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Crock is a one or two player fighting game that runs with the X Window System. You control your fighter by making offensive and defensive moves. The characters fight until one player's strength runs out. After describing the options, this man pages describes the attacks, defenses, and finishing moves, as well as some strategy. For information on how to configure the game, refer to player.config.5 and config.crock.5 which describe the formats of the general and player-specific configuration files.
There are two buttons, labeled "quit" and "play again". Clicking on "quit" at any time causes the game to end. Clicking on "play again" at the end of a match causes a new match to begin.
In addition, there are two sets of buttons labeled "human" and "computer" for the left player and the right player. Clicking on one sets that player (right or left) to be controlled by a human or computer, respectively. By default, the game starts up with both players controlled by the computer. If the game is running in single player mode, clicking on "human" for one character automatically makes the other player controlled by the computer.
Standard attacks include punches (left, right and uppercuts) and kicks (low and high), as well as a leg sweep or trip move. The range of a move is different for each move and each character. These move are generally only effective at a close range. Keyboard and keypad keys are used for these attacks (currently the plus, enter and insert (shifted and unshifted) on the keypad for kicks and punches, and keyboard keys for other attacks ('s' for the sweep).
Special moves include fire projectiles as well as other non-standard attacks (including teleport). Some specific to a particular character. These attacks tend to be more distance oriented, and in fact projectiles do not work if the opponent is is too close. The 'Return' key on the keyboard fires a projectile.
Blocking and crouching and jumping are the main defensive moves. The down and up arrows cause the character to crouch and jump, respectively. Holding the space bar blocks. Blocked hits take damage, but also leave the opponent vulnerable for a retaliation.
They exist. Each character has some. Some are more difficult to perform than others or have certain prerequisites. If you are curious, look at the keybindings in the player config file for some clues and if you are really curious, then read the source code. The "f" key, usually plain or with the <SHIFT> or <CONTROL> key is a good place to start.
To compile, it should be sufficient just to run "xmkmf" and then make. Edit the file "runcrock" and change the path to be whatever the proper path is. By default, all other paths are specified relative to the crock/bin directory. If you don't like that, then change the paths in "config.crock" and the player config files (currently "tb.config" and "gecko.config"). The keybindings in the initial version are something I threw together. They are not intended to be the optimal configuration and are pretty easy to change. Certain attributes of characters or moves (damage or x and y offsets, for example) are also easy to change. Other changes, like adding moves require more extensive changes to the config file or even code changes if it is adding a special move that does not yet exist.
The computer sucks. It was not intended to be wonderfully intelligent, simply as a way to test things. Two player mode is far more challenging, if you have a fast enough network connection. Crock was designed to use a minimal amount of network bandwidth once the initial loading stages have completed. The best strategy is probably a mix of offensive and defensive. Purely offensive is not the way to go, since all moves can be blocked and retaliated. Pure defense is just plain boring. Just like continually throwing projectiles is considered bad etiquette (and angers the Beerhunter). Currently, Sel-Fesh is probably not as powerful as The Gecko, though in the hands of a good player, it probably shouldn't be that great of a disadvantage.
If there is enough interest, a mailing list or newsgroup can be created. Check the crock entry in my web page for more information (currently: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/people/frank_adelstein.html but eventually http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~frank/crock.html). This has taken far more time than I originally intended, so there's a limited amount of improvements and bug fixes that I will be capable of doing. Contributions are always welcome, though I might not be able to deal with them in a timely fashion. The danger of the game is that almost anything can be added to it. I don't intend it to be "the fatality game" and see how many tricks I can stuff into it. However there is a lot of room for improvement, perhaps by interested parties. In other words, have a blast.
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Created by unroff & hp-tools. © by Hans-Peter Bischof. All Rights Reserved (1997).
Last modified 21/April/97