Asciiportal

ASCIIpOrtal 
By Joe Larson
Sound Design by Steve Fenton.

Inspired by Increpare's Portile game 
(http://www.increpare.com/2008/11/portile/) and Super Serif Bros 
(http://foon.co.uk/farcade/ssb/) and Valve's Portal.

HOW TO PLAY
===========
Grab your hand-held portal device and enter the test chambers for a 
non-euclidean good time.

ASCIIpOrtal is a text based puzzle game inspired by the popular video game.  
In ASCIIpOrtal you overcome challenges by placing portal way-points, joining 
two points in the map. If they player or any object passes through one portal 
way-point it will seamlessly exit the other. Since both way-points are the 
same point on the map the player's view through the portal reflects this and 
space warps around you as you pass through the portal.

From the main menu you can choose to 'Begin' from the first map, 'Select 
Level' to visit any level you've already beaten, 'Change Map Set' to load a 
new set of levels from any map set subdirectory in your ASCIIpOrtal 
directory, Read the 'Instructions', view the map set's 'Credits', or 'Quit' 
the game.

Within the game you can use the following keys to play:
Left/Right Arrows . Move Left/Right
Up/Down Arrows .... Move Up/Down Ladders
                    or adjust aim.
Number Pad Keys ... Quick Aim.
Z/0 ............... Fire Blue Portal
X/PERIOD .......... Fire Yellow Portal
SPACE/5 ........... Fire 'Next' Portal
C ................. Clear Portals

ESC/P/F1 .......... Pause Game Menu
F2 ................ Change Portal Render
F3 ................ Set to Default Speed
+ ................. Increse Game Speed
- ................. Decrese Game Speed
R ................. Restart Level
M ................. Restart Level
? ................. This menu

The goal of each level is to make it to one of exits on the level. Exits 
appear as an E on a green field.

USING PORTALS
=============
Portals link 2 places on the map and make them as one place. Remember that 
you can aim diagonally to aid portal placement, except when on ladders. While 
on ladders your aim remains steady and can only be adjusted using the Number 
Pad for quick aim.

When passing through portals if the in direction and out direction are 
different then any object passing through the portal will exit it rotated, 
preserving momentum. This opens up several techniques:

HOROZONTAL FLING - Fall into a portal placed on the floor from a height and 
exit a portal on the wall. You will travel a horizontal distance relative to 
how far you fell before gravity will take over.

VERTICAL FLING - Fall into a portal placed on the floor from a height and 
exit a portal placed on the floor. You will travel a distance up relative to 
how far you fell. It's important to note that the distance you fall up will 
be less than the height you fell from, so vertical re-flings will eventually 
fall to zero.

OBJECT RELOCATION - Occasionally you will need get objects from where they 
are and pushing them either will not work (in the case of a box stuck in the 
corner) or is not possible (in the case of boulders). Placing a portal under 
or in the path of an object can aid in getting things where you want them.

For any other use of portals experimentation is key.

STATS
=====
After each level you will be given your stats for that level. They are:

Game beats - How many in game "turns" it took you.

Portals Used - How many portals you opened in the last successful run. Missed 
               placements that don't open don't count against your score.

Deaths/Restarts - How many times you had to try to get that last successful run.

MAKING YOUR OWN CHALLENGES
==========================
Please see the included MAP_MAKING_TIPS.txt for the how-to on making your own 
challenging maps.

COMMAND LINE PROMPTS
====================
 -?               This help menu\n"
 -m [mappackname] load a map pack\n"
 -d               80x24 character text graphics window (overrides all other
options)
 -r 640x480       Choose 640x480 screen resolution\n"
 -r 800x600       Choose 800x600 screen resolution\n"
 -r 1024x768      Choose 1024x768 screen resolution\n"
 -f               Fullscreen\n"
 -w               Windowed mode\n"

Please visit Cymon's Games and register on the forums 
(http://cymonsgames.com/forum).

Any comments or critisism you can either post on the forums or e-mail me 
directly at joealarson()gmail.com.

KNOWN ISSUES
============
o If a portal is on one side of a wall, and you attempt to place a portal on 
  the other side of the same wall in the same time you will not be allowed. 
  This is because both portals, despite not being invisible to each other, 
  will be trying to occupy the same space. Does not warrant the time to fix it.

THANK YOUS
==========
Thanks again to Erin Robinson who without which I would not have been as well 
known as quickly. It was her tweet that got me on Kotaku, Boing Boing, Wired, 
Joystiq, and just about every other games news website.

Thanks to Nicholas McGuire, Mads Lund, arminwagner, Sparky, and i300 for 
designing levels during the beta that were used in the initial public 
release. Thank you to everyone else who helped with the beta testing.

Releases:
1.2a (Nov 18 2009)
o WADS keys added.
o Music files changed to OGG.
o Menu item for chaning mapset disabled.
o 5th default ambient music added.
o Numberpad input is fixed.
o Objects in portals when they collapse are more properly delt with.

1.2 (Nov 14 2009)
o Controls finally fixed to react instantly. For real this time.
o Original levels reduced from 50 to 25. Extra levels moved to their own pack.
o 4 default musics available for custom map makers.
o Visual effect added when portals change.
o "Next" for portal gun incriments when portal is created.
o Key to turn off all portals ('C') added.
o Game speed is now variable.
o Code hopefully compiles nativly for dingoo and GP2X devices.
o There is a known issue involving mouse movement being caught as input.

1.1 (Oct 21 2009) - Bug fix release:
o Physics bugs concerning boulder movements have been corrected.
o Player will pass through portals determined by aiming direction. 
o The keyboard delay pause has been considerably scaled back. (You still may 
  need to turn before moving, so there may be a pause there.)
o Some levels have been adjusted slightly.
o Comes with all known extra levels and new map packs.
o Player will now "catch" ladders mid fling.
o Level stats no longer try to keep track of time.
o You can now adjust your aim if at the top or bottom of a ladder.
o Portals will no longer count doors as valid walls when calculating normals.
o Portals will no longer open up straight to a chain link wall.

1.0 (Sept 16 2009) - First public release.