Shroom – Help
Detailed description of Shroom – the artillery game.
Table of contents
- Overview
- Parental advice
- Technical requirements
- The goal of the game
- Navigating the game window
- Controlling your team members
- Round types
- Custom games
- Performance
Overview
Shroom is an online artillery game. In an artillery game, you try to defeat your opponents by hitting them with a bullet. This becomes interesting when they are hidden behind a hill, and you have to aim above the hill, and guess the amount of power necessary to hit them. The first player who guesses right, will win. By practice, you can become an expert.
Parental advice
I believe that this game should be suitable for players of any age. It is not possible to chat with anyone through this game, and there are no ads that would navigate away from the page.
Technical requirements
You need a web browser, with Adobe Flash Player installed. If it fails to load, try the Google Chrome browser. It comes with Flash pre-installed.
The goal of the game
Is to have fun! I hope you will have lots while playing it.
In order to win, you'll need to defeat all the other teams – hit them with your bullets. If a team member takes 100 points of damage, he flies up to heaven. That is, unless he falls into the water, in which case he sleeps with the fishies. You can check the health levels of your team members by looking at the gauge around them. Teams who lose members are at disadvantage, which is compensated for by allowing those teams to move last in each round. If a team loses all their members, they are out.
Navigating the game window
You can move the game window around by clicking and dragging it around. You can zoom the game window using the mouse wheel. If you want the game window to focus on your team member and reset the zoom level, you can click your already selected team member.
Controlling your team members
In general
Usually, there are multiple team members in a team. You can see them listed on the bottom left corner of your screen. The ones waving to you are the ones you have not yet selected in the current round. Click on them in either the list or in the game window to start controlling them.
Alternatively, you can press Tab or Shift+Tab to switch between team members.
Once you have finished moving all of them, you can click the button on the bottom right to end your turn, and let another team move.
Alternatively, you can press Backspace to end your turn.
In a moving round, running round or moonwalking round
You can walk by clicking and dragging your team members. They will walk in the direction you are dragging them, and jump if you drag them upwards. While in the air, you can still control their movement a little bit. If you want to go real slow, drag them only a little bit outside the small white circle around your team member.
Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys to move around. If you would like to go slowly, press Shift while pressing the arrow keys.
There's also an indicator of how much energy a team member has (the big white circle). You can see it shrinking as you walk or jump. When it becomes red, you cannot jump anymore. When it reaches the small white circle around your team member, you cannot walk any further.
Do not forget to move all of your team members!
In a shunpo round
You can teleport to the locations marked by the white circles by clicking on them. As you can see, all the circles are positioned along diagonal angles from your team member. Knowing this, try to position your team member in preceding moving rounds so that you can make best use of your shunpo!
Do not forget to move all of your team members!
Aiming
You can drag the crosshair around to aim your weapon. The further away it is from your team member, the more powerful the shot will be. If you drag it onto the small white circle around your team member – meaning zero power –, your team member will not fire.
Alternatively, you can aim using the arrow keys, and increase the power by keeping the Space key pressed.
For Shooting Stars, Doughnuts and the Dawn Ball you can set the number of times the bullet will rebounce from walls and team members before it explodes. So it will basically behave like a grenade. You can do this by using the control on the bottom of your screen.
Alternatively, you can press the number keys from 0 to 3 to set the bounce count.
Once you've finished aiming with all of your team members, end your turn to let other teams do the same. At the end of the shooting round, after each team has moved, the characters will fire their weapons all at once automatically. Please keep in mind that bullets can hit each other, as well as other team members.
Do not forget to move all of your team members!
Round types
In Shroom, players move in rounds. There is a list of rounds coming up on the top of the screen, so that you can plan your strategy. You always get a random moving round first (unless they've been disabled in a customized game), and a random shooting round after that.
Moving round types
In moving rounds, you can move your team members, but you're not allowed to shoot.
Moving round
In a moving round, you can walk and jump around, as long as your team member has enough energy.
Not sure how to move your team members?
Running round
In a running round, you can move just like in a moving round, but you get more energy – so you can move farther.
Not sure how to move your team members?
Moonwalking round
In a moonwalking round, you can move just like in a moving round, but the gravity is weaker.
Not sure how to move your team members?
Shunpo round
In a shunpo round, you can teleport to the locations highlighted by the white circles.
Not sure how to move your team members?
Shooting round types
In shooting rounds, you must first aim your weapons, and then wait for everyone else to do so. Then, at the end of the round, everyone fires their weapons at the same time.
Shooting star round
In this round you get to use the classic weapon of artillery games. When the Shooting Star explodes, it damages team members close to it. It also leaves a crater in the terrain, so you can use it to get through obstacles. You can also set it to rebounce a number of times before exploding.
Not sure how to aim?
Doughnut round
In this round you get to use a special weapon, that does a lot of damage when it explodes at a certain distance from a team member. A direct hit usually does no damage. You can also set it to rebounce a number of times before exploding.
Not sure how to aim?
Tesla round
In this round you get to use a special weapon, that damages team members as it flies past them. The closer and slower it flies by, the more damage it does. But beware, when it hits anything, it gets destroyed immediately. It does not explode. You cannot set this weapon to rebounce.
Not sure how to aim?
Dawn round
In this round you get to use a special weapon, that damages all team members in its sight, at any distance, when it explodes. Any piece of terrain can protect you from its effect, so try to shoot it from behind something. You can also set it to rebounce a number of times before exploding.
Not sure how to aim?
Custom games
You can customize many aspects of a game, before starting it.
Picking a level
You can see a preview of the currently selected level in the level preview window. You can pick a level from the list of hand painted levels, or you can have a random generated level by clicking the 'Generate' button. Hand painted levels are well thought out and beautiful. Random generated levels are less pretty, but you can get a different one as many times as you wish.
Setting up teams
Usually, each team represents one player. You can add new teams, or delete unnecessary teams by clicking on the appropriate buttons below the team list. When adding or deleting a team, please observe which team is currently selected. The selected team will have a glowing border in the list. New teams will inherit the controller type of the selected team; and when removing, the selected team will be the one removed.
You can change the team names by clicking on them, and typing in a new one.
You can change the appearance of a team by clicking on the character next to the team name. This will bring up a character selection dialog, where you can pick a new look. Select a character first, and a color afterwards. A certain combination of character and color can be assigned to only one team, so that each team can be easily identified.
This means that you will be unable to add more teams than the number of available character and color combinations.
You can also change the controller of the team. Teams can either be controlled by human players, or computer AIs of various levels. When adding many AI controlled teams to a game, please keep in mind that more clever AIs will be tougher opponents, but they will also take longer to think about their moves. However, the AI will treat all teams as his enemies, regardless of whether they are controlled by human players or an AI. This means that it will not try to defeat a human player any more or any less than a fellow AI player.
You may also change the number of team members in each team, by changing the number with the control below the team list. Please consider the following:
- The total number of team members in the game will be the number of team members times the number of teams.
For example: 10 team members × 5 teams = 50 team members in total. - If the total number of team members is very high:
- it may take a long time to finish a round when you need to wait for each player to move,
- and it may take a long time for your computer to calculate all the shots.
- However, a game is about fun, so why not experiment with what's the best setting for you? It will definitely look cool when over a hundred characters fire their weapons at once. You may also try to find out what the maximum setting is that your computer can calculate.
There is a 60 seconds limit to calculations per frame displayed in Adobe Flash, so if it reaches that limit, the game will stop with an error, and you will have to simply reload the page in your browser.
Changing the rounds
You can set how big or small the chance of getting a certain type of round is, that is, how often they will come up. Game rounds will then be picked randomly based on this setting. You can set the likeliness factor from ×1 to ×10. You can also disable certain types of rounds altogether. The only rule is that you must leave at least one type of shooting round active.
Please note that these values gain their meanings in the context of the other values. For example, setting all items to ×10 will have exactly the same effect as setting them all to ×1. They will have the same chances to come up.
Please keep in mind, that if you disable all moving rounds, there may be a chance that the game cannot be won, because the teams cannot reach each other.
Performance
If the game runs too slow, you may wish to try one of the following:
- Close all programs that run in the background.
- Resize the browser window to a smaller size, so that the program needs to draw less.
If your computer is fast enough, you may wish to set the game to full screen. This can be normally achieved by a menu option in your web browser, if it supports this feature.