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)