MISCOM(6)

NAME
miscom - defend cities from missile attack (curses game)

SYNOPSIS
miscom

DESCRIPTION
In miscom you must defend cities from missile attack. You do this by launching missiles of your own (in a point-and-blast fashion) to destroy the enemy missiles before they land.

The enemy's missiles are either normal missiles or `smart' ones which attempt to avoid explosions. (Both look the same.) Further missiles may be launched at low-level by an enemy plane. (Indicated by the terminal's cursor; it's a bit weird, but you'll know it when you see it.) Some missiles may split into multiple warheads. This is extremely nasty, so watch out for it.

You have three bases which can launch missiles. When you press fire to launch a missile at the current cursor position, the closest base to the target (with ammo remaining) launches it. Ammo remaining is indicated under each base. Note that bases can be blown up too - but unlike cities, these are restored at the start of the next level.

Lose all the cities and it's game over (though only after the current level has finished). There are no bonus cities.

KEYS
Use h/j/k/l to move left/down/up/right. Space fires. P pauses the game.

HINTS AND TIPS
You can use the explosion from one enemy missile to destroy another - chaining explosions together like this is the key to not running out of ammo. Tricky to do under pressure though.

It's probably best to tap the movement buttons N times to move rather than holding them down.

BUGS
There are some display glitches. Hopefully they don't get in the way of the gameplay. Some of them are intentional to try and keep the speed up on slower terminals, but not all can be excused like this.

There aren't any hi-scores.

The title screen is crap. Sorry. :-)

There may be other bugs, but I've tested it a fair bit and it seems to work well enough.

The level numbering starting at zero is, ISTR, not a bug.

AUTHOR
Graham Richards.

Russell Marks cleaned it up a bit, added colour and sound, and wrote this man page and other documentation.