Ok, here are the glossary items which Abula asked me to write.
Code: Select all
Accelerating
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Accelerating is essential to get more speed. However, accelerating may turn your bike over and you'll hit your head, so be careful. Easy way to avoid it is to release gas once in a while. Harder (and faster) way is to turn your bike to the other direction for a while to return your front wheel to the ground. This works because accelerating always drops down the wheel which is accelerating. While sounding very easy, accelerating can be very hard in its subtlety.
Acrossish
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A particular Elma language used mainly in #across IRC channel but also in other Elma media. The base language is English and a lot of influences come from Swedish and Finnish. Kuskis like Jeppe, SoC and ribot have brought several new words to acrossish. Most words are used only for a limited time and new ones appear all the time. Sample words could be balle (battle), ez (easy), whange (want), höyl (play over and over), kuski (player). Acrossish is a dialect of internet slang which is widely used in IRC, see [url]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Internet_slang[/url]
ALE
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Advanced Level Editor (newest version is 2.1) is a program coded by Nicolas for more advanced level editing. Polygon copy, cut and connect, improved user interface, autograss, grid, level importing and many more features included. Also possible to create multiple flowers. The maximum level size is little bit bigger than what you can make in elma internal editor. Download ALE from [url=http://zworqy.com/elmaguide/index.php?p=ale]Zworqy's site[/url].
Autolevel
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An autolevel usually means a level where you don't have to press any button to finish the level. Usually they have some tight places so that you won't finish it easily if you press some key. An autolevel might be hard to make because the bike behaves little bit differently on each run. This is caused by rounding errors which happen when the speed, rotation etc. are expressed in doubles or floats in elma source code.
An autolevel can also mean a level made with a level generator, a program which makes random levels automatically. At least ribot has made a level generator.
Background
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The texture used and showed behind the driver. The usual background is sky but it can also be switched to ground, brick and all the other available mask textures. It can also be altered by using an LGR. In elma versions since 1.2 there has been an option to set default background to sky and foreground to ground. This is sometimes useful for example in headbanger where the brick background is irritating.
Battle
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A battle (or balle) is a contest mainly playable on irc which consists in hoyling a level for a short period of time. Statistics are made with the results and are available by typing stats nick.
There were also mopobattles which were bigger and advertised beforehand and there
were better statistics available. Nowadays almost all the battling is played in [url=http://www.moposite.com/mopolauta/viewtopic.php?t=4653]belma[/url]. Before belma, there were mainly only one possible battle mode, where each player played the given unforeseen level for the given time and told the best time he got. Nowadays in belma there are also first finish battles, where the winner is the one who finishes the level first, one-life battles where you can try only once, slowness battle where you have to finish the lev as slowly as possible and survivor battle where you have to stay alive as long as possible. All these can be also crippled which means that you are not able to use throttle or turn or brake or rotate keys. The battle can also be hidden which means that you can't see other players.
belma
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belma (Battle ELasto MAnia, ballelma) is a patch created by milagros which allows you to play battles online on the Internet. To play belma, you need to register to [url]http://b.attle.info[/url] (which is down at the moment, registeration is not needed now) and download belma patch from [url=http://zworqy.com/belma/]zworqy's size[/url]. For more info, see [url=http://www.moposite.com/mopolauta/viewtopic.php?t=4653]mopolauta[/url],[url=http://88.193.228.32/belma/faq/]veezay's installation instructions[/url] and join #ballelma in IRCnet. belma shouldn't be confused with EOL, which is meant for multiplaying (only for 2 players).
Bike
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Bike is the vehicle the kuski uses to drive through levels. The bike in elma is few pixels taller than in Across. That's why it might be impossible to play some old across level in elma.
Bounce
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A trick where you pressure one of the wheels and then press brake to release the pressure. You can practice bounces in the [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url]. Bounce was originally deemed as bug, but when people started to know how to make it on purpose, it revealed lots of new style possibilities. Nowadays it belongs to every höylä's trick gallery. Bounce should be distinguished from a bug bounce, which happens sometimes when you are trying bounce. A bug bounce is a unnaturally powerful bounce which can't be predicted. It is sometimes hard to make a clear difference between a normal bounce and a bug bounce. For example current enigma wrs have a controversial bounces. There has been discussion should they be allowed or not. But it's hard to draw line which bounce is buggy and which is not. That's why all enigma bounces are allowed so far, but generally a bug bounce is not allowed.
Braking
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By braking you can lock both of the wheels. Braking can many times used to get more speed.
Correct use of brakes is one of the hardest skills in elma.
See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Brutal volt
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Volt that is usually made from flat ground. First you pressure your back wheel and brake. Then you volt so that you can make a full volt on flat ground. See
[url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Cannon
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A wheel rail or a bunch of tiny polygons inserted to the start of the lev to get a big starting speed. Usually used by noobs. See special level 1 in [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Clipping
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Each picture has a clipping. It can be either ground, sky or both which means that they can be seen only on ground (like big brick mask), only on sky (like trees) or on both.
See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_designing.php]Designing section[/url].
Cup
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A cup is a specific kind of contest with a number of events. Each event the participants play a level to make a best time, trying to end as high in the list possible. Points are counted and when the cup ends the one with the most points wins (this differs from the usual meaning of cup where the participants knock each other out of the competition). Commonly, points are also counted for teams. The first cup was World Cup by px, other famous cups are mastercups by team TAP, mopokups by zworqy and los cups by Xhomaz. Russian scene has also arranged a bunch of cups.
Crippled battle
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A Crippled battle is a battle mode in belma where you can't use some of the bike's features (gas/throttle, brake, turn, volt/rotate). There is a crippled internals WR table on
[url=http://www.geocities.com/sanitars/]8-ball's page[/url]
Deadbounce:
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A type of bounce that is normally executed at the end of a 2-wheel-hang, making the bike bounce upwards and slightly backwards above the hang.
Under Moposite's Playing section there is a level that is specially made for practicing this trick, PLSP05. See
[url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Distance
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Each picture has its own distance which is a number between 1 and 999. Kuskis distance is 500 and grass's is 600, so if you want to insert the picture in the background, its distance has to be over 500. Distances can be edited in editor by selecting 'move' and pressing the pictures with right mouse button. See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_designing.php]Designing section[/url].
EOL
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Elma OnLine, a patch created by milagros which allows you to play multiplayer in the Internet or LAN. Not to be confused with belma, which is meant for battling. See [url=http://www.moposite.com/mopolauta/viewtopic.php?t=4099]mopolauta[/url] for more info.
Ez
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Usually means easy (ez under 30 secs). Can also mean possible.
First Finish Battle
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First Finish battle (ff) is a battle mode in belma where the winner is the kuski who finishes the level first. One second + lag will be added to your time. The second is due to the one second freezing when you touch the flower. You can try again as many times as you want, contrary to one-life battle. There is a 60-second countdown to start so that everyone could start playing at the same moment.
Flag Tag:
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This is a game mode for multiplaying. The objective is to hold a flag on your bike while the opponent tries to grab it back, or if your opponent has it you have to take it from him.
Each player has their own timer telling for how long in total they have held the flag.
You grab the flag by touching one of the opponent's wheels with one of your own.
If you die your opponent gets the flag and you respawn at the start.
There is a bug if you rotate the bike when you are respawning: the rotation remains and lets you make some volts in the beginning which you couldn't normally make.
Flag Tag can be played by 2 people on the same computer or online using the EOL patch by milagros.
Flower
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The level is finished by touching a flower. With ALE you can make multi flower levels. In such levels it doesn't matter which flower you pick.
Food
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See Apple.
Fruit
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See Apple.
Grass
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Grass is used in the level editor to spice up the look of your level. You can cover the surfaces of polygons with grass. You can add grass automatically with ALE. When inserting grass manually, you have to make sure that the longest horizontal edge of that polygon is not in the side where the grass should be. If you didn't understand that, see [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_designing.php]Designing section[/url].
Gravity
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Apples can affect the gravity in a level. You can set an apple to change gravity to down, up, left or right. Note that you can't get gravity off because without gravity you couldn't accelerate at all because there wouldn't be any grip. You should think twice before inserting a gravity apple, because not all players like gravity levels. You can usually design the level so that gravity apples are not needed. Though, when used lightly and in a correct way, they can make your level even better. You can usually find more gravity apples from a noob designer's lev than from an experienced designer's lev.
Grip
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You can get more grip by pressing the wheel to the ground. Grip is what you need to be able to gas or brake. By turning vsync off can increase grip in some places.
Ground
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The ground is the normal foreground texture. It consists of a dark blue polygonic texture.
Since elma 1.2 there has been an option to set default background to sky and foreground to ground.
Golden Apple Awards
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GAAs are given annually to best players/designers in that year. In each year there is a specific GAA jury which consist of 6 veteran kuskis who have been active in that year. The system goes so that first community can give their suggestions to jury. From those suggestions, jury collects 10 candidates to each category. After that community can vote for their best candidates. After that the winners are chosen in special gaa final show. The current categories in GAA are internalist, externalist, battler, rookie, designer, team, wr, style, replay, level, contest, contribution, achievement and site.
Head
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The kuski's head is the only part of the driver that causes death when it touches directly a polygon. You can make the head go through walls by using nitro patch's invulnerability option (which works only with elma 1.0 and which is forbidden to use generally). Head's position is always little bit closer to front wheel. That means that you can avoid dying to a wall sometimes by turning your head.
Hooked-bug
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If you touch one apple with two wheels (or one wheel and head, or two wheels and head) at the same time the game thinks you took two apples instead of one and thereby lets you finish the level without taking all the apples. In belma this bug has been fixed partly so that you can still finish without taking all the apples, but if you do so, you don't get your time into results.
Impsy
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Means impossible. Usually pipes are said to be impsy because they many times look impossible for noobs.
IRC
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Internet Relay Chat. In IRC there are several Elma related channels, like #across, #battle, and #ballelma. You can just talk there about elma or ask questions, but it isn't limited to that. More info at [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat]Wikipedia[/ur].
Internal error
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When the bike stretches too much, Elma will crash eventually. It will report an internal error (error.txt). There's no fix for this. Internal error is kind of generalized error message that is given every time some error has occurred in elma. For example opening corrupted level or trying to save rec file when rec folder doesn't exist will cause internal errors.
Invisible
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Invisible polygons are created by making them exceedingly thin, so they won't be rendered on the screen. Generally, the use of this is disagreeable.
See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_designing.php]Designing section[/url].
Juish-p0p-bounce
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A kind of special bounce invented by Juish, where you drive along a thin polygon (with front wheel on top of it, back wheel beneath it, and head above the polygon) and press brake (at the end of the polygon) and the front wheel kind of p0ps. See special tricks level 6 in [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Jumping
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Jumping means volting so that you can fly longer/higher.
See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Kinglist
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Originally a name of Moposite contests' total points lists but nowadays used in many other pages for same purpose. See [url=http://www.moposite.com/contests_kinglist.php]kinglist[/url].
KOM
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Kuski Of the Month. Every month, on Mopolauta and on the News page, 5 kuskis are nominated on a poll and the community votes for the best one. At the end of the month, the kuski with the most votes gets the title of Kuski Of the Month and writes answers to an interview.
See [url]http://paprika.moposite.com/community_players_kom.php[/url].
Launcher
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See Cannon.
Level
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Level (lev, track or map) is a composition of polygons, pictures and objects that forms a playable area for the kuski. Levels are usually made in internal level editor, though there exist other tools for that, see Level editor.
Level editor
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With the level editor it is possible to make your own levels. Besides the game's level editor there's also ALE, an alternative level editor with more advanced options.
Internal editor shows only 1000 levels from the lev folder. This limit has been removed in belma. If you make battle levels, best way to name your levels is like '<yournick>001', '<yournick>002' and so on. Don't put spaces in level name; it crashes the level editor.
Levelpack
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Levelpack means simply a bunch of levels. Usually all the levels are made by same person/persons and they are named consistently. In elma 1.2 there is an option which allows to make levelpacks with level name pattern. With that, you can generate statistics automatically. Examples for famous levelpacks are ALP (Alternative Level Pack), OLP (Official Level Pack), RLP (Russian Level Pack) and IFLP (Internal Feeling Level Pack).
LOM
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Level Of the Month. A contest organized by Moposite which is all about level designing. Every month a new theme is released and the designers have one month to make the best level possible about that theme. The levels are rated on these points: visual, playability, respect of theme and name. The contest have been on pause since 2003. See [url]http://www.moposite.com/contests_level_of_month.php[/url].
Loop
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Loop is a round polygon where you can drive fast. For example Spiral has loops.
LGR
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Level Graphics Resources (?). An LGR file is a file that contains all necessary picture files for the game to work, such as pictures, masks, textures and biker's parts. An LGR can be made or modified with the LGR Development Kit. You can get it directly from [url=http://www.elastomania.com/dk.htm]balazs's site[/url].
Map
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Sometimes used to mean a level, sometimes the navigator (minimap).
Merging
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In Elma you can merge many different things.
You can merge recs with elma 1.2 with the 'merge replays' option (see them at the same time). Stats (txt files) can be merged with [url=http://zworqy.com/elmaguide/index.php?p=programs#mergestats]mergestats[/url].
Levels can be merged with ALE. You can merge your internal level times by renaming the other state.dat to merge.dat and running elma.exe.
Minimap
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See Navigator.
Mongo
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Mongo, mango, bango, bungo. If your level is said to be mongo, then it's bad.
Mopolauta
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Mopolauta is Finnish and it means a motor bike board. It's the name of the Elasto Mania discussion board on Moposite. It's the main Elasto Mania forum in the Internet.
Check it [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/mopolauta]here[/url].
MUe text
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There is a MUe text in bowling. You can get there by taking a gravity apple and heading up right. Although it might be hard to find, it's not an official secret area.
Multiplaying
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Opposite of single playing. You can play flat tag and normal multiplayer game in elma. You can also play multiplayer game online with [url=http://www.moposite.com/mopolauta/viewtopic.php?t=4099]elma online (EOL)[/url].
You can see multiplayer wrs in [url=http://www.home.no/sveinrune/multiwr/multiwr.html]official SveinR's multiwr table[/url].
Navigator
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Also known as minimap. It's purpose is to show a bigger part of the level so the you can drive faster in unfamiliar levs. Big minimap is useful in battles. Since elma 1.2 it's size have been adjustable.
Nitro patch
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Nitro patch is an unofficial patch which works only with elma 1.0. It is illegal to use in any cups and it adds 10 minutes to your time. With the patch you can adjust for example gravity, acceleration, time and elasticity and you can be invulnerable. It's certainly worth to try, but it's not meant for regular playing. Get it from [url=http://zworqy.com/elmaguide/index.php?p=programs#nitro]zworqy's site[/url].
Noob
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Noob, n00b, nab, newbie, a new kuski. See [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbie]Wikipedia[/url].
O-bounce
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O-bounce is a special bounce invented by The OooO. It is possible only if you are driving down a rail and press brake just before the rail ends. More info in the [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Official levelpack
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Official levelpack (OLP) is a levelpack which consists of the best levels sent to Csaba (Balazs's brother). The levels to the pack were chosen by MUe.
U: Not OLP! But Csaba's <- eh, what does this means?
OLP
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See Official levelpack.
One-life battle
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A battle mode in belma where you have only one try. There is a 60-second countdown and you have to be present at second 0 to be able to play it.
Online mode
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See belma and EOL.
Pick and skip
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Pick and skip is a new level format which was caused by the hooked-bug. When you insert a pipe in the beginning of the level and some apples so that you get them with both wheels, you can skip the same amount of apples from the rest apples. For example, if you put 2 apples to the start pipe and have 5 apples totally (3 apples somewhere else in the level) you have to pick only 1 apple because the 2 apples in the beginning are counted twice. This means you can skip 2 apples. This idea was first time used in cup level in MP's WCup512 level. See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_designing.php]Designing section[/url].
Pipe
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Pipe is a tunnel which is so narrow that you can't drive normally. Instead, you have to drive
sideways. The first pipe level was made by px and first non-linear by Abula. Driving pipe levels is much different from other playing and you have to practice it separately.
Since people learned to play pipe levels, there has always been one special pipe event in each world cup. There are pipe levels in the [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url] too.
Protection
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The state.dat is protected so that you can't read it directly. Instead, you can see your times in stats.txt which is updated every time you exit elma. It's only an output file and the real times are stored in the state.dat file.
Rail
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Rail is a narrow pipe between two polygons (about the wheel's size) so that you can drive normally through the pipe. The head is outside the rail. Rails are used in rollercoaster levels. If you make the rail size smaller than wheel's size and have vsync switched on, you can use it to get more speed by pressing brake. See special level 1 in [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Refresh rate
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Refresh rate of your screen tells how many times the picture is drawn to the screen in a second. If vsync (vertical synchronization) is set on, the refresh rate limits FPS (frames per second, i.e. how many times in second the game situation is calculated).
See [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_tweaking.php]Tweaking page[/url].
More info in [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refresh_rate]Wikipedia[/url].
Replay
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Replay or shortly a rec file is a file where all the moves and locations of a single ride are saved. Since belma the replay name could have been up to 15 characters long (before belma only 8 characters). If you get an internal error when you save a rec, you probably don't have rec folder or it's write protected.
Rollercoaster
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Rollercoaster is a kind of level which consist of rails and speedloops throughout the level and usually has only one route to finish. The concept was invented by px and since then every world cup have has a rollercoaster level, usually made by px.
Rotating
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You can rotate/volt your bike by using left and right arrow keys. Early beta versions of Across didn't have rotate keys at all, which means that basically every level could be finished without them. And actually they can, see [url=http://www.geocities.com/sanitars/]8-ball's crippled wrs (no volt)[/url]. At least Markku has finished all the levels without rotate keys. By pressing both arrow keys exactly at same time, you can get a supervolt (see supervolt). For some volting levels, see [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_playing.php]Playing section[/url].
Route
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Route means the path you use when you finish a level. It doesn't mean same as style; two different styles can use same route but two different routes are definitely two different styles also.
Saveload
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Saveload was a cheat program which allowed you to save your progress during a rec and load it later. DarMoeD used that to get wrs back in 2004 when he was caught by milagros and his anticheating team. Nowadays you couldn't get wrs by cheating.
Screen-toggling
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Normally Elma is launched in full screen mode. It can be played in windowed mode by using [url=http://zworqy.com/elmaguide/index.php?p=programs#d3d]D3D-windower[/url].
Secret area:
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A place that is hard to find and/or hard to get to, usually marked with the yellow "Secret Area"-sign with red borders. Often you have to leave the traditional route or make a special trick to reach one. There are 5 secret areas on the internal levels: The Steppes, Upside Down, Pipe, Bowling and What the Heck. You can put Secret Area-signs in your own levels too.
Shortcut
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Shortcut is a route which is faster than the normal/easiest route. Shortcuts can sometimes be really hard (for example Ramp Frenzy brutal shortcut).
Skin
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In across you could make your own skins to make the kuski and bike look different. Same kind of skin system is nowadays in belma, where you can make your own bmp file and use it as the kuski's shirt. You can see your skin by renaming the bmp to <yournick>.bmp and putting it to bmp folder. Others can see your skin if you upload it to the server and others download it. At the moment you can upload skins to [url=http://zworqy.com/belma/uploadbmp.php]zworqy's server[/url]. Get more info from IRC channel #ballelma.
Sky
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The sky is the normal background texture. It consists of a blue sky with white clouds.
Since Elma 1.2 there has been an option to set default background to sky. It helps for example in headbanger where there is an irritating brick background by default.
Slalom
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A part in the level where you have to go left-right-left-right like in the end of the internal level called Slalom. In Trouble Double there are also slalom parts.
Slowness Battle
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A battle mode in belma where you have to try to finish the level as slowly as possible.
Do not confuse with survivor battle, where you don't have to finish the level.
Sound
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Can be turned off in options. Elma uses same sound buffer as (for example) winamp, so you can't listen both winamp and elma sounds at the same time. Turn sounds off when listening to winamp. Sounds are quite irrelevant when playing elma so you don't need them.
Speed
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You can get more speed with gas, gravity, braking, loops etc. There is a maximum speed which can't be exceeded. You can get it in long loops and you notice it when the bike stops accelerating. In such conditions it's very hard to control the bike, especially in pipes.
Spin
-----
You can get more spin by rotating the bike. Supervolt/alovolt gives more spin than the regular volt. If you spin too much, the game will eventually grash and give an internal error.
Stretching
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You can stretch the bike by letting another wheel go freely when other stops. If you stretch the bike too much, you will get an internal error (same as in spinning). In nitropatch, if you increase elasticity you can stretch the bike much more :)
Style
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Style is a way to finish the level, containing all the little tricks which are needed. Not to be confused with route; two different styles may use same route.
Survivor Battle
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A battle mode in belma where you have to stay alive as long as possible. Note that you don't have to finish the level. Do not confuse this with slowness battle, where you have to finish.
Supervolt
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Press the both rotation keys simultaneously to get a supervolt. That should cause the bike rotate faster. This only works to the clockwise direction (so called right supervolt), but it still helps and is quite important trick when you learn try drive better. This was first considered as a bug but when it only increased the style possibilities, Balazs decided to let it stay. There has been debates whether a left supervolt should be added to elma, but so far it hasn't been added. It's usually needed to make a normal volt before supervolt, because it's really hard to press both rotation keys exactly at the same time, though it's possible. That's why a special alovolt (alone supervolt) key was added to elma. With that you can make a single supervolt much easier.
Table
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A table is a collection of times. Usually it consists of a single levelpack times. The intention is to get as many records in a table as possible. A good example of a table is the current [url=http://www.moposite.com/records_elma_wrs.php]WR table[/url].
VCR-style controls
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VCR-style (Video Casette Recording) controls have been possible since elma 1.2. They allow the rec to be watched on slow motion, fast forward or backwards.
Vertex
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A node of a polygon. Minimum is 3 vertexes/vertices for each polygon in a level (otherwise the edges between the vertexes couldn't form a polygon). Limit of polygons in Elma demo version was 5 and limit of vertexes was 10 per polygon. In full version the limits are 300 polygons and 1000 vertices. Not to be confused with edge, though a polygon always has same amount of vertices (nodes, corners) and edges (arcs, lines).
Vsync
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Vertical synchronization. Switching vsync on you can limit the frame rate to your screen's refresh rate. If you don't know whether you have vsync on or off, it's probably on. See Refresh Rate and [url=http://paprika.moposite.com/info_knowledge_tweaking.php]Tweaking page[/url] for more material.
Widescreen
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In belma there are more screen modes and you can play with widescreen resolutions also.
Wheel
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The bike has two of these. Pressure them to perform bounces. The size of the wheel is exactly the size of objects (killers, apples and flowers).
WR
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World Record. If you get a WR in a lev, then you have the fastest time in that level in whole world. WR is usually associated with internal levels. An internal level WR is very hard to get nowadays.
#across (the link didn't work)
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The main elma channel in IRCnet, founded by px and Abula in 1998. See IRC for more info.