What *is* hunt? Hunt is a multi-player search-and-destroy game that takes place in a maze. The game may either be slow and strategic or fast and tactical, depending on how familiar the players are with the keyboard commands. Distribution Policy: Hunt is part of the user-contributed software distributed by Berkeley in 4BSD. The sources are copyrighted by the authors and the University of California. You may redistribute freely as long as the copyright notices are retained. Words of Warning: hunt uses the socket mechanism of 4BSD Unix, so if you are on System V (my sympathies), you're on your own. If your machine does not permit non-setuid-root processes to broadcast UDP packets, then hunt uses a *very* inefficient method for locating the hunt server: it sends a packet to every host on your network. If your machine falls into this category, we strongly recommend that you use either standalone or inetd mode *and* start hunt by specifying the hunt server host. hunt can be configured to use Unix-domain sockets, but that code has not been tested in recent memory. Also, since 4.2BSD Unix-domain sockets are buggy, running hunt on 4.2BSD with Unix-domain sockets will probably crash your system. If you want to experiment, feel free to do so. However, don't say I didn't warn you :-). hunt uses a fair amount of CPU time, both in user time (for computing interactions) and system time (for processing terminal interrupts). We found that a VAX 750 can support about three users before the system is noticeably impacted. The number goes up to about 8 or 10 for a VAX 8650. On a network of Sun 3/50's with the server running on a 3/280, things work much more smoothly as the computing load is distributed across many machines. hunt may be dangerous to your health. "Arthritic pain" and "lack of circulation" in fingers have been reported by hunt abusers. Hunt may also be addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms are not pretty :-) Setting up the network: Hunt may be set up in one of three modes: standalone, inetd, or nothing. In "standalone" mode, there is always a hunt server running on a server machine. All players who enter the game will be talking to this server. This is the mode we use at UCSF. The cost is one entry in the process table on the server machine. In "inetd" mode, the server is started via inetd. Again, only one machine should be set up to answer game requests. The cost is having to edit a few system files. In "nothing" mode, no server is running when there is no one playing. The first person to enter hunt will automatically start up a server on his machine. This, of course, gives him an unfair advantage. Also, there may be race conditions such that players end up in different games. The choice of which mode to use depends on site configuration and politics. We recommend using "standalone" mode because it is simple to set up and starts up rapidly. ----- FOR STANDALONE MODE, put these lines in /etc/rc.local on the server machine. THERE SHOULD ONLY BE ONE SERVER MACHINE! # start up the hunt daemon if present if [ -f /usr/games/huntd ]; then /usr/games/huntd -s & (echo -n ' huntd') >/dev/console fi Also, you should start one up (on the off chance that you will want to test this mess :-) by typing "/usr/games/hunt -s". ----- FOR INETD MODE, then things get more complicated. You need to edit both /etc/services and /etc/inetd.conf. In /etc/services, add the line hunt 26740/udp 26740 corresponds to the default "Test_port". If you changed that variable, then you should put whatever value you used here as well. In /etc/inetd.conf, add the line hunt dgram udp wait nobody /usr/games/huntd huntd This works for 4.3BSD. I don't remember the configuration file format for 4.2BSD inetd. See the huntd.6 manual page for more details. ----- FOR NOTHING MODE, do nothing. Testing: Now you are ready to test the code. Type "/usr/games/hunt" or whatever you call the hunt executable. You should be prompted for your name and team. Then you should get the display of a maze. At this point, you should read the manual page :-). ====== Hunt is not officially supported by anyone anywhere (that I know of); however, bug reports will be read and bug fixes/enhancements may be sent out at irregular intervals. Send no flames, just money. Happy hunting. Conrad Huang conrad@cgl.ucsf.edu Greg Couch gregc@cgl.ucsf.edu October 17, 1988 P.S. The authors of the game want to emphasize that this version of hunt was started over eight years ago, and the programming style exhibited here in no way reflects the current programming practices of the authors.