Critical Mass

Your world has been infested by an aggressive army of space critters. Overrun
and unprepared, your government was unable to defend its precious resources. As
a last effort to recapture some of the 'goodies', you have been placed into a
tiny spacecraft and sent after them. Critical Mass (aka Critter) is a shoot'em
up (smup) similar to Galaxian. The basic idea is simple: you move your ship back
and forth at the bottom of the screen, shooting up, while bad guys fly around
and shoot at you.

Running:
If you haven't already done so, just run Critter! A config file will be created
the first time you exit the game. 
Mac OS X
The config file is called config.txt and will be created in your
$(HOME)/.critter/ directory.
Double clicking on GoConfigDirectory.command will automatically open the config
directory in the Finder.  You can then open the config.txt file in your favorite
text editor.

Linux
The config file is called config.txt and will be created in your
$(HOME)/.critter/ directory.
A note about sound in RedHat and FedoraCore: If you find sound to be lagging,
start Critter with the SDL_AUDIODRIVER set to "alsa" or "dma" (for bourne shell:
"export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa"). Unfortunately, some distributions ship with a
patched SDL library that is not game friendly. Note the the binary zip package
from SourceForge contains all the original non-patched libraries.
Windows
The config file is called config.txt and will be created in the directory where
Critter is started. 
You can edit the config.txt file to change resolution, fullscreen mode, etc. Or
you can specify it on the command line. When Critter exits it will write the
current configuration to the config file. Many of the settings can also be
changed within the game (See Config menu).

Video Resolution:
You can select the most common video resolutions via the in-game config menu. It
is possible to run Critter at any resolution by editing the config.txt file. By
default the game will reject resolutions that that don't have an aspect ration
of 4/3 e.g. widescreen displays. Non 4/3 resolutions can be enabled in the
config menu. The downside is that things may look a little stretched. In the
latest version, the game will automatically add all resolutions supported by SDL
(OpenGL/fullscreen). To add a new resolution, simply add it to the end of the
line containing "set resolutions =
1600x1200,1280x960,1152x864,1024x768,800x600,640x480,512x384". After saving the
file and restarting Critter, the new resolution will be available in the in-game
config menu. Be careful not to switch to a resolution you monitor does not
support! You have been warned.

Keyboard/Mouse Controls:
The default action bindings are:

PrimaryFire 
SPACE 
Fire!
PrimaryFire 
MOUSEBUTTON1 
Fire! 
SecondaryFire
LALT
Fire!
SecondaryFire 
MOUSEBUTTON2 
Fire!
TertiaryFire
LCTRL
Fire or Bark!
TertiaryFire 
MOUSEBUTTON3 
Fire or Bark!
Motion 
MOTION 
Move via Mouse
MotionUp 
UP
Move up
MotionRight 
RIGHT
Move right
Confirm 
RETURN
Confirm selection
EscapeAction 
ESCAPE
Cancel selection
CritterBoard 
TAB
Show/Hide CritterBoard
Snapshot 
F12
Take snapshow (snapNN.png)
PauseGame 
p
Pause game
ChangeContext 
c
Toggle locked-in / Mouse-look style (for developer)

Go to http://criticalmass.sourceforge.net/ for the latest news, email info, etc.

Have fun,
Frank (crittermail2005 at telus dot net).