Playing Online
First of all
The very first thing you should do is READ THE RULES!!!
How to play online
Playing online works exactly like playing offline, except that you can see other players, up- or download levels and replays, and see various stats while playing. In order to use the online features, there are a lot of new keys for you to configure.
The default keys are:
- F1 = Show/hide other players
- F2 = Observe next player
- F3 = Observe previous player
- F4 = Download current battle level
- F5 = Show/Hide players online list
- F6 = Show/Hide battle standings/results
- F7 = Show all finished times since key was pressed
- F8 = Clear finished times list
- F9 = Write a chat line - The layout is US, get used to it
- F10 = Hide yourself - Won't work in a lev which is being battled
- F11 = Upload / Download winning replay of battle
- F12 = Reconnect to the server
Additional commands which don't have default mapping are:
- Show/hide chat
- Show/hide battle status line
- Show/hide battle leader in battle status line
When you first time enter the game, there might be a battle running. Simply download the level, go to the external levels through the menu and find the level, that is being played.
As mentioned, you can chat with the F9 key (default). You may also send private message by pressing "observe next/previous player" while having chat activated. Do not spam in private, you'll get ignored.
How to make your own shirt (BMP)
1. Open Microsoft Paint 2. Rotate any bmp 90° anti-clockwise 3. Make the background 4. Put something unique on it: letter, image, etc 5. Personnalise 6. Rotate 90° clockwise 7. Copy everything 8. Open working bmp (right colors in belma. ex: milagros) 9. Paste there 10. Save with 256 colors BMP format with your EXACT name on belma (caps, no accents or special char) 11. Publish on http://zworqy.com/belma/uploadbmp.php 12. Advertise to everybody on belma, here and everywhere
P.S. On step 3, make sure to not use the same color as the top left corner because it will be transparent On step 4, it is useful to use advanced program like photoshop for better results You can also use special fonts on http://www.dafont.com/themes.php On step 10, save using your EXACT name on belma (caps, no accents or special char) and save type must be 256 colors BMP
Let's say you have a User1.bmp file in your BMP folder. You will see that shirt on a user using the name User1. The downside of this is that if you change your nick, people won't recognize you any longer, so it is smart to keep the same nick throughout your Elma career!
If you acquired Belma from zworqy's elma site, you should have a BMP.zip among the other files. This is the shirt collection of most of the users in Belma. Extract it in the bmp folder and you will recognize other players better.
Possibly the easiest way to make your own shirt is opening one of the existing .bmp in Paint or similar program and then drawing something over the center area (your nick, capitals or a simple logo or anything that you think other players will instantly associate with you). It might be a good idea to test it yourself first. There are mainly two different LGRs used as the default one (the original default.lgr and highq.lgr) and it's a good idea to have a look at the shirt with both LGRs as they have a different color palette. After this you can upload it and come to #ballelma and advertise your shirt, so others can download it for our own BMP folder.