Audio Laser
By KL Productions
Version 0.33

Welcome to Audio Laser.
Have you ever played the fun and exciting game laser tag?
If so this is the game for you.
Your goal is to shoot as many players as you can with your laser gun.
This gun has unlimited ammunition.
Each player including you has 10 health when they log into the game.
When you shoot a player each shot will take away one health from them, and it is the same if you
get shot.


THE MAIN MENU

log in or create an account: this opens the account screen. You sign in first, and only once you
are actually logged in are you asked which arena you want to play on. This option only appears once
you have agreed to the rules.
Creating an account asks for an email address, and a 6 digit code is sent to it. You have to enter
that code before you can play. Temporary or throwaway email services are not accepted, and one
address can only hold one account. If the code does not arrive, check your spam folder, ask for a
new one, or fix a mistyped address, all from the same screen. If your mail simply will not get
through, ask a developer: they can read you a code directly or verify you by hand.
The account screen also has "Reset my password, I have forgotten it", which emails a reset code to
the address on your account. If you simply get your password wrong, the game offers you the same
thing there and then rather than sending you back to the main menu.
change some options: this brings you to the options menu, more about that later.
agree to the audio laser rules: you have to agree to the rules before you can connect. Choosing
this reads you the rules and asks. If you say no the game closes. If you say yes it takes you back
to the main menu, where the log in option has now appeared. If you have already agreed, this
option just tells you so.
check for new updates: checks the KL Productions host for a newer game build or sound pack. A game
update is downloaded and unzipped for you into an "update" folder next to the game.
exit the game: this quits the game. How surprising.

Only one copy of Audio Laser can run at a time. If you try to start a second one it will tell you
so and close. This is to stop cheaters running an alt alongside themselves.

WHAT YOUR ACCOUNT REMEMBERS
Your username and password are only half of it. Your account also holds your duo mate, how many
players you have tagged out, how many times you have been tagged out, the arena you last played and
when you were last online. All of that follows the account rather than the computer, so signing in
somewhere new gets you your own setup rather than a blank one, and several people can share a
computer without treading on each other. Type /stats in game to hear it back.
Admin is on the account too, so an admin who changes computer stays an admin, and nobody else who
uses their computer becomes one.


THE GAME ARENA SELECTION MENU

This comes up once you are signed in. The server holds your connection and sends you nothing at all
until you have picked, so nothing loads until you have decided.

connect to the indoors arena: the 100 by 100 by 100 cube, ten floors and a roof.
connect to the outdoors arena: the open sand arena with the bridge over it.
connect to the electrify arena: the mountain that closes in on itself.
Exit the game: signs you out and quits.

Pressing escape here signs you out and takes you back to the main menu.
Whichever arena you pick is remembered, so next time the menu opens on the one you usually play.
If you are tagged out and reconnect, you are put straight back into the arena you were already on
rather than being asked again.


THE OPTIONS MENU

set your name: just pick a name you want to be known as.
Set your duo mate: here you enter the name of the player you want to duo with. If you want to
fight somebody after you were a duo with this person, you can enter some random words to stop
forming a duo with them. You can also change it in game with /setmate followed by a name.
Your duo mate is saved on your account, not on your computer, so it follows you to any machine you
sign in from. If several people share one computer, each account keeps its own duo mate.
You can type /d then your message in the chat box if you want to talk to your duo mate in game.
Change the language: picks from the languages installed in the "languages" folder next to the
game. English is always there and needs no file. To make a translation, copy
languages/_template.txt, rename it to your language ending in .lng, and translate the right hand
side of each line. Anything you do not translate falls back to English, so a half finished
translation still works.
Go back: returns you to the main menu.


HOW TO PLAY

Your goal is to shoot as many players as you can with your laser gun.
This gun has unlimited ammunition.
Each player including you has 10 health when they log into the game.
To draw your laser gun press D.
Once this is done you can press control to fire it.
To find players to tag out press T.
Once you have pressed T you will be given a list of the players that are online. Press enter on a
name to track that person.
When you have chosen the person to track, press W. This will tell you what direction they are in
and how far away they are.
Then go to them and shoot them until they run out of health.
If you are hit once you will hear a buzzer like sound.
If you run out of health you will hear a continuous beep and be given the option to reconnect.


MOVING

UP arrow will move you forward.
Down arrow will move you backwards.
Left arrow will move you left.
Right arrow will move you right.
Page up will climb up a ladder if you are on one.
Page down will climb down a ladder if you are on one.
Space will make you jump.
Q will turn you 45 degrees left.
E will turn you 45 degrees right.
S will let you face and aim up.
X will let you face and aim down.
F will tell you the direction you are facing.
C will give you the coordinates you are standing at.


OTHER CONTROLS

Home will turn up the game volume.
End will turn down the game volume.
F1 will tell you how many players are online.
F2 will give you your ping, which tells you how long your client takes to reach the server and
get back. The longer the ping, the laggier your game.
F3 will tell you the message of the day, which can change at any time, so check it now and then.
F7 will tell you how long the server has been up, and the longest it has ever stayed up in one
run. If this run has not beaten that record yet, it also tells you how much longer it needs.
Anyone can check this, you do not have to be staff.
H will tell you how much health you have.
Z will tell you what is near you: items on the floor, the health pad, the exterminator, the laser
cannons and the laser launch pads.
P will tell you which players are near you.
B will tell you the current zone you are in.
O starts the exterminator, if you are stood on it and have paid it.
/ will open the chat box so you can chat with other players.
J will open the game menu.


CHANGING THE KEYS

Every key listed in this readme is the key the game comes with, not a key you are stuck with. In
the options menu, and in the game menu while you are playing, there is an entry called "change
which key does what". It lists everything the game listens for, grouped into moving about,
fighting, finding things out, talking and menus, reading messages back, and the review camera.
Choose one, press enter on "press a new key", and press the key you want. Hold shift, control or
alt along with it if you want a combination like shift and the left bracket.

Some things about it are worth knowing before you start:

Two things can never share a key. If the key you press is already taken, the game tells you what
has it and asks whether you want it given to the new thing instead; if you say yes, the old one is
left with no key until you give it another one. It is never silently taken away behind your back.

The review camera has its own keys, and those are allowed to be the same keys you walk with, because
the camera only listens while you are holding its key down. That is why the up arrow can be both
"walk forward" and "move the camera forward" without the two arguing.

A few keys cannot be taken at all: escape, F12, insert, caps lock, the windows key and the media
keys. Escape is how you get out of every menu and prompt in the game, including the one that asks
you to press a key, and the rest belong to your screen reader or to your computer.

Walking, turning, firing, using what you are holding, chatting and opening the game menu must
always have a key. You can move them anywhere you like, but you cannot leave them with nothing,
because there would then be no way to play or to reach the menu that would put it right.

If you change your mind, each key has "put it back to the key it came with", and the top of the
menu has one that puts every key in the game back at once. Your choices are saved as soon as you
make them, and they follow you from one session to the next.


THE GAME MENU

J opens a menu of everything you can do without leaving the game. It is the same set of things
you can type into the chat box, arranged in lists you arrow through, so you do not have to remember
that a command exists or spell it right in the middle of a game. Anything that needs the name of a
player shows you the players who are online and lets you pick one, so a duo mate, a private message
or a voice chat mute never has to be typed out.

Escape closes it and puts you straight back where you were standing. Anything that reads something
back to you, like your stats or the message of the day, closes the menu on its own so you hear the
answer against the game rather than over the top of a menu.

If you are an admin or a developer, the menu has a section for that as well, and it only appears
for the people it belongs to. It covers the same commands as /adminhelp and /devhelp, with the
players, items, amounts, ban lengths and coordinates all offered as lists rather than as things to
type. Anything that cannot be taken back, a ban or a server restart, asks you first and says the
name of whoever it is about to happen to.

The typed commands have not gone anywhere. Everything below still works exactly as it always did,
and always will.


SUPPORT TICKETS

Inside the game menu there is "support and tickets". A ticket is a conversation with the people who
run Audio Laser, and unlike sending a note, it goes both ways: staff reply, you reply back, and the
whole conversation is kept.

Open one for a bug, to report a player, to appeal a ban, for technical trouble getting the game
running, or for anything else. You are asked for a category, a subject and a description, all on one
screen, so you can go back and change any of them before it is sent. Every ticket gets a number.

When staff answer, you are told in game there and then. If you were not online at the time, you are
told the next time you log in, so an answer cannot be missed. You are only told about answers you
have not read yet, so once you have caught up the game stops mentioning it, and a login where it
does speak up always means there is genuinely something new.

Reading a ticket marks it read. So does replying to it, because you cannot answer something without
having read it.

"My tickets" lists yours with the status of each, and anything that has been answered since you last
looked says "new reply for you" and sorts to the top, so you never have to open all of them to find
out which one moved. Opening a ticket reads the conversation a line at a time, so you can go back
over anything as often as you like.

Only you and the staff can ever see your tickets. Other players cannot, whatever they try.

You can have three tickets open at once, and there is a short wait between opening one and the next.
If you have already got a ticket about something, add to that one rather than opening another: it
keeps everything together and gets it answered faster. You can close your own ticket at any time if
you no longer need it.

By typing, if you prefer: /newticket followed by a category (bug, player, appeal, tech or other) and
then what you want to say. /tickets lists yours, /ticket followed by a number reads one, and
/ticketreply followed by a number and a message adds to it.

If you only want to tell the developers something and do not need a reply, "send the developers a
note" is still there and is still the right thing for that.
In the chat box, and every other box the game asks you to type in - the ticket boxes, the account
screens, the message of the day, all of them, they are all the same box:

  F1                      read out this list, from inside the box
  tab                     repeat the question you are answering
  enter / escape          send what you have written / throw it away

  MOVING
  left and right arrows   move a character at a time and read it out
  control and left/right  move a whole word at a time and read the word out
  home and end            start and end of the line
  up or down arrow        read back everything you have typed so far

  SELECTING
  hold shift with any of the moving keys above to select as you go. You are told what you have
  just selected, or unselected if you come back the other way. So shift and right selects a
  character, control and shift and right selects a word, shift and end selects to the end of the
  line, and so on.
  control and A           select everything in the box
  shift and up or down    read back whatever is selected right now

  EDITING
  backspace               rub out what is selected, or the character before the cursor
  delete                  rub out what is selected, or the character under the cursor
  typing anything         replaces what is selected
  control and backspace   rub out the whole word before the cursor
  shift and backspace     clear the whole line and start again
  control and C           copy what is selected, or the whole line if nothing is selected
  control and X           cut what is selected
  control and V           paste, over the selection if there is one

  SPEECH
  F2                      turn the speaking of each letter as you type on or off
  F3                      turn "cap" before capital letters on or off

A box that opens with something already in it - your username on the account screen, your duo mate,
the message of the day - opens with that text SELECTED. So typing replaces the lot, and pressing an
arrow key first drops the selection and lets you edit what is there instead.

The first few boxes you open in a session end with "press F1 for the editing keys", and then it
stops saying it.

PASSWORD BOXES

A password box never reads your password out and cannot be copied or cut from. Every character you
type is spoken as "star", and anywhere the box would otherwise tell you what is in it, it tells you
how many stars there are instead: "5 stars". So you always know whether the box is empty, half
filled or full, without the password ever being said out loud. Press up or down arrow to hear the
count at any time, and rubbing characters out tells you how many are left.

You CAN paste into a password box with control and V, so a password manager can fill it in for you.
It tells you how many stars went in, which is how you know it worked. Any newline or tab on the
clipboard is thrown away rather than pasted, because password managers often put one on the end and
a password with an invisible newline stuck to it fails to log in with no way to see why. Copy and
cut are still refused, so the clipboard only ever goes one way into a password box.

A password box is never filled in for you, on any screen, ever. "Log in as a different account"
used to open with the last password used on this computer already in it - so the screen for signing
in as somebody else handed you the previous player's account for one keystroke. Both boxes on that
screen now start empty.
Password boxes speak "star" instead of your password and will not let it be copied out.
You can only send a chat message once every second. This is to stop lag and spam, and the server
enforces it as well as the game, so patching the game will not get you around it.

/help will read you the whole list of chat commands in game, so you never have to remember them.
Admins and developers also have /adminhelp and /devhelp.

Chat commands anybody can use:
/help         every command you can use.
/kills        how many players you have tagged out this session, and in total.
/myemail      the email address on your account.
/changemyemail <address>  change it. The code goes to your CURRENT address for safety.
/confirmemail <code>      finish an email change.
/setmate <name>  set or change your duo mate without leaving the game.
/mate         who your duo mate currently is.
/stats        your tag outs, your times tagged out, your duo mate and when your account was made.
/healthpad    where the health pad is on your arena.
/cannons      where the laser cannons are.
/lp           where the laser launch pads are.
/ladders      where the ladders are.
/exterminator where the exterminator is.
/sectors      on the electrify arena, which sectors are live right now.
/arena        which arena you are on and how many others are on it.
/changes      the changelog.
/d <message>  talk to your duo mate.
/pm <player> <message>  send a private message.


INVENTORY AND ITEMS

When you are walking around the map you may hear a laser looping sound.
That sound is an item.
To pick up the item just walk over it.
Once you have done this the item is added to your inventory.
To check for items around you press Z.
If you are told the item is above or below you it could be on another floor, so you will have to
go up or down a ladder to reach it.
To move back through your inventory press shift and tab together. To move forward press tab. Each
press tells you what you have landed on and how far through the list you are. The mouse wheel does
the same thing. With nothing in your inventory, tabbing is silent rather than repeating "no items"
at you.
To use an item, tab through your inventory until you hear its name, then press enter.

The Laser Grenade
When you use this item you throw it. It rolls along the floor, bouncing off walls, then powers up
and explodes, taking between 3 and 6 health off anybody too close. Your own grenade can catch you
too, so do not stand next to it.
The blast also wrecks machinery. Anything in the radius takes between 4 and 8 damage, which is
usually enough to destroy a laser bot, a laser turret or a laser guided missile outright, so a
grenade is the quickest answer to a bot that is chasing you or a turret you cannot get past.

The Health Pad Token
To use this you must be standing on the health pad. Press enter on the token while you are on it
and the pad comes to life, and the whole server is told you are using it. From then on it gives
you 2 health every time the health pad sound plays, as long as you are standing on it. You do not
need another token to use it again: it stays yours until somebody else puts their own token in.
The health pad is at 50, 50, 90 on the indoor arena, which is the middle of the roof and sounds
like a piece of wood underfoot.
It is at 50, 50, 20 on the outdoor arena, in the middle of the bridge.
It is at 115, 115, 0 on the electrify arena, dead in the centre.
You can also press / and type /healthpad to be told where it is.

The Laser Cannon Card
Used while standing on a laser cannon. See the laser cannons section below.

The Laser Turret
See the laser turrets section below.

The Laser Guided Missile
See the laser guided missiles section below.


THE EXTERMINATOR

When you tag out a player you get 1 or 2 laser credits.
Once you have 5 laser credits you can run the exterminator.
Go and stand on it, tab through your inventory to your laser credits, and press enter on them
until they are all gone. Then press O to start it.
A siren wails for twenty seconds. When it stops, everybody who did not evacuate is tagged out.
On the indoor arena that means everybody below the roof, so do not go down to another floor until
the siren stops.
On the outdoor arena it means everybody off the bridge, so stay on the bridge.
The person who paid for it is never caught by their own exterminator.
The indoor exterminator is at 90, 90, 90.
The outdoor exterminator is at 10, 10, 20.
Type /exterminator to be told where it is.


THE LASER CANNONS

Laser cannons are cannons that, once you feed a cannon card into one, blast the closest player
you are facing for 5 health.
Stand on the cannon, face the direction you want to fire, and press enter on a laser cannon card.
The cannon charges for a moment and then fires. Each card is one shot, so use them properly.
The beam only hits somebody who is actually in front of the cannon, within about 35 degrees of
the way you were facing, and within 70 feet. If nobody is there, the shot is wasted.
On the indoor arena the cannons are on floor 3, the laser cannon floor, at 20/20, 80/20, 20/80,
80/80 and 50/50, all at height 20.
On the outdoor arena there is one in each corner of the battlefield.
On the electrify arena there are four out in the middle sector.
Type /cannons to be told where they are.


LASER BOTS

Every arena runs these.
They chase you and try to tag you out, one health at a time, and they use the ladders to follow
you between floors. Shoot them and they go down, and a laser grenade will usually destroy one in
a single blast. Whoever takes a bot out is named to the whole server. Each arena keeps four of
them running whenever there is anybody in there to hunt.
Bots and laser turrets are enemies. A bot that has no player nearer to it than a turret will go
after the turret instead, and the two of them will shoot it out.


LASER TURRETS

Press enter on a laser turret in your inventory and it is deployed where you are standing.
If any player other than you or your duo mate comes within 25 feet, it starts firing at them.
It shoots at laser bots as well, and hits them harder than it hits a player: three shots and the
bot is gone. Whichever is closer, a bot or an enemy player, is the one it fires on.
The turret is not indestructible: players can shoot it out with their laser guns, a laser grenade
will usually destroy it in one blast, and laser bots shoot back at it. If yours goes down you are
told what destroyed it.
It also runs out of battery after one minute, which is what stops people placing turrets all over
the map. You can only have one out at a time.


LASER LAUNCH PADS

These are on the roof of the indoor arena and out on the sand of the outdoor arena, and there are
a couple in the electrify arena as well. They hum quietly so you can find them by ear.
Stand on one and you are launched into the sky, then you come back down on your own.
Type /lp to find out where they are.


LASER GUIDED MISSILES

These are found in the electrify arena, out in the outer sector where the good items are.
Press enter on one in your inventory and it is spawned beside you. It makes a sound and a beep.
It will not move unless there is another player online. If there is, it goes to that player, and
when it gets there it explodes, taking between 5 and 9 health off them.
Two minutes after being spawned it gives up and ceases to exist.
Players can also tag out your missile by shooting it.
You can have two out at a time.


THE INDOOR ARENA

The map is 100 by 100 by 100 tiles, so you can think of it as a huge cube.
In each corner of the map there is a ladder, at 1/1, 99/1, 1/99 and 99/99, running the full
height of the building. Climb them to get between floors. This is very helpful when an item or a
player is on a different floor from you.
Type /ladders to be told where they are.

THE EVACUATION ALERT
Every two minutes you will hear a notification saying that certain floors, for example 7, 8, 9 and
the roof, must be evacuated. You have thirty seconds. If you are still on one of those floors when
the time runs out, you are tagged out.


THE OUTDOOR ARENA

The outdoor arena is a huge open sand covered area, 100 by 100.
When you join you are dropped in from a helicopter. Do not worry, it is not high enough that you
need a parachute.
Twenty tiles up there is a bridge running north to south and east to west across the whole arena.
The health pad is in the middle of it and the exterminator is on a platform at one end.
The ladders up to the bridge are at 1/50, 99/50, 50/1 and 50/99, plus one at 10/10 for the
exterminator platform. Type /ladders to be told where they are.
The laser turret platform is at 80, 80, 0.
Every five minutes everybody is moved to a random location on the map. This is to stop people
from camping.


THE ELECTRIFY ARENA

In the electrify arena you are spawned in the centre of the map.
The very centre is at 115, 115, 0, and you will find the health pad there.
This map gets smaller and smaller by sectors.
There is an outer sector, a middle sector and an inner sector.
The outer sector runs around the outer edge of the map.
The middle sector is between the outer sector and the inner sector.
The inner sector runs around the centre of the map, where the laser electrifyer does not go.
This map is a mountain, so each sector is at a different height: the inner sector is at the bottom
at height 0, the middle sector is at height 10, and the outer sector is at height 20. Ladders
connect them.
There is a countdown before each sector is electrified. You get thirty seconds of warning.
If a sector is electrified and you find yourself in it, you lose between 1 and 2 health every
second.
The further you get from the centre, the better the items you will find, however there will be
fewer of them. The laser guided missiles are only out in the outer sector.
Once everything that is going to go live has gone live, the electrifyer powers down for a while
and the whole thing starts again.
Type /sectors to be told what is live right now.


WINDOWS, MACOS AND LINUX

Audio Laser runs on all three. Your settings are saved in the normal place for your system:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Audio Laser on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Audio Laser on macOS, and
~/.config/audiolaser on Linux. If you played an older version on Windows, your settings are copied
across automatically the first time you run this one, so your name and your rules agreement carry
over.
On Linux, the in game updater needs the "unzip" command to unpack a downloaded update. Most systems
have it; if yours does not, the updater tells you so and leaves the zip in the game folder for you.


FORKING THIS GAME

Audio Laser is open source and the licence lets you run your own fork. Everything naming who
publishes a build is in includes/branding.nvgt, five lines at the top of the file, and everything
that differs between operating systems is in includes/platform.nvgt. See FORKING AND PLATFORMS.txt
for the details.


CONTACT

If you have any problems you can get in touch through the KL Productions discord server, or
through https://kl-productions.xyz
