Provided by: trader_7.18-1_amd64 bug

NAME

       trader - a game of interstellar trading

SYNOPSIS

       trader [--no-color|--no-colour] [--max-turn=NUM] [GAME]
       trader [-h|--help] [-V|--version]

DESCRIPTION

       Star  Traders  is  a simple game of interstellar trading, where the objective is to create
       companies, buy and sell shares, borrow and repay money, in order to become the  wealthiest
       player (the winner).

OPTIONS

       GAME   If  GAME  is  specified  as a number between 1 and 9 (inclusive), load and continue
              playing that game.  If GAME is not specified, start a new game.

       --no-color, --no-colour
              Don't use colour for displaying the text in  the  game.   Use  this  option  for  a
              “retro-computing” look (as shown in the EXAMPLES below).

       --max-turn=NUM
              Set  the  number of turns in the game to NUM.  In this version of Star Traders, NUM
              must be greater or equal to 10.  If this option is not specified, the default is 50
              turns.

       -h, --help
              Show a summary of command-line options and exit.

       -V, --version
              Display version information about the program, then exit.

EXIT STATUS

       0      Star Traders finished without any errors.

       1      Star  Traders  encountered  an unrecoverable problem or error; a diagnostic message
              will be written to standard error in this case.

EXAMPLES

       You can start a new game by running Star Traders without any command line options:

              trader

       Once the game starts, you will be asked to enter the number of people playing.   From  one
       to  eight  people can play (although, in this version, they will all have to share the one
       keyboard and screen!).  After entering the  names  of  the  players,  you  will  have  the
       opportunity  to  read  instructions  on  how to play the game.  Do so—and good luck in the
       game!

       If you would like to continue a previously-saved game, simply specify that game number  on
       the command line.  For example, the following starts game 4, if it was previously saved:

              trader 4

       If  you  are  running  under  the  X  Window System, you might like to start the game in a
       dedicated xterm(1) window (typed all on one line):

              xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg black -fg white -bc +sb +fbx -e trader &

       If you would like a full “retro-computing” green-screen experience, try (again, typed  all
       on one line):

              xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg '#181818' -fg '#2CAB00' -bc +sb +bdc +fbx -xrm
              'XTerm*colorBD: #41FF00' -e trader --no-colour &

       Or, if you prefer the old amber screens of yesteryear:

              xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg '#101010' -fg '#AB7A00' -bc +sb +bdc +fbx -xrm
              'XTerm*colorBD: #FFB700' -e trader --no-colour &

ENVIRONMENT

       XDG_DATA_HOME, HOME
              If  XDG_DATA_HOME  is set to an absolute pathname (that is, a path that starts with
              “/”), Star Traders will use that directory, with a subdirectory  trader,  to  store
              game  files.   If  this environment variable is not set or does not start with “/”,
              ~/.local/share/trader  will  be  used  instead,  where  “~”  represents  your  home
              directory, as contained in the HOME environment variable.

       LINES, COLUMNS
              Star  Traders  uses the Curses library for displaying text on the screen.  As such,
              it will access these two environment variables if  the  underlying  Curses  library
              does  so  (see,  for example, the ENVIRONMENT section in the ncurses(3) manual page
              for in-depth details).  It requires a text console or window of at least  80×24  in
              size.

       LANG, LC_ALL, etc.
              This  version of Star Traders has full support for locales and will use appropriate
              settings.  In particular, messages will be displayed using LC_MESSAGES and LANGUAGE
              (if  Star  Traders  has  been translated into that language).  In addition, numeric
              quantities will be displayed using LC_NUMERIC  and  monetary  quantities  will  use
              LC_MONETARY.   See  the  locale(7) or setlocale(3) manual pages for more details on
              locale settings.

       TEXTDOMAINDIR
              If set, Star Traders will use this path as  the  base  with  which  to  locate  its
              message  catalogs  instead  of  the  compiled-in path; the relevant trader.mo files
              should be located in language-code subdirectories (such as en_AU),  in  LC_MESSAGES
              sub-subdirectories.

FILES

       ~/.local/share/trader/gameN
              Star  Traders  stores  saved  game files in the .local/share/trader subdirectory in
              your home directory (unless overridden by the XDG_DATA_HOME environment  variable).
              N is a number between 1 and 9 inclusive.  The game file is scrambled to prevent you
              or others from casually cheating!

       ~/.trader/gameN
              If the ~/.trader directory exists, game files will be read from and saved  to  this
              location instead.  This is for compatibility with versions of Star Traders prior to
              version 7.15.

BUGS

       None yet known...

FEEDBACK

       Your comments, suggestions, corrections  and  enhancements  are  always  warmly  welcomed!
       Please send these to:

       Postal:   John Zaitseff,
                 The ZAP Group Australia,
                 Unit 6, 116 Woodburn Road,
                 Berala, NSW, 2141,
                 Australia

       Email:    J.Zaitseff@zap.org.au
       Web:      ⟨https://www.zap.org.au/projects/trader/⟩
       FTP:      ⟨https://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/⟩
                 ⟨ftp://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/⟩
       Git:      ⟨https://www.zap.org.au/git-browser/trader.git⟩
                 ⟨https://git.zap.org.au/git/trader.git⟩
                 ⟨git://git.zap.org.au/data/git/trader.git⟩

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 1990-2022, John Zaitseff.

       Star  Traders  is  free  software  that  is distributed under the terms of the GNU General
       Public License.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of that  License
       as  published  by  the  Free Software Foundation, either version 3 or (at your option) any
       later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY  WARRANTY;
       without  even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program.
       If not, see the GNU licenses web page ⟨https://www.gnu.org/licenses/⟩.

       Even though the GNU General Public License does not require you to send your modifications
       back to the author,  it  is  considered  “good  form”  to  do  so,  as  this  allows  your
       modifications  to  be incorporated into future versions of the program, allowing others to
       benefit from them.

HISTORY

       The original (and very primitive) Star Traders game was written by S. J.  Singer  in  1984
       using  Altair  Basic.   This  was  modified for Microsoft Basic (MBASIC) running under the
       CP/M-80 operating system by John Zaitseff and released on 7th March, 1988.

       Star Traders was then completely rewritten  in  1990  for  the  Australian-designed  8-bit
       MicroBee  computer  running  CP/M-80  on  a Zilog Z80 processor, using Turbo Pascal 3.01a.
       Essentially, only the name of the game and  some  of  the  ideas  were  retained  in  this
       version.  Version 4.1 of Star Traders was released on 1st August, 1991.

       In  1992,  it  was  recompiled  for the NEC Advanced Personal Computer (with 8-inch floppy
       drives!) running CP/M-86 on an 8086 processor, using Turbo Pascal 2.0.  This  version  had
       colour  added  to it in the form of ANSI escape sequences; version 4.4 was released on 2nd
       August, 1993.

       The next version came in 1993, when the program was recompiled to  run  on  IBM-compatible
       machines  running  MS-DOS  and  ANSI.SYS.   Turbo  Pascal 6.0 was used for this.  The ANSI
       escape sequences were slightly different under MS-DOS than under the NEC, in that the  NEC
       supported  a  number  of  extra  character attributes.  In other words, the MS-DOS version
       looked worse than the one running under CP/M-86!

       Star Traders was recompiled again in 1994 for  IBM-compatible  machines  with  VGA/EGA/CGA
       video  graphics  adapters.   The  output  routines  were recoded to use a “windowed” look.
       Borland Pascal 7.0 was used  for  this  purpose,  along  with  a  number  of  text  window
       manipulation modules.  Version 5.4 was released on 1st June, 1994.

       In  1995,  Star  Traders  was  completely  rewritten  for the 16-bit Microsoft Windows 3.1
       graphical environment.  Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 was used for  this  purpose.   Although
       completely rewritten, the original algorithms were reused from previous versions.  Version
       6.0 of the game was released on 15th September, 1995.

       Star Traders was then to languish until  almost  16  years  later...  when  the  game  was
       rewritten  once  again, this time in the C programming language.  Version 7.0 was released
       on 25th July, 2011 for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, with subsequent releases
       to  add  features  and  correct bugs.  Now you, too, can run this small piece of computing
       history!

SEE ALSO

       Star Traders home page ⟨https://www.zap.org.au/projects/trader/⟩