Solarwolf
Encyclopedia
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
produced by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
Electronics which was itself adapted from the 1981 arcade game
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
of the same name.
SolarWolf is free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
, licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
, version 2.1 and uses the cross-platform
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
Pygame
Pygame
Pygame is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games.It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language...
game development library. The official site maintains binary packages for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
. The source code may also easily be compiled for UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
variants such as BSD, Solaris and IRIX
IRIX
IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...
. It is included in the official repositories of several Linux distributions, including Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
http://packages.debian.org/solarwolf, ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
http://packages.ubuntu.com/solarwolf, OpenSUSE
OpenSUSE
openSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE...
http://software.opensuse.org/search?q=solarwolf and Fedora https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/solarwolf.
Gameplay
SolarWolf has been described by GameSpy as a "strange hybrid of games. It's part Pac-Man, part Q-Bert, and part Dodgeball."The object of the game is to pilot your ship with the arrow keys across a rectangular play area to collect all of the cubes in the level. However, while doing this, four enemy fighters (one of each side of the screen), will launch fireball-like rockets at you; if hit, you will lose a ship. If all your ships are lost, you will lose the game. Each level has a timer on the right side; should the player complete the level before the timer runs out, they can skip the next level entirely.
As the game goes on, more challenges emerge. The enemies fire more rapidly, obstacles such as asteroids and spike mines appear (colliding with either costs the player a ship), as well as the introduction of yellow blocks (which require two passes to collect) and red blocks (requiring three passes). Later in the game, a hidden spike mine may emerge from any yellow or red block.
During the game there are several power-ups that the player may collect, including:
- an increase in the skip level timer
- an immediately evaporation of all enemy fireballs from the screen
- destruction of one of the four enemy ships
- a temporary shield (which only protects the ship from fireballs)
- a temporary slow-animation power-up (which reduces the speed of objects).
- an extra life
If the player loses the game, they can later continue it from a saved file menu.
According to the author's website, his own personal best score is "in the 40's." The best reported score on the same website is 15 ships and 26 skips. Scores as low as 13 ships with 25 skips have been reported on various websites.
External links
- Official SolarWolf Site
- The Freeware Scene: Volume 5 (July 2002) see page 2; article from GameSpy.com
- Marcel's Linux Game of the Month (June 2006) article from UnixReview.com
- Linux Game Tome entry