GNOME Robots is a game where you try and avoid a band of marauding robots which are, for no adequately explained reason, trying to kill you. It is based on the text-based robots game which can be found on a number of UNIX systems.

This new version includes two types of robots, movable junkheaps, multiple game configurations, user definable keyboard layouts, and sound, as well as all of the features which were present in the original GNOME Robots game.

To run GNOME Robots, select Games ▸ Robots from the Main Menu, or type gnobots2 on the command line.

GNOME Robots is included in the gnome-games package, which is part of the GNOME desktop environment. This document describes version 2.18 of GNOME Robots.

The objective of GNOME Robots is quite simple. You are surrounded by a number of robots or other hostile adversaries. As you move about they will move directly towards you for every move that you make. Their goal is to kill you. Your goal is to kill all the robots on the board by taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.

Robots are destroyed when they collide with each other, or when they collide with the debris of some previous collision. You die if a robot ends up right next to you.

In some of the game configurations (you can choose from five different sets of rules), you can push the junkheaps around to form barricades to protect you. Also, if you are daring enough, you can Splat! the robots by pushing junkheaps on top of them for an additional bonus.

You can also save yourself by teleporting yourself to a random location. Unfortunately, randomly teleporting means that you might end up being right next to a robot, so they can kill you when they make their move. Luckily, there are also safe teleports which will place you out of immediate danger, but there are only a limited supply of them. You can earn more free teleports as you go along (how you gain them depends on the chosen game), but typically you get one for each robot that is destroyed while you are 'waiting', up to a maximum of 10. If you don't want to waste your saved-up safe teleports, you can choose to teleport randomly if you think it's safe enough.

If you press the Wait button (see below) you will no longer be able to move until either all of the robots (which still move towards you) are gone, or you are killed. Doing this is risky, but may earn you extra safe teleports.

If you manage to reach the point where more than half of the screen is occupied by robots, the number of robots will be reset to the starting amount, allowing you to continue.

GNOME Robots is extremely simple to play. You can use either the mouse or the keyboard. This section describes basic usage of GNOME Robots.

3.1. Basic usage

Starting GNOME Robots opens the Main window, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 GNOME Robots Main Window

To start a new game, choose New in the Game menu or click on the New button on the toolbar.

To move, either click in the direction you want to move (the cursor will show you which way you will go) or press the appropriate key on the keyboard (keypad by default). Clicking on the little man will keep you still. To teleport (safely or unsafely), and to wait, use the buttons on the toolbar or use the items in the Move menu.

The menu bar, located at the top of the game board, contains the following menus:

You can use the keyboard to control the little man. By default, the keys from the keypad are configured for the game. However you can customize the key mappings in the Keyboard tab in the Preferences dialog. To select a different key for a command, double-click on the line for that command and then press the key you want to use.

You can modify the behaviour and appearance of the game by selecting Preferences under the Settings menu. This brings up a dialog with three tabs:

Any changes you make take effect immediately and are automatically saved.

You can design your own graphics for the game if you want. The graphics files are found in $PREFIX/share/pixmaps/gnobots2 , where $PREFIX is the prefix into which GNOME was installed. This is usually either /usr or /usr/local.

Each character is 16x16 pixels and there are 14 of them arranged in a PNG file which is 224x16 pixels in size. You can look at the existing files to see the order in which they must be arranged to produce the correct animated sequences.

Any graphics files which are placed in the directory are auto-detected, so you don't need to alter any configuration files. You can also define your own game configurations by creating extra .cfg files which are stored in the $PREFIX/share/gnobots2 directory.

GNOME Robots was written by Mark Rae (<m.rae@inpharmatica.co.uk>). This manual was written by Patanjali Somayaji (<patanjali@mindless.com>), from the original HTML documentation by Mark Rae. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, follow the directions in this document.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the gnome-help:gpl as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to