Playing Glines
Glines is easy to play. At startup, you find yourself with five balls randomly positionned on the board. Each turn, you are allowed to move one ball. You can move it up or down, left or right, or any combination of the previously mentionned directions, any number of squares. After your move, the computer drops three balls, again at random positions. You can preview the color of the balls to be dropped in the upper right corner of the application's window. If you manage to align five balls of the same color, they disappear, leaving you some more space to continue playing.
Basic usage
Starting Glines presents you with the game board, which is nine squares on a side. A new game starts as you launch the application. What it looks like is shown in Figure 1.
As the game progresses, the board gets more and more crowded (unless you are really good...) and making balls disappear gets harder and harder... The game is over, when the bord is full.
Basic Rules
A game of Glines begins with five balls of random colors on the board.
To make a move, click on one of the balls. A ball is activated when it starts rotating (or doing something else depending on the theme, but let us not anticipate...). You can then select its destination by clicking an empty square. If the path to the destination is clear, the activated ball rolls there. If the destination square is occupied by another ball, no ball will be moved and the selection will be transferred to the latter ball. If the path is not clear (your ball cannot jump over already laid down balls!) the application prints a warning in the status bar (bottom of the window) and the original ball reamains active.
As balls disappear, you get points, your score is shown in the upper right corner of the application window. The amount of point you get depends on the number of balls you managed to align (see Table 1).
Table 1. Scoring in Glines
| Number of balls | Score given |
|---|---|
| 5 | 10 |
| 6 | 12 |
| 7 | 18 |
| 8 | 28 |
| 9 | 42 |
| 10 | 82 |
| 11 | 108 |
| 12 | 138 |
| 13 | 172 |
| 14 | 210 |
Menus
The menu bar, located at the top of the game board, contains the following menus:
- Game
This menu contains three items:
New Game (Ctrl-N)
Scores...
Exit (Ctrl-Q)
- Settings
The Settings menu contains only one item:
Preferences which brings up the preferences dialog box.
- Help
This menu contains:
Glines Manual— shows this manual.
Playing Glines— shows the section of the manual dealing with how to play Glines.
Creating New Themes— shows details about creating new themes for glines.
Known Bugs— lists the application's known bugs and features on the whishlist.
Authors and Bug Reporting— provides the authors' contact and information on how to submit bug reports.
About— shows basic information about Glines, such as the author's name and the application version number.
How to set preferences
You can configure Glines by clicking on Preferences in the applications Settings menu. The following dialogbox will show up:
You can select different ball styles and background images for Glines. Just click on the drop down menus and choose your favorite look.
Ever been teased by an application asking you if you really want to quit? Well, the checkbox labelled "Ask confirmation when quitting" can help you disable this feature.
Glines version 1.9 and higher has now session management support, which allows it to remember your favorite settings when you quit the application or when you log out from your desktop.
 | Warning! |
|---|---|
Be careful though, the game itself is not saved!!! |