hunt - a multiplayer multiterminal game

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SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The object of the game hunt is to kill off the other players. There are no rooms, no treasures, and no monsters. Instead, you wander around a maze, find grenades, trip mines, and shoot down walls and players.

Your score is the ratio of number of kills to number of times you entered the game and is only kept for the duration of a single session of hunt. The more players you kill before you die, the better your score is.

hunt normally looks for an active game on the local network; if none is found, it starts one up on the local host. One may specify the location of the game by giving the hostnameargument.

hunt only works on crt (vdt) terminals with at least 24 lines, 80 columns, and cursor addressing. The screen is divided in to 3 areas. On the right hand side is the status area. It shows you how much damage you've sustained, how many charges you have left, who's in the game, who's scanning (the asterisk in front of the name), who's cloaked (the plus sign in front of the name), and other players' scores. Most of the rest of the screen is taken up by your map of the maze, except for the 24th line, which is used for longer messages that do not fit in the status area.

hunt uses the same keys to move as vi does, for instance, h,j,k, and l for left, down, up, right respectively. To change which direction you're facing in the maze, use the upper case version of the movement key (for instance, HJKL).

Other commands are:

f	 Fire (in the direction you're facing) (Takes 1 charge)
g	 Throw grenade (in the direction you're facing) (Takes 9 charges)
F	 Throw satchel charge (Takes 25 charges)
G	 Throw bomb (Takes 49 charges)
o	 Throw small slime bomb (Takes 15 charges)
O	 Throw big slime bomb (Takes 30 charges)
s	 Scan (where other players are) (Takes 1 charge)
c	 Cloak (where you are) (Takes 1 charge)
^L	 Redraw screen
q	 Quit

Knowing what the symbols on the screen often helps:

-|+

Walls

/\

Diagonal (deflecting) walls

#

Doors (dispersion walls)

;

Small mine

g

Large mine

:

Shot

o

Grenade

O

Satchel charge

@

Bomb

s

Small slime bomb

$

Big slime bomb

><^v

You facing right, left, up, or down

}{i!

Other players facing right, left, up, or down

*

Explosion

\|/
-*E- Grenade and large mine explosion
/|\

Satchel and bomb explosions are larger than grenades (5x5, 7x7, and 3x3 respectively).

Other helpful hints:

You can only fire in the direction you are facing.

You can only fire three shots in a row, then the gun must cool.

A shot only affects the square it hits.

Shots and grenades move 5 times faster than you do.

To stab someone,

you must face that player and move at them.

Stabbing does 3 points worth of damage and shooting does 5 points.

You start with 15 charges and get 5 more for every new player.

A grenade affects the nine squares centered about the square it hits.

A satchel affects the twenty-five squares centered about the square it hits.

A bomb affects the forty-nine squares centered about the square it hits.

One small mine and one large mine is placed in the maze for every new player.

A mine has a 5% probability of tripping when you walk directly at it;

50% when going sideways on to it; 95% when backing up on to it.

Tripping a mine costs you 5 points or 10 points respectively.

Defusing a mine is worth 1 charge or 9 charges respectively.

You cannot see behind you.

Scanning lasts for (20 times the number of players) turns.

Scanning takes 1 ammo charge, so do not waste all your charges scanning.

You get 2 more damage capacity points and 2 damage points taken away

whenever you kill someone.

Maximum typeahead is 5 characters.

A shot destroys normal (for instance, non-diagonal, non-door) walls.

Diagonal walls deflect shots and change orientation.

Doors disperse shots in random directions (up, down, left, right).

Diagonal walls and doors cannot be destroyed by direct shots but may

be destroyed by an adjacent grenade explosion.

Walls regenerate, reappearing in the order they were destroyed.

One percent of the regenerated walls will be diagonal walls or doors. When a wall is generated directly beneath a player, he is thrown in a random direction for a random period of time. When he lands, he sustains damage (up to 20 percent of the amount of damage he had before impact); that is, the less damage he had, the more nimble he is and therefore less likely to hurt himself on landing.

ENVIRONMENT

The environment variable HUNT is checked to get the player name. If you do not have this variable set, hunt will ask you what name you want to play under. You may also set up a single character keyboard map, but then you have to enumerate the options. For example:

setenv HUNT ``name=Sneaky,mapkey=zoFfGg1f2g3F4G''

sets the player name to Sneaky, and the maps z to o, F to f, G to g, 1 to f, 2 to g, 3 to F, and 4 to G.

The mapkey option must be last.

It is a boring game if you are the only one playing.

OPTIONS

-m

You enter the game as a monitor (you can see the action but you cannot play).

-l name

Enter the game as player name.

FILES

/usr/games/lib/hunt.driver

game coordinator

LIMITATIONS

hunt normally drives up the load average to be about (number_of_players + 0.5) greater than it would be without a hunt game executing. A limit of three players per host and nine players total is enforced by hunt.

BUGS

To keep up the pace, not everything is as realistic as possible.

Created by unroff & hp-tools. © somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved. Last modified 11/5/97