The Game of ROBOTS

    ROBOTS is a fairly old game which has been implemented in BASIC for
several microcomputers. This version is a newer, faster version which works
on any CP/M system. A 24 line by 80 column screen is best, but other sizes,
including larger screens, are fully supported. The terminal must support
cursor addressing, however.

    The game is fairly simple, pitting the human player against an ever-
increasing army of dumb, but deadly, robots. The playing area is depicted
on the terminal's screen, surrounded by a box of '#'s, with a single
statistics line at the bottom. The player is represented by '$', robots by
'%'s and land mines by '*'s. The landmines blow up if touched, killing the
player or robot which touched them. Robots are violent machines and destroy
one-another if they collide. Naturally, they kill the player if they reach
him. The landmines are stationary, but the player and the robots can move
around - up, down, left, right and diagonally. Each time the player moves,
the robots all move one position towards the player.

    The player moves by using the keys on a numerical keypad, or keys on the
main keyboard. If the player is viewed as being on the 5 key (or the j or J
key), then the other keys move him in the corresponding direction. The
resulting key layout is:

	7, y, Y		8, u, U		9, i, I
	up-left		   up		up-right

	4, h, H		5, j, J		6, k, K
	  left	      stand still	 right

	1, b, B		2, n, N		3, m, M
       down-left	  down	       down-right

    The mines, robots and the player are positioned randomly at the start of
the battle. If the arrangement is particularily bad, the player can use the
space bar to relocate his character. This can only be done before moving.
After having moved, the space bar is equivalent to the '5' key. If the player
succeeds in destroying all of the robots, the next round will have more
robots and proportionately more land mines. A key strategy element to ROBOTS
is that pairs of robots can be lead so as to collide with each other.

    If the terminal resets or the communications line has a transmission
error, the screen can be redrawn by pressing 'r', 'R' or CONTROL-R. Pressing
'?' will re-display the instructions, and pressing CONTROL-C will immediately
return to CP/M.

    ROBOTS must be configured to operate on the user's terminal before it can
be used. This is done using the CONFIG utility which is included on the
distribution diskette. Refer to the accompanying writeup on CONFIG for
details on how to do this.

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