Updated: 2025/Nov/16

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WARP(6)                          Games Manual                          WARP(6)

NAME
       warp - a real-time space war game

SYNOPSIS
       warp [options]

DESCRIPTION
       Warp is a real-time space war game that requires skill and quick
       thinking.  "Real-time" in this context means that the enemies keep
       moving (and shooting) even if you don't.  A unique feature of warp is
       that blast propagates; it is unhealthy to remain near things that are
       in the process of blowing up.  If a given universe is above a critical
       density it may chain react.  Scoring is like many popular arcade
       games--there are multiple waves which get harder and harder as you go
       along.  Nobody has ever maxed out the scoreboard without cheating.

       Unlike many space-war games, warp is not simply a shooting gallery.
       Along with phasers and photon torpedoes, you have tractor beams and a
       cloaking device.  Skill in navigation is important.  It helps to be
       schizophrenic, because you must manage an Enterprise and a Base
       simultaneously.  And enemies do not simply shoot back.  You can get
       tailed, absorbed, snuck up upon, hemmed in, rammed, loved to death,
       reprimanded for destroying civilized life, dragged around, robbed,
       damaged and eaten.  And if you should happen to get bored by the
       enemies (a trifle unlikely), you can always watch the interesting star
       patterns.  In fact, you'll have to, since your tactics will depend upon
       what kind of universe you find yourself in.

       Warp is played in a double wraparound universe, i.e. the bottom is
       connected to the top, and the right is connected to the left.  You need
       a crt with random cursor addressing and at least 24 lines by 80
       columns.  For more information about about how to play, simply run warp
       and say "y" when it asks if you want to see the instructions.  There is
       also a single-page command summary that you can get while playing by
       typing a "?".

       Command line options include:

       -b   Put warp into beginner mode.  Makes the difficulty increase more
            slowly, but penalizes you for it.

       -d<n>
            Sets the initial difficulty to n.

       -l   Play a low-speed game.  Changes the basic cycle time from 1 second
            to 2 seconds.  This switch is automatically set at baud rates
            below 2400.  You may want to set it at higher speeds if your
            terminal cannot keep up with the output.  (This should never
            happen on BSD systems, which have an IOCTL call to determine
            output queue length.)  Because this makes the game easier, a
            separate scoreboard is kept for low-speed games.

       -m   Terminal has a meta key which turns on the eighth bit.  Ordinarily
            the eighth bit is stripped in order to ignore parity.
            Metacharacters will appear to the keymap as prefixed with a ^A,
            and will subsequently have the same effect as a control character,
            unless otherwise mapped.

       -s   Just prints out the scoreboards and saved games and then exits.

       -v   Prints out the version number.

       -x   Play an experimental game.  This causes warp to ignore any saved
            game, and disables the ability to save the current game.  Thus you
            can play around with something or show warp to someone without
            jeopardizing a currently saved game.

ENVIRONMENT
       WARPMACRO
            If defined, names a file containing keyboard mappings and macros.
            If not defined, the value %X/Kbmap.%{TERM} is assumed.  The macro
            file contains lines of the following form:

            <keystroke-sequence> <whitespace> <canonical-keystroke-sequence>

            You may use certain % interpolations and ^<letter> control
            characters.  For possible % interpolations see warp.h.  Sequences
            in the canonical-keystroke-sequence bounded by ^(...^) are subject
            to reinterpretation via the keymap.  This file has two major uses.
            First, you can set up your commands to use any kind of prefix key
            your terminal might have, or change the key bindings in any other
            way you choose.  Second, you can define arbitrary macros, such as
            this:

            # define Corbamite maneuver = DDllllll

AUTHOR
       Larry Wall <lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP>

FILES
       ~/.fullname, if full names aren't in /etc/passwd

DIAGNOSTICS
       Generally self-documenting, as they say.

BUGS
       Addicting.  At the end of a wave, all you have to do to keep going is
       hit a space.  You see the message "Hit space to continue" and
       automatically hit space.  About 2 seconds later you remember you wanted
       to go home, but by then it's too late to escape without penalty.

       You can't kill a backgrounded warp process directly, because it is
       running setuid.  You have to use the killer built in to warp.

       Now that there is a space amoeba, there ought to be tribbles.  But it
       might be too much trouble...

                                                                       WARP(6)