall or short.
  • Dithering (toggle) — if enabled, the land and sky gradients will be dithered. this is especially useful on 16-bit displays, where the gradient is very noticeable otherwise. it does slow down land generation a bit, but it's worth it for the aesthetic.
  • Animation (toggle) — if enabled, explosions and other effects will be animated. you can also control this from the System Menu. pretty.
  • Graphics Are Fast (toggle) — if enabled, all graphics are always as fast as possible. you can also control this from the System Menu. speed.
  • Computers Are Fast (toggle) — if enabled, graphics are fast when there are only computer players alive. you can also control this from the System Menu. efficient.

🎮 Gameplay Options 🎮

  • Mode (list) — determines if all players fire at once (Synchronous), or if each player fires independently (Sequential). sync or solo, your call.
  • Teams (list) — N/A. not applicable.
  • Order (list) — determines the player order. who goes first, who goes last.
  • Talk Mode (list) — determines who is allowed to talk. chatty or silent.
  • Talk Probability (percentage) — the likelihood that a player will speak at the end of a turn. how talkative.
  • Extended Status (toggle) — if set, the status bar will have an additional row of extended info during the game (things like trigger and battery inventories, life, wind). more info, more power.
  • Tooltips (toggle) — if set, tooltips will be displayed where available. a restart is required to change this option. so set it and forget it, or restart if you change your mind.

🤖 AI Controller 🤖

  • Human Target Practice (toggle) — AIs will always prefer human targets over AI targets (except for AIs that fire at random). when playing against 9 Calculators, this can make your day pretty lousy. 😭 good luck.
  • Allow Offset Targetting (toggle) — generally, when a weapon hits a shield it does less damage than an explosion detonating right outside the shield (weapons hitting the shield don't have a chance to detonate). this changes the AI targeting behavior so they'll deliberately aim outside the shield if their intended victim has raised shields. sneaky.
  • Always Offset (toggle) — if the above option is set, this forces the AI to always offset its targeting as if the player had raised shields. this lets the AI compensate for cases where the player may not have had their turn yet to raise shields. the downside is the AI will never attempt to score a direct hit with this option enabled. so it's a trade-off.
  • Enable Scan Refinement (toggle) — if set, harder AIs can refine their trajectories by computing trajectories that take into account player shielding effect and various other factors they don't normally consider. this could slow down gameplay a bit, but it makes the AIs much more difficult. hard mode.
  • No Budget Constraints (toggle) — AIs will spend as much money as they can, disregarding their budget preferences. money is no object.

🔊 Sound Setup 🔊

  • Enable Sound (toggle) — when set, music and sound effects will be played. turn it up.
  • Use HQ Mixer (toggle) — when set, mikmod's high-quality mixer will be used. audiophile vibes. ✨

✨ COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS ✨

Bestie, here's where you boss xscorch around before it even opens its little eyes. All the flags, no gatekeeping 💅

  • --help — prints a lil' quick rundown of every command-line option you've got available. Baby's first cheat sheet, we love her 🫶
  • --insanity — This is insanity, Max! Or what if it's genius? That's literally all it says. Make of that what you will 🙈
  • --yields — shows you the weapon yields, plus the economical yields. Numbers girlies rise 💖
  • --geometry=wxh — sets the starting window geometry for xscorch, where w is the width and h is the height of the playing field. Lowkey a lifesaver for displays under around 800x600 resolution ✨ Heads up though: this option overrides whatever's in your config file — but plot twist, you can just save the new options to your config file so you're not typing this out every single time. You can also use -g if you're feeling lazy (respectfully) 💅
  • --config=file — loads an alternate user config file from file. Bring your own vibe 🎀
  • --sound — turns on music and sound effects. You may also use -S. Turn it UP 🎵
  • --nosound — turns off music and sound effects. You may also use -s. Silent mode for the stealth girlies 🤫
  • --hqmixer — enables the high-quality mixer, if sound is enabled. Fair warning bestie: this may eat a lot of CPU power on older machines 😭
  • --nohqmixer — disables the high-quality mixer, if sound is enabled. Your CPU says thank you 🫶
  • --name — sets the name of your player, if you're the one initiating a network game. By default it just uses your user name. Main character naming rights 👑
  • --port — sets the port number to use in a network game. Ngl, this one only matters if you also specify --client or --server. The default depends on the protocol number, but it's some large port number 🔢
  • --client=server — starts xscorch in client mode and connects to server (which should already be running, no cap). If --name and --port aren't specified, reasonable defaults get used. She's flexible like that ✨
  • --server — starts xscorch in server mode and waits for connections from the clients. You can pair this with --name to specify the name of this player. Patient queen behavior ⭐

🌐 NETWORK MODE 🌐

Okay so real talk: this is very unstable right now, and therefore it is not documented. That's it, that's the section 💀 Consider this your vibe check: proceed at your own risk, bestie.

📁 FILES 📁

  • ~/.xscorch/config — your default configuration for xscorch. Home sweet home 🏠
  • tankprofiles — the profile bitmaps for the tanks, usually stored in the local share directory. It's giving tank portrait gallery 🎨

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

The xscorch home page at <http://www.xscorch.org/>. There's also additional documentation chillin' in the source distribution, if you want to go full lore deep-dive 🦋

👑 AUTHORS 👑

xscorch was written by Justin David Smith <justins(at)chaos2.org> and Jacob Luna Lundberg <jacob(at)gnifty.net>.

Real talk though, and they mean this: please do not list these e-mail addresses on webpages, or list them in other packages, without contacting them first. Respect the authors, periodt 💜

This manual page was written by Justin David Smith <justins(at)chaos2.org>. Copyright(c) 2001,2000 Justin David Smith.

And that's the whole page, bestie — you made it to the end 🎀 This little legend comes to you as xscorch(6), dated May 2001, written by Justin David Smith. Iconic then, iconic now. Go blow up some tanks 💥🌸

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