Neon Lights
-----------

Description
-----------
A one-handed autofire arena shooter, inspired by Robert Fearon's SYNSO2: Squid
Harder. The game has a unique control scheme which may take some getting used
to, so it's worth playing the tutorial first to get the hang of things. There
are 5 game modes; Score Attack, Survival, Time Attack Speed, Time Attack
Shooting, and the Tony Hart-inspired Draw mode which dispenses with the enemies
and just lets draw pretty patterns. You can also have up to 4 players (on a
single computer) in all of the game modes (including the tutorial). Depending
on the game mode, multiplayer will either be co-operative or competitive.


Controls
--------
All the controls listed here can be re-mapped using the keyconfig.txt file. See
below for its location.

Cursors:         Player 1 movement.
wasd:            Player 2 movement.
ijkl:            Player 3 movement.
Numpad(8,4,2,6): Player 4 movement.

The players' movement is also mapped to the 1st 4 gamepads on your system by
default. I would recommend using the keyboard over a gamepad however, as it
allows finer control of your ship.

Space, Return, Ctrl, Joy1 Button1: Activate menu.
Escape: Quit to menu/quit.


Draw Mode Controls
------------------
The Draw mode has a lot of extra controls to manipulate your bullet trails:

1234567:                           Select line type.
zxcvbnm,.:                         Select preset colour (from the
                                     drawColours.txt file, see location below).
-:                                 Slow down ink movement speed.
=:                                 Speed up ink movement speed.
Space, Return, Ctrl, Joy1 Button1: Toggle player 1 on/off.
Tab, Joy2 Button1:                 Toggle player 2 on/off.
Shift, Joy3 Button1:               Toggle player 3 on/off.
Alt Joy4 Button1:                  Toggle player 4 on/off
Joy1 Button2:                      Select colour preset 1.
Joy1 Button3:                      Select colour preset 2.
Joy1 Button4:                      Select colour preset 4.
Joy1 Trigger1:                     Slow down ink movement speed.
Joy1 Trigger2:                     Speed up ink movement speed.
Joy1 Button5:                      Cycle line type left.
Joy1 Button6:                      Cycle line type right.
Mouse Movement:                    Select colour (x-axis = hue,
                                     y-axis = luminance, saturation).
Mouse Left Button:                 Cycle line type left.
Mouse Right Button:                Cycle line type right.
Mouse Wheel:                       Speed up/slow down ink movement speed.


Game Options
------------
The game will automatically start fullscreen at your desktop's current
resolution, with the game corrected to its desired aspect ratio.

You can pass the executable various command line flags:

Usage:
NeonLights.exe -w [width] -h [height] -a [val] -win -ns -nm -aa [name]

Flags:
--width [val] | -w [val]:	Set the width of the window.
--height [val] | -h [val]:	Set the height of the window.
--antialias [val] | -a [val]:	Sets the antialiasing level (2, 4, or 6).
--windowed | -win:		Sets whether to go windowed or not.
--nosound | -ns:		Switches off the sound output.
--nomusic | -nm:		Switches off the background music.
--audio-api [name] | -aa [name]:Sets the audio API to use.  Can be DirectSound,
				ASIO, MME, ALSA, JACK, OSS, CoreAudio.
--help:				Display this help.

These can also be set from the NeonLights.conf file that will be generated when
the program is first run.  See below for its location.


File Locations
--------------

NeonLights.conf, HighScores.xml:

Windows XP:      Documents and Settings/<user name>/Application Data/NeonLights
Windows Vista/7: Users/<user name>/AppData/Roaming/NeonLights
Linux etc.:      /home/<user name>/.NeonLights
OSX:             /Users/<user name>/Library/Application Support/NeonLights

keyconfig.txt, drawColours.txt:

Windows XP:      Same dir as NeonLights.exe
Linux etc.:      $PREFIX/share/NeonLights
                 (by default /usr/local/share/NeonLights)
OSX:             NeonLights.app/Contents/Resources
                 (to access them, right-click on the NeonLights icon and select
                 'Show Package Contents')

Saved Score Attack levels:

Windows XP:      The levels subdirectory, relative to NeonLights.exe
Linux etc.:      /home/<user name>/.NeonLights/levels
OSX:             NeonLights.app/Contents/Resources/levels (see above)


License Details
---------------
Source code is licensed under the GPL v3.  Graphics and sounds (bar the
following exceptions) under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license.

The font used is Neuropol, from: http://www.dafont.com/neuropol.font
The jumping mushroom sprite is a modified version (i.e. vector-traced with
added curves) of Robert Fearon's Mushroom sprite from SYNSO2: Squid Harder.
The Space Invader is a modified version of Taito's classic space invader.
The Draw mode music is Left Bank Two, from the British children's TV show
Hartbeat.

If any copyright-holders have a problem with my use of these assets, email me
at niallmoody@yahoo.co.uk and I'll remove them from the game.


- Niall Moody (7/2/11).
