warp/warp.man

   1 .TH WARP 6
   2 .SH NAME
   3 warp - a real-time space war game
   4 .SH SYNOPSIS
   5 .B warp [options]
   6 .SH DESCRIPTION
   7 .I Warp
   8 is a real-time space war game that requires skill and quick thinking.
   9 "Real-time" in this context means that the enemies keep moving (and shooting)
  10 even if you don't.
  11 A unique feature of
  12 .I warp
  13 is that blast propagates; it is unhealthy to remain near things that are
  14 in the process of blowing up.
  15 If a given universe is above a critical density it may chain react.
  16 Scoring is like many popular arcade games--there are multiple waves which
  17 get harder and harder as you go along.
  18 Nobody has ever maxed out the scoreboard without cheating.
  19 .PP
  20 Unlike many space-war games,
  21 .I warp
  22 is not simply a shooting gallery.
  23 Along with phasers and photon torpedoes, you have tractor beams and a cloaking
  24 device.
  25 Skill in navigation is important.
  26 It helps to be schizophrenic, because you must manage an Enterprise and a Base
  27 simultaneously.
  28 And enemies do not simply shoot back.
  29 You can get tailed, absorbed, snuck up upon, hemmed in, rammed, loved to death,
  30 reprimanded for destroying civilized life, dragged around, robbed, damaged
  31 and eaten.
  32 And if you should happen to get bored by the enemies (a trifle unlikely),
  33 you can always watch the interesting star patterns.
  34 In fact, you'll have to, since your tactics will depend upon what kind of
  35 universe you find yourself in.
  36 .PP
  37 .I Warp
  38 is played in a double wraparound universe, i.e. the bottom is connected to the
  39 top, and the right is connected to the left.
  40 You need a crt with random cursor addressing and at least 24 lines by 80
  41 columns.
  42 For more information about about how to play, simply run
  43 .I warp
  44 and say "y" when it asks if you want to see the instructions.
  45 There is also a single-page command summary that you can get while playing
  46 by typing a "?".
  47 .PP
  48 Command line options include:
  49 .TP 5
  50 .B -b
  51 Put
  52 .I warp
  53 into beginner mode.
  54 Makes the difficulty increase more slowly, but penalizes you for it.
  55 .TP 5
  56 .B -d<n>
  57 Sets the initial difficulty to
  58 .BR n .
  59 .TP 5
  60 .B -l
  61 Play a low-speed game.
  62 Changes the basic cycle time from 1 second to 2 seconds.
  63 This switch is automatically set at baud rates below 2400.
  64 You may want to set it at higher speeds if your terminal cannot keep up
  65 with the output.
  66 (This should never happen on BSD systems, which have an IOCTL call to
  67 determine output queue length.)
  68 Because this makes the game easier, a separate scoreboard is kept for
  69 low-speed games.
  70 .TP 5
  71 .B -m
  72 Terminal has a meta key which turns on the eighth bit.  Ordinarily the
  73 eighth bit is stripped in order to ignore parity.
  74 Metacharacters will appear to the keymap as prefixed with a ^A, and will
  75 subsequently have the same effect as a control character, unless otherwise
  76 mapped.
  77 .TP 5
  78 .B -s
  79 Just prints out the scoreboards and saved games and then exits.
  80 .TP 5
  81 .B -v
  82 Prints out the version number.
  83 .TP 5
  84 .B -x
  85 Play an experimental game.
  86 This causes
  87 .I warp
  88 to ignore any saved game, and disables the ability to save
  89 the current game.
  90 Thus you can play around with something or show
  91 .I warp
  92 to someone without jeopardizing a currently saved game.
  93 .SH ENVIRONMENT
  94 .TP 5
  95 .B WARPMACRO
  96 If defined, names a file containing keyboard mappings and macros.
  97 If not defined, the value %X/Kbmap.%{TERM} is assumed.
  98 The macro file contains lines of the following form:
  99 .sp
 100 <keystroke-sequence> <whitespace> <canonical-keystroke-sequence>
 101 .sp
 102 You may use certain % interpolations and ^<letter> control characters.
 103 For possible % interpolations see warp.h.
 104 Sequences in the canonical-keystroke-sequence bounded by ^(...^) are
 105 subject to reinterpretation via the keymap.
 106 This file has two major uses.
 107 First, you can set up your commands to use any kind of prefix key your terminal
 108 might have, or change the key bindings in any other way you choose.
 109 Second, you can define arbitrary macros, such as this:
 110 .sp
 111 # define Corbamite maneuver
 112 =       DDllllll
 113 .SH AUTHOR
 114 Larry Wall <lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
 115 .SH FILES
 116 ~/.fullname, if full names aren't in /etc/passwd
 117 .SH DIAGNOSTICS
 118 Generally self-documenting, as they say.
 119 .SH BUGS
 120 Addicting.
 121 At the end of a wave, all you have to do to keep going is hit a space.
 122 You see the message "Hit space to continue" and automatically hit space.
 123 About 2 seconds later you remember you wanted to go home, but by then
 124 it's too late to escape without penalty.
 125 .PP
 126 You can't kill a backgrounded
 127 .I warp
 128 process directly, because it is running setuid.
 129 You have to use the killer built in to
 130 .IR warp .
 131 .PP
 132 Now that there is a space amoeba, there ought to be tribbles.
 133 But it might be too much trouble...