1 Warp is a real-time space war game. This means that the enemies will keep 2 playing even when you sit still. Another peculiarity is that things which 3 blow up can damage other things around them. Universes above a critical 4 density may chain react. 5 6 The game starts at difficulty 1, and gets more difficult with each 7 succeeding wave, up to difficulty 99. You're not likely to get that far. 8 (Invoking warp with a -b switch causes the difficulty to increase more 9 slowly, but games count only a tenth as much.) The game starts with 10 5 Enterprises and 3 Bases, and you get more for surviving long enough. 11 The game is over when you run out of Enterprises and Bases. 12 13 The object of the game is to get as many points as possible. This is done 14 by destroying as many enemies as possible. This is not a trivial task. 15 Each wave starts with one Enterprise and one Base, and continues until 16 either both the Enterprise and Base are destroyed, or all the enemies 17 (including any homing torpedoes) are destroyed. It is possible to abort a 18 wave, but you will be penalized for it. The game may be saved between waves. 19 20 A -x switch causes any saved game to be ignored, and causes the new game 21 not to be saveable. Hence it is possible to run test games without 22 invalidating a currently saved game. 23 25 The game is played in a 23 x 40 double wrap-around universe. Everybody 26 (both you and the enemies) gets the chance to move once every second, 27 unless a -l (low-speed) switch was given or you are under 2400 baud, in 28 which case it's every two seconds. The following symbols are displayed: 29 30 FRIENDS 31 E Enterprise with shields e Enterprise without shields 32 C Cloaked E with shields c Cloaked E without shields 33 B Base with shields b Base without shields 34 + Friendly torpedo M Harry Mudd 35 36 ENEMIES 37 K Klingon G Gorn 38 R Romulan A Apollo 39 Romulan with cloaking device! & Space Amoeba Nucleus 40 T Tholian >,< Planet crusher 41 x,X Hostile torpedo o,O Homing torpedo 42 P Pirate M Harry Mudd 43 44 MISCELLANEOUS 45 * Star @ Inhabited star 46 |,-,/,\ Web ~ Protoplasm 47 other Friendly Freighter, for now... 48 50 The following keys control the DIRECTION of your various actions: 51 52 h or 4 left 53 j or 2 down 54 k or 8 up 55 l or 6 right 56 b or 1 down and left 57 n or 3 down and right 58 y or 7 up and left 59 u or 9 up and right 60 61 (You will note that the letters are the same as other visual games, and the 62 numbers are for use with a keypad.) By themselves, these keys move either 63 the Enterprise or the Base, whichever is the current vessel. When shifted, 64 they fire photon torpedoes in the specified direction from the current 65 vessel. When used with either the CTRL key or the FUNCT key, phasers 66 (turbo-lasers for the Base) are fired in the specified direction. (CTRL 67 won't work with numbers, and FUNCT probably doesn't exist on non-TVI 68 terminals.) When preceded by an 'a', an attractor beam is fired in the 69 specified direction, and when preceded by an 'r', a repulsor beam is fired. 70 72 These keys have special functions: 73 74 del or % fire photon torpedoes in every (reasonable) direction 75 s stop all friendly torpedoes 76 S or 0 stop the Enterprise when in warp mode 77 d destruct all friendly torpedoes (quite useful) 78 D destruct the current vessel (commit suicide) 79 i/w switch to Enterprise and put into impulse/warp mode 80 c/v switch to Enterprise and put into cloaking/visible mode 81 p switch to Base (not very mnemonic, but 'b' is taken) 82 o switch from Enterprise to Base, or vice versa 83 z zap explosions (multiple zaps extend further) (E only) 84 85 ^R refresh the screen 86 ^Z suspend the game (on a bsd system) 87 q asks if you want to exit this wave (will not work 88 within 10 cycles of previous q command) 89 Q exit this game (not wave) 90 ? display a summary of these commands 91 92 There may be additional commands listed in your terminal's keymap file. 93 Unrecognized keystrokes are ignored. IF YOU FORGET ALL THE OTHER COMMANDS, 94 REMEMBER "?", which gives you help. 95 97 Commands for moving the Enterprise may operate in one of two ways. If it 98 is in impulse mode, movement commands affect the position of the ship; 99 if it is in warp mode, movement commands affect the velocity instead. 100 The Base always moves in impulse mode. Since multiple commands may be 101 entered in one turn (if you can type fast enough), it is possible to jump 102 over things even in impulse mode. In a crowded universe this may be the 103 only way to go. 104 105 (Actually, motion commands always change the velocity--the actual motion 106 does not occur until the next turn. Impulse mode simply causes the 107 velocity to be zeroed out at the end of every turn. Phaser commands, on 108 the other hand, are executed immediately. If you want to move and fire a 109 phaser, you must wait for the motion to actually occur before typing the 110 phaser command, or the phaser fires from your old position. This is a 111 feature, not a bug, and is intended to reflect reality. Really.) 112 113 If multiple torpedo launching commands are given in a turn, a single torpedo 114 is launched with extra velocity. You can thus launch photon torpedoes over 115 objects in the way, and get them where you want them quickly. This feature 116 works well with the destruct button. Variations on this may be useful 117 against the Space Amoeba. 118 120 NOTE: Phasers destroy the target by blasting the projected next location of 121 the object hit. This means that if the object hit, be it Klingon, Romulan or 122 Enterprise, changes velocity in the same turn, it can elude the effect of 123 the phaser! (Note that this also means that if you phaser a Klingon or 124 torpedo that is about to ram you, you will be phasered as well as he/she/it. 125 This can be embarrassing, not to mention deadly.) Smart players move 126 immediately upon phasering something at short range, or whenever they 127 think they might get phasered (in other words, most of the time). 128 129 Objects with larger mass can bounce objects with smaller mass out of the way. 130 In a crowded universe the bouncee can bounce quite a way before finding an 131 empty place to land. If you let the Tholians fill up the universe with web, 132 so that there is no place to bounce to, the Tholians win that wave. 133 134 The status line across the top gives the current mode, the number of 135 points accumulated this wave, the Enterprise's energy and torpedoes, the 136 Base's energy and torpedoes, the number of stars, the number of enemies, 137 and the stardate. You will note that nice things happen to your energy levels 138 when you put the Enterprise next to the Base, or the Base next to some stars. 139 Bad things happen inside an Amoeba. 140 142 An object is destroyed when its energy goes negative, either from a direct 143 hit, or from the blast of the previous turn's explosions. Enemies and 144 stars start with random amounts of energy. High energy enemies can go warp 145 2. A Romulan with sufficient energy maintains a cloaking device. Tholians 146 spin web, Gorns shoot homing torpedoes, and the Planet Crusher munches 147 anything in its way, even Apollo. Apollo won't let you go unless you kill 148 him, but he loves you very much and beefs up your shields considerably. 149 Both Apollo and the Planet Crusher recharge themselves, so you must hit 150 them hard in a single turn to do them in. (Yes, the Planet Crusher must be 151 shot in the mouth--he can only die of gluttony--and he blasts out of his 152 mouth when he dies.) Tholian web may be crossed only by coasting across it 153 in warp mode, or by blasting it (but web blasts extend twice as far as 154 normal blasts, so keep your distance). The Space Amoeba sucks energy and 155 grows, and you must destroy the nucleus. Somehow. There are at least four 156 ways. Phasers won't work on the big ones. 157 158 Pirates turn inhabited star systems into uninhabited ones. Even Friendly 159 Freighters will take potshots at you if you get them mad enough. 160 162 Note that because of the size of the Base's turbo-lasers (the Base does not 163 have phasers) they cannot shoot anything next to the Base. (This is why the 164 Death Star died!) In part, this is to protect the Enterprise. It also lets 165 you shoot over one adjacent star. The Enterprise's phasers will shoot over 166 a arbitrary number of adjacent, contiguous stars, including inhabited ones. 167 Phasers die away with distance, so don't expect them to kill everything with 168 one blow. 169 170 While the Enterprise's shields are up (when it is displayed as "E" rather 171 than "e"), hits on it count only a fifth as much (or even less if you are 172 moving in warp mode). The shields are automatically maintained as long as 173 there are more than 500 units of energy for the Enterprise. The Base also 174 has shields, which stay up as long as it has at least 1000 units of energy. 175 176 Aside from losing energy, the Enterprise can also take damage, either random 177 damage from getting blasted, or specific damage when a system is in use 178 and breaks down under the load. In place of the score you will see the 179 Estimated Time to Repair. Sometimes docking helps to get things fixed faster. 180 If you lose both your warp and impulse engines, try the tractors. The 181 Base doesn't take damage because it has much more redundancy than the 182 Enterprise. 183 185 You get points for destroying enemies and hostile torpedoes. At the end of 186 a wave, you also get bonus points for saving stars, saving the Enterprise 187 and Base, and for having an efficiency rating higher that 0.8. You get 188 NEGATIVE bonus points for letting friendly life forms get blown up, and for 189 giving up. Bonuses tend to be scaled by the ratio of the number of points 190 you got over the number of points you could have got. If you think you are 191 done with a wave, but it won't quit, there may be homing torpedoes that you 192 haven't destroyed--you must make the universe safe for posterity, you know. 193 194 When you have used up your Enterprises and Bases (or quit), your score will 195 be posted to the scoreboard. You may see the scoreboard outside of the game 196 simply by giving the command "warp -s". 197 198 If you get bored, you can always play with some of the undocumented switches 199 that are used to test warp. Such funny games go on their own scoreboard. 200 For kicks try "warp -x -d50 -C -\& -G -T -E400 -S5" and then go hide. Quick. 201 203
Indexes created Wed Oct 15 16:09:53 GMT 2025