# The &ksirtet; Handbook

&Nicolas.Hadacek;
1999
2000
Nicolas Hadacek
&FDLNotice;
2003-09-18
2.1.7

&ksirtet; is a clone of the well known game Tetris. You must fit the falling pieces to form full lines.

KDE
game
tetris

## Introduction

&ksirtet; is a clone of the well known game Tetris. You must fit the falling pieces to form full lines. You can rotate and translate the falling piece. The game ends when no more pieces can fall, &ie; when your incomplete lines reach the top of the board.

Every time you have destroyed 10 lines, you advance to the next level and the pieces fall quicker (to be precise, the pieces fall from the top of the screen each `1/(1+level)` second).

## How to play

### Handling the falling piece

You can use the keyboard to rotate, translate or drop down the falling piece. The keys are configurable via the menu item Settings Configure Shortcuts....

### Game Types

&ksirtet; supports two types of single player game: Normal and Arcade. In Normal mode, points totals are kept, and highscores recorded. Also, when advancing to the next level, play continues without clearing the gameboard. In Arcade mode, no points totals are kept, although an Elapsed time counter is shown. When you advance to the next level in Arcade mode, the gameboard is cleared of pieces.

You can choose the game mode in the Mode menu.

### How to gain points

There are two sources of points:

- Dropping down a piece using the Down Arrow gives a small number of points which is equal to the drop height. It is not much each time but is particularly relevant in the earlier levels, when the pieces fall more slowly.

- The biggest part of the score comes from destroying full lines. It is very important to note that destroying multiple lines at the same time gives you a lot more points. A four-lines destruction is called a tetris: it gives a maximum amount of points.

  The points gained are 40 for a one-liner, 100 for two lines, 300 for three lines and 1200 for a tetris. These numbers are multiplied by the current level. For example, destroying four lines in level 10 gives 12,000 points.

### Configuring &ksirtet;

The &ksirtet; configuration is accessed from the menu item Settings Configure KSirtet.... The options are as follows:

#### Game Configuration

Initial Level

  Set the level which you will play at startup, from 1 (easiest) to 20 (hardest). Default is level one.

Direct drop down

  If checked, pressing the Down Arrow will cause a tile to immediately fall to the bottom of the screen. If unchecked, pressing the Down Arrow only causes the piece to fall until the key is released.

Old rotation style

  &ksirtet; has two ways of rotating each piece: Old style and New style. Each style uses a different point to rotate the piece around. Try both, and see which one you prefer.

#### Appearance Configuration

Block Size

  Sets the size of the falling blocks.

Enable animations

  If checked, pieces gluing are shown with an animation.

Show piece's shadow

  If checked, a shadow is placed beneath the game board showing where the piece will fall.

Show next piece

  If checked, shows the next tile that will fall onto the game board.

Show detailed "removed lines" field

  If checked, the Removed lines counter on the left of the screen shows how many times each number of lines have been removed. If unchecked, just the total number removed is shown.

Fade Strength

  Controls the fade balance between the desktop background and the &ksirtet; background. A setting of zero makes the &ksirtet; background completely transparent, and a setting of one makes the &ksirtet; background completely opaque.

Fade Color

  Displays a dialog allowing you to choose the color of the &ksirtet; background.

#### Colors Configuration

Here you can select the colors used for the tiles in &ksirtet;.

## Multiplayer

The multiplayer option allows you to play with others players on the same computer and/or on different computers situated on the network. You can also play against an AI (artificial intelligence) player which is currently not very good.

Basically when destroying lines, a player sends garbage at the bottom of the game of his next opponent: nothing for one line destroyed, one garbage line for two lines destroyed and so on.

## Command Reference

### The Main &ksirtet; window

#### The Game Menu

&Ctrl;N Game New

  Starts a new game.

P Game Pause

  Pauses the game

H Game Show Highscores

  Displays the high scores.

&Ctrl;Q Game Quit

  Quits &ksirtet;

#### The Mode Menu

Mode Single Human (Normal)

  Sets the multiplayer mode to single player normal. See .

Mode Single Human (Arcade)

  Sets the multiplayer mode to single player arcade. See .

Mode Human vs Human

  Sets the multiplayer mode to two player with two human players.

Mode Human vs Computer

  Sets the multiplayer mode to two player with one human and one computer player.

Mode More...

  Displays the multiplayer options dialog.

#### The Settings Menu

&Ctrl;M Settings Show Menubar

  Shows or hides the Menubar.To return the menubar, right-click anywhere on the gameboard and select Show Menubar.

Settings Configure Shortcuts...

  Displays a standard &kde; key bindings configuration dialog to change the keyboard shortcuts for &ksirtet;.

Settings Configure Notifications...

  Displays a standard &kde; notifications configuration dialog to change the audio and visual notifications for &ksirtet;.

Settings Configure Highscores...

  Displays the highscore configuration dialog, in which you can change several settings that affect how &ksirtet; treats highscores.

Settings Configure &ksirtet;

  Displays/changes the &ksirtet; configuration dialog.

#### The Help Menu

&help.menu.documentation;

## Credits and Licenses

### Developers

`Erik Eng` - Wrote the generic tetris code

&Nicolas.Hadacek; &Nicolas.Hadacek.mail;

### Authors

&Nicolas.Hadacek; &Nicolas.Hadacek.mail;

Robert Williams rwilliams@kde.org - Editor

Documentation updated for &kde; 3.2 by &Philip.Rodrigues;.

&underFDL; &underGPL;