1. If you are confronted by failure to run, there are three logs deposited in the game root that you can check:
opt-out.txt
pyknic.log
out.txt
You can also try run_game_debug.py. This prints copious messages to the console. You may want to redirect the output to a file. DR0ID and Gummbum will ask for these logs if you wish to report a problem, so save them please.

2. There's a bug when running on one Slackware system that we can't figure out. The game fails to present any of the levels, and goes straight to the end game credits.

3. When the mouse exits the window the game auto-pauses. This is by design. There is one report that exiting the window area with the mouse pressed leaves the vacuum powered on; a click in the window is required to turn it off. We could not reproduce this.

4. If you are having trouble with a specific level and want to bypass it, there are two ways to cheat: a) change settings.starting_level and (re)start the game; b) turn on cheats by touching cheats_enabled.txt in the game root, and using the ESC or RETURN keys to skip a level (documented in settings.py). You can note the current level in the game title bar while the game is running: L:n where n is the current level number.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

5. Short sweeping attacks work best. Use them to advantage where several ants converge in a group or line.

6. Empty the hopper before it alarms. It's a bit inconvenient to race after a speedy or burly ant chowing down on your chips, and have that last ant fill your hopper. "Come on you slow thing..." Munch, crunch, chomp chomp chomp. :)

7. It takes a lot of juice to slurp up the burly ants. If you get low on power and there are still many ants to vanquish, slurp the little ones. You can pull the burly ones to a corner and take care of them later if there's juice left. Otherwise, you can make a last ditch effort to crush them with the dead vacuum. All ants, regardless of their toughness, are instantly smashed (but they are adept at dodging into the nooks and crannies under the vacuum, so crushing is by no means an ideal tactic).

8. If you got plenty of juice and a handful of burly ants to manage, you can get one stuck in the vacuum nozzle and drag him over to another. The peripheral suction is powerful enough on the T-1000 that the nearby ants will stop and cling lest they be pulled in too. This temporarily pauses their march toward your towers of chips.

HERE BE SPOILERS

9. Some folks may have trouble smashing ants with the dead vacuum after the battery loses all its juice. As any house wife knows, this is an extraordinarily difficult way to battle ants. Unfortunately, it is against battle ethics to use cowardly methods. So when the chips are down, regroup and retry. (Yuck-yuck. :)) Fortunately, there are only a couple levels where you may have to smash ants this way, depending on how many burly ants spawn.

10. Some folks may have trouble with the strong ants. Here are some visual cues. When the vacuum power is on and drawing near the ant, he will crouch and cling to the ground. If you move the vaccum over his head - directly above; move the nozzle around a little - until his legs start kicking, he is then officially stuck and after a few moments of struggling he will go into the vacuum.

11. The boss encounter works the same way as in #10. But the boss has mega hit points, so you're vacuum will overheat. Just give it a quick rest and get back at it. And yes, an ant way bigger than the T-1000 can be crammed into the hopper. It is, after all, the legendary T-1000 of olde.

12. The heroic end game treasure stash is 24 million potato chips. Surely that is hours of munching fun for all those disenfranchised ants. You have three choices to finish the game here. Only one of those choices is honourable. Choose wisely.

Scope
There is a timing issue that has been seen on an under-powered system. Though it can happen on any system, it may only impact lower end platforms which allow too large a time gap in between operations. Even so, applying this fix is recommended.

Problem
The game starts and presents the intro, which is a series of four combo story-help screens. Pressing a key to proceed to Next skips all the game levels, and displays the end game credits screen.

Fix
Edit the file gamelib/main.py, the function definition for _update_top_context() like so:

    def _update_top_context(ls, dt, simt):
        context_top().update(dt) if context_top() else None
        context_update()    # Add this line

The full main.py file with the fix can be retrieved here.