ZNibbles v0.0.3 - A little silly game
(c) Vincent Mallet 1997, 1998, 1999 - vmallet@enst.fr

Home page is http://www.stud.enst.fr/~vmallet/ZNibbles.html

ZNibbles is a little server/client multiplayer game. It's dumb
but it's really cool when a lot of people is playing. It is based on
old games like "nibbles", "snake", "snipes"... Each player controls
a worm and tries to eat as many nibbles as possible. When a worm 
eats a nibble, it grows. The goal of course is to have the longest
worm and live as long as possible, trapping other players..

Unfortunately I didn't have time to finish it, and still don't 
have that time. So I'm releasing the sources AS-IS because I've
had some demand for that. Remember: it is NOT FINISHED ! 

I wrote that while I was at the University of Nice, France (http://www.unice.fr),
in early 1997.

I'm now at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications  
http://www.stud.enst.fr/~vmallet

Any question or suggestion : vmallet@enst.fr

If you are interested in this little game and modify the sources, please 
SEND ME PATCHES so I can make this codebase evolve too.

Check out for a new version sometimes in the future..

ZNibbles is copyrighted free software, distributed under the
conditions of the GNU General Public Licence. See the file COPYING
for more info.


RULES:
 - you control your worm with the cursor keys (UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT) 
   or (LEFT, RIGHT) if you are in "two-key mode". see client option 
   -twokey

 - you cannot reverse your direction, i.e, if you are going right and
   press LEFT, you die.

 - you die whenever you encounter a wall, another worm or even yourself.

 - when a worm is created, it is in "baby-mode" for a few seconds. That 
   is, a non-baby worm won't die when walking on a baby worm.

 - the more nibbles you eat, the more you grow. Yellow nibbles are the
   most effectives.


BUGS:
 - there are a lot of bugs. Please report them at vmallet@enst.fr !
 - I will try to fix at least most annoying bugs

NOTES:
 - it is not finished
 - There is an X11 directory in which there should be a X11-only client.
   this is merely a copy and adaptation of the Motif client, and I just
   began to work on it, so don't be surprised by what you may find.

HOW TO BUILD AND INSTALL:
 - see file INSTALL. Basically just a ./configure and a make should get you
   going

HOW TO RUN:
 - launch the znibbles server :   "nibbles 5005" if you want it to run on port 5005
 - launch the znibbles client:    "znibbles localhost 5005 yourname"
 - tell your friends to launch the znibbles client. Play with 5 or 10 friends. Have fun.

ANOTHER NOTE:
 - ZNibbles was formerly called "XNibbles". Actually when I wrote this game in early 1997 
   I didn't know of any game of this name. When I recently decided to release the as-is version 
   of Xnibbles, I discovered that someone unfortunately used the same name for another game.
   So I had to choose another one and picked up "ZNibbles". Now you know why.

cool.


Vincent.   1998.10.28 (revisited 1998.11.17) (rerevisited 1999.04.03) (rerere 1999.04.14)

