Because hackers too need to play with balls

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How to play

There are 2 gameplay modes:

• Sequential - Where the player starts at the chosen level and plays until all lives are lost.
  • In this mode, you can unlock new levels
  • If you beat the reference time for a level, you get 50 pts for every second
  • Every 20000 pts gives you a new life
  • If played all the way through (starting from the first level), an extra 5000 pts for every remaining life will be awarded
• Survival - Lets you play a single level with increasing speed and number of different balls.
  • Some bonuses (like reverse and bomb) are excluded
  • A new ball colour is added every two minutes

There are currently 2 level sets:

• Professional - including all the levels and pretty demanding gameplay
• Easy - a subset of levels with modifications such as:
  • More bonuses
  • Bigger balls
  • Slower movement
  • Some levels use kids mode (laser always on, bombs and reverses can occur more than once)

Bonuses:

How levels work

All levels are listed in level sets. Currently, there are 2 of them:

• pro.set
• easy.set

The game will scan for *.set files during startup so if you add your own set, you have to restart.
The format:

line 1: Name of set
line 2: thumbnail image
(for every level)
	level_line 1: Name of level
	level_line 2: 
		coordinates       - lvl file
		background        - png or jpg
		overlay           - png (if not used, just add a comma)
		thumbnail
		music             - optional - if not given a random music will play
	level_line 3:
		*start feedrate    - feed rate at the start of level
		*end feedrate      - feed rate at the end
		*balls to draw     - how many balls in total will be drawn
		*balls from start  - how many balls will quickly fill the path to start with
		colours            - how many different ball colours there will be (2 - 16)
		time               - time to beat to get time bonus (in seconds)
		bonus_frequency    - the higher, the more bonuses will be drawn (1-100)
		                     -1 : use game default (which is 5 at the moment)
		kids mode          - (0/1) if set to 1:
		                        - the laser will always be on
		                        - bomb and reverse bonuses will draw more than once 
		*ball size         - 1.0 is standard, 2.0 is twice as big
		mirror x           - (0/1) mirror level horizontally
		mirror y           - (0/1) mirror level vertically

last line: -

* - these entries can have semicolon separated values for different paths

Example consisting of two levels:

Example set
level1_thumb.jpg
Messy Bedroom
level12.lvl, level12.jpg, level12_overlay.png,level12_thumb.jpg
1.5,2.5,120,10,5,300,10,0,1.0,1,1
Zatlantiz
level1.lvl, level1.jpg, ,level1_thumb.jpg
2,3,120,40,4,180,10,1,1.3,1,0
-

Editor

The game has a built-in (nightmarish) editor which can be invoked with arguments -e level_name. It will try to open whatever it finds of:

• level_name.lvl
• level_name_overlay.png
• level_name.png
• level_name.jpg - if no level_name.png is found

F1 will bring up a brief description of keys. While in test mode (press space), pressing F12 will save a nice screenshot which can be used as a thumbnail. Right mouse button adds a node in current path. Left button moves nodes and control points.
Remember to use power of two image sizes as they will be loaded as textures.

User data directory

If you create a directory called data in the users zaz directory, all files found there will be used together with files installed on your system. In case of name clash, user files will override the installed files. On unix-ish platforms the path to this directory will be:

~/.zaz/data

On windows-ish :) platforms, it depends on your version. There will be a .zaz folder in your application data.

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