Category : A Collection of Games for DOS and Windows
Archive   : CHASE.ZIP
Filename : CHASE.DOC

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Chase is an old computer game for one player. It is sometimes
known as "Robots". Versions have been published in the old
"Creative Computing" magazine, which attributed the original
version to Mac Oglesby, with later modifications by Bill Cotter
and Arnold Loveridge. The rules and format for this DOS version
are based on my remembrance of the look and feel of a version
distributed as a freebie with the Xenix operating system, with a
bit of added functionality.

RULES

The player controls a man represented by '&', in the playing
field. A number of robots, each represented by 'R', move towards
the man by the shortest possible path. If one of them touches
the man, the man explodes and the game is over. However if two
or more robots touch each other, they explode, leaving a hole
represented by '#'. A robot which falls in the hole also
explodes. The goal of the game is to maneuver the man in such a
way that all of the robots are destroyed.

The game begins with 5 robots. When all 5 are destroyed, 10 new
ones appear. When they are destroyed, 15 new ones appear, and so
on. Each round begins with 5 more robots than in the last round.

A player can move using the number keys, as indicated in the
upper right number display on the screen. You must turn NumLock
ON to use the IBM PC number pad. Other available commands are:

Space = 5 = Stand still on this spot for this round.

T = Teleport to some random location on the screen. If a
robot happens to be there, or at an adjacent position,
the man will be destroyed.

L = Last stand. Stay at the current position until the
round is over. Useful when the robots are all doomed at
their current positions.

B = Trigger a bomb, destroying all robots immediately
adjacent to the man's current position. Holes are left
alone.

The player starts out with some number of bombs and gets more
after each round. It is possible to teleport as many times as
desired, but the number of bombs is limited.

The number of bombs with which which a player starts, and the
number added on each turn, can be varied by using a command line
argument. By default, a player starts with one bomb and one is
added on each turn. If it is desired to play with some other
number, up to 5, the game can be invoked with a number after the
"chase" command, e.g.:

chase 1 = Play with one bomb added per turn (default).
chase 2 = Add 2 bombs per turn.
...
chase 5 = Add 5 bombs per turn.

In the early stages of the game, teleporting is generally
successful. Most of the screen is clear and the chance of
landing next to a robot is small. It is usually best to save
bombs until later stages. By the eighth or ninth round, the
screen becomes very crowded and teleporting becomes increasingly
dangerous.

Luck plays a role every time the player teleports. However with
experience, one can learn to maneuver through some very complex
situations with minimal use of the Teleport and Bomb commands.
Scores over 1,500 points have been achieved using a single bomb
per round. The internal limits in the program are set at 1,000
robots simultaneously on screen, requiring a score above 100,000
points to reach.

The ten highest scores are saved with the players' names in the
file "CHASEx.DAT", where x = 1..5, indicating the number of bombs
with which the player played. This keeps scores for different
levels of play separate. The .dat file is created in whatever
directory is used to play the game.

Chase is configured to handle a maximum of 1,000 robots on
screen. If the user reaches the point where all 1,000 have been
destroyed (it can be done), then the game will be over.

* * *

This version of CHASE was written in Turbo C++ 1.0, partly as an
exercise to learn the C++ language. The program is copyrighted
by its author but is hereby contributed to the public domain. It
may be freely distributed.

Alan Meyer
AM Systems, Inc.
7438 Rockridge Rd.
Baltimore, MD 21208