WARP(6) 							   Games Manual 							   WARP(6)

NAME

       warp - a real-time space war game

SYNOPSIS

       warp [options]

DESCRIPTION

       Warp  is a real-time space war game that requires skill and quick thinking.  "Real-time" in this context means that the enemies keep moving
       (and shooting) even if you don't.  A unique feature of warp is that blast propagates; it is unhealthy to remain near things that are in the
       process	of  blowing  up.   If  a  given  universe  is  above  a  critical density it may chain react.  Scoring is like many popular arcade
       games--there are multiple waves which get harder and harder as you go along.  Nobody has ever maxed out the scoreboard without cheating.

       Unlike many space-war games, warp is not simply a shooting gallery.  Along with phasers and photon torpedoes, you have tractor beams and  a
       cloaking  device.  Skill in navigation is important.  It helps to be schizophrenic, because you must manage an Enterprise and a Base simul-
       taneously.  And enemies do not simply shoot back.  You can get tailed, absorbed, snuck up upon, hemmed in, rammed, loved to  death,  repri-
       manded  for  destroying civilized life, dragged around, robbed, damaged and eaten.  And if you should happen to get bored by the enemies (a
       trifle unlikely), you can always watch the interesting star patterns.  In fact, you'll have to, since your tactics will	depend	upon  what
       kind of universe you find yourself in.

       Warp  is played in a double wraparound universe, i.e. the bottom is connected to the top, and the right is connected to the left.  You need
       a crt with random cursor addressing and at least 24 lines by 80 columns.  For more information about about how to play, simply run warp and
       say  "y"  when  it asks if you want to see the instructions.  There is also a single-page command summary that you can get while playing by
       typing a "?".

       Command line options include:

       -b   Put warp into beginner mode.  Makes the difficulty increase more slowly, but penalizes you for it.

       -d<n>
	    Sets the initial difficulty to n.

       -l   Play a low-speed game.  Changes the basic cycle time from 1 second to 2 seconds.  This switch is automatically set at baud rates below
	    2400.  You may want to set it at higher speeds if your terminal cannot keep up with the output.  (This should never happen on BSD sys-
	    tems, which have an IOCTL call to determine output queue length.)  Because this makes the game easier, a separate scoreboard  is  kept
	    for low-speed games.

       -m   Terminal  has a meta key which turns on the eighth bit.  Ordinarily the eighth bit is stripped in order to ignore parity.  Metacharac-
	    ters will appear to the keymap as prefixed with a ^A, and will subsequently have the same effect as a control character, unless other-
	    wise mapped.

       -s   Just prints out the scoreboards and saved games and then exits.

       -v   Prints out the version number.

       -x   Play  an  experimental  game.  This causes warp to ignore any saved game, and disables the ability to save the current game.  Thus you
	    can play around with something or show warp to someone without jeopardizing a currently saved game.

ENVIRONMENT

       WARPMACRO
	    If defined, names a file containing keyboard mappings and macros.  If not defined, the value %X/Kbmap.%{TERM} is assumed.	The  macro
	    file contains lines of the following form:

	    <keystroke-sequence> <whitespace> <canonical-keystroke-sequence>

	    You  may  use  certain % interpolations and ^<letter> control characters.  For possible % interpolations see warp.h.  Sequences in the
	    canonical-keystroke-sequence bounded by ^(...^) are subject to reinterpretation via the keymap.  This file has two major uses.  First,
	    you  can  set up your commands to use any kind of prefix key your terminal might have, or change the key bindings in any other way you
	    choose.  Second, you can define arbitrary macros, such as this:

	    # define Corbamite maneuver =    DDllllll

AUTHOR

       Larry Wall <lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP>

FILES

       ~/.fullname, if full names aren't in /etc/passwd

DIAGNOSTICS

       Generally self-documenting, as they say.

BUGS

       Addicting.  At the end of a wave, all you have to do to keep going is hit a space.  You see the message "Hit space to continue"	and  auto-
       matically hit space.  About 2 seconds later you remember you wanted to go home, but by then it's too late to escape without penalty.

       You can't kill a backgrounded warp process directly, because it is running setuid.  You have to use the killer built in to warp.

       Now that there is a space amoeba, there ought to be tribbles.  But it might be too much trouble...

																	   WARP(6)