If you know the game "Boulderdash" (Commodore C64) or "Emerald Mine" (Amiga), you know what "ROCKS'N'DIAMONDS" is about.
You can see eight blue circles on the left side of the eight green menu texts; these are buttons to activate the menu commands by simply clicking on them with the left mouse button. The button will then change to red. (You can control the menues over the keyboard or joystick, too. Just use the arrow keys and the 'Return' or 'Enter' key or, if you use a joystick, the appropriate direction and the fire button.)
When you start the game the first time, your login name will appear in the 'NAME:' field. If you want to use a different name for playing, for example a funny player name or a name for cheating, you can click on the button and enter a new name.
If you choose a certain special name, you will be in a cheat mode where you can choose all levels without playing the lower levels before... :)
If you have played some levels of this game, you can choose the already played levels at any time, but you cannot choose the higher levels. This means, you can choose levels from level 0 to the highest level that you have ever won. This is known as your 'handicap'.
If the level number is red, you have choosen a 'ready' level, if it is yellow, you have choosen a 'user' level, which is blank and can be edited by yourself with the built-in level editor (see below).
To choose new level series, click on the button on the left and choose the new level serie.
Click on this button to see a list of the best players of this level. Click again to go back to the main menu.
"Buffered Gfx" can be set to "off" on slower systems, "Fading" gives a nice fading effect when displaying new screens, but unfortunately I haven't found a system which is fast enough to display it so far. (Maybe this works better on highly accelerated X servers.) Better set this to "off" if you have a normal system...
Set "auto-record" to "on" if you want to automatically record each game to tape.
If you have a Linux or FreeBSD system with a joystick, you can choose the "1st" or the "2nd" joystick port and use "Cal. Joystick" to calibrate it. Use "Save and exit" after calibration to save it for later playing sessions.
"Exit" quits the setup menu without saving the changes, "Save and exit" will save and then return to the main menu.
(A little note: The sound server currently needs about 10% CPU time on my 486DX/33/SBPro system when playing background music. I wonder if this would get better with a better soundcard, like Gravis Ultrasound, or if only pure CPU power helps in this case...)
Just try the levels from the 'tutorial' level serie to see what most of the elements do or have a look at the info screen!
Note: It is *highly recommended* to use a joystick for playing this game! It is possible to play it with the keyboard, but it is *much more fun* to play with a joystick, and some levels are very difficult to solve with the keyboard. So, the best platform for this game is a Linux or a FreeBSD system (which gives you background music, too).
Another way is to create your own level series. Just add a line to the
file 'levels/ROCKS.levelinfo' with the following entries:
- the name of the level directory (create this directory under 'levels')
- the name of the level serie (don't use any whitespaces within the name)
- the 'ready' (red) levels (start with zero)
- the 'empty' (yellow) levels (set this to some number of blank levels)
To edit a level, you can use all three mouse buttons to draw in the level window. Click into the elements field with one of the three buttons to remap it to the new element. Use the arrow widgets to scroll around in the level. Use the 'flood fill' field to init exactly ony flood fill operation in the level field (you will be prompted). Click on 'control window' to switch to the control window.
In the control window you can modify different parameters like the size of the level playfield, the name of the level, the scores for different elements and something like that. The four 3x3 field on the upper left can be edited like the level field and indicate the 'contents' of smashed crunchers (just try it out with some crunchers in one of your own levels).
have done to the level. will be deleted).
If you have set "auto record" in the setup menu to "on", you just have to press 'Start Game' as usual.
While recording or playing, you can press 'pause' to stop the recording or the playing of the tape and continue by pressing 'pause' again. You can use either the tape recorder buttons or the game control buttons for this purpose.
Have fun playing the game, building new levels and breaking all high scores! ;)
If you have any comments, problems, suggestions, donations, flames, send them to
Have fun!