NAME xconq - X-based strategy game SYNOPSIS xconq [ options ] ... DESCRIPTION Xconq is a multi-player strategic wargame. Your goal is to save the world from the evil empires attempting to take over. You get cities, armies, airplanes, and ships with which to accomplish your task. Success is achieved by the neutralization or defeat of the other sides, by any means available. First you have to find them! Although the game can get complicated, to start you need only know about the help command '?', which is valid at any time. You start with only one city, which makes things even simpler. The city will automatically produce a military unit, which you will be prompted to move around. Eventually, you will get more and can attempt to take over other cities. The game keeps going until only one side is left in action; this player is then declared the winner. By default, xconq starts up with one human (on the display in $DISPLAY) and one machine, playing on a randomly gener- ated 60x30 world. Options are available to set numbers and kinds of players, as well as the kind of map used. In addition, xconq has extensive and elaborate facilities for building maps, scenarios, and historical periods, result- ing in a wide variety of games. OPTIONS host:display adds a human player to the game and assigns to the given host and display. Players get created in the same order as they appear on the command line, inter- leaved with the players created via -e and -A. All of the player adding options may be used any number of times in any order. -A host:display attaches a machine player to the given display. Ideal for those who like to watch. -C allows the machine player to play in cheat mode. It will get a complete update of the screen every turn. -e number sets the number of machine players not attached to displays. Non-displayed machine players form alliance blocks of 5-9 countries. Utah 1 -m name reads the map named name and starts up a game on it. -M width height generates a random map of the given size. The size must be at least 5x5, although some periods will impose additional constraints on the lower bound. In theory, there is no upper bound (but 200x100 is huge). -p name reads the historical period specified by name, and sets everything up for that period. -r resets the list of players on the command line. It is most useful when placed before other player speci- fications, to clear out the default players. -s name reads a scenario with the name name. A scenario sets up a particular situation; it has a fixed number of sides that can participate. -t number toggles a chess-clock-like feature that limits the total time of play for each side. The amount is num- ber minutes per side. Time is only counted while actually waiting for input. -v make the entire world seen by all players at the out- set. This is useful if exploration is deemed to be time-consuming, or if the map is already known to everybody. Some maps already have this enabled. In addition, -B and -D are recognized; see the customiza- tion document for more details. EXAMPLES xconq One human on local display, one machine, 60x30 random map xconq -m crater One human vs one machine, on the "crater lake" map xconq -e 0 blitzen:0 kzin.eel:0 Three humans. One on the local display, one on blitzen:0 in the same network, and another: kzin.eel:0 in another network. 60x30 random map xconq -e 2 -M 90 40 -A shark:0 One human, three machines (one on display shark:0), 90x40 random map Utah 2 xconq -r -e 3 -m 1987 wind:0 surfer:0 -A springs:0 Six players (4 machine, 1 on springs:0; 2 human, on wind:0 and surfer:0), all playing on a 360x122 map of the earth with present-day cities. Major! X DEFAULTS Class / name You may specify these resources in your .Xres (or .Xdefaults) using a spec of the form XConq.Class: value or XConq.name: value and you can mix classes and names in the spec. This is just standard X resource stuff. The following resources have a prefix of XConq.Map.Period / xconq.map.%s HexDisplayMode / hexDisplayMode This is how xconq will display the terrain hexes. Possible values are FullHex, BorderHex, TerrIcons, and BothIcons. Background / ownColor The color for your own units. Background / alternateColor I forgot Background / differentColor Reminders would be appreciated Foreground / borderColor It shouldn't be hard to figure out anyway Foreground / grayColor but my boss is looking over my shoulder Foreground / enemyColor The color of enemy units Foreground / neutralColor The color of neutral units Foreground / goodColor The color of allied units Foreground / badColor And I really shouldn't play this game until I've finished the project Utah 3 Font / textFont Font for all text. Font / iconFont Font for miscellaneous pictures. Font/ helpFont Font for the help pages. AUTHORS Stan Shebs (shebs@cs.utah.edu) Version 5.4 by Greg Fisher (fisher@cs.rutgers.edu) Version 5.5 by Robert Forsman (thoth@lightning.cis.ufl.edu) Version 6.0 in the works. It doesn't work too well yet, Stan's still fixing things. FILES save.xconq saved game emergency.save.xconq game saved after program crash stats.xconq performance statistics for a game cmds.xconq listing of commands parms.xconq listing of units and their characteristics view.xconq printable version of the map display /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/*.map predefined maps /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/*.scn predefined scenarios /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/*.per predefined historical peri- ods /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/*.onx X10 fonts /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/*.bdf X11 uncompiled fonts /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/*.snf X11 compiled fonts /local/lib/x11r4/xconq/xconq.news news about fea- tures/additions SEE ALSO Liberating the World (Made Simple) Customizing Xconq (Made Somewhat Simple) DIAGNOSTICS If a given display cannot be opened due to a missing xhost(1) command, xconq will quit with a message "Error opening display host:0". If the icon fonts cannot be found or opened, text will be substituted. This is usually pretty yucky. If the map is too small for the desired number of players, xconq will complain about not being able to place units. There are some panic messages which usually precede a core dump by a few milliseconds. Utah 4 Incorrect combinations of periods, maps, and scenarios can generate a host of different error messages. BUGS Since some periods/maps/scenarios are interdependent, they must be specified in a particular order on the command line (period first usually). Does not cope gracefully (it doesn't really cope at all) with insufficient memory. Some annoying behaviors are actually features. Feel free to report bugs to xconq@uunet.uu.net. There are people there willing (if not able) to help you. If you wish to listen in on the list you may join by sending mail to xconq-request@uunet.uu.net. Utah 5