.\" ********************************************************************* .\" * * .\" * Star Traders: A Game of Interstellar Trading * .\" * Copyright (C) 1990-2015, John Zaitseff * .\" * * .\" ********************************************************************* .\" .\" Author: John Zaitseff .\" $Id: trader.6 595 2015-08-17 23:10:05Z john $ .\" .\" This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify .\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by .\" the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at .\" your option) any later version. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU .\" General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. .\" .\" .\" ********************************************************************* .\" Various macros .\" .\" Allow hyphenation .hy 14 .\" .\" Define .URL, .MTO and .FTP, then try to load the www.tmac version .de URL \\$2 \(la\\$1\(ra\\$3 .. .de MTO \\$2 \(la\\$1\(ra\\$3 .. .de FTP \\$2 \(la\\$1\(ra\\$3 .. .if \n[.g] .mso www.tmac .\" .\" ********************************************************************* .TH TRADER 6 "10th September, 2015" "Unix-like systems" .SH NAME trader \- a game of interstellar trading .\" ********************************************************************* .SH SYNOPSIS .B trader .RB [ \-\-no\-color | \-\-no\-colour ] .RB [ \-\-max\-turn=\c .IR NUM ] .RI [ GAME ] .br .B trader .RB [ \-h | \-\-help ] .RB [ \-V | \-\-version ] .\" ********************************************************************* .SH DESCRIPTION \fBStar Traders\fR is a simple game of interstellar trading, where the objective is to create companies, buy and sell shares, borrow and repay money, in order to become the wealthiest player (the winner). .\" ********************************************************************* .SH OPTIONS .TP .I GAME If \fIGAME\fR is specified as a number between \fB1\fR and \fB9\fR (inclusive), load and continue playing that game. If \fIGAME\fR is not specified, start a new game. .TP .BR \-\-no\-color ", " \-\-no\-colour Don't use colour for displaying the text in the game. Use this option for a \*(lqretro-computing\*(rq look (as shown in the .B EXAMPLES below). .TP .BI \-\-max\-turn= NUM Set the number of turns in the game to \fINUM\fR. In this version of Star Traders, \fINUM\fR must be greater or equal to 10. If this option is not specified, the default is 50 turns. .TP .BR \-h ", " \-\-help Show a summary of command-line options and exit. .TP .BR \-V ", " \-\-version Display version information about the program, then exit. .\" ********************************************************************* .SH "EXIT STATUS" .TP .B 0 Star Traders finished without any errors. .TP .B 1 Star Traders encountered an unrecoverable problem or error; a diagnostic message will be written to standard error in this case. .\" ********************************************************************* .SH EXAMPLES You can start a new game by running Star Traders without any command line options: .RS .sp .B trader .sp .RE Once the game starts, you will be asked to enter the number of people playing. From one to eight people can play (although, in this version, they will all have to share the one keyboard and screen!). After entering the names of the players, you will have the opportunity to read instructions on how to play the game. Do so\(emand good luck in the game! .PP If you would like to continue a previously-saved game, simply specify that game number on the command line. For example, the following starts game 4, if it was previously saved: .RS .sp .B trader 4 .sp .RE If you are running under the X Window System, you might like to start the game in a dedicated .BR xterm (1) window (typed all on one line): .RS .sp .nh .na .B "xterm \-g 80x24 \-fa Mono \-fs 18 \-bg black \-fg white \-bc +sb +fbx \-e trader &" .ad .hy 14 .sp .RE If you would like a full \*(lqretro-computing\*(rq green-screen experience, try (again, typed all on one line): .RS .sp .nh .na .B "xterm \-g 80x24 \-fa Mono \-fs 18 \-bg black \-fg '#009911' \-bc +sb +bdc +fbx \-xrm 'XTerm*colorBD: #00FF00' \-e trader \-\-no\-colour &" .ad .hy 14 .sp .RE .\" ********************************************************************* .SH ENVIRONMENT .TP .BR LINES ", " COLUMNS Star Traders uses the Curses library for displaying text on the screen. As such, it will access these two environment variables if the underlying Curses library does so (see, for example, the \fBENVIRONMENT\fR section in the .BR ncurses (3) manual page for in-depth details). It requires a text console or window of at least 80\(mu24 in size. .TP .BR LANG ", " LC_ALL ", etc." This version of Star Traders has full support for locales and will use appropriate settings. In particular, messages will be displayed using \fBLC_MESSAGES\fR and \fBLANGUAGE\fR (if Star Traders has been translated into that language). In addition, numeric quantities will be displayed using \fBLC_NUMERIC\fR and monetary quantities will use \fBLC_MONETARY\fR. See the .BR locale (7) or .BR setlocale (3) manual pages for more details on locale settings. .\" ********************************************************************* .SH FILES .TP .IB \(ti/.trader/game N Star Traders stores saved game files in the \fI.trader\fR subdirectory in your home directory. \fIN\fR is a number between \fB1\fR and \fB9\fR inclusive. The game file is scrambled to prevent you or others from casually cheating! .\" ********************************************************************* .SH BUGS None yet known... .\" ********************************************************************* .SH FEEDBACK Your comments, suggestions, corrections and enhancements are always warmly welcomed! Please send these to: .IP Postal: 10n \fBJohn Zaitseff\fR, .br The ZAP Group, .br Unit 6, 116 Woodburn Road, .br Berala, NSW, 2141, .br Australia .IP E-mail: 10n .MTO J.Zaitseff@zap.org.au .PD 0 .IP Web: 10n .URL http://www.zap.org.au/software/trader/ .IP FTP: 10n .FTP ftp://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/ .PD .PP .\" ********************************************************************* .SH COPYRIGHT Copyright \(co 1990\-2015, John Zaitseff. .PP \fBStar Traders\fR is free software that is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of that License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 or (at your option) any later version. .PP This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. .PP You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see the .URL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ "GNU licenses web page" . .PP Even though the GNU General Public License does \fInot\fR require you to send your modifications back to the author, it is considered \*(lqgood form\*(rq to do so, as this allows your modifications to be incorporated into future versions of the program, allowing others to benefit from them. .\" ********************************************************************* .SH HISTORY The original (and very primitive) Star Traders game was written by S.\~J\. Singer in 1984 using Altair Basic. This was modified for Microsoft Basic (MBASIC) running under the CP/M-80 operating system by John Zaitseff and released on 7th March, 1988. .PP Star Traders was then completely rewritten in 1990 for the Australian-designed 8-bit MicroBee computer running CP/M-80 on a Zilog Z80 processor, using Turbo Pascal 3.01a. Essentially, only the name of the game and some of the ideas were retained in this version. Version 4.1 of Star Traders was released on 1st August, 1991. .PP In 1992, it was recompiled for the NEC Advanced Personal Computer (with 8-inch floppy drives!) running CP/M-86 on an 8086 processor, using Turbo Pascal 2.0. This version had colour added to it in the form of ANSI escape sequences; version 4.4 was released on 2nd August, 1993. .PP The next version came in 1993, when the program was recompiled to run on IBM-compatible machines running MS-DOS and ANSI.SYS. Turbo Pascal 6.0 was used for this. The ANSI escape sequences were slightly different under MS-DOS than under the NEC, in that the NEC supported a number of extra character attributes. In other words, the MS-DOS version looked worse than the one running under CP/M-86! .PP Star Traders was recompiled again in 1994 for IBM-compatible machines with VGA/EGA/CGA video graphics adapters. The output routines were recoded to use a \*(lqwindowed\*(rq look. Borland Pascal 7.0 was used for this purpose, along with a number of text window manipulation modules. Version 5.4 was released on 1st June, 1994. .PP In 1995, Star Traders was completely rewritten for the 16-bit Microsoft Windows 3.1 graphical environment. Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 was used for this purpose. Although completely rewritten, the original algorithms were reused from previous versions. Version 6.0 of the game was released on 15th September, 1995. .PP Star Traders was then to languish until almost 16 years later... when the game was rewritten once again, this time in the C programming language. Version 7.0 was released on 25th July, 2011 for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, with subsequent releases to add features and correct bugs. Now you, too, can run this small piece of computing history! .\" ********************************************************************* .SH "SEE ALSO" .URL http://www.zap.org.au/software/trader/ "Star Traders home page" .\" ********************************************************************* .\" End of file