Letter Invaders v2.1
A game to help improve typing skills.
=====================================

Copying:

Please put this on as many different machines as you like.  If you make
changes or bug fixes, please mail them to me so they can be incorporated
into later versions.  Feel free to use the entire program or portions of
it in any way you like as long as I get credit for what I've done.


Installation:

--UNIX--

Installation of letters should be fairly simple.  A few lines in the
Makefile should be changed to reflect the directories where the files
should be installed.  Config.h may (but shouldn't) require a couple of
changes.  After making the minor changes, "make install" or "make
install_hpux" should do all the work.  The hpux installation could be
improved, but it is enough to get it up and running.  If your system does
not have /usr/dict/words or any other large collection of words you can
use "make dict" to create a wordlist.  Well, it works for me, but I use
awk to do it so I know someone is bound to have a problem.

So far it has been compiled and run under SunOS 4.0 and 4.1.1, SCO Xenix,
ULTRIX 4.2, hpux 7.05, NeXTStep and a large number of others.  When
compiling it on the NeXT it produces a number of warnings but there are
no serious problems (I'd fix it, but my access to a NeXT is fairly
limited so I just made sure it compiles).  Please let me know about any
other platforms that it gets compiled on or fails to get compiled on.

--MS-DOS--

The MS-DOS port is specifically for Turbo C.  I don't know it it will
work with any other C compiler.  Substitute Makefile.tc for Makefile and
run make.  There shouldn't be too much that needs to be changed.

--Amiga--

There are a few files that are included here that are different for the
amiga version.  There is also a Makefile.amiga that should work with SAS
C.  Look at the README.amiga file for more information.  This port is
complete, but the amiga termcap library is not included.  All UNIX
specific and Amiga specific stuff has been kept separate so that it will
be easy to keep versions the same if/when the game is improved.  In the
past, the amiga specific code was not included with the UNIX sources, but
a number of people have asked for it and I wanted to get everyone up to
the same version of the program in one shot.  In the future I will probably
separate them again.

--MINIX--

I'd like to mention that there is a minix version of the game available.
The changes to make it compile under minix are not included in this
package (although there have been enough changes to accomodate other
systems that it might not be too much work any more to get it to compile
on minix).  Credit for the minix version (and comments and questions) to
Wim van Dorst ([email protected]).  I've been told the minix version
can be found on your favorite minix archive site.

authors
-------
Larry Moss ([email protected]) - original game, UNIX version
Brent J. Nordquist ([email protected]) - amiga version, bug
	fixes, improvements.

Thanks to (those not in man page):  
----------------------------------

D. A. Gwyn.  I have used his code for usleep() to get it to compile on
machines that don't have it.  Since the code is included in the FAQ
posted to comp.unix.questions I assume this is ok.  If someone knows
otherwise please let me know.

Kim Storm.  I used his nn code as a reference when trying to figure out
how to use the termcap library.

Wim van Dorst ([email protected]).  Creator of the minix version of
the game.


Future plans:

None at the moment.  I planned on rewriting it since the code has gotten
rather messy with all the changes and ports to different platforms.  With
a bit of reorganization the code can probably be reduced in size
drastically.  (For example, most of the SYSV2 stuff would probably work on
many more platforms, but I don't have access to enough machines to try it
out a whole lot.)  The way things have gone in the last few months I don't
expect to do much more work on it.  I may change my mind, but I'm having
trouble with my hands and I've lost interest in developing a typing
tutor.  I won't ignore the program, but I won't necessarily respond
immediately with bug fixes.  If someone else would like to take over
development and support of the game, let me know.

Here's what I said in the past about future stuff...

I had at one time planned to have bonus words fly horizontally across
screen, but I never bothered with implementing it.  Instead, I just got a
suggestion to have the bonus words come down like the others, but
underlined.  When a bonus word is typed correctly it will take out the
whole screen with it.  This could add a bit of strategy to the game.

interesting things should happen at higher levels.  Now it just keeps
getting faster.  I've gotten the suggestion of possibly having some words
on the screen change randomly to force you to watch the screen more
carefully.

I've considered using this as an excuse to learn X programming.  I figure
that way words can really explode.  This will only happen if I find
myself with a lot of free time.

Frequently mistyped words should come back later in the game.  This would
certainly make the game more useful as a typing tutor.