<para>The Klingons are waiting.</para>
+</chapter>
+<chapter><title>Starting the Game</title>
+
+<para>The program will ask you some setup questions. You can give it
+command-line arguments that will be treated as answers. Any token
+may be abbreviated to a unique prefix.</para>
+
+<para>The first question concerns whether you want a regullar,
+tournament, or saved game. For discussion, see the <link
+linkend="freeze">description of the freeze command</link>.</para>
+
+<para>The second question will concern the length of the game.
+Longer games include more enemies.</para>
+
+<para>The third question will set the game's difficulty level.
+You should probably start out at the novice level, even if you are
+already familiar with one of the other versions of the Star Trek
+game—but, of course, the level of game you play is up to you. If
+you want to start at the Expert level, go ahead. It's your funeral.
+The Emeritus game is strictly for masochists.</para>
+
+<para>The fourth question, new in SST2K, sets your game options. A
+blank answer or 'fancy' enables all SST2K features. The option
+'plain' disables a number of features (Tholians, planets &
+dilithium, Thingies shooting back, deep-space-probes, Klingon ramming
+and movement, time-warping through black holes, death-ray upgrade),
+approximating the original CDC 6600 FORTRAN game from UT Austin. The
+option 'almy' approximates Tom Almy's C translation from 1979,
+disabling Thingies shooting back, base shields, and time-warping
+through black holes.</para>
+
</chapter>
<chapter><title>How To Issue Commands</title>
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para>You can abbreviate practically anything</para></listitem>
-<listitem><para>If you forget, the computer will proompt you</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>If you forget, the computer will prompt you</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>If you remember, you can type it all on one line</para></listitem>
</orderedlist>
only way to obtain this information is with the <quote>SENSORS</quote> command.</para>
</sect1>
-<sect1><title>Freeze</title>
+<sect1 id="freeze"><title>Freeze</title>
<literallayout>
Mnemonic: FREEZE
selecting Courier 8pt font, and then print in <quote>landscape
orientation</quote>.</para>
-<para>You should probably start out at the novice level, even if you are
-already familiar with one of the other versions of the Star Trek
-game—but, of course, the level of game you play is up to you. If
-you want to start at the Expert level, go ahead. It's your funeral.
-The emeritus game is strictly for masochists.</para>
-
</chapter>
<chapter><title>Handy Reference Page</title>
rather longer than the one we have.) The Austin crew proceeded to
write their own Trek game, loosely based on the Hicks version, in
CDC6600 FORTRAN. At that time, it was just called "Star Trek"; the
-"Super" was added by later developers.</para>
+"Super" was added by later developers. In the rest of this history
+we'll call it the "UT FORTRAN" version.</para>
-<para>At the time the CDC6600 FORTRAN source was translated to C
-it emitted the message "Latest update-21 Sept 78". Thus, it actually
-predated (and may have influenced) the best-known BASIC version, the
-"Super Star Trek" published by David Ahl in his November 1978 sequel
+<para>At the time the UT FORTRAN source was last translated to C it emitted
+the message "Latest update-21 Sept 78". Thus, it actually predated
+(and may have influenced) the best-known BASIC version, the "Super
+Star Trek" published by David Ahl in his November 1978 sequel
<citetitle>BASIC Computer Games</citetitle>.</para>
-<para>Ahl's "Super Star Trek" had been reworked by Robert Leedom and
+<para>This 1978 "Super Star Trek" had been reworked by Robert Leedom and
friends from (according to Leedom) Mayfield's HP port. There is
internal evidence to suggest that at least some features of Leedom's
SST may have derived from the UT FORTRAN version. In particular, Dave
Matuszek recalls implementing command words to replace the original
-numeric command codes, a feature Leedom's SST also had.</para>
+numeric command codes, a feature Leedom's SST also had but the
+1973 and 1975 SPACWRs did not.</para>
<para>One signature trait of the UT FORTRAN game and its descendants
is that the sectors are 10x10 (rather than the 8x8 in Mike Mayfield's
<!-- navigation. -->
<para>Eric Allman's BSD Trek game is one of these, also descended from
-FORTRAN Star Trek via translation to C. However, the mainline S (now
-SST2K) has had a lot more stuff folded into it over the years —
-deep space probes, dilithium mining, the Tholian Web, and so
+the UT FORTRAN version via translation to C. However, the mainline version
+(now SST2K) has had a lot more stuff folded into it over the years
+— deep space probes, dilithium mining, the Tholian Web, and so
forth.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1><title>Tom Almy's story</title>
-<para>Back in (about) 1977 I got a copy of this Super Star Trek game for
+<para>Back in (about) 1977 I got a copy of the Super Star Trek game for
the CDC 6600 mainframe computer. Someone had converted it to PDP-11
Fortran but couldn't get it to run because of its size. I modified
the program to use overlays and managed to shoehorn it in on the 56k
<sect1><title>Stas Sergeev's story</title>
<para>I started from an older Tom Almy version and added features I had
-seen in mainframe variants of the game, I wrote a screen-oriented
+seen in other mainframe variants of the game, I wrote a screen-oriented
interface for it based on the curses library.</para>
<itemizedlist>
projects / super-star-trek.git / blobdiff