greg@uwvax.UUCP (06/15/83)
Warp is definitely fun (addictive?), but there are a few bugs, which can be particularly dangerous, since warp runs 'setuid'd. Major problem: if I get out in the middle of a round using control-z and then send certain flavors 'kill' (such as 'hangup') to the warp job, it sometimes brings the warp job into the foreground, but with my keyboard completely locked. And I mean COMPLETELY. Can't move the Enterprise around, can't shoot, can't use control-z, can't do ANYTHING. I must go to another terminal and send an 'stty 0' to my terminal device. Even after I've done that, the warp job is still running, now disassociated from any terminal, burning CPU time. One such job (started by another user) used 4 CPU hours before our facility manager noticed it, logged in as super user, and killed it. If the round should end, then the warp process will die by itself. At 1200 baud, it is annoying to see the stars appear one-by-one (SLOWLY) in random order on the screen. This is a nice effect at 9600 baud, but I suggest that at 1200 baud the display be presented a row at a time, the way it is done if the user does a control-z and then brings the game back to the foreground. In general, I find warp to be too 'sticky.' It's like the Tar Baby in Brer Rabbit. I think there should be some way to stop playing in the middle of a round, and have the job go away. You can do that by doing a control-z, then starting up another warp job, telling it to kill the first job, and then hitting 'delete' (generating an interrupt signal from the keyboard) when that job asks you if you want instructions. If, on the other hand, you try control-z and then logging off, the warp job will sit around 'forever', as can be seen by doing a 'ps au.' Well, enough for now. Congrats and thanks to Larry Wall for an imaginative and enjoyable game. - Greg Johnson U. of Wisc., Madison
futrelle@uiucdcs.UUCP (06/28/83)
#R:uwvax:-91700:uiucdcs:9200009:000:471
uiucdcs!futrelle Jun 27 13:07:00 1983
Why DOES Warp replot so slowly? It's a real pain,
especially in dense universes when you just died and
all the stars start blowing each other up, or when
there are just a few enemies. Even at 1200 baud,
the screen takes less than a second to replot. In
fact, I'd prefer the game if it wasn't "real time".
If it would just accept a key OR the 1 second timer,
you could see the results of your command as they
happened, but the enemies would move just as
{fast,slowly}.