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SKI(6)				      Games				  SKI(6)

NAME
     ski - an unusual skiing simulation game

SYNOPSIS
     ski

DESCRIPTION
     Imagine  you  are	skiing	down  an  infinite slope, facing such hazards as
     trees, ice, bare ground, and the Yeti, -- a  horrible  monster!  Each  turn
     moves  you  one  screen  row  downhill. Unfortunately, you have to put your
     jet-powered skis on backwards, so you can't see ahead where you are  going;
     only behind where you have been.

     However, you can turn to either side, jump or hop through the air, teleport
     through  hyperspace, launch nuclear ICBMs, and cast spells to call the Fire
     Demon. And since the hazards occur in patches, you can  skillfully  out-ma-
     neuver them.

     You  ski  until  something bad happens to you. Your final score is based on
     how far you have skied, how many jumps you made, how many Yetis have melted
     during your run, and how healthy you are when are finished.

     These characters represent the things that you see on the slope behind you:

     I
	 This is where you are.

     .
	 This is normal snow -- always completely safe to ski on.

     Y
	 These are trees. If you try to ski through trees, you might hit one and
	 get hurt!

     ' '
	 A space represents bare ground with no snow on it. If you try to ski on
	 dirt, you could fall down....

     #
	 This is ice. When you are on ice, you can't turn, and	you  might  slip
	 and fall down.

     A
	 This  is the Yeti! As soon as he crawls out of a snowbank, he will lum-
	 ber directly towards you at one space per turn, and if he  gets  within
	 one  space  of  you,  he will grab you and beat you up! However, he has
	 trouble moving through trees. Steer clear from the Yeti,  and	he  will
	 melt after a while, since it is a sunny day. If you jump over him, your
	 jet-powered skis will help melt him. You can also melt him with nuclear
	 ICBMs, or call the Fire Demon who will cook him, but once a Yeti melts,
	 another  one always shows up after a while. The Yeti doesn't understand
	 about the edges of the slope either, so you can just cross them to  get
	 away  from  him!  And	since  he is slower than you, you can try to ski
	 right past him before he can grab you!

     *
	 This represents a nuclear ICBM that you launched. You launch them  from
	 your backpack, and they zoom right at the Yeti.

     D
	 This is the Fire Demon, who is always your friend unless you call him a
	 bad name and he gets mad at you.

     These  are  your  commands.  You can type any one of these letters when you
     have the "?" prompt on the end of the slope line, or just hit a  return  to
     do nothing this turn. Preceding any command with a number does that command
     repeatedly; thus, for example, "4l" is "turn left 4 times".

     r
	 Turn  to the right. If you were going straight down, this will make you
	 go one space to the right every turn. If you type "R" again,  then  you
	 will  go  two	spaces to the right every turn. If you type "L" the next
	 turn, you will again be going one space to the right every turn. Remem-
	 ber that you can't turn when you are on ice, and if you go off the edge
	 of the slope you come back into the  other  edge.  You  travel  farther
	 while	you  are going sideways, so you get a better score if you slalom
	 to the side a lot, but you can never go sideways more than five  spaces
	 per turn.

     l
	 Turn left. Exactly the same as turning right, but totally opposite.

     j
	 Jump.	When  jumping, you don't have the "?" on the right for each line
	 you jump over, so you can't enter a command for it. You can't fall, hit
	 trees, or get grabbed by the Yeti while jumping,  but	you  might  land
	 badly	and  get  hurt.  Since	the Yeti moves one space toward you each
	 turn, you have to be going at least two spaces  per  turn  sideways  to
	 jump  over him without getting grabbed when you land, but your jet-pow-
	 ered skis may melt the Yeti while you're jumping over him.

     h
	 Hop. A hop is half a jump.

     t
	 Teleport through hyperspace. This transports you to somewhere	else  on
	 the slope, but you might materialize way up in the air and fall down.

     i
	 Launch  ICBM with nuclear warhead. If your backpack is working well, an
	 ICBM will be launched from it towards the  Yeti,  travelling  at  three
	 spaces  per  turn. Launching ICBMs is dangerous, but once one is going,
	 it can't hurt you. If it is launched and  loses  its  negative-infrared
	 lock on the Yeti, it self-destructs.

     d
	 Cast  spell to summon the Fire Demon to this material plane. If the al-
	 ternate universes are in a synchronous phase, the Fire Demon  will  ap-
	 pear  somewhere  on the slope, and move to attack the Yeti at one space
	 per turn, but if something goes wrong while  casting  this  spell,  the
	 Fire  Demon might get mad and decide to go for you instead of the Yeti!
	 If there is no Yeti around, the Fire Demon will soon get bored  and  go
	 home.	If you don't like where the Fire Demon showed up, you can try to
	 recast this spell, so that he will appear somewhere else.

     !
	 Spawn an invisible monster called a Unix shell. You  may  type  to  the
	 shell;  it will do strange things with your input, opening a space warp
	 in the middle of the ski-slope to display them at you. The  shell  mon-
	 ster  is  polite;  when  it is done, you will be deposited back on your
	 slope exactly where you were before.

     ?
	 Display command help.

     Good luck, and happy skiing!

AUTHOR
     Mark Stevans, for Roy's Games, Inc. Python  implementation,  color  support
     and the invisible shell monster by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>.

DIAGNOSTICS
     None.

BUGS
     None known.

ski				   07/30/2026				  SKI(6)

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