Delirium is 100% FREEWARE, which means that you can distribute it freely - as long as the game remains in its unmodified, original form. Additionally, you are allowed to distribute Delirium through all possible distribution channels (including electronic means, such as WWW) without any special authorization from the author. Again, the game must be in its original form.

However, should you want to distribute the game on a CD-ROM, for example, you must contact the author and ask for a permission. This is merely because I'd like to know where this game ends up. When you have my permission, you can also make money with the game (like including it to a commercial CD-ROM collection) and use it for advertising purposes.

Finally, if you write an online review about Delirium (on the Internet, for example), I'd appreciate if you told me about it. You are not legally required to do so, but I'd like to read them :)

Also, note that Delirium is released AS IS, without any warranty whatsoever. This means that the author can't be held responsible for any damage this piece of entertainment can possibly cause. You use this game completely on your own account. I must add that the game didn't cause any harm during the testing period.

By installing/using this product, you agree with this license in its entirety.

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Delirium is sort of an arcade/puzzle mixture. Its basic idea is rather simple: clear the level from blocks. In the top of the screen there are various colored blocks, or plates. You must get rid of those very same blocks in order to advance to the next level.

The goal can be accomplished with help of a certain object, part of every good puzzle game, that is: a ball. That's right, my friend, a ball. Or loads of them, in this case. Ok, ok... I'll tell the whole story.

You, as a player, control a cannon which can catch a falling ball - and shoot it at those nasty blocks. When the ball hits the top of the screen - or a block - it becomes a block. When three or more blocks of the same color are connected to each other, they disappear. You shoot those balls and try to form groups of three-or-more blocks, thus clearing the level - a bit by bit. The final goal is to get the best possible record. There is a time limit for each level. Running out of time isn't that serious - the game continues from the next level. You just don't get all the possible points, that's all. Delirium keeps track of the best records.

There are three different "level packs" to choose from, 52 levels in total. Delirium supports user made level packs and the necessary tools are provided should you want to try making your own levels.

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Look at the following picture. I will explain each number briefly. Note that the colors in the picture are heavily desaturated, to make the numbers stand out better.

That's right: Delirium does rule! No, just kidding... Anyway, what do I know?

All right, you were probably looking for the rules of this game, right? In that case, here are all the rules - in no particular order:

• Each destroyed block is worth 100 points. However, if a group of blocks is destroyed by a falling block (in a chain rection, for example), the reward is 150 points per block.

• Each level pack has maximum and minimum time limits. The first level has the maximum time, and the last has the minimum. The rest of the levels are linearly in between. When you run out of time, the game advances to the next level - even if there's still blocks left. And if you manage the clear the level without using all the time, the remaining seconds are used for a score bonus. You get seconds * 100 bonus points.

• In order to make a group of blocks disappear, the player must connect three or more blocks of the same color. Two blocks are considered connected when their left/right- or top/bottom- sides touch. Diagonal directions are not used.

• If the player destroys more than three blocks at a time, there is a bonus involved. For four blocks, the bonus coefficient is 2x, for five it's 3x, for six it's 4x - etc. The maximum coefficient is 10x. The total scored points is the sum of the block points times the bonus coefficient.
  For example: Player destroys four blocks (each worth 100 points) -> bonus is 2x -> final score is 2 * (4 * 100) = 800 points.

• The playfield contains room for 20 blocks horizontally and 6 blocks vertically. It means that there's exactly six rows of blocks. If the player tries to shoot a ball into the 7th row, the ball will explode when it hits the block on the 6th row.

• The balls shot by the player will bounce off from the walls.

• When the player enters a new level, the blocks can be in any place (i.e. they don't necessarily have to be stacked). However, when the player has fired his first ball - and when the ball reaches it's position - all blocks which aren't stacked, begin to fall. They'll "fall upwards" until they hit another block or the top of the screen. Also when the player removes blocks from the middle of a stack, the remaining blocks fall and form a new stack.

• When a new stack is formed by falling blocks, the blocks are again examined for same colored groups - and if found, those groups are destroyed. This rule can release interesting chain reactions. Which means bigger score, of course :)

Delirium needs some power to keep up the desired 60 frames-per-second (fps) rate. I would recommend something like Pentium II, 32 MB and fast gfx-card. You need a 32-bit Windows: W9x/Me/2000 or XP.

DirectX is advised to have installed. It should run without, but it would be freakin' slow then. The speed of your gfx-card affects the speed mostly, I think. If you have a good card, Delirium can make use of 2d hardware acceleration and thus run fast. Most cards accelerate some 2d operations if you got DirectX installed. Without any HW-acceleration the game might run slowly. Delirium runs in resolution 640x480, fullscreen by default.

Delirium supports all the major color-depths available, except 8 bpp: 12, 15, 16, 24 and 32 bpp are supported. It defaults to 16 bpp. If a color-depth isn't supported by your gfx-card, it will be emulated (which is really slow). If the game is very slow, you could try switching to 15 bpp mode. Open the 'delirium.cfg' and change the

video_mode_color_depth = 16

to

video_mode_color_depth = 15 (or anything forementioned)

You can also run the game in windowed mode (video_mode_fullscreen = 0), but you might lose the hardware acceleration and the game is much slower then. If you really want to run the game in a window, be sure the match the color-depth to your desktop's color-depth setting for the best speed.

Other things that may increase the performance:

• Disabling the sound (sound_enabled = 0)
  - Especially slower computers might do better without sound and music

• Reducing the sound frequency (sound_freq = 22050)
  - Might speed up a bit
  - You can reduce it as much as you want (22050, 11025, ...)

IMPORTANT: Delirium doesn't support the ALT-TAB combination!
If you really need to switch between applications while playing, run the game in windowed mode.

Note that the game skips frames if your PC can't update screen at 60 fps; that way the game runs at right speed, you just don't get very smooth animation.

By the way, I don't recommend running Delirium in 24 or 32 bpp modes on slower computers. There's some graphical benefit but the speed suffers greatly. Stick with 15 or 16 bpp for the best speed. However, if you got a reasonably fast computer: feel free to crank the color-depth up to 32 bpp. Btw, don't even bother to try the 12 bpp mode - chances are that your gfx-card won't support it (so it'll be emulated - in other words: slow as hell).

The best way to fine-tune your Delirium configuration for the best speed is to enable the FPS-counter (show_fps = 1) and check how different settings affect the fps rate.

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Delirium utilizes following libraries:

• SDL and SDL_Image by Sam Lantinga (+ others)
  http://www.libsdl.org
  
  
• FMOD Music & Sound Effects System by Firelight Technologies
  http://www.fmod.org

Version 1.1 (released 12.02.2004)

• Adds basic mouse support.
  - You can move the cannon by moving your mouse left or right.
  - Shoot with the left mouse button and aim with the right mouse button.
  - The moving treshold can be tweaked from the config file 'delirium.cfg'.
  - You can also disable the mouse support from the config file.
  - Keyboard controls work normally, and they can be combined with mouse movement.

I've written a quick HOWTO - document on the subject. If you're interested in making your own levels and creating playable level packs out of them, check it out. Assuming you installed the level making tools, you can read the document right here (it's in the TOOLS - folder).

Happy level making!

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