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letters.man
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letters.man
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.TH LETTERS 6 "23 SEPT 1991"
.SH NAME
letters \- a game to improve typing skills
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBletters\fP [-q | -b] [-l#] [-H#] [-ddictionary | -sstring]
.br
\fBletters\fP [-h]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBLetters\fP is based on \fBLetter Invaders\fP which was around in the PC
environment several years ago. It in turn was based on the popular
arcade style game, \fBSpace Invaders\fP. For those not familiar with
\fBSpace Invaders\fP \ (please let me know if you're one of these people
and let me know what planet you've been living on :-) the idea is to blast
aliens out of the sky as they attempt to land on and "kill" you. Since
this is a game to improve typing skills, the aliens are words selected
randomly from the dictionary. You blast the aliens out of the sky by
typing them correctly.
.PP
Playing the game is very straight forward. Type words as they appear on
the screen. They will slowly drop until you have either typed them
correctly or they reach the status line on the bottom of the screen. If
a word makes it to the bottom of the screen you lose one "life". This is
actually a non-violent game. The words "kill" and "life" are only used
in this context for historical reasons.
.PP
If at any point you type a letter incorrectly the entire word is reset.
The backspace key will not save you if you're a sloppy typist.
It is not necessary to type words in the order they appear on the
screen. In fact, that is often not the
best action to take. Very short words fall faster than longer ones.
The program will attempt to determine the word you are
trying to type by matching what you've typed with the first letter(s) of
all other words on the screen. Unlike in previous versions the program
tries to determine what word you are typing by more than the first
letter. The highlight bar doesn't move to a new word until it is clear
which word is being typed.
.PP
If you successfully complete 3 rounds of play you get a bonus life and
you get the opportunity to play a bonus round. The bonus round is played
the same as all other rounds but the words are strings of random
printable characters. The round is played at the same speed as whatever
level you were on and likewise points are computed the same as in that
round. since this is just a bonus round, you can only gain points. You
cannot die. The round lasts as long as all other rounds (15 words)
unless a word reaches the bottom of the screen.
.SH "Special Keys"
.IP
ctrl-L Redraw screen.
.IP
ctrl-C Exit from the game. You will be prompted before exiting to make
sure that's really what you wanted to do. Since it prompts you this can
also be used as a method of pausing the game. This is actually whatever
your interrupt character is. Ctrl-C is just most common.
.IP
ctrl-N Skip to next level. The game does correctly keep track of how
many levels you have completed. (See '-l' under \fBOPTIONS\fP)
.IP
ctrl-Z Works as it should. If your system has job control it will stop
the process.
.SH OPTIONS
.IP
-q quiet mode (default) - turn off the obnoxious beep
.IP
-h Show high scores.
.IP
-b Beep when words are completed or mistyped.
.IP
-l# # is the level number that you want to start at. The level will
not increase until you have completed the number of rounds equal to your
starting level. In other words, if you start on level 5, you need to
play through 5 rounds before the level increases to 6 (and the speed
increases and scoring changes).
-H# # is a handicap applied to the speed that the words fall. By
default the handicap is 1. This is really only useful for someone just
learning to type that need the words to fall slower than they normally do
on level 1. Since the speed is reduced drastically by higher handicaps,
scores obtained with a handicap greater than 1 are not saved to the high
score list.
.IP
-ddictionary
Dictionary is the pathname of an alternate source of randomly
selected target words. Useful for alternate spellings or special typing
exercise wordlists. Scores obtained will not effect the high score file.
.IP
-sstring
String is a character string from which randomly generated
words will be chosen. Characters are copied in order, wrapping around
from the end of the string to the beginning. Bonus words are constructed
from characters chosen from the string in random order. Useful for
exercises based around small sets of typewriter keys, such as the home
row. High scores will not be saved to the high score list.
.SH SCORING
A word's point value = (# of letters) + 2 * (current level). No points
are added for partially typed words. Successful completion of bonus
rounds increases your score by 10 * level.
.SH "STATUS LINE"
It's fairly obvious what most of the things on the status line are. The
last thing on the line however is words per minute. This is computed at
the end of each round based on 5 letter words. It's not a particularly
accurate measure of your typing speed, but I think it's an interesting
enough statistic to justify filling up the empty space on the status line.
.SH FILES
DICTIONARY
.br
LIBDIR/letters.high
.SH BUGS
"Transmogrifier" doesn't appear frequently.
.SH AUTHORS
Larry Moss ([email protected]) - original game, UNIX version
.br
Brent Nordquist ([email protected]) - amiga version, also
fixed some of bugs.
.SH THANKS
Chris Uppal ([email protected]) for contributing enormously to the
program with a couple of bug fixes, variable speed words, some
performance improvements, SYSV compatibility, and many suggestions.
.sp
Brad Keister ([email protected]. Ported it to MS-DOS and
added the -H option.
.sp
Adrian Godwin ([email protected]). Ported it to system Vr2. Added the
-s and -d options.
.sp
Mark Levinson ([email protected]) for pointing out the bug
listed above.
.sp
Thanks also to everyone else that's sent me mail with comments and/or
suggestions.