WA-TOR FOR WINDOWS 
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Copyright (C) 1993, WARREN L. KOVACH 

Welcome to Wa-Tor, the sharks and fish game for Microsoft 
Windows.  This program allows you to create your own world, 
populated with tasty fish and hungry sharks, and watch how the 
population changes through time. 

You can change parameters that determine how often the sharks and 
fish breed and how soon the sharks will starve if they can't eat 
a fish.  If you get the settings right, the populations will live 
for a long time.  Get them wrong, however, and the sharks might 
eat up all the fish, then starve to death.  They might also all 
die off before finding any fish to feed on. 

It is fun to cheer on the sharks and fish as they battle it out, 
but this game is also a simulation of some ideas from population 
ecology, although it is a very simplistic model. 

The idea for this game comes from A.K. Dewdney's "Computer 
Recreations" column in the December 1984 issue of Scientific 
American. 

INSTALLATION 

The Wa-Tor program consists of two files, WATORW.EXE and 
WATORW.HLP.  To install Wa-Tor, simply copy these two files onto 
your hard disk in any directory you desire.  You can then create 
an icon for it in the Program Manager (PM) by either using the 
"File/New" option in PM, or by dragging the file from the File 
Manager directly to a PM group. 

STARTING WA-TOR 

When you first start Wa-Tor, you will see the blank game board 
and the population graph.  You can first change the initial 
parameters through the Options menu, then start or stop the 
simulation through the Game menu.  You can view other types of 
graphs through the Graphs menu. 

The game board can be cleared and a new game started by choosing 
"New" from the Game menu.  Changes made to the parameters in the 
middle of a run take effect immediately. 

GAME BOARD 

Wa-Tor is a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) planet completely covered 
by an ocean.  The game board shows a map of the planet flattened 
out into a square.  If a fish or shark moves off one edge of the 
map, it will reappear on the other side. 

At the start of the game, fish and sharks are placed randomly 
around the board.  You control how many are there at the start 
through the options menu.  When the game starts, each fish and 
shark moves once during a chronon (time unit).  Fish move onto 
the next adjacent space, chosen randomly.  Sharks will first look 
around to see if a fish is within snapping distance; if not it 
too will move onto an unoccupied space. 

After all fish and sharks have moved once, the scoreboard will be 
updated to show the current population.  The movements for the 
next chronon will then begin. 

Wa-Tor has a full on-line help system that gives more details 
about using the menuing system.  There is also information about 
the different graph types and a brief introduction to population 
ecology. 

COMMENTS, COMPLAINTS, COMPLIMENTS AND BUGS
These should be addressed to me at the address below.  There are 
numerous improvements that could be made in this game, both in 
the presentation and in the actual mechanics and assumptions.  
For instance, adding a requirement for sexual reproduction could 
have interesting results in the population dynamics.  If you have 
any suggestions please let me know.  Thank you!

REGISTRATION 

Wa-Tor is a shareware game.  This means that you can freely copy 
it and give it to friends and colleagues.  A charge may be made 
for distribution to cover costs, but it may not exceed UKœ5 (or 
US$10) per disk. 

If you like the program and wish to support the programming 
effort, a registration fee of UKœ10 (or US$20) would be 
appreciated.  In return, you will be notified of any updates to 
Wa-Tor, as well as of any other programs that I produce. 

If you wish to use the program for teaching, then you must 
register.  A copy of Wa-Tor must be purchased for each machine it 
is used on.  Discounts are available for purchases of multiple 
copies of Wa-Tor, according to the following table: 

        Copies          Price per copy 
        ------          --------------
        1-10            œ10 ($20) 
        11-20           œ8  ($16) 
        21-50           œ6  ($12) 
        51-100          œ4  ($8) 

Payment may be made by cheque in UK pounds or US dollars (drawn 
on a UK or US bank), by international money order in pounds or 
dollars, by Eurocheque in pounds, or (if you want to risk it) by 
sending banknotes through the post.  Cheques should be made 
payable to Dr. Warren L. Kovach.  Please send your payment to: 

        Dr. Warren L. Kovach 
        Kovach Computing Services 
        85 Nant-Y-Felin 
        Pentraeth, Anglesey LL75 8UY 
        Wales, U.K. 

        e-mail: warrenk@cix.compulink.co.uk 
        CompuServe: 100016,2265 

THANK YOU!