NAME¶
tuxmath - a math game for kids with Tux
DESCRIPTION¶
"Tux, of Math Command" ("TuxMath," for short) is an
educational arcade game starring Tux, the Linux mascot! Based on the classic
arcade game "Missile Command," Tux must defend his cities. In this
case, though, he must do it by solving math problems.
Use the number keys on the keyboard to answer math equations, and then hit the
space bar or enter. If you don't answer a comet's math equation before it hits
one of your igloos, the igloo will be damaged. If an igloo is hit twice, the
penguin inside walks away. When you lose all of your igloos, the game ends.
There is also a "factoroids" game in which a ship destroys asteroids
if you type a valid factor of the number for a particular asteroid. Use the
number keys to steer.
OPTIONS¶
Note: most settings are now stored in a config file named 'options' in a hidden
directory named './tuxmath' within the user's home directory. The file
consists of simple name/value pairs. It is much easier to edit this file to
set game parameters than to use the command-line arguments listed below. Also,
many options are not selectable from the command line. The config file
contains extensive comments detailing how to configure the behavior of
Tuxmath.
- --help
- Display help for the command
- --version
- Display version and author information
- --homedir dirname
- seek for user home director(ies) in the specified location, rather than
the user's actual home directory. You can set up a user directory tree in
this location (see README). This option is especially useful for schools
where all students log in with a single user name.
- --optionfile filename
- read config settings from named file. The locations searched for a file
with a matching name are the current working directory, the absolute path
of the filename, tuxmath's missions directory, the user's tuxmath
directory, and the user's home.
- --playthroughlist
- to ask each question only once, allowing player to win game if all
questions successfully answered
- --answersfirst
- to ask questions in format: ? + num2 = num3 instead of default format:
num1 + num2 = ?
- --answersmiddle
- to ask questions in format: num1 + ? = num3 instead of default format:
num1 + num2 = ?
- --nosound
- to disable sound/music
- --nobackground
- to disable background photos (for slower systems)
- --fullscreen
- to run in fullscreen, if possible (vs. windowed)
- --windowed
- to run in a window rather than fullscreen
- --keypad
- to enable the on-sceen numeric keypad
- --demo
- to run the program as a cycling demonstration
- --speed S
- set initial speed of the game (S may be fractional, default is 1.0)
- --allownegatives
- to allow answers to be less than zero
- --debug-X
- prints debug information on command line. X may be one of the following:
setup: debug messages only during initialization
fileops: file operations (loading and saving data)
loaders: loading of mulitmedia (images and sounds) titlescreen
menu: most operations dealing with menus
menu-parser: subset of operations dealing with menus
game: the comets game
factoroids: the factoroids game
lan: anything dealing with networking
mathcards: generation of math problems
sdl: the general graphical system
lessons: parsing pre-prepared lessons
highscore: loading and saving high scores
options: loading and saving options files
text-and-intl: text and internationalization
all: everything!
HISTORY¶
- 2013-07-29: Updated for version 2.0.3 by Dmitry Smirnov.
- 2004-12-17: First version of this manual page.
-
AUTHOR¶
This manual page was written by Fabio Brito <
fabio@debian-ba.org>
for the Debian GNU system (but may be used by others).