NAME

       snake4, snake4scores - Game starring a fruit-eating snake.

SYNOPSIS

       snake4 [-hHV] [-M file] [--help] [--highscores] [--version] [--merge-highscores=file]

       snake4scores

DESCRIPTION

       The  snake4  program  is  my  fourth implementation of the snake game, written for Unix and X11. Previous
       versions were written for MS-DOS.

       Move the snake around the screen and eat food. The snake grows in length as you eat.  Avoid  hitting  the
       fence, eating lethal mushrooms and rotten food, and biting your own tail.

       Now  and  then  a  slim-pill will bounce around. If you eat this, you will get shorter, and you will gain
       bonus points for every length you loose. The bonus is also given when a round is over.

       When food starts blinking, it's about to rot. Rotten food is poisonous, and thus uneatable. As long as it
       blinks, it can still be eaten.

       Oh,  yes  - I almost forgot: You may be visited by the evil headbanger.  Take my advice and run away from
       him before he hits you in the head!  He won't stay long.

       The keys used to control the game are given at startup.

       snake4 features a site-wide highscore file. The file contains the top 200 users.  Each  user  may  appear
       once only in the highscore table.

       For technical reasons, snake4 connects to the X11 server before parsing options. This makes it impossible
       to eg. browse the highscore table using -H if no server is available.  To be able to see  the  scores  in
       such  a  case,  snake4scores  produces  the  same output as snake4 with option -H, but does no attempt on
       connecting to the X11 server.

   OPTIONS
       -h, --help
              Print a usage message on standard output, and exit successfully.

       -H, --highscores
              Dump the highscore list to standard output, and exit successfully.  Starting snake4 with the  name
              snake4score  does the same thing, without first connecting to the X11 server.  Note that this will
              possibly print more entries than the 20 or so that will fit within the game startup screen.

       -V, --version
              Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.

       -M, --merge-highscores=file
              Merge separate highscore file file  into  the  default  highscore  file,  and  exit  successfully.
              Displays the new highscore table. This option is for the game owner or root only.

X11 OPTIONS

       In addition to the above mentioned options, snake4 accepts the standard X11 toolkit options.

AUTHOR

       Sverre H. Huseby <shh@thathost.com>.

                                                 11 October 1996                                       SNAKE4(6)