1ROBOTFINDSKITTEN(6) Games Manual ROBOTFINDSKITTEN(6)
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6 robotfindskitten - help robot find kitten
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9 robotfindskitten [ -n number ] [ -s seed ] [ -f filename ]
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12 In this game, you are robot ( # ). Your job is to find kitten. This
13 task is complicated by the existence of various things which are not
14 kitten (collectively known as Non Kitten Items or NKIs). Robot must
15 touch items to determine if they are kitten or not. The game ends when
16 robot finds kitten.
17 You can move robot with the arrow keys, the EMACS keys (^N, ^P, ^B and
19 ^F for down, up, left and right), the keypad keys (all 8 directions),
20 and the nethack keys (all 8 directions; hjklyubn is left, down, up,
21 right, up-left, up-right, down-left and down-right).
22 You can press Ctrl-L at any time to redraw the screen. You can press q
24 at any time to quit. A good old-fashioned Ctrl-C quits too.
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27 You can optionally specify the number of Non Kitten Items to use with
28 the -s option. The default is 20.
29 You can set the random-number seed, normally initialized from the sys‐
31 tem clock, with the -t option. This may be useful for debugging.
32 You can supply an arbitrary file from which to draw NKIs using the -f
34 option.
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37 robotfindskitten(6) reads all of the files in the ~/.robotfindskitten
38 and /usr/share/games/robotfindskitten directories. Each line of each
39 file matching *.nki becomes the description of a Non Kitten Item.
40 Lines beginning with '#' or '%' are ignored. This allows comments to
41 be used in nki files and allows fortune(6) files to be used.
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44 robotfindskitten(6) uses the HOME environment variable to find the
45 ~/.robotfindskitten directory.
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48 The exit status is 0 if robot found kitten; 1 if you quit or there was
49 a problem; and the signal number if robotfindskitten(6) exits grace‐
50 fully due to a signal.
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53 Day and night I feverishly worked upon the machine, creating both a
54 soul which could desire its goal, and a body with which it could real‐
55 ize it. Many who saw my creation called it an abomination, and denied
56 me grant money. But they could not dissuade me from my impossible task.
57 It was a spectre that tormented me always, a ghost I had to give a form
58 and a life, lest it consume me from the inside. And when at last my
59 task was done, when the grey box on wheels was complete and when it, as
60 well as I, knew what had to be done, I felt deep sympathy for the
61 machine. For I had not destroyed the phantom, but merely exorcized it
62 into another body. The robot knew not why this task had to be per‐
63 formed, for I could not imbue it with knowledge I did not myself
64 posess. And at the same time, I felt a sweeping sense of relief sweep
65 over me, that somehow, the dream that had driven me for my entire life
66 had come one step closer to fruition.
67 "Gort, Klaatu Verada Nikto"
69 As I vocally activated the robot, I realized that it was following my
71 instructions, but not out of any desire to obey me. Had I remained
72 silent, it would have performed exactly the same operations. We were
73 two beings controlled by the same force now. And yet, seeking vainly to
74 hold some illusion of control over the machine I thought I had created,
75 I gave my final command.
76 "GO!" I told the box as it began to roll out of my workshop into the
78 frozen desert beyond. "FIND KITTEN!"
79 -- The Book of Found Kittens, pages 43-4, author unknown
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83 robotfindskitten web page: http://robotfindskitten.org/
84 sourceforge page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rfk/
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88 robotfindskitten was originally written by Leonard Richardson
89 <leonardr@segfault.org> for DOS in 1997. He rewrote it for Linux in
90 1999. Since then robotfindskitten has been ported and/or rewritten for
91 countless other platforms. The current POSIX code is based on code
92 originally written by Alexey Toptygin <alexeyt@freeshell.org>.
93 The POSIX development team consists of:
95 Alexey Toptygin
96 David Griffith
97 Eric S. Raymond
98 Leonard Richardson
99 George Moffitt
100 Jake Berendes
101 Lukas Eklund
102 Neale Pickett
103 Nick Moffitt
104 Peter A. Peterson II
105 Phil Ulrich (Mac OS X)
106 Ryan Finnie (Debian Maintainer)
107 Sean Neakums
108 October 11, 2005 ROBOTFINDSKITTEN(6)