Credits and LicenseKGoldrunner copyright 2003 Ian Wadham and Marco Krüger.
KGoldrunner is inspired by an early computer game called Lode Runner™ which was written in the USA by Doug Smith© and first released in 1983 by Broderbund Software©. It appeared originally on the Apple II and Commodore 64 computers, which was where the Wadham family and Marco Krüger became hooked. It was a major best-seller in its day and is one of the all-time great computer games.
You can find out more about Lode Runner™ and the various versions that have come out since 1983, on the website Jason's Lode Runner Archive (https://entropymine.com/jason/lr/). That site also has the story of the game's original development, in the file misc/ldhist.html. Wikipedia also has a very good article on Lode Runner™, with interesting links to other sites.
KGoldrunner is an attempt to preserve the spirit of the original classic game on a platform that will be portable and will last more than a few years. It is available as free software in source code form. Copies of the original game are unobtainable now and the machines it ran on are going into museums.
Marco Krüger developed KGoldrunner as far as v0.3, out of nostalgia for the original Commodore 64 game. Ian Wadham added several features and levels and created the current version. Ian's elder son Peter composed the 100 levels in the “Initiation” game and the 20 tricky levels in “Vengeance of Peter W”. The other levels were composed by Ian, Peter, Marco Krüger and friends and Ian's other children, Simon and Genevieve.
Stuart Popejoy of New York contributed the “State of Terror” game, in 2007, the first Championship game to use KGoldrunner rules and one of the most difficult games ever.
Steve Mann of Waterloo in Canada contributed the “Count” game in 2008 and the “Curse of the Mummy” game in 2008. Both use Traditional rules and both have interesting themes running through them, as well as being quite difficult.
Peter Wadham composed the sound effects in 2008 and Luciano Montanaro incorporated the sounds into the KGoldrunner program.
Special thanks are due to Mauricio Piacentini and Dmitry Suzdalev, who converted KGoldrunner to Qt™ 4 and KDE 4, and to the many graphics artists who contributed to the new SVG graphics and themes in the KDE 4 version: especially Mauricio Piacentini for the “Default” theme and the new runners, Johann Ollivier Lapeyre for the ladders and bars, Eugene Trounev for the “Geek City” and “Treasure of Egypt” themes and, last but not least, Luciano Montanaro for the two “Nostalgia” themes, the “Black on White” accessibility theme, improvements to the runners, multiple backgrounds and several other ideas.
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.