) General This software is a for internet client/server "Si-Guo-Da-Zhan' (literally "four country grand war'), a Chinese board game. This software is the client program. The excutable of the server program is available on an individual basis. The program is designed to use under unix enviroment. To actually play the game, X-window enviroment is needed. 1) UNPACK If the file you get is in the .tar format, you use "tar xvf the_file" to unpack the file. If the file is in .tar.gz format you use "gunzip the_file" to obtain a .tar file first, then you then use "tar xvf" to unpack the file. 2) COMPILING Use either of the following ways. In any case, you only need to keey one final file 'xsg'. a) use Makefile.simple, the compiling is very simple: %make -f Makefile.simple this will produce an executable called xsg. if this doesn't work, then b) use Imakefile, you can type 'xmkmf' to get a Makefile, then %make 3) Options on compiling There are two sets of bitmaps which can be used for the faces of the pieces, one is in Chinese characters, the other is in images. When you compile, you can select one of the bitmaps set. If you want to use the Chinese character bitmaps, nothing needs to be changed. If you want to use the image bitmaps, edit Makefile.simple to define DEFS to empty, or comment out DEFINES definition in Imakefile if you use Imakefile. 4) Tips on using of xsg The program has less terminal problems if you use tcsh. Because the server site may change or there are more than two sites. You can specify a machine (or port) by the following methods. For those who are familiar with unix shell enviroment. You can set server machine by variable XSGSERVER, set port by XSGPORT. You can also speicify the machine and port by useing '-h' (short for host) and '-p' (short for port) argument. Type 'xsg -help' for more information. The program currently uses 128.122.134.87 and 9999 as the default machine and port respectively. You can also use enviroment variable XSGNICK or command line argument '-n' to set your nick name. The command line argument always overwrite the corresponding shell enviroment variable in the case they both appear. 6) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The X-window part of the code is based on previous x4war program by Xiaobing Chen. My copyright notice does not apply the files by him. Please refrence to the specific files. The Chinese pieces bitmaps are by Zhongmin Guo, Bo Wang, Ju Wu, and Danpo Zhang, image pieces are by Reece Peacock (nrp@btcase.bt.co.uk), all come along with Chen's package. 7) COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1995 & 1997 by Ze Yang Permission to use, copy, and distribute for non-commercial purposes, is hereby granted without fee, providing that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both the copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. The software may be modified for your own purposes, but modified versions may not be distributed without prior consent of the the author. This software is provided "as is" without any expressed or implied warranty. The author may be contacted via email: yangze@math.nyu.edu