Tornado readme file
                     (last modified September 3rd, 2002)

License:

Tornado is released under the conditions of the GNU General Public
License. See the file COPYING included in this software package for
details. This program comes with NO WARRANTY of any kind and is provided
as "AS IS". See section 11 of the GNU General Public License.

For a detailed description of the program see the tornado manpage or
the webpage at https://kiza.eu/software/tornado/

The multiplayer server of Tornado runs on port 3000 TCP. The port is
defined in the file main.c.

Installing:

The short way:

	make
	make install (as root).

Uncompress the archive (what you'll likely have already done) and just
type "make". When compiling is finished type "make install" as root. That
will install the tornado binary in /usr/local/bin/tornado, the manpage
in /usr/local/man/man6/tornado.6 and the scorefile in
/var/games/tornado.scores (location changed in version 1.0). If you'd like
to place the files into a different directory, edit the "Makefile" and
change the variable "PREFIX". Setting it to "/usr" will install in
/usr/bin and /usr/man/man6 for example.

If the program does not compile on your system make sure you've got
the latest version of gcc and the ncurses library. If the program
still does not compile you can write me a mail at [email protected]. If you
get the error message "undefined reference to 'getnstr'" when
compiling the program you've got a too old version of the ncureses
library that doesn't implement the 'getnstr' function. Sorry, but you
can't compile it unless you upgrade to ncurses 5.0.

System Requirements:
- A working C compiler environment.
- GNU make
- GNU utils.
- GNU textutils.
- ncurses 5.0 or above (It may compile on earlier version; see above).
- GNU wget is required for the online highscore and online players site.
  The game runs without it in single/multiplayer/network play as well.

If the locale stuff does not work for some reason
(main.c:32: libintl.h: No such file or directory), you can still
compile and install the program with "make tornado-no-locale" and
"make tornado-no-locales-install".


ncurses vc. curses:

The program also works with BSD curses. To compile with curses, edit
the Makefile and replace "-lncurses" with "-lcurses" in the line LDFLAGS
on top of the file. The 'getnstr' notice from above applies to curses, too.


How to activate the computer player:

If you want to play against the computer, just leave the field for one of
the players blank when you are asked for the names. The computer will take
over that part. See also the tornado manpage.


Misc stuff:

After Tornado was announced on freshmeat for the first time on Sun Apr
23th, 2000 the webpage had 500 hits and the program was downloaded about
200 times within the first 12 hours. I dunno if the program is really that
good or if this is just called "the freshmeat effect" like the well known
"slashdot effect". Thanks to all who downloaded and like the program. :-)


The why-does-lightning-not-flash-my-screen-bug:

It's not my fault(tm). Either your ncurses is causing that problem or you
are running Tornado inside an xterm or <insert your favourite terminal
program here>. It does not work in my xterm either. The screen is just
drawn to fast. Try it on a text console.


Tornado Tournament:

There is a world highscore system available on the tornado website. At the
end of each game you are asked if you want to submit your highscore to the
website. The score will then be submitted via a CGI script on the webserver
using wget. This system is not really cheat-proof. Please don't abuse it.
Your score/nickname will then be visible on the website together with the
hostname/IP from where the score was submitted.


The where-is-the-windspeed-bug:

If you're running tornado in a terminal window under X make sure your window
is at least 80x25 big. Standard size for most terminals is 80x24. So the
bottom line is missing there.


-Oliver