The Game of WRUNG

    WRUNG is a semi-graphical game which can be played on any CP/M computer
system on which the terminal has an addressable cursor. It does not require
any graphical output hardware. Instead, characters from the standard ASCII
character set are moved around on the display screen to simulate the feel of
graphic animation. WRUNG is not a real-time game, i.e. things do not happen
at a fixed rate, but instead are triggered only by the player's actions.
Attempting to do real-time operations on a wide variety of systems is
hindered by the various CPU speeds, terminal communication speeds, etc. Also,
when playing fast-paced real-time games, most players would tend to hit the
keyboard harder than is good for it.

    Within these constraints, WRUNG is still a fast-paced game with
considerable opportunity for surprise, especially at the higher levels. It
is best played on a 24 x 80 screen operating at at least 9600 baud, but
other combinations will also work. The key layout used in WRUNG (along with
other games in this series) is designed to use a standard numeric keypad
arranged with 7, 8, 9 on the top row, 4, 5, 6 on the middle row, and 1, 2, 3
on the bottom row. Users without such a keypad on their terminal can use the
alternate pad on the main keyboard. The alternate keys are accepted in
either upper or lower case, and correspond to the numerical keypad:

		7, y, Y		8, u, U		9, i, I
		4, h, H		5, j, J		5, k, K
		1, b, B		2, n, N		3, m, M

    The 5, j, J keys can be viewed as the player's current position, with the
others being movement and action in the corresponding direction from the
current position. Thus 8, u, U represent moving up, and 4, h, H represent
moving left.

    WRUNG is an original game, but does borrow several ideas from other
games. It can be thought of as a cross between the various "Pacman" type
games and games of the "Apple-Panic" type. At the higher levels, however,
WRUNG has several features not found in either of the other games. The first
version of WRUNG was written by Rick Gillespie while he was a graduate
student in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta.
This version is a complete rewrite, including many new features. A similar
version of WRUNG, written by Chris Thierman, runs on the University's Amdahl
mainframe, under the MTS operating system.

    The basic screen format used by WRUNG consists of a playing area and a
statistics area. The statistics area is a single line at the bottom of the
screen, and the playing area is the rest of the screen (normally 23 lines).
In the playing area are several (normally 6) platforms, drawn with equals
signs. Connecting these platforms are several (normally 6) ladders, drawn
using vertical bars and underscores. On top of the platforms will be several
monsters eggs, represented by periods, one or more monsters, represented by
letters, and the player, represented by the 'at' sign. At higher levels,
other characters will appear.

    The eggs are stationary, but the player and the monsters can move around
on the platforms and can move up and down the ladders. The monsters move
each time the player moves. If they are on the same platform as the player,
they move towards the player; if they are on a ladder, they move towards the
platform the player is on; and if they are on some other platform, they move
towards the nearest ladder which gets them to a platform closer to the one
the player is on. This behaviour is fixed throughout the game, and can be
used to advantage by the player.

    The player must move around the platforms, smashing all of the monster
eggs by running over them. At the same time, he/she must avoid being eaten
by any monster. Asside from being able to move, the player can dig and fill
in holes in the platforms. This can be done either to the left of the
player or to the right. Typing any of 1, b or B will dig a hole to the left
of the player; 3, m or M will dig to the right of the player; 7, y or Y will
fill in a hole to the left of the player; and 9, i or I will fill in a hole
to the right of the player. It takes 3 digs to produce a complete hole.
Monsters and the player fall through any complete hole they pass over.
Partial holes have a 1/3 or 2/3 chance of breaking through (after which they
become complete holes) when something passes over them.

    The player is hardy and survives all falls through holes. Monsters come
in a range of strengths. 'a' monsters die after falling through any hole
(except one in the bottom platform). 'b' monsters are stronger and do not
die after falling from a platform to the platform below. They must fall
through a pair of aligned holes in two platforms before they are killed.
Similarly, 'c' monsters must fall 3 platforms, etc. Thus, there is much
strategy in the placement of holes. If a monster or the player falls through
a hole in the bottom platform, then they are positioned randomly on the top
platform (possibly falling through a hole there!).

    Points are given for breaking eggs and killing monsters. Each egg is
worth one point, and each monster is worth points equal to it's strength
(1 point for 'a's, 2 points for 'b's, 3 points for 'c's, etc.). As an added
bonus, an extra 100 points is given for clearing all eggs from the screen.
Each time the player digs or fills in a hole, one point is taken away, so
optimal strategy can net greater points.

    When all of the monsters have been killed, the round is over. The first 
round has only a single 'a' monster, so it can be over quickly. At the end 
of the round, a new set of platforms, ladders and eggs is produced. As 
rounds go by, the number of monsters, and their strength, will increase. 
Every 5 rounds, a new level of play will be reached. In the second level, 
the monsters are all metamorphs - they will occasionally change their 
strength. Thus a weak 'a' monster can suddenly become a strong 'e' monster. 
The points given will increase in proportion to the level number. Points 
taken away for digging and filling stay fixed at 1 each. 

    After some practice, the first couple of levels will be fairly easy to
handle. Later levels introduce new features which make survival and clearing
the screen considerably more difficult. It takes a lot of time and work to
progress to the higher levels. To aid in doing this, the game state may be
saved at any time by pressing the 's' or 'S' keys. This produces a save
file with type .RNG and file name derived from the player name. After saving,
the log file is displayed and WRUNG terminates. A saved game can be resumed
by giving the save file name as a parameter to WRUNG. Thus, for a player
called "John", the saved game can be resumed by entering 'WRUNG JOHN' at
the command level. Restoring from a save file does not delete or empty that
save file, so there is no need to make backup copies of save files.

    The space bar can be used along with the 5, j, J set to simply wait,
i.e. to allow the monsters to move, without the player moving or digging.
Keys r, R, and CONTROL-R will clear and redraw the screen. This is useful
if your terminal resets itself (WRUNG assumes the terminal can keep up with
it, which in some cases is not true) or if you get a transmission error to
the terminal. During the game, entering '?' instead of a normal game key
will display the instructions built-in to the game.

    WRUNG will automatically maintain a log file, WRUNG.LOG, containing the 
top ten scores. This file is an editable ASCII file, so you can edit in the 
scores attained by your friends, thus giving yourself something to shoot 
for. Scores approaching 100,000 are feasible, but will require considerable 
skill. If 'WRUNG -' is entered at the command level, WRUNG will simply 
display the log file. Entries in the log file are updated, and the file is 
displayed, whenever a game is saved or lost. WRUNG will only use a WRUNG.LOG 
file if one exists on the current disk. An empty file will be initialized 
automatically, so you can enable logging by just creating an empty file
called WRUNG.LOG. This can be done with any file editor. 

    A typical section of the playing area might look like this:
                                 _              _
	     .              .   |_|      c     | |
	=========|_|============|_|===-====================
	         |_|            |_|
	         |_|            |_|
	    .    |_|     @ .  . |_|           ..        .
	=========|_|==== =_================================
	         |a|
		 |_|
	       . |_|     ..             .     b  .  .
	=========|_|=======================================

This section shows portions of 3 levels and 3 ladders, along with 14 monster
eggs, 3 monsters and the player. The 'a' monster is on the ladder, moving up
towards the player. If the player simply waits, it will fall through the
completed hole and die when it hits the platform below the hole. The 'b'
monster will be moving left, towards the ladder the 'a' monster is currently
on. The 'c' monster will be moving left, towards the middle ladder. It has
a 1/3 chance of falling through the 1/3 dug hole, and a 2/3 chance of falling
through the 2/3 dug hole to the right of the player. Neither fall would kill
it. If the player were to move left, he would fall through the hole. If he
were to move right, he would have a 2/3 chance of falling through the hole
to the right. If he fell, he would be between the 'a' and 'b' monsters, and
would be doomed, unless he could quickly dig a new hole and escape through
it. Note that the player has no control over the game when he is falling, and
that the monsters get a move for each screen line that the player falls.

    WRUNG must be configured to operate on specific terminals. In it's
distributed form, it is supplied as CP/M file 'WRUNG.SET', which is actually
a runnable .COM file, except that the terminal description information has
not been filled in. This must be done using the CONFIG program (file
CONFIG.COM, along with the database file CONFIG.DAT) which is included on
the distribution diskette. See the accompanying writeup on CONFIG for details
on how to configure programs.

    One small hint to the desperate: the game's random number generator is
set by having the CPU count while waiting for the user's response in certain
cases. This is done in a standard CRT library, rather than in the WRUNG game
itself. No such responses occur when playing a restored game, thus the random
seed is not random. In such a case, if you absolutely MUST have a different
roll of the dice, then simply request the instruction display by entering
a '?'; this requires two user responses, and thus resets the random seed.
This technique is normally considered cheating, but might be useful to those
who can't bear to lose at a given position.

    WRUNG, CONFIG, and the terminal independent CRT I/O routines are all
written entirely in the Draco systems programming language.