Important Secrets of Pong revealed here.

Obviously you are in a hurry to master the art of Pong. Let us cut to the essential.

System Requirements

The current version of rendezvousPong works only with OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) or later. For up-to-date information and coming attractions, visit rendezvousPong Home page.

RendezvousPong is now Free!

It is the election year in America. We would like to encourage people to exercise their supreme right in November 2004. You will find that we have added a paddle option with light-hearted political slant. There are many people in American political arena that we deeply admire, both on the right and the left. But we are also aware that they are not all Abraham Lincolns. We have selected a few people from each side, mainly based on their prominence for many different reasons, in the sense that their voices somehow reached even our dim radar.

We hope that while you play pong with those characters, you may spend a few minutes reflecting on what each of these people stand for in our daily lives. It is from our genuine wish to help sharpen our political judgement that we creatively borrowed their images. If you already have very sharp political mind and find our feeble presentation nothing but offensive, we respectfully suggest that you turn off the option.

Having used the images of these public figures in our game without their explicit permissions, we feel obligated to make rendezvousPong a freeware. Enjoy!

Challenging (Connecting) and Disconnecting : Cmd-K

To play against a human, one must be on a local network (ethernet, airport, etc..) and people running rendezvousPong on their machines. Game->Connect (Cmd-K) menu will open the net-drawer to reveal available players. Choose one, double click, then the other party will get a message about your challenge. If the gauntlet is accepted, proceed with a match as described above. After a match, in the game pause mode, one may disconnect from the player. Same menu item which now reads Game->Disconnect (Cmd-K) or the button in the net drawer will do.

The small button on the bottom of the window indicates whether you are connected to a human (lit blue) or in the local mode (grey). You can connect or disconnect by pressing this button. In case of connection, you should have already picked an opponent in the net drawer. If not, it will open to show you the available players, instead of connecting already.

Starting and Stopping a Match : Cmd-G

If you are in the local mode (vs. Machine), or if you have established a connection to a human being already, then you can start a match or stop by choosing Game->Start or Stop in the menu (Cmd-G).

Clicking on the Table

The flow of the game is mostly controlled by the user clicking on the pong table to pause/resume a match. In playing vs Machine, it is mainly the human player's responsibility to resume the match after a scoring event. In vs. Human mode, a match is initiated by the double click on the defender's (left hand side) side. From then on, the party winning a score resumes the game.

Controls : Cmd-W

The paddle moves freely during a match in a limited space on your side of the table. The movement of the paddle at the time of the impact alters how the ball bounces off. Experiment to find its fine controls. Also, in the tool chest (Game->Tweak menu or Cmd-W) you can change the paddle shape, game pace in the Ball and Paddle tab. Generally, these controls are available only when the match is not on. In the vs human mode, the changes you make will be sent to the other party immediately. If for some reason, inconsistencies occur, suspect that the game parameters failed to synchronize. In that case, abort the game (Cmd-G), disconnect (Cmd-K) and try afresh.

Spells

Currently there are two ways to put yourself on advantage. To try these, make sure that the settings in the Ball and Paddle tab of the tool chest are correct. One is the math quiz challenges. After every few hits, each player is challenged by a simple math question. One types in the answer directly using the keyboard (You don't have to pause the game to do so, although some may want to take unfair advantage of it). If the answer is correct, you gain a point which will be used in the next time you hit the ball. The ball will gain significant boost and also cast a spell over the other player. The answer, however, should be put in before the question dissolves away.
Another way is to hit the ball dead on at the center of your paddle. This immediately puts the other player under the spell.

If you become under the spell, the following occurs. A random position on your paddle will glow with a small white dot. The incoming ball will pulsate with red color. You can successfully free you from the spell only by hitting the ball right (there is a some fudge allowance by a few pixels, of course) at the white dot on your paddle. Otherwise, your paddle will get out of your control for a few seconds. It will become obvious soon how one could take advantage of this paralyzed opponent to gain score.

Chatting : Cmd-T

Whenever the ball is not moving (either no game on or in a paused state), you can chat with the connected party simply by typing a short message to send. The message can be sent by pressing return key or if the length exceeds a certain limit, it will be sent automatically.

Panic : ` or Cmd-`

The grave (`) key (located on the left-upper corner of the keyboard, right below the escape key on most keyboards) or Cmd-` makes the pong window semi transparent.

Miscellaneous

There are other interesting features you may want to find out about. After a few cursory rounds with the machine, make sure to return and browse the rest of this document!

Think different together. And have a game of pong.

Please memorize the following and support the American legal system:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER SPECIFIED IN THIS NOTICE BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, OR ANY SPECIAL INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM THE NATURE OF THE CONTENT OF DATA OR THEIR LOSS WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.