| The Kolf Handbook |
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Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
Kolf is a miniature golf game for KDE.
Table of Contents
| Introduction |
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Kolf is a miniature golf game with block graphics and a 2d top-down view. Courses are dynamic, and up to 10 people can play at once in competition.
Kolf comes with a tutorial course. Playing this course is the easiest way to get started.
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| The Kolf Handbook | Up | Tutorial |
| Tutorial |
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Kolf's game-play is simple. It is easiest to learn how to play hands-on, and thus a tutorial course is included to guide you through the basics. This chapter will guide you through this tutorial. To start the tutorial, choose Help->Tutorial.
To aim the ball, either line up the mouse behind the ball so the putter aims in the direction you want to hit it or press one of the Left Arrow (counterclockwise) or Right Arrow (clockwise) keys, to rotate the putter.
To rotate the putter more quickly with the keyboard, hold down Shift while pressing or holding the arrow keys. To rotate more slowly, hold down Control.
To hit the ball, press and hold either the left mouse button or Down Arrow key. The longer you hold down the key or button, the more strength the putt will have. It will take practice to get a good feel for speed.
To stop abort the putt while you are still holding moving the putter back in your stroke, press Escape.
Hit the ball into the hole (gray circle) to move on the next.
| Slopes |
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Slopes are areas of slanted down that the golf ball rolls down in an expected manner. The light of the golf course is from the upper-left, so the brightest slopes will push the ball towards the upper-left corner of the hole. Choose Hole->Show Info to see an arrow that points in the direction the slope will roll the ball.
On this tutorial hole, hit the ball onto the upward-pointing slope and let it roll into the cup to move onto the next hole.
On the next hole, experiment with the other kinds of slopes. There are elliptical, vertical, horizontal, and diagonal slopes in Kolf. Hit the ball into the hole.
The next tutorial hole has two slopes of differing steepness. If you choose Hole->Show Info, the steepness of the slope will appear as a number from 1-8, where 8 is steepest and 1 is shallowest. Also, the more extreme shading the slope has, the steeper it is. Hit the ball into the hole and continue to the next hole.
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| Tutorial | Up | Walls |
| Walls |
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Balls bounce of walls as one would expect them to, with a little bit of dampening. Deflect the ball off the walls and into the cup to advance to the next hole.
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| Slopes | Up | Puddles and Sand |
| Puddles and Sand |
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Puddles are blue. When your ball rolls into a puddle, a penalty stroke is added to your score and your ball is placed outside the puddle.
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| Walls | Up | Windmills |
| Windmills |
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Windmills are compound objects with brown border walls and a moving arm at either the top or bottom of the object. Half-walls create the opening to the windmill, which a black arm swings across. It takes practice to be able to time stroke of the ball to pass through the opening. Hit the ball through the windmill into the hole to continue.
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| Puddles and Sand | Up | Black Holes |
| Black Holes |
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When you hit your ball into a black hole, it is transported to the exit and ejected at the angle of the exit at a speed directly relational to the speed your ball was going. Choose Hole->Show Info to see which Black Hole goes to which exit and which direction the ball will come out of the exit. The rim around Black Holes and their corresponding exits are also the same color. Hit the ball into the black hole, which will then eject the ball into the cup so you can go to the next hole.
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| Windmills | Up | Floaters |
| Floaters |
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Floaters are moving platforms that carry a ball that lands on it. Floaters' speeds vary. This one is a pretty slow floater, but you still must time your shot so you can go over the wall and into the cup.
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| Black Holes | Up | Bridges |
| Bridges |
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Bridges are simple - they just lift the ball above the things below them, like slopes, sand, and puddles. They can have brown walls on their perimeter.
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| Floaters | Up | Basics |
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| Introduction | Up | Slopes |
| Basics |
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Here's in-depth description of Kolf's basic features.
To start a game, choose Game->New. This opens a dialog where you can configure your new game.
More third-party Kolf courses are available at the Kolf website. See the Kolf user-uploaded courses page.
To add a player to your game, click the New Player button.
The text boxes in the grass area are the names of the players in this game. To change the name of the players, change the text in the text boxes. To change the ball color of the players' balls, click the middle button that has a color rectangle, and a dialog will open where you can select the new ball color. The rectangle on the button is the current player's ball color.
To remove a player, click the Remove button next to the player's name.
To choose the course that you want to play, click it's entry in the list box on the left of this page. Kolf comes with many built-in courses that you can play.
To add a course that you have downloaded or made, click on the Add... button on the bottom of this page, and choose the course file in the file dialog.
| Saved Games |
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Kolf can keep a history of your rounds that are still in progress and save them to disk so you can load them and play them later. Saved games include the current hole, names and colors of all players in game, and the scores of the players.
To save your game while still playing, choose Game->Save Game. If you have not saved a game on this game before, you will be prompted for the file to save to.
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| Basics | Up | Practicing |
| Practicing |
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There are a few features that make practicing your golf easier. These features are not enabled during strict mode.
The Go menu contains many menu items for switching to different holes that are quite self explanatory. See the Go menu reference.
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| Saved Games | Up | Putting Options |
| Putting Options |
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Kolf has a few ways to putt. The basic putting method is described above.
The mouse is enabled by default. This means that whenever the mouse is moved, the putter aligns to the line between the mouse and ball.
If you prefer to only use the keyboard and arrow keys, you can disable mouse putting by unchecking Settings->Enable Mouse for Moving Putter.
Advanced putting can be enabled by checking Settings->Enable Advanced Putting. This putting mode is slightly more challenging than the regular click-and-hold mode, and can be used with either the mouse or keyboard.
To putt in this mode:
Procedure 3.1.
Click or press the Down Arrow key once to begin the swing. The putting indicator will appear, and the strength gauge will start filling up with a color, which changes as the gauge fills up.
Click or press the Down Arrow key when the strength gauge has filled up the amount that you want. The farther around the circle the strength gauge has filled up, the stronger the putt will be. It takes practice to be able to get the correct strength on putts.
After this, the color in the putting indicator will start to wind down back to where it started.
Click or press the Down Arrow key again when the strength-indicator is as close as possible to the center line of the putting indicator.
The closer the final click (or key press) is, the more true the putt is to the original line.
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| Practicing | Up | Editing Courses |
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| Bridges | Up | Saved Games |
| Editing Courses |
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Kolf comes with a versatile editor for its course file format. Courses can have any number of holes, and there is no limiting the creativity of the course designer.
To create a new course, choose Game->New. Go to the Courses page of the dialog, and choose the Create New course. Make sure that, under the Options page of the dialog, Strict mode is unchecked.
To play this new course later, click the Add... button to add the course to your list of courses.
| Adding Holes |
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Choose Hole->New to add a new hole at the end of the course.
You can restore a hole to a blank state, similar to when it was first created, by choosing Hole->Clear.
Two items will appear on new holes: a cup, and a white ball. The white ball marks where players' balls start the hole.
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| Editing Courses | Up | Editing Basics |
| Editing Basics |
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The basic building block of Kolf courses is the “object”. Holes are made up of a bunch of objects. Objects can be moved to any location, and the different kinds of objects each have different properties you can set.
To start editing a hole, toggle the Hole->Edit menu item, or press the pencil icon on the toolbar. To leave editing mode, uncheck this menu item (or the toolbar icon).
To add a new object to the course, choose it's name in the list box labeled Add object. The object will appear in the center of the course.
Bridges and signs will cover up new objects if they were already in the center of the hole.
You can add more than one cup to a hole! Doing so can create interesting hole designs.
Some Kolf objects are available as plugins. If you add these objects to your course, course players will need to download the plugin.
Third-party Kolf plugins are available at the Kolf website. See the Kolf plugins download page.
Move your mouse cursor over the object that you want to move, and the mouse cursor will change to a hand cursor. Then click and drag the object to where you want it.
Puddles, sand, floaters, bridges, and signs can be resized by dragging the small circle at their lower-right corner.
Walls can be moved by clicking and dragging their endpoints, or you can move the whole wall by clicking and dragging on the middle part of the wall as normal.
Objects' properties can be changed in the area at the lower-right corner of the Kolf window. To edit an object, move your mouse cursor over it until the cursor changes to the hand cursor. Then click. Various controls for that object will appear in the lower-right corner of the Kolf window.
To edit general hole settings, click an area of the hole that is not covered by an object. When this is possible, the cursor will be the normal pointer cursor.
This is the name that is shown in the new game dialog and in the About Course dialog.
This is the author name that is shown in the About Course dialog.
The par of the hole.
The maximum number of strokes a player can take on the hole.
Whether or not to show walls around the border of the hole.
Choose the type of the slope - Vertical, Horizontal, Diagonal, Opposite Diagonal, Elliptical. Diagonal and opposite diagonal slopes are triangles, while elliptical slopes are circles. Vertical and horizontal slopes are rectangles of course.
Whether or not to reverse the slant of the slope. For example, consider an elliptical slope (a circular slope). When it is not reversed, it pushes balls outward like a mound. When it is reversed, it sucks balls inward like a hole.
Choose the grade (steepness) of the slope by moving the slider so the grade moves towards 0 or 8, where 8 is steepest and 0 is flat. Steeper slopes push the ball more.
Whether or not this can be moved by other objects, like floaters.
If a floater overlaps with this object at any point on this path, and the slope is large and thus won't move the floater, you must make the slope Unmovable, or Kolf will suffer poor performance!
Puddles and Sand have the same configuration options as each other.
Checking this enables the flashing of this puddle or sand.
The more towards Fast the slider is, the faster the puddle or sand flashes.
Bridges, windmills, floaters, and signs all have similar settings for configuring on which sides there are border walls. To show the wall on a side, check the checkbox for that side.
There are also some more specific options for windmills, floaters, and signs.
Whether or not the black windmill arm is on bottom or top - the default is that it is on the bottom. The two half-walls will always be with the arm. Note that you can not enable a border wall on the side that the arm is.
The more towards Fast the slider is, the faster the black windmill arm moves.
The path the floater moves along is shown by the wall it's connected to.
The more towards Fast the slider is, the faster the floater moves. If the slider is all the way at the Slow end, the floater will stop.
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| Adding Holes | Up | Command and Menu Reference |
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| Putting Options | Up | Adding Holes |
| Command and Menu Reference |
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Start a new game
Load a previously saved game.
Save the current course using it's current file name.
Open a file dialog allowing you to save the current course using a new file name.
Save the current game with the last saved game filename, or under a filename you specify if you have not saved the game yet.
Opens a file dialog allowing you to save the current game with a filename of your choice.
End the current game, without closing Kolf
Display the high score table.
Print the current screen.
Show name, author, and par of course.
Quit Kolf
| The Hole Menu |
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Switch to editing mode to edit the current hole.
Create a new hole. (Only while editing.)
Remove all objects from the current hole. (Only while editing.)
Reset the current hole to it's starting position, so that you can start over.
Show information about objects on the current hole.
Undo the last shot you made.
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| Command and Menu Reference | Up | The Go Menu |
| The Go Menu |
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Go directly to another hole within the course. A list of the hole numbers allows you to choose which hole you wish to go to.
Go the the next hole.
Go to the previous hole.
Go to the first hole in the course.
Go to the last hole in the course.
Go to a random hole from the current course.
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| The Hole Menu | Up | The Settings Menu |
| The Settings Menu |
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Toggle on and off the main toolbar.
Allow the use of the mouse to move the putter.
Enable the advanced putting mode, as described in its own section.
Toggle on and off the putter guideline.
Toggle on and off the sound effects.
Re-enables any dialog boxes that you disabled by clicking on Do not show this message again or similar.
Reload plugins.
Display the currently loaded plugins.
Customize the keyboard shortcuts.
Customize the toolbar icons.
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| The Go Menu | Up | The Help Menu |
| The Help Menu |
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Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the Kolf help pages. (this document).
Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within Kolf will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.
Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a “wishlist” feature.
This will display version and author information.
This displays the KDE version and other basic information.
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| The Settings Menu | Up | Credits and Licenses |
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| Editing Basics | Up | The Hole Menu |
| Credits and Licenses |
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Kolf copyright 2001, 2002 Jason Katz-Brown
Developers
Jason Katz-Brown <jason@katzbrown.com>
Niklas Knutsson
Ryan Cumming
Daniel Matza-Brown
Documentation copyright 2002, Jason Katz-Brown
This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
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| The Help Menu | Up | Installation |
| Installation |
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Kolf is part of the KDE project http://www.kde.org/.
Kolf can be found in the kdegames package on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main FTP site of the KDE project.
In order to compile and install Kolf on your system, type the following in the base directory of the Kolf distribution:
% ./configure % make % make install
Since Kolf uses autoconf and automake you should have no trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the KDE mailing lists.
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| Introduction |