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 <[email protected]> for the Debian GNU system (but may be used by others).