STARTREK For The Rainbow Running MS DOS By Jeff Cameron Version 3.0 This is version 3.0 of STARTREK. Many new features have been added to the game. Every effort has been made to remove all known bugs, and to make the game as challenging, fun and easy to play. The game is now ready to play, if all the required files, are in the current default disk and dir- ectory. Just enter in STARTREK at the DOS prompt. Required Files : STARTREK.COM STARTREK.000 TREK.MSG TREK.INS <-- The game will play without these last TREK.CMD <-- two files, but the game instructions and Command help will not be available. If STARTREK is entered with no other command line parameters, the game will create a file called STSCORES.HST if none exists. For more informa- tion, see the section on "History Files", below. Learning how to play : This game is based on the standard command based version of STARTREK. There are many other versions available that may be better, but this one is for all those "ORIGINAL" Star Trek fans, that were there on Friday, September the 8th, 1966, when NBC was premiering the "Sneak Preview" of their answer to CBS's "Lost In Space". The game may create one file in the current default DOS directory, only if none exists. The name of the file is STSCORES.HST, and it contains the history of the top ten best scores for each class. This distribution of STARTREK contains a history file of the Author's best games. For more on history files, read on. The game asks you if you want instructions. The instructions are on the file TREK.INS. This file contains ANSI Escape sequences so it can be typed on the RAINBOW PC (VT102 or higher) screen or printed to a DEC LN03, LA50, or compatible printer. The instructions are quite extensive and are written in two sections. The first part is designed to give you a general overview. Just enough to get you started. The second section describes some of the many details of the game. In addition to the instructions at the beginning of the game, you can enter the command "COMMANDS", which will give you a list of all the valid commands for the game, and a complete description of the syntax and func- tion of each command. This information is also kept in a text file with ANSI escape sequences, suitable for VT102 or compatible, LN03, LA50 or LA100 ... etc. The file is called TREK.CMD. The game is capable of recording it's current state on a file to be re- played at a later date or time. The OLD and the SAVE commands allow you to restart an old game, or save the current state respectively. When you use these commands the game will ask for a file name. You may specify a device and directory, but if you omit them, STARTREK will look in your current default DOS directory for the file. You may also specify any extension for the file, and if you do not, then .SAV is the default. STARTREK is also able to keep a record of the scores of it's best play- ers. This is done in a "History File". The History File saves the records of the top 10 best players for each game level (Novice, Fair, Good, or Expert). One such history file, of the author's best scores, is provided with the distribution of the game. There is no facility, yet, to combine history files. Along with this distribution is a program called BESTSCOR, which will report the best scores stored in a history file. If you just enter in the command BESTSCOR, you will get a listing of the best scores for the norm- al game history file (STSCORES.HST), or you can enter the file name of another history file on the command line, to report on another history file. For example, the command : C>BESTSCOR AUTHBEST.HST will give a report on the current best scores done by myself. Considerations :