How to play Battleship

     The object of the game is sink your opponent's ships before he sinks yours.

     To start a new game, select 'New Game' from the Control menu.  You must then place your ships.  You do this by dragging them around on the grid.  Double clicking on a ship will rotate it 90°.  When you are done, select 'Done' from the menu and you can start firing by clicking on your opponent's grid.
     You can play against the computer or a friend (password required).  If you play against the computer, there are four levels of play, each one with a different strategy.  Levels 3 and 4 require the password.
     If you play against a friend, you will each have to place your ships.  The person playing on the left grid hides first and shoots first.
     You can print the playing board whenever you want to.  If you want to turn off the sound effects, set the speaker volume to zero.

Game Info

     You sink a ship by hitting each of its squares.

     aircraft carrier:   5 squares
     battleship:           4 squares
     destroyer:            3 squares (white)
     submarine:           3 squares (gray)
     patrol boat:          2 squares

     A miss is painted grey.
     A hit is painted splotchy black and white.
     If you're playing with sound effects, you will notice the difference very clearly.

Registration and How to Obtain the Password

     If you have any suggestions for improving this program, please let me know.  If you haven't paid for the program, please do so.  It took a lot of effort to get the program to work, so a contribution of US$5 or more will be greatly appreciated.
     Some of this program's features are protected by a password.  This was done to encourage you to send in your shareware fee.  The menu item 'Enter Password' allows you to enter the password and unlock the protected features.  When you send me US$5 and the Phrase given in the Enter Password dialog, I will send you the correct password.
     Once you enter the password, the program will save it so that you do not need to do it again.  Please remove the password from the copies you give to your friends.
     I'll be happy to send you a list of my other programs if you want me to.  I also do custom programming, in case you need a program that will do something special.

     My address is:

     John Lindal
     P.O. Box 4092
     Point Dume, CA  90264

     My E-mail address is:

     jafl@alice.wonderland.caltech.edu

Disclaimer

     I have tried to debug this program on all the common Macs.  However, I can’t guarantee that it will work with all systems.  If the program does crash, send me a letter telling me how it happened (error messages and numbers are very useful!), and I’ll try to fix the problem.
     Please don't feel that you have to pay for the program before you report a problem.  (But it wouldn't hurt.)  I'm more interested in fixing bugs and getting new ideas than getting paid for the program.

Bugs Fixed from Previous Versions

1)  David Perlman discovered that playing sounds would sometimes crash the program.

2)  Mike Dickens discovered that if the shooting routine hit more than one ship, it would sometimes get confused.

3)  Occasionally, part of a ship would get left behind when you dragged it around.

4)  Mike Dickens pointed out that “if you have the screen space, use it!”  He's right, so now you can move the game window to any screen.

5)  You can thank Lloyd Wood for helping me make the password system more secure.

6)  Lloyd also pointed out that the fonts in my program were interfering with the system's fonts.

7)  Christopher Ormond discovered that the shooting routine would hang if you stuffed all your ships into a corner.

8)  The program now uses a better pattern on level 3.

9)  Jack Repenning helped me figure out how to get the program to work with the Greg's Buttons INIT.

Battleship 1.3

10)  Matt Bauer suggested that the program should show the positions of the ships after the game was over.