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User Manual
From Globulation2
Play guide from old Wiki should be copied here and improved. (so far as of copying from the old guide, the links need to be updated this is just a clone copy to start with)
Before reading this, see the guide to the installation of Globulation 2 for instructions about how to get and install Globulation 2.
Configuration Settings
Once you have correctly installed the game, run it and click on Settings in the main menu. This allows you to customize the way Globulation 2 runs on your computer. You can:
- select the language in which the program will display messages and menus. At the time of writing, Globulation 2 supported nine different languages. If you would like to help translate Globulation 2 into your language, see the translation guide
- select whether to play in full screen mode or in windowed mode. (in this guide it will be assumed that you play it in full screen mode, so if this guide says "screen" and you play in a window, just think "window" instead ;-)
- Select the screen resolution/window size. Globulation 2 supports the standard modes such as 640x480, 800x600, 832x624, 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc. (If you experience speed problems, opt for a low resolution)
- tweak settings to improve the speed of the game: enable lower quality graphics, enable or disable OpenGL. At the time of writing, Debian Linux supplied a version of Globulation 2 with broken OpenGL support - Debian users will need to turn off OpenGL or use the source.
- choose your username; the username allows you to be known by others; the online registration allows a free and password protected way to register your online username
- you can also set the music volume of the game
- Some day, you might want to try tweaking the rules of Globulation 2 by editing files in Glob2's data folder. This guide assumes you are using the standard data files.
Creation of maps
There is a high quality, easy to use map editor. Maps are from 64x64 to 512x512 (for now, more than 512x512 is not allowed, and the game is still slow to play on such big maps, but the game is supposed to be a lot faster in the first official release) To see how to edit maps, go here.
Manage games
How to begin/load/save a local, LAN or online game:
- Play for the first time: The best way to begin is to choose the tutorial . The tutorial explains the basics of the game. Just follow the messages that appear in the top-left of your screen.
- Play the campaign: We currently have only the short but fun "Joey" campaign available. Creating a new campaign is quite easy, and we'd be glad to have more.
- Play a custom game: Select Custom Game in the main menu. You can now choose a map. If you don't know what to choose, click on Easy Three, then OK.
- Play a saved game: Continue a saved game by selecting Load Game in the main menu.
Understanding the game (and strategy)
Inside a game of globulation 2
Your screen is divided into:
- a thin top line that shows informations about the game
- a mini map in the right upper corner, that you can click on to jump directly to that area
- a little circle left of the mini map that allows access to the game menu, from where you can save the game, make alliances, change in-game options, etc...
Top line of the screen
The top line of your screen shows various information about the game:
- The three left-most items show the number of workers, explorers, and warriors you have free, and the number you have in total. If the number of free globules falls below zero, you have more work assigned than globules available.
- The next item is a measure of the Prestige status in the game. The prestige system hasn't been fully worked out yet, and can be safely ignored for now.
- The next item is the number of globs that have converted to and from your team. Globs can be enticed to convert to different teams if the enemy offers a wider variety of fruit at their inns.
- The final item is a red bar representing the amount of work your computer's processor is being asked to do. The first white line represents 0% processor usage, the second line represents 100%. If the bar crosses the 100% boundary, your processor is being overloaded. This causes the game to slow down and become less responsive.
Buildings
Construction cost
When in the building panel on the right side of the screen, you see thumbnails of buildings. Hover over those thumbnails to see more details about construction costs.
Destroy, upgrade, and repair buildings
Click on a building. There is a "destroy" button at the bottom right of your screen. Click it to delete building. If you can, there will be an Upgrade button just above the Destroy button. When a building is damaged, you will also see a Repair button which asks your creatures to repair the bilding.
"Points"
On each side Inn/Swarm, there is a column of black dots :
- The left one indicates how much wheat is in your Inn/Swarm.
- The right one indicates how many globuls are inside (true for other buildings as well). It tells you how many globuls are eating (for the Inn), how many warriors are training (training camp) etc.
Description of buildings
There are many type of buildings doccumented on Description of buildingspage.
Units
Gathering information on units
- Food, hit points: Besides your swarm, there should also be creatures of the same color in your main window. There are a blue and a green bar under each creature. The blue bar shows how much food the creature has left, and the green one indicates its hit points (or life points). If the blue bar is empty, your creature is starving, and its hitpoints will decrease.
- Other informations: Click on one of your creatures. It is probably a worker. On the right side of your screen you can now see how hungry and healthy it is, what it is carrying, and how good its abilities are.
- Other statistics and information on your units can be seen if you choose the section number four at right under your map. These are detailed informations on health and many others.
No orders!
You cannot give any kind of orders to your creatures. This is done indirectly through your buildings and flags. You can use the t key to show/hide the path to the current target of the selected unit.
The creatures
Other units besides the Workers are the Warriors and the Explorers.
- The Warriors can attack other land creatures and structures; they can be improved via the training camp, the pool, and the running court. They can be recognized as the units with big arms.
- The Explorers will keep your map up to date and show you live units that are within their sight. They can attack other flying objects and when they've been through a school of level 3, they can attack ground creatures and structures. They can be recognized as the flying units.
- All creatures eat in inns, they will each take one fruit of each available variety and one unit of wheat. Their satisfaction level will depend on the fruits they had (from 0 to 3) and will determine wether they are attracted to the ennemy's inns.
Alliances
There are four alliance levels:
- Show markets so that fruit can be exchanged
- Show Inns so that enemy units can perhaps convert
When you ally with someone, there won't be fighting betwen you.
Victory
Except with a few maps that specify particular conditions for victory, there are three basic ways of winning in Globulation 2:
- Reaching the prestige limit before anyone else
In practice, most games are won through a combination of the first two, while the last (prestige) is only used when stalemate has long been reached.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Hit the space bar to jump to the location of the last event that appeared on-screen
- Hold down the letter 'a' to show the team that each unit and building belongs to
- Hit 't' to toggle showing of where each of your units is headed to
- Hit escape to show the in-game menu
- Hit 'p' at any time to pause the game
- Hit 'u' to upgrade a building, or 'r' to repair it
- Hit 'd' to destroy a building or flag. Be very careful, as it doesn't ask you if you're sure before destroying your swarm
- When a building is selected, you can hit TAB to cycle between all your buildings of the same type
- When a building is selected, you can hit '+/-' to modify its assigned number of workers
- Hit 'h' to show/hide text history
- Use the arrows to move or speed up the your view-frame
Got lost? Example of a simple game
Buildings you place first in order:
These are all the steps regarding the buildings you will construct:
- you should always have a Swarm when you begin a game. If not, you can build it later, since your first priority is to build an Inn or two. Your creatures will get hungry, the Inn will provide them with food. Don't forget to assign enough workers to the Inn after it is finished (depends on how far away your wheat field is);
- The swarm allows you to build more units, and, depending on how many units you want, you should build one, two, or maybe even three swarms. Look at how much food you have to decide how many units you can maintain. In this game having more units is not always better. Units that are hungry will certainly die very fast.
- Build a hospital: It is easy to build and it helps units to recover hitpoints;
- Barracks will improve the strength of Warriors, a Racetrack is needed if you want your units to move faster on the ground, and a Swimming Pool will allow your units to move through water. Depending on your priorities, now decide to build one of these three buildings.
- Upgrading your buildings vastly improves their effectiveness. But to do so, you need a School. To build a School, your creatures need to be able to swim, so that they can collect the Algae. Therefore, we must build a Swimming Pool first. When it is finished, place a School.
- Other useful structures to have are the Defense Tower and the Wall. A defense tower surrounded by or on the other side of a wall is especially hard for the enemy to destroy, and low-level warriors won't be able to do much damage to a defense tower anyway (but they can kill workers assigned to it, causing it to run out of ammunition). Walls can also keep resources from growing in annoying places and can isolate resources you have no plans to exploit or wish to keep out of reach of enemy workers.
- Against another human player, there can be a rush to destroy each other's nearby algae completely to prevent the enemy from having advanced buildings too easily. AI are not smart enough to do it to you, but certain players have been known to try it every game! So send a few warriors to protect yours. Defense towers are nice for this purpose as they don't require feeding and won't convert to the enemy; but to fight an algea genocide rush, you need warriors who can swim.
- As soon as the first workers have finished school, you get the option to upgrade buildings. Swarms, Markets and Stone Walls cannot be upgraded, others buildings can be upgraded twice. To upgrade to higher levels, you must first upgrade your School and train some workers (it's a common error to assign 20 workers to upgrade something ASAP when only a few have the proper build level - be careful). Workers trained in School can not only upgrade buildings, but also gather resources much faster.
Organization of creatures
In order to raise a healthy colony you need to:
- Take your time to build all these buildings. The most important for your creatures is the food. Once you have enough food and workers upgrade buildings one by one.
- Assign more workers when upgrading, and it will take less time until the new and improved building is available. Don't wait for a building to be finished slowly. And don't forget that after your building is upgraded, you still need all your units to train inside your building. It will take some time until you will see your units go faster or fight better.
Details and other information
For details about Artificial Intelligences (AI), please have a look at the FAQ here.
TODO Adding some jpegs of buildings, some screenshots near every explanation.
--Knives 11:29, 17 December 2005 (PST)
Further readings
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