Help for Gorillas

Table of contents

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• User interface
• Basic rules
• Players
• Game Types
• Religions
• Allowed Bananas
• Points to win
• Gravity
• Friction
• Wind speed
• Closed World
• Remove Traces
• Frames per second (FPS)
• Weapons
• License

The customisation panel

The main window.

• Basic rules

  • This game features two players standing on opposite ends of a skyline, each equipped with a number of items that are more or less throwable. The objective clearly is to throw an item of your choice towards the other player, in the hope of hitting them really hard. Simple, stupid, brainless. The game is, as you will immediately recognise, heavily influenced by Microsoft(R)'s Gorillas game for QBasic(TM).
    To make your life a little harder, the game approximates the physical difficulties of hitting someone else with an item over a distance of roughly 100 meters (some 300 feet), including the effect of gravity, wind speed and friction.
  • In order to win, you must gather a certain number of points. You gain points everytime your opponent is hit by an item that has been thrown either by you, himself or God. The amount of points you receive is determined by the item's value, see the section on bananas for more details.
  • Each player starts with a default banana, depending on the character they chose in the game customisation panel (see the section on players to find the players' default bananas).
  • The game is played in rounds, with each player being allowed to throw one item around per round.
  • There are two ways of collecting more bananas. The first one is to hit one of the bananas boxes that are distributed across the building roofs. The second way is to hit your opponent or get hit.
    
    1. The banana boxes are small squares that have the color of the banana you'll get once you hit the box (see bananas for banana colors). Each box can be hit only once, and if you hit the box, the corresponding banana is added to your list of throwable items.
    2. Depending on the game type you chose in the game customisation panel, one or both players gain or lose a banana every time a player is hit. See the secion on game types for the details.
    
    You can carry only a limited number of all bananas except your player's default one. Everytime you gain a banana, you get three throws for this banana.
    You will also always have at least one banana. If you have no more bananas in your armory, you will be given your player's default banana.
  • You can tune the game's behaviour in many respects, such as adjusting gravity, friction, wind speed. See the according sections of this help file.
  • In order to exit from the game, click the Exit button in the game. There is no way to exit directly from the game customisation panel (not because it would be difficult to implement, but rather because I don't care very much).

• Players

  
  The game offers five different players which apart from being named and looking differently, come with their respective default banana.
  • Brown Oval is a brown oval. It might remind you of a monkey and therefore throws a banana by default.
  • Tux looks like tux and throws a Herring.
  • Devil disguises as a BSD daemon. His banana of choice is the trident.
  • CMS is rather heavy and throwas a Higgs boson. See screenshot of CMS in action at the bottom of this file.
  • Atlas is the biggest of all the players and toys around with protons. See screenshot of atlas in action at bottom.
  • AMS is flying high, where there is a lot of AntiMatter. So much in fact, that it is often seen throwing it at other players.
  • The playboy is having a lot of fun. He toys around with a football and is thus in constant danger of committing suicide.

• Game Types

  
  Each of the available game types brings a new twist to game play (with the possible exception of nihilism which is plain boring). The basic rules are common to all games types. Choose your favourite among the following:
  • Nihilism offers nothing special in addition to the basic rules.
  • Socialism tries to make all people equal. Therefore, if you are hit, you immediately get the banana you've been hit by, because the only reason you could get hit is that the hitter's banana was superior to all the bananas in your armory.
  • Capitalism: If you hit someone, you get the banana they used for the last shot (they stay in possession of this banana).
  • Darwinism: If you hit someone, you get better. Therefore you get a new random banana.
  • Americanism: If you hit someone, you perform a banana's inspection on your opponent and take the banana they acquired last (it's removed from their list of bananas and added to yours). Also, because you fundamentally believe in God, the effects of Christianity (see below) are in place regardless of your choice of belief structure.
  • DDR: There are no Bananas in the DDR (aka GDR [German Democratic Republic]). Also, because of a general shortage of basically everything, if a player is hit, both players lose the banana they used for their last shot.

• Religions

  
  To reflect the fact that there is more to life than politics and bananas, game play is further advanced by the optional choice of a belief structure for the game. The consequences of choosing from the offered religions are the following:
  • Atheism: As you probably would have guessed anyway, game play is unchanged by choice of this belief structure.
  • Christianity: There's random lightning coming down from the heavens which might kill any of the players. If a player is struck by lightning, they have a 30% change of dying. Their opponent gets an extra point, whether the player dies or not.
  • Buddhism: If a player dies, he or she is reborn as a random new player. So tux can easily turn into the BSD deamon or a playboy. Players keep both their points and their bananas. If you have lightning, too, your opponent gets a point if cows are struck by lightning while it's your turn (and vice versa).
  • Hinduism: Holy cows fall from the sky at random intervalls. They move in vertical direction with a velocity of one pixel (10 cm) per frame, and stop at the top of buildings. Cows don't hit players, but they die if hit by bananas (or lightning). If a player kills a cow, their opponent is awarded points corresponding to the banana value.
  • Frutarians: If a player does not hit his or her opponent within six throws, he or she starves to death. Being hit by the opponent does not reset this counter. However, if you hit you opponent (lightning hitting the opponent while it's your turn does not count), you have six throws until you need to hit them again.
  • Jehova's witnesses: There's no way out. To exit from the game, first choose a different belief structure.
  • Satanism: All players are fried devils and they only have Tridents.
  • Polytheism: All of the above belief structures (with the exception of Atheism and Satanism) take effect. Choose this for unlimited chaos.

• Allowed bananas

  
  You can choose here a single banana which will be the only allowed banana type throughout the game, regardless of other choices you made. Great for testing or more defined game conditions.

• Points to win

  
  Each time a player is hit by a throwable item, his or her opponent gets a number of points determined from the banana the player was hit by (ranging from one to four points, see bananas for details). The amount of points a player must aquire in order to win is determined by the Points to win quantity that can be adjusted in the game customisation panel and which defaults to 10.

• Gravity

  
  In the context of this game, gravity refers to the acceleration towards the ground which the celestial of your choice body exerts on all bodies on (or to good approximation close to) its surface. In the game customisation panel, you can choose from a selection of bodies in our solar system (one of which has ceased to exist a few years ago) or enter the gravitational field strength of a fictious body. The field strength is taken in units of m/s^2.

• Friction

  
  The number you can enter here is taken as a reference on which the single banana's friction will depend. The frictional force a flying item feels is calcluated as an item dependend scale factor f times the friction δ times the square of the velocity v:
  F = f*δ*v^2
  See the bananas section for the respective values of f

• Wind speed

  
  The wind speed is computed as a random number in the interval [-MAX_WINDSPEED..+MAX_WINDSPEED]. Any velocities are taken in units of 1m/s. The game customisation panel features two check boxes which let you determine how often the wind speed changes and wether it's relative strength (where relative refers to the max wind speed you can enter in the game customisation panel) is displayed. If the "change" check box is selected, the wind speed changes every time a thing was thrown by one of the players, whereas it changes only once a player was hit if the box is not selected.

• Closed world

  
  The world is closed per default. That means that bananas leaving at the left of the world re-enter at the right and vice versa. Disable this check box to suppress re-entering.

• Remove traces

  
  We normally show the traces of the bananas. This is a great visual aid for the players, as it makes adjusting the throw parameters much easier. It also lets you see the fantastic flight paths of some of the bananas. You can disable this feature by selecting this check box.

• Frames per second (FPS)

  
  The name of this field is misleading. You do not enter the number of frames that are displayed per second here. In fact, the number of milliseconds the game sleeps before computing and displaying a new frame is given by 1000 divided by this number here. The actual frame rate is therefore always (and sometimes significantly) lower than the number you enter here.

• Bananas

  
  The game sports a total of 10 different bananas which each have their special flight characteristics:
  • Banana
    Color = yellow - value = 1 - f = 1.0 - mass = 1.0kg
    The banana is a simple banana that is not too strongly affected by friction. It does not exist if your game type is DDR. If monkeys were brown ovals, they'd eat bananas that look like yellow circles.
  • Herring
    Color = cyan - value = 1 - f = 1.4 - mass = 1.0kg
    The Herring is a pretty bad flyer. It is quickly stopped by friction, which makes it perfect to hit players in deep holes. However, with strong headwind it may be virtually impossible to hit your opponent. Herrings keep tux happy.
  • Trident
    Color = gray - value = 1 - f = 0.7 - mass = 2.0kg
    The trident is probably the easiest banana to handle. Its large weight combined with almost negligible friction make it almost not dependend on the wind speed at all. It's standard equipment of the Devil.
  • Higgs
    Color = red - value = 2 - f = 1.4 - mass = 1.4kg
    The higgs is not easy to trace. In fact, it has never been caught yet. This might be due to its erratic meandering through space. In addition, it is more strongly affected by the wind speed (especially by heavy wind...) than a banana, but not as much as a herring. CMS is the only player to produce Higgses en masse.
  • Proton
    Color = blue - value = 1 - f = 0.7 - mass = 2kg
    The proton runs in circles until it hits something. Apart from that it behaves as the trident does. The proton is Atla's favourite toy.
  • AntiMatter
    Color = green/white - value = 3 - f = 0.2 - mass = 1kg
    Antimatter does not only feel gravity (and, because it only exists in tiny quantities, very little friction), but also a strong repelling force due to a tiny body sitting in top/middle of the visible world that has a charge of same sign as the antimatter.
  • Football
    Color = grey/white - value = 2 - f = 1.0 - mass = 1.0kg
    The football travels in the same way as the banana does. But, unlike all other bananas, it bounces off objects. It will explode after a number of bounces (eight) or when it hits a player. It it the playboy's banana of choice.
  • Scatter gun
    Color = black - value = 2 - f = random - mass = random
    The scatter gun is a powerful banana, in that it fires five shots at a time. However, these shots are distributed randomly in terms of velocity ( +- 50% about the value you entered for each shot), friction (f between 0.2 and 2.2) and mass (between 0.2 and 4.2kg). The angles are distributed at -8, -4, 0, +4, +8 degrees with respect to the angle you entered.
  • Bomber
    Color = green - value = 1 - f = 1.0 - mass = 1.0kg
    The bomber is one of the two most powerful bananas. It carries a number of bombs that are released in intervals of 0.5 seconds. The bomber itself is not slowed down by friction or gravity. Its flight direction is determined by vectorially adding the velocity you entered and the wind speed (which is always parallel to the celestial body's surface).
    Once released, the bombs fly like bananas.
    The number of bombs a bomber carries depends on how much time has passed since you first acquired a banana that has bombs (bomber or cluster bomb) and on the number of rounds you have not used one of these bananas. A bomber is created carrying five bombs. If you are in possession of a bomber or a cluster bomb, you get an additional two bombs every time it is your turn to throw something. The number of bombs in your possession is reset to zero every time you use either a bomber of a cluster bomb.
  • Cluster bomb
    Color = magenta - value = 2 - f = 1.0 - mass = 1.0kg
    Like the bomber, a cluster bomb carries a number of bombs. For the number of cluster bombs in your possession the same rules apply as for the bomber. Like the bomber, the cluster bomb travels in the direction given by your chosen velocity and the wind speed. However, it releases all it's bombs at one random point in time, 0.5 to 1.5s after the cluster bomb has been thrown. The individual bombs are released at a random angle +-45 degrees about the angle you entered for the bomb.
  • Parachute
    Color = orange - value = 4 - f = 0.7 | 20.0 - mass = 2.0kg
    The parachute travels for 2 seconds along a trajectory identical to that of a trident. It then opens the parachute which dramatically increases its friction, such that it will drop down slowly, at the sime time being carried away by the wind.
  • Rocket
    Color = pink - value = 4 - f = 0.7 - mass = 2.0kg
    The rocket travels along the same trajectory as the trident does. However, for the first 1.5 seconds, it is additionally accelerated with an acceleration of 20m/s^2 at an angle of 70 degrees.
  • Satellite
    Color = red/white - value = 4 - f = 0.2 - mass = 1.0kg
    The satellite feels a strong attraction from a massive body that is situated in the top middle of the visible world. The attraction is due to a 1/r^2 potential that is only felt by the satellite. It is good for the most beautiful banana tracks in the game.
  • AntiFootball
    Color = blue/white - value = 4 - f = 0.2 - mass = 1.0kg
    The AntiFootball behaves exactly like Antimatter, but it can also bounce off buildings or cows up to eight times. It's virtually impossible to control it...

The end

CMS playing Atlas with their default bananas Higgs (red) and Proton (blue) respectively.

License

Jorillas Version 0.75
Copyright (c) 2005 Richard Brauer
This game is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)

You may download version of this game from http://jorillas.sourceforge.net/.

Images

The image of the cow is taken from Bernd Roethlingshoefer's blog, and the original ORF source is no longer available.

The playboy's image was online for a few hours on Spiegel online in a report about german second division football games on Sunday, 10th April and has been removed the following day.