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vt100-games/Battleships/readme.txt

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2019-10-25 09:59:49 +02:00
This is a version of Battleships played on a 10x10 grid, with you
playing against the computer. There's a reasonable amount of onscreen
help, so you should be able to figure out how to work it pretty
quickly.
It's a port of a Unix curses version hacked by a few different people.
A formatted version of the man page (documentation) is given below,
and the 'readme' from the last person to hack it is in 'esr.txt'.
-Rus.
BATTLESHIPS(6) BATTLESHIPS(6)
NAME
bs - battleships game
SYNOPSIS
bs [ -b | -s ] [ -c ]
DESCRIPTION
This program allows you to play the familiar Battleships
game against the computer on a 10x10 board. The interface
is visual and largely self-explanatory; you place your
ships and pick your shots by moving the cursor around the
`sea' with the rogue/hack motion keys hjklyubn. If your
UNIX has a modern (non-BSD) curses, your arrow keys will
also work.
Note that when selecting a ship to place, you must type
the capital letter (these are, after all, capital ships).
During ship placement, the `r' command may be used to
ignore the current position and randomly place your cur-
rently selected ship. The `R' command will place all
remaining ships randomly. The ^L command (form feed, ASCII
12) will force a screen redraw).
The command-line arguments control game modes.
-b selects a `blitz' variant
-s selects a `salvo' variant
-c permits ships to be placed adjacently
The `blitz' variant allows a side to shoot for as long as
it continues to score hits.
The `salvo' game allows a player one shot per turn for
each of his/her ships still afloat. This puts a premium
scoring hits early and knocking out some ships and also
makes much harder the situation where you face a superior
force with only your PT-boat.
Normally, ships must be separated by at least one square
of open water. The -c option disables this check and
allows them to close-pack.
The algorithm the computer uses once it has found a ship
to sink is provably optimal. The dispersion criterion for
the random-fire algorithm may not be.
AUTHORS
Originally written by one Bruce Holloway in 1986. Salvo
mode added by Chuck A. DeGaul (cbosgd!cad). Visual user
interface, `closepack' option, code rewrite and manual
page by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> August
1989. Keypad support and ANSI/POSIX conformance, November
'93. See http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html for updates,
also other software and resources by ESR.
Nov 15 1993 1