Snake

1. SYNOPSIS
2. REQUIREMENTS
3. FILES
4. INSTALLATION
5. CHANGES
6. COPYRIGHT
7. NOTES


1. SYNOPSIS

Snake is a simple game. On-line help is provided - start up the game and click
the Help button or press F1. 


2. REQUIREMENTS

You will need Tk::MesgBox.pm which is not included in the snake .tar.gz,
but which is available from the same directory on CPAN. 

Perl 5.004
Tk 400.202
Linux/X windows or Win32

The game was developed under Debian GNU/Linux 2.0.

~60K disk space.


3. FILES

README
debian-menu
snake
snake-action.pl
snake-board.pl
snake-body.xpm
snake-button-commands.pl
snake-buttons.pl
snake-consts.pl
snake-food-1.xpm
snake-food-2.xpm
snake-food-3.xpm
snake-head.xpm
snake-help.pl
snake-icon-16x16.xpm
snake-images.pl
snake-keys.pl
snake-options.pl
snake-opts.pl

Snake will create a directory in your home directory called '.games' and a
file in that directory called 'snake-opts'. For Win32 it will create a file
called 'SNAKE.INI' in the directory from which it is invoked.


4. INSTALLATION

Note that Snake can be installed pretty well anywhere - the only restriction
is that all the snake* files must be together in the same directory.

# Create the directories.
mkdir /usr/games
mkdir /usr/games/snake

# Copy the tar.gz to the game directory.
cp snake-VERSION.tar.gz /usr/games

# Change to the games directory.
cd /usr/games

# Unpack the archive using method A or B:
# Method A for those using GNU tar
tar xvfz snake-VERSION.tar.gz
# Method B for those not using GNU tar
gunzip snake-VERSION.tar.gz
tar xvf snake-VERSION.tar

# Change to the snake directory.
cd snake

# Move the library file (obtained separately) into the Tk directory.
# (The -u option ensures we don't overwrite newer with older.)
# Note that you could move this to any Tk directory in any lib directory in
# Perl's %INC path, or /usr/games/snake/Tk.
mv -u MesgBox.pm /usr/lib/perl5/Tk

# Make sure snake is executable.
chmod a+x snake

# If you want snake to appear on your X menu do the following:
cp debian-menu /etc/menu/snake
update-menus

# Note that the name of the file supplied, 'debian-menu', is changed in the
# move to 'snake'. Note also that if you haven't used the paths given here you
# must change the command path in /etc/menu/snake. The addition to the menu
# will only appear when the window manager is restarted.

# To run snake from the command line:
/usr/games/snake/snake &

# You could always either alias this or use a soft link to a directory on the
# path to save typing the whole path. Note that 'deprecated' error messages
# which appear are harmless and can be ignored.


5. CHANGES

1999/01/23  Modified options so that game doesn't have to exec itself if you
            change the board size.

1999/02/02  Made a little more Win32 'friendly'.

1999/02/23  Should now work under Windows.

1999/03/18  Minor documentation changes to suit CPAN scripts area.

6. COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) Mark Summerfield 1998/9. All Rights Reserved.
Snake may be used/distributed under the same terms as Perl.

Contact: <mark.summerfield@chest.ac.uk> - please include 'snake' in the
subject line. 


7. NOTES

Snake was developed as a result of a long wait at Glasgow airport. Due to
excessive boredom I discovered that my company-supplied mobile phone had a
simple game on it called 'snake'. I actually liked the game and decided I'd
rather play it on my PC than my phone. Using the same code-base I've also
written a version of Tetris called Petris. I think that the code supplied here
could be adapted to many other 'graph-paper' games.

