Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk2.iso/games/volume11/bt/part01/bt.doc

Text File | 1990-12-11 | 11KB | 244 lines

The Broken Throne

A multiplayer, realtime game of conquest for the Unix operating system

By Tom Boutell, 11/14/90

Permission granted to freely copy and alter the code, provided that new
versions are cleared through me before release. I will be acting as a
source of information, and would appreciate copies of all changes.

FIRST

See the readme file for instructions on building the game! This file
covers the rules of the game, not installation.

THE STORY

Emperor Lettuce Prei of Squaria has died, leaving no heir. The nobles
of the land scramble to reunite the pieces of the Broken Throne; do it
first and become the next Emperor!

ABOUT THE GAME

Broken Throne is a strategic wargame which runs in "real time." Every
few seconds, "action points" are transmitted to the players, which allow
them to do things- recruiting troops, moving troops, attacking, and
constructing and destroying cities. The object is to seize control of
all of your opponents' cities; when a player controls no cities, that
player is out of the game. Gameplay is quite rapid, and the map is
continuously updated on the screen. All that is required to play is
an ordinary terminal with curses screen control; any terminal that can
run a visual editor (like vi or emacs) will do fine. If the terminal
is especially large, the game will take advantage of this, displaying
more space between locations and adding extra lines to the output window.
This is handy if you are running Xwindows.

The map of Broken Throne is 16x16, consisting of square "hexes." Each
hex may contain one of several types of terrain:

.      Plains
T      Town
M      Mountains (passable)
F      Forest
C      City
S      Swamp
^      Crags (impassable mountains)

On the screen, a hex is displayed like this:

aC05

Where the lowercase letter is the letter of the player who controls the
hex, the capital letter (or . or ^ ) is the terrain type, and the number
following is the number of troops. Unowned territories have no lowercase
letter, and territories without troops have no following number.

STARTING OUT

To launch the game, someone must launch the server program. This is done
by typing btserver #ofplayers &, where #ofplayers is replaced by the
actual number of combatants and the & sign puts the server in the background.
Putting the server in the background is important because it allows the
player who runs the server to play in the game as well.

Then, the individual players each need to launch the client program. This
is done by typing btclient addressOfServer, where addressOfServer is the
Internet address of the machine on which the server is being run.

For instance, in our local network, bt resides in a subdirectory of my
own directory, so a player types:

cd ~boutell/bt    <-- Of course this should be replaced by the path of your
                      *own* Broken Throne directory.
btserver 2 &      ... To launch the game for two players, then each
                  player moves to the bt directory and types:
btclient toffee   <-- Where "toffee" is the name of the machine the game
                  is running on. EVEN IF YOU ARE ALL ON THE SAME MACHINE
                  IT IS STILL NECESSARY TO SPECIFY THE NAME OF THE MACHINE.
                  ONLY ONE PLAYER LAUNCHES THE SERVER.

The player who is running the server should start up his client last, in
order to keep his screen from being "munged" as the server announces
players.

Once the client is launched, a blank map will be displayed. Within a moment
or two it should be replaced by the full map; be patient if there are
several players.

When the game first begins, the player is told which lowercase letter
belongs to them. Initially the player controls one city and no troops.
In order to acquire troops, the r (recruit) command should be used
immediately. A cursor will appear at the city's location. This cursor
can be moved with the standard vi/ moria/ hack movement keys:

          k
          |
        h-*-l
          |
          j

The space bar is used to actually select a location at which to
recruit. Since the cursor starts out at the first city, the player should
just tap the space bar after pressing r to recruit. Several troops should
appear in the city.

It is then possible to fan out and claim control of towns. The m (move)
command is used to do this. The player should press m, then move the cursor
to the source of the troops, initially the first city, and press the space
bar. Then the cursor should be moved to the destination of the troops,
which can be no more than one hex away; diagonal moves are acceptable.
When the space bar is pressed again, the troops will be moved.
Once a new town is reached, the player can use the r command here to recruit
more troops.

Recruitment can only take place every twenty ticks in any given town or
city. The exact length of time is found in the file bt.h, in terms of seconds.
Also found in bt.h is the constant _SPEED, which determines how often a "tick"
takes place, awarding action points and bringing the next recruitment closer.
The player can attempt to recruit early, but runs the risk of failure, and
will be forced to wait the full time again if recruitment does not succeed.
The number of troops recruited is a function of population.

Action points are required to move troops! The player will soon find
themselves running low on them while exploring the area. This is because
movement in unfamiliar territory costs 4 action points per army moved.
Movement in the player's own territory costs only 2 action points per
army moved. When each tick takes place, the player will receive 2 action
points, plus 1 action point for each city under the player's control.

COMBAT

Combat in the Broken Throne is simple; the player simply moves troops into
enemy territory, and the game resolves the conflict. Each round of battle,
there is a 50% chance the attacker will lose an army, and a 50% chance
the defender will; this continues until one side has no more troops.
Usually, however, the odds of combat are modified by the terrain of the
two hexes, as detailed below. If the attacker seizes an opponent's last
city, that opponent is out of the game!

TERRAIN

The different terrain types have different roles in the game. Plains
hexes (' . ') have no effect on combat, but provide substantial population.
The number of troops a town or city can recruit depends on the surrounding
population either controlled by the player or not controlled.

Town hexes (' T ') are the basic source of troops in the game, since
recruitment can only take place here and in cities. They have a strong
defensive advantage, 10%, but no offensive advantage.

Mountain hexes (' M ') are difficult to move through. When moving troops
into them, some troops will usually be balked by conditions in the passes,
and the action points will still be spent. However, a player in the mountains
enjoys a 10% advantage, both defending against attack and when striking
down out of the mountains.

Forest hexes (' F ') hide enemy troops from view. A player can only tell
who the forest is controlled by; the exact numbers of troops are hidden.
Forces in a forest enjoy a 5% advantage when attacking out of the forest.
Forces in the forest have a 10% defensive advantage as well.

City hexes (' C ') are the strongest hexes in the game, with a 15% defensive
advantage, though only a 5% offensive advantage. The player can recruit
troops at cities, and cities also provide an extra action point per tick;
the more cities the player controls, the more resources they have, and
the more quickly they can move armies. Cities can be constructed out of
towns, at a cost of typically 90 action points! This value can be set
in the file bt.h, and is the constant _CONSTRUCTCOST. If a player loses
control of all cities, that player is out of the game, and their existing
troops disband, leaving their territory free for the taking! Although
building cities is expensive, the action points they provide can quickly
make up for the cost. It is very inexpensive to destroy a city, however,
so they should be built in safe areas.

Swamp hexes (' S ') are the armpit of Broken Throne! Troops are very
unhappy here; the swamp will often gobble one army of the advancing
force. Swamps have no population, and unless in the player's way, aren't
worth slogging through. Troops in a swamp are at a 10% DISadvantage,
both attacking and defending!

Crag hexes (' ^ ') are impassable mountains. It is not possible to
enter these hexes, and so they do not affect combat.

COMMAND REFERENCE& SOME NEW COMMANDS

c (location): construct a city. This requires, usually, 90 action points,
  unless the value has been changed in bt.h before compiling.
  Can only be used in towns.
d (location): destroy a city or town. Usually costs 10 action points.
q: quit the game. This has no confirmation, so be careful!
t (player letter) (message): Tell a player something. Type their player
  letter (case is not important) after striking t, then your message to
  them (one line). The message will appear in their output window.
t # (message): If you type a '#' sign instead of a letter, the message
  will go to all players, including yourself.
m (location) (location) (# of troops): move troops. The game will prompt
  for the locations from which and to which troops are to be moved, then
  for the number of troops.
r (location): recruit troops. See notes above on the rules of recruitment.

WINNING& LOSING

You win the game when no other players remain. You lose the game if you
control no cities. If your last city is taken (towns don't count), it
doesn't matter how many troops you still have, so be careful to defend
them! When a player is eliminated, any remaining troops and territories
are dissolved and available to the first taker.

If you have lost the game, you can continue to watch the game for as long
as you like, before striking 'q' to actually leave the program.

If you win, the game will not automatically halt itself. You need to type
'q' to quit the game as the last player. This allows the game to be launched
by one person on one terminal to test it out.

The player who launched the server should see the message "Ending" after
the last player quits. If not, that player should do a ps -aux command
and look for a lingering copy of the server, then kill that copy of the
server.

IF YOU ABORT THE PROGRAM

If you control-c a client, the other players can continue, but you will be
out of the game. You will not be able to see what you type unless you quit
properly with the 'q' command. Type 'tset' to repair this.

RUNNING ON LARGE TERMINALS& UNDER X-WINDOWS

Under X- Windows and on other systems providing large terminals, the game
will take advantage of the terminal's size to provide more spacing and
more room for output messages. The wider and deeper, the better. The game
will *not* take notice if you resize the window while it is running, however.

SUNVIEW

Broken Throne does not run properly under Sunview. This is because curses
support for Sunview seems to be broken. If someone is willing to investigate
the cause I'll be glad to accommodate a fix.

... Enjoy! Someday I'll make this into a proper man page.