warp(6) - NetBSD Manual Pages

WARP(6)                                                                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 think-
       ing.  "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, reprimanded
       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 con-
       nected  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 ter-
            minal cannot keep up with the output.  (This should  never  happen
            on BSD systems, which have an IOCTL call to determine output queue
            length.)  Because this makes the game easier,  a  separate  score-
            board 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
            otherwise 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 charac-
            ters.  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 automati-
       cally  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 run-
       ning 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)