BLIND ROYALE 1.0.3
A battle royale played entirely by ear.

Fifty fighters, one island, one winner. A storm closes in until only one is left.
There is no screen - everything is sound and speech.

Run blind_royale.exe. Nothing to install. Keep the exe, the lib folder and
sounds.dat together.


START HERE

  1. Main menu, "Learn the sounds". Ten minutes. Do the damage topic.
  2. Main menu, "Practice". The island, with nothing trying to kill you.
  3. Play a solo match.

To play online you need an account and a working email address. See PLAYING
ONLINE at the end.


================================================================================
THE KEYS
================================================================================

THE DROP

Every match starts in the air.

  space             jump out of the bus
  p                 what you are flying over
  left / right      steer as you fall
  up / down         dive faster, or slow down

The glider opens itself and calls out your altitude. You land with a pickaxe, a
rare scar and a full hundred shields, so you can fight straight away.

MOVING

  q / e             turn. Let go and it says your heading
  shift + q / e     snap to the nearest compass point
  up / down         walk forward and back
  left / right      sidestep
  shift + up        sprint. Fast and loud
  x                 crouch. Slow and quiet
  space             jump
  page up / down    step up or down onto stairs, a ledge, a floor

FIGHTING

  left control      fire. Hold it for automatic weapons
  a                 aim down sights. More accurate, slower
  r                 reload
  1 to 6            weapon slots. Slot 1 is your pickaxe
  n                 grenade, about sixteen meters ahead
  y                 turn to face the nearest person you can hear

A soft ping in your ear means somebody is in your firing cone. y turns you onto
the nearest person, but it points at the nearest body rather than whoever is
shooting at you, and it ignores walls and floors - so settle with q and e.

HEALING

  w                 cycle what you will use
  h                 use it

  Small shield 25, up to 50.   Big shield 50, up to 100.
  Bandage 15 health, up to 75.   Medkit takes you to 100.

There is a second or two of wait after each one, and moving cancels it. Heal
behind cover.

LOOT AND BUILDING

  enter             open a chest, or pick up everything at your feet
  t                 scan: what is nearest, which way, how far
  f                 swing your pickaxe at a tree, rock or car
  m                 wood, stone or metal
  z  wall      c  ramp      v  floor      b  cone

Chests hum. Ten materials a piece. A piece goes where you are facing; a cone goes
over your head. A ramp climbs the height of a wall, so they stack.

VEHICLES AND YOUR SQUAD

  o                 get in or out
  left control      fire the mounted gun, from any seat
  u                 where your squad is
  enter             pick up a downed team mate. Stand there four seconds

A kart carries four and is about four times running speed. Shots hit the
bodywork, not the people in it - but it explodes when the bodywork goes, so get
out when you hear it taking rounds.

In duos and squads, a hit that would kill you knocks you down instead while
somebody on your side is still up. You have forty five seconds to be picked up.

INFORMATION

  tab               health, shields, weapon, ammo, materials, players left
  i                 inventory
  p                 where you are and which way you are facing
  g                 the storm
  l                 players left
  k                 recent eliminations

TRACKING

  j                 a person
  ;                 a place - the circle, or a named spot
  d                 something to pick up - chests, vehicles, loot
  shift + any       a fresh fix. Use this while chasing
  \                 stop

TALKING

  '                 say something to everybody in your game
  /                 type a command
  shift + '         message one person
  [ and ]           move between message buffers
  , and .           read back. Hold shift to jump to the ends
  control + c       copy the line you are on

FUNCTION KEYS

  f1                offline: help.  Online: who is online
  f2                the message of the day
  f3                ping the server
  f4                help, in an online match
  f7                how long the server has been up
  f8                support
  escape            offline: pause.  Online: a menu, and nothing stops


================================================================================
WORTH KNOWING
================================================================================

DIRECTIONS are given as the turn you would make: "in front and a little ways off
to the left, 40 meters away". Compass directions stay compass directions.

TRACKING gives you a fix, not a live feed - where somebody was when you asked. If
they move you arrive at an empty field, so press shift with j for a fresh one.
The circle is the exception and keeps up with itself. A downed team mate stays
tracked.

DAMAGE has a sound each: shields, the shield breaking, then the body. That is how
you tell how far through somebody you are.

HEIGHT matters. You climb by walking onto the top of things, never into the side.
High ground makes you more accurate and harder to hit, and somebody directly above
you cannot be shot at all. A fall over five meters hurts.

THE STORM is a roar from the nearest edge. Walk away from the roar. It closes
eight times and hurts more each round.

LEAVING a match online is asked of the server, and refused if you were hit in the
last few seconds. Closing the game does not get round it - you stay standing for a
minute.


================================================================================
THE MAIN MENU
================================================================================

LEARN THE SOUNDS   Nine topics, a hundred sounds. Arrow through and it tells you
                   what each one means. Enter or space plays it, s stops, r says
                   the meaning again.

PRACTICE           The island with no enemies and no storm.

SANDBOX            A normal match with the cheat keys on. Press j, backtick or
                   insert for the cheat menu, which holds everything: invincible,
                   endless ammo and materials, one shot kills, spawning team
                   mates and enemies, and the rest. Cheats never carry into a
                   real match.

SETTINGS           Volume, distance fade, spoken damage numbers, and binaural
                   positioning. Turn binaural off first if audio ever crackles.

Your settings live outside the game folder, so updating loses nothing:

    Windows   %LOCALAPPDATA%\Blind Royale
    macOS     ~/Library/Application Support/Blind Royale
    Linux     ~/.config/blind_royale


================================================================================
PLAYING ONLINE
================================================================================

The island, the guns, the storm and every key are the same online. This is only
the part with other people in it. The offline build has none of it.

MAKING AN ACCOUNT

A name, a password, and an email address that works - a six digit code goes to it
and you type the code in. Throwaway addresses are refused. The code can take a
minute and does land in spam; the screen you are on can send it again, or fix an
address you mistyped.

SIGNING IN

  Sign in            straight back in with what this machine saved
  Sign in as         type a name and password
  Create an account
  Forgot password    a reset code is emailed to you

"Your account" in the lobby, or /account, changes your password and email. A new
email is confirmed with a code sent to your OLD address.

THE HUB

Where you land after signing in. Chat and news arrive while you sit there.

  n                 open a public lobby
  b                 see public lobbies and join one
  p                 open a private lobby, joinable only by its code
  j                 join by code
  i                 the open island
  s                 start your lobby
  w                 where you stand
  o  or f1          who is online
  c                 talk to the whole server
  t                 talk to your team
  l                 leave your lobby
  escape            sign out

Message buffers, private messages and the function keys work as they do in a
match.

LOBBIES

Nobody queues. Somebody opens a lobby, people join, and whoever opened it starts
it. Nothing is on a clock. Public lobbies are on the list everyone sees; private
ones are code only. Both get a code - type your own or leave it blank for one.
You can be in one lobby at a time.

THE OPEN ISLAND

Press i. Not a battle royale: one place, everybody on the same island, no storm
and no winner. Go down and you drop your kit where you fell and come back
somewhere else. The loot is shared, so what somebody left is there for you. Leave
whenever with escape.

IN A MATCH

Fifty fighters, with bots filling only the seats nobody is sitting in. Every bot
is the same bot for everybody in the match, so "Ash got me" means one person to
all of you. Loot is first come, first served.

COMMANDS

Anything starting with a slash is a command, anywhere you can talk. The slash key
opens that line for you.

  /help              every command you can use
  /ping              round trip to the server
  /changes           what is new
  /all  /team  /match  <text>     talk, at three different reaches
  /pm <name> <text>  private message.  /r <text> answers the last one
  /account           password and email
  /ignore <name>     stop seeing somebody.  /unignore, /ignored

SUPPORT

Press f8 to open a ticket - something broken, somebody spoiling the game, a ban
you think is wrong. Unlike chat, a ticket waits, and you are told when we answer.
Three open at once.

UPDATES

The game checks at startup, and the server turns away old versions. If there is a
new one it downloads it beside itself and closes; unpack it over your folder.


Sound effects are Fortnite assets, used here for a personal, non-commercial fan
project.
