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STARSHIP RUBICON
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v2.14 - NOV 2015
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www.wick.works

If something gets messed up option-wise, you can just delete rubicon.options and the game will generate a new default file next time you run the game.

------------------------- Default Controls -------------------------

Thrust				: Left Mouse
Shoot				: Right Mouse
Ability				: Spacebar
Afterburner			: Left Shift (Z for Mac)

Each key can be rebound in-game to either a mouse, keyboard, or joystick button. This ain't no twin-stick shooter, so aiming is done with either just the mouse or a joystick stick. The game should be able to automatically detect most joysticks, and the options to bind keys to them should become available when it does.

Macs seem to have a love/hate relationship with the Shift key, so I've disabled the ability to bind Shift for Macs. If you absolutely *have* to have it on shift, you can set the control manually by setting "afterburn" to 160 in rubicon.options.

Since Macs don't have a printscreen key (and it's ambiguous for Linux boxes), I've set \ (backslash, above enter) as an additional 'take screenshot' key.

Hit Alt+Enter to toggle fullscreen/windowed (not available for the "fit to screen" window size).

TOUCHPADS ARE NOT RECOMMENDED. But do what you gotta do.




------------------------- Modding -------------------------

Hopefully by the time you read this, I'll have things integrated into the Steam Workshop. UPDATE: haha, puny human, such optimism. You knew not the labyrinth that is the Steam API documentation. Gonna have to do things the old-fashioned way for now -- swapping around files directly.

If you're interested in making your *own* mods, you can use the ingame editors in conjunction with editing .lua scripts in various code/ folders. It's really not too hard! I got into coding by modding Star Wars Battlefront, so even if you've never learnt to program, I recommend at least poking around with a text editor.

Just, ah, remember to make backups!

(check rubimod.txt for more detailed information on modding + using the ingame editor)



------------------------- Troubleshooting -------------------------

If something isn't listed here, I check the Steam forum fairly frequently. You can try posting there.

OPTIONS:
You can open "rubicon.options" in a text editor. There, you can manually set:
> Resolution: "resolution_override" to 1 and "resolution" to whatever resolution you think might work.
> Driver: "graphics_driver" can be either "directx" or "opengl".
> FPS: The game is locked by default to 45 fps. You can tweak this, but the game may play differently because I didn't know better.
> Loading screen: By default the game loads all the music up at the start. If hate startup screens and you'd rather just have it load things as it goes (causing occasional half-second hangs), change "load_music_at_start" to 0.
> Tourny mode is for recording high scores at conventions. On death, only the points you just picked up are shown and there is no continue option.

LOG:
If the game crashes (or you run into some other bug), it would be great if you could save "log.txt" and send it my way (if you run the game again, log.txt will be overwritten!) along with a description of what you think may have triggered the crash.

WEIRD FLICKERING BACKGROUND GRID:
I've inconsistently seen this since I uploaded the game to Steam. If you're getting it a lot, just delete space_tile2.png from gfx/effectGraphics. Usually it's an additional parallax layer, but sometimes the edge transparencies get messed up and you can see the tile seams.

WINDOWS FIREWALL EXCEPTION:
The reason Windows asks to allow a firewall exception is that the game is actually multiplayer under the hood, but I didn't have the technical chops to get it running smoothly enough in time to include it in the final release. Maybe someday, if it looks like people respond well enough to the game (ie, buy enough copies that I can justify spending another large chunk of time getting it working). You can see that it technically works by twiddling "prototype_multiplayer" in the options file.

LINUX SOUND:
Linux has some problems with sound effects not playing and/or being at wonky volumes. Go figure. It uses OpenAL by default (I have not been able to get FreeAudio to work) but apparently needs the 32-bit drivers. On 64-bit Ubuntu, you should be able to get them with:

	sudo apt-get install libopenal1:i386 libopenal-dev:i386

Other linux distros need to modify that command accordingly (https://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/diag/missinglibopenal has a good reference sheet). You may need to reboot following the install.

(In general for linux problems, try installing the 32-bit versions of any libraries it complains about not having.)

If you run into any other issues (or just want to let me know what you think!), feel free to shoot an email to starshiprubicon@gmail.com or go to starshiprubicon.com and find some kind of message box.


------------------------- Steam Information -------------------------

A note about Steam's cloud saving: profiles store what ships are unlocked in code/configSource, and I couldn't make a separate entry for each possible unlocked ship. So the cloud isn't going to store what ships you've unlocked. HOWEVER, it will store all configs named ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA, or DELTA. Best I could do.

I, um, made *educated guesses* about the minimum system requirements on the store page. I simply don't have the resources/time to narrow it down. Your milage will vary.


------------------------- Development Information -------------------------

STARSHIP RUBICON was designed, programed drawn, sfx'd, and arted over a total of about a year of actual work by Joseph "Wick" Perry (that's me!). It was first released at the end of a Kickstarter-funded development period as open source (https://github.com/wickworks/Rubicon) under the name RUBICON.

Because the world totally needed another shooting-stuff-in-space game. I combat my existential doubt by pursuing quality (hella smooth gameplay) and ethics (doesn't selfishly demand a lot of your limited time for being alive). More "for the good of humanity" games are coming, I swear.

Distributed by:
Cheerful Ghost - cheerfulghost.com

Development blog:
wickworks.tumblr.com

Ye Olde Kickstarter campaign:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/rubicon-0

Music by:
Beatscribe - soundcloud.com/beatscribe
Rich Douglas - richdouglas.wix.com/rdhome

Character portraits by:
Jackson Lango - jacksonlango.com

Character design and dialogue by:
Enyo Sherman - reactionglyph.tumblr.com

ACTUAL PICTURES OF SPACE by:
NASA

Tools:
Blitzmax, SciTE, Notepad2, Scrivener, Paint.Net, GIMP, Total Commander, www.bfxr.net, Audacity



------------------------- Influences -------------------------

Spaceship shooting:
This whole thing started as an attempt to come up with a better control scheme for flying a spaceship around than in Asteroids; I liked its core economy of choice between moving and shooting, but it felt unwieldy. Rubicon is my response -- I tried to preserve that core mostly-mutually-exclusive decision to steer versus aim, but make it easier to switch between the two.

I also looked at Geometry Wars and a couple of the other twin-stick shooters that it spawned. I didn't learn a lot though, since it allows you to do both simultaneously.

Luftrausers showed me the Form of juicy 2D flying + shooting.

I copied a lot of the weapon/ability/enemy designs from Bastion+Transistor. They do an *amazing* job making equipment "swingy" (no +5% incremental improvements) and allowing different loadouts to generate novel gameplay.

Ship modification:
I initially tried copying Mechwarrior/Gratuitous Space Battles with slots and whatnot, but it never felt right. The final version was cribbed almost directly from Megaman Battle Network, with my own addition of "addon" components and the bonus for symmetry (there are other shape bonuses too but they're pretty trivial).

Mission design:
Space Pirates and Zombies did a pretty good job of filling the design space of "what sorts of objectives can you have in a fly-around-and-shoot-things-game". I didn't end up using most of it (base defense, hunt, assassinations...) but it was a good starting point. Also, progress past escort missions not depending on the survival of your escort was a good call (you just don't get their bonuses).

I mostly ended up with two core mission types (and enemy types, for that matter): shooting challenges and movement challenges (cryopod rescue). 

PCG mission nodes:
FTL, obviously. Though I don't like the lack of information in FTL, most of the time you're just randomly choosing where to go. I pared it down and made things a little more straightforward. The creators of Spelunky put up a cool walkthrough of how their PCG engine works, which I based a lot off of.

I actually played around with making it a roguelike (contact enemies to zoom into battle mode) for a full month before scrapping it (KILL YOUR DARLINGS) as an uncontrollable too-complicated metastructure.

Character dialogue:
Randomly-triggered banter? Sounds like Bioware.
Badly translated English? Sounds like Zero Wing.

Unlockables:
Unlockable stuff from the main menu showing up playable ingame? Sounds like FTL and Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Philosophy:
Ever since I read Kidd Radd (a semi-animated online webcomic epic from 2002 - 2004), I've been conscious of games about violence for the sake of violence... whiiich is basically what I just made. The muddled morality that pops up in the game stems from this.






















































































































------------------------- Cheats! -------------------------
The cheats of STARSHIP RUBICON:
[Q] : STARMAP : select any visible node | BATTLE : slow time
[0] : win a level
[9] : repair ship
[P] : ++points at shops or the unlock screen

However! Cheats are only enabled in SPECIAL EDITION mode. I'm not telling you any of the PASSWORDs or where to enter the (gate) PASSWORDs in order to activate SPECIAL EDITION mode.

(PROTIP if you were a kickstarter backer of the appropriate tier, you know a password!)

