Playing

Rules
Once a round is started, the players do not stop moving forward (unless the game is paused). All you have to do is avoid crashing by changing your players direction. Additionally you can try to hinder your opponent. For this it is possible to increase the velocity by pressing your accelerator key.
Pushing a direction key in the opposite direction to which you are travelling, will make you crash.
A round starts when all human players press a direction key. The initial moving direction is then in this direction.
If you want to interrupt playing, select Pause/Continue from the Game menu or hit the keyboard shortcut (see section Default Key Bindings). Additionally the game is paused when the game loses the keyboard focus, ⪚ when switching to an other window.
To continue the game, select the menu item Pause/Continue again, or the keyboard shortcut. The game will also continue if the human players press one of their direction keys. But be careful, your player switches to this direction immediately.
A game consists of several rounds, and ends if a player has at least nine points, and additionally two more points than the opponent. The current score is always displayed in the status bar.

The Computer Player
You can let the computer be Player One, Player Two or both players. There are three difficulty levels: Beginner, Average and Expert.
If you choose Beginner, the computer doesn't care about the opponent and just moves around. This is the same algorithm as used by xtron-1.1.
At skill levels Average and Expert, the computer tries to hinder the opponent when he comes near.
See the Settings Menu section for information on how to configure the computer player.

Using the keyboard
Each player has five keys. Four keys for changing the direction and one to accelerate.
The direction keys do not have to be held down. Simply press them once to change the direction of your player.
Acceleration only occurs while the acceleration key remains depressed. When you release the acceleration key, velocity returns to normal.
See section Settings Menu for information how to change the default keys.