The Game of NUCLEAR

    The game of NUCLEAR is an old game that has probably been programmed
in BASIC for nearly all home computers. This version is simply a newer,
faster, and perhaps cleaner, implementation of the standard game. NUCLEAR
is a two player game, in which each player tries to eliminate all of the
other player's pieces ("neutrons"). It is played on a 6 x 6 playing board.
The 36 spaces are identified as 0 - 9 and a - z. The players take turns
placing neutrons on their own or unowned spaces.

    Each space has a "critical mass" which is the number of orthogonal
(left-right or up-down) neighbours that it has. The four corner spaces have
a critical mass of 2; the 16 side spaces have a critical mass of 3; and the
16 interior spaces have a critical mass of 4. If placing a neutron on a
space causes the number of neutrons there to exceed that space's critical
mass, then the space "explodes", sending one neutron to each of its
neighbours. These neighbours may in turn have exceeded their critical mass
and will also explode, in a kind of "chain reaction". Such chain reactions
can involve many spaces, some more than once, and can drastically affect
the playing board. The key element here is that neutrons exploding into
neighbouring spaces take over that space, along with all of its neutrons,
for the player who started the first explosion. Thus, players "attack" the
other player's spaces by exploding into them. The game is won by the player
who takes over all of the other player's neutrons. Note that neutrons are
never destroyed, so the game cannot continue indefinitely.

    In NUCLEAR, the game board is displayed on the screen, along with an
identification board, which displays just the "name" of the corresponding
spaces on the game board. Positions on the game board indicate the number
of neutrons in each space, along with a '+' or '-' if the number is not 0.
'+' spaces belong to the first player, and '-' spaces belong to the second
player. The screen also indicates which player is which, how many neutrons
each player currently owns, and how many games each player has won in this
series. Players are prompted for their moves, and enter them by pressing
the key corresponding to the space they wish to place a neutron in. The last
move made by each player is displayed on the screen.

    When either player is prompted for a move, CONTROL-R can be entered 
instead. This will clear the screen and redraw the current board. This is 
useful if the terminal resets or a noisy communication line changes the
data. Also, pressing '?' will cause NUCLEAR to re-display the built-in 
instructions. CONTROL-C will abort the game and return to CP/M. 

    Before it can be played, NUCLEAR must be configured to operate on the
user's terminal. This is done using the CONFIG program, which is included on
the distribution diskette. Refer to the accompanying writeup on CONFIG for
details on how to do this.

    NUCLEAR, CONFIG, and the terminal independent CRT I/O library, were
written entirely in the Draco systems programming language.