1SNIPES(6)                        Games Manual                        SNIPES(6)
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NAME

6       snipes - a text maze game
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SYNOPSIS

9       snipes [-cdsx] [-jkqv] [level]
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DESCRIPTION

12       snipes  is a single-player text-mode action game in which the object is
13       to wander a maze killing evil smiley face characters (the "snipes") and
14       the  hives which create them.  Of course, the snipes try to kill you at
15       the same time.
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17       The level argument is of the form [A-Z][1-9].  The alphabetic character
18       specifies characteristics of the level, such as whether or not diagonal
19       shots bounce off the walls.  The numeric character specifies the  level
20       of difficulty. More details in the LEVELS section below.
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22       Use  the  grey  arrow keys to move and the keys a, s, d, and w to fire.
23       (This works best with a QWERTY layout, of course.)  You can move diago‐
24       nally  by  pressing a combination of one vertical movement key with one
25       horizontal movement key simultaneously  and  a  similar  approach  will
26       allow  you  to  fire  diagonally.  Holding the space bar makes you move
27       faster.  CTRL-C is quit.
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29       While running snipes on the console (not in X) you will  be  unable  to
30       switch  VTs.   Pressing  CTRL-Z will suspend the raw keyboard mode (re-
31       enabling VT switching) until you press Enter.
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33       Jenny scrolling is named after a friend who  suggested  it.   While  it
34       makes the screen less flickery, it's a little hard to deal with IMHO.
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36
37   DISPLAY TARGET OPTIONS
38       -c      Use ncurses(3X).
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40       -d      Use doublewide font hack with ncurses(3X).
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42       -s      Use svgalib(7).
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44       -x      Use X Window System.
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47   GENERAL OPTIONS
48       -j      Use Jenny scrolling mode.
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50       -k      Force   keyboard   to   use  safe  (non-raw)  mode  (only  with
51               ncurses(3X) display target).
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53       -q      Quiet mode: do not play sound effects.
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55       -v      Display version number and exit.
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57

LEVELS

59       There are three hives for levels 1->4, four hives for 5->8 and 5  hives
60       for  level  9.  The maximum number of sprites for each difficulty level
61       is 10, 25, 40, 55, 70, 90, 110, 130 and 150.
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63       The level letter determines which features are enabled:
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65
66       ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
67           ****    ****    ****** walls deadly
68               ********        ** walls can be destroyed
69        * * * * * * * * * * * *** ghosts
70         **  **  **  **  **  **** bouncy shots
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HISTORY

74       Novell NetWare 2.x came with a pair of "network testing  utility"  pro‐
75       grams  (games)  called  nsnipes  and ncsnipes.  nsnipes worked on mono‐
76       chrome displays while ncsnipes worked on color displays.  The networked
77       Novell  version  was  based on a single player version made by SuperSet
78       Software, called either hsnipes or  just  snipe.   snipes  is  a  from-
79       scratch reimplementation and shares no code with the Novell or SuperSet
80       games.
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BUGS

84       The snipes are pretty stupid about where they go  and  when  and  where
85       they shoot.
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87       In  the  DOS version, vertical movement is slowed down so that it seems
88       to be about the same speed as horizontal movement.  This  program  cur‐
89       rently does not do that.
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91       In  the  DOS  version,  diagonal shots don't travel exactly diagonally.
92       The deltaX values change in the pattern {2, 2, 3, 2, 3}.  See weapons.c
93       for more detail.  This program currently uses deltaX=1.
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95       The X Window version of snipes is extremely slow.
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97       The  fact  that  snipes uses raw keyboard mode makes bugs somewhat more
98       problematic than they would be otherwise.  The remainder of  this  sec‐
99       tion  describes  how to minimize problems.  Note that this section does
100       not apply if you use the X Window System display  target  because  that
101       target does not have these problems.
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103       Different types of computers have different keyboard scancode mappings.
104       In order to deal with this, the dumpkeys program is used  to  determine
105       the  keyboard  mapping  at  run-time.  If the mapping can not be loaded
106       from dumpkeys for any reason, raw keyboard mode will be unavailable.
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108       If snipes crashes, the keyboard may be left in raw mode.  In that case,
109       the  console  will  be unusable: you will not be able to switch VTs and
110       when you type, garbage will probably appear on the screen.  Recent ver‐
111       sions of snipes should be good at preventing this, but you can be extra
112       safe by running it like so:
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114              snipes; kbd_mode -a; stty sane; reset
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116       After snipes runs, even if it terminates by  crashing,  the  subsequent
117       three  commands  will  run.  Note that the last two restore some screen
118       settings which may also be incorrect.
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120       If snipes hangs for some reason, it's harder to get things  fixed.   If
121       you're on a network, you can always log in remotely and kill the snipes
122       process ("killall snipes" should do.)  There are other things  you  can
123       do without having to log in remotely, however.  One is to set up gpm(1)
124       (the cut and paste utility for virtual consoles) to be able to  execute
125       commands  for  you  when  you use certain combinations of mouse clicks.
126       The command I use in my startup scripts looks like:
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128              gpm     -t     $MOUSETYPE      -S      '/usr/bin/killall      -9
129              snipes;/usr/bin/kbd_mode -a::'
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131       See the man page for gpm(1) for more information on how this works.  In
132       short, it lets you kill snipes and restore the keyboard using a special
133       sequence of mouse button clicks.  If you use this method, you will want
134       to make sure you use whatever path is appropriate on  your  system  for
135       the killall(1) and kbd_mode(1) programs.
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137       Finally,  recent  versions  of  the  Linux kernel have support for some
138       "magic" SysRq key commands.  If you have compiled your kernel with this
139       enabled, pressing Alt-SysRq-R will change the keyboard translation mode
140       back to "cooked".
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FILES

144       /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/vga.pcf
145                           Screen font for X display.  Provided with dos(1).
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147       /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/snipes.psf
148                           Screen font for doublewide font hack.
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SEE ALSO

152       ncurses(3X), svgalib(7), dumpkeys(1), dos(1).
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AUTHOR

156       snipes was written by Jeremy Boulton, with some help from John  Meacham
157       on the X Window System programming.
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161                                  3 June 1999                        SNIPES(6)
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