1 .TH BATTLESHIPS 6 "Nov 15 1993"
7 This program allows you to play the familiar Battleships game against the
8 computer on a 10x10 board. The interface is visual and largely
9 self-explanatory; you place your ships and pick your shots by moving the
10 cursor around the `sea' with the rogue/hack motion keys hjklyubn. If
11 your UNIX has a modern (non-BSD) curses, your arrow keys will also work.
13 Note that when selecting a ship to place, you must type the capital letter
14 (these are, after all, capital ships). During ship placement, the `r' command
15 may be used to ignore the current position and randomly place your currently
16 selected ship. The `R' command will place all remaining ships randomly. The ^L
17 command (form feed, ASCII 12) will force a screen redraw).
19 The command-line arguments control game modes.
22 -b selects a `blitz' variant
23 -s selects a `salvo' variant
24 -c permits ships to be placed adjacently
27 The `blitz' variant allows a side to shoot for as long as it continues to
30 The `salvo' game allows a player one shot per turn for each of his/her ships
31 still afloat. This puts a premium scoring hits early and knocking out some
32 ships and also makes much harder the situation where you face a superior force
33 with only your PT-boat.
35 Normally, ships must be separated by at least one square of open water. The
36 -c option disables this check and allows them to close-pack.
38 The algorithm the computer uses once it has found a ship to sink is provably
39 optimal. The dispersion criterion for the random-fire algorithm may not be.
41 Originally written by one Bruce Holloway in 1986. Salvo mode added by Chuck A.
42 DeGaul (cbosgd!cad). Visual user interface, `closepack' option, code rewrite
43 and manual page by Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> August
44 1989. Keypad support and ANSI/POSIX conformance, November '93. See
45 http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html for updates,
46 also other software and resources by ESR.