Main page

contents:

  1. What is CHRZĄSZCZ?
  2. Requirements
  3. Download
  4. Credits
  5. Technical info
  6. Why

What is CHRZĄSZCZ?

CHRZĄSZCZ is an Open Source maze game. In chrząszcz you are walking through a maze. The whole maze is divided into chambers. In order to go to a different chamber you must open a door. In order to open a door you must have a key.

To open the door you sometimes need to exchange the keys with the orcs living here. Do not be afraid, the orcs are friendly and they always allow you to reverse the transaction. But sometimes they will not give you anything. You must figure out which keys combinations they would be willing to exchange.

Choose your class (fighter, thief or wizard) and gain special abilities. Each time you exchange the keys with the orc you have a chance to get them. Some of them are class specific, like the wizard's ability to teleport himself.

While in the game press F1 to access your library. See the missions you have to accomplish to complete the game.

You may save your game pressing F2 (while in the game). Use the menu option "Load" to open it.

See the chrzaszcz.pdf document.

Requirements

  • SDL
  • SDL_image
  • SDL_ttf
  • libxml-2.0
IMPORTANT - in order to build chrząszcz from source you will need "devel" versions of these libraries. You will also need a tool called "pkg-config".

Check "configure --help" - it is possible to disable certain chrząszcz features and then some of the libraries may be not required.

Download

The recent release is 0.0.9, released in the 10th September, 2013. It is qualified as "beta".

"chrząszcz" is hosted by SourceForge.net®. (SourceForge.net, Slashdot, freshmeat, and ThinkGeek are registered trademarks or trademarks of SourceForge, Inc., in the United States and other countries.)

The project tarball can be downloaded from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chrzaszcz

Thanks to SourceForge.net® for hosting the project!

Credits

In terms of the game itself (source code, soundtrack, graphics, 3D models, scripts) the "chrząszcz" author is Paweł Biernacki (pawel.f.biernacki@gmail.com). However, the project would never come to existance without the Open Source contributors involved in multiple projects. Some of the projects are used by chrząszcz directly, some have been used to produce it.

Technical info

"chrząszcz" has been written in C/C++. It is packaged using autotools (autoconf/automake). The project started in July 2008.

The mathematical concept behind chrząszcz has been first used in a maze generator for children I wrote in 2008 (mazes - english version Colorful Dwarves, polish version Kolorowe Krasnoludki).

"chrząszcz" is running on Fedora Core Linux 10. It is my hope that it would run on other systems as well. No guarantees, though.

Why

The big question is: WHY HAS CHRZĄSZCZ BEEN WRITTEN? Here is the story:

In July 2008 I posted a message to a polish programming newsgroup (pl.comp.programming) describing an idea of extending the Colorful Dwarves. I really liked the idea and imagined that someone else might get "infected" by it, too. Unfortunately, I failed. I realized that I needed to invest more effort in it, at least to make people believe that I really believed in the idea. Posting a message is easy. I decided to create a maze game and use the game to demonstrate the concept behind it. So, these are the origins of the "chrząszcz". Enjoy!

Paweł Biernacki,
Helsinki, 4th September, 2013
http://www.pawelbiernacki.net/software/chrzaszcz

Copyright by Pawel Biernacki, Helsinki, 2008-2015.