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TRADER(6)			  Games Manual			       TRADER(6)

NAME
     trader - a game of interstellar trading

SYNOPSIS
     trader [--no-color|--no-colour] [--max-turn=NUM] [GAME]
     trader [-h|--help] [-V|--version]

DESCRIPTION
     Star  Traders is a simple game of interstellar trading, where the objective
     is to create companies, buy and sell shares, borrow and repay money, in or-
     der to become the wealthiest player (the winner).

OPTIONS
     GAME   If GAME is specified as a number between 1 and 9  (inclusive),  load
	    and  continue  playing that game.  If GAME is not specified, start a
	    new game.

     --no-color, --no-colour
	    Don't use colour for displaying the text in the game.  Use this  op-
	    tion for a "retro-computing" look (as shown in the EXAMPLES below).

     --max-turn=NUM
	    Set the number of turns in the game to NUM.  In this version of Star
	    Traders,  NUM must be greater or equal to 10.  If this option is not
	    specified, the default is 50 turns.

     -h, --help
	    Show a summary of command-line options and exit.

     -V, --version
	    Display version information about the program, then exit.

EXIT STATUS
     0	    Star Traders finished without any errors.

     1	    Star Traders encountered an unrecoverable problem or error; a  diag-
	    nostic message will be written to standard error in this case.

EXAMPLES
     You  can  start a new game by running Star Traders without any command line
     options:

	    trader

     Once the game starts, you will be asked to enter the number of people play-
     ing.  From one to eight people can play (although, in  this  version,  they
     will  all	have to share the one keyboard and screen!).  After entering the
     names of the players, you will have the opportunity to read instructions on
     how to play the game.  Do so--and good luck in the game!

     If you would like to continue a previously-saved game, simply specify  that
     game number on the command line.  For example, the following starts game 4,
     if it was previously saved:

	    trader 4

     If  you  are running under the X Window System, you might like to start the
     game in a dedicated xterm(1) window (typed all on one line):

	    xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg black -fg white -bc +sb +fbx -e
	    trader &

     If you would like a full  "retro-computing"  green-screen	experience,  try
     (again, typed all on one line):

	    xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg '#181818' -fg '#2CAB00' -bc +sb
	    +bdc +fbx -xrm 'XTerm*colorBD: #41FF00' -e trader --no-colour &

     Or, if you prefer the old amber screens of yesteryear:

	    xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg '#101010' -fg '#AB7A00' -bc +sb
	    +bdc +fbx -xrm 'XTerm*colorBD: #FFB700' -e trader --no-colour &

ENVIRONMENT
     XDG_DATA_HOME, HOME
	    If	XDG_DATA_HOME  is  set	to an absolute pathname (that is, a path
	    that starts with "/"), Star Traders will use that directory, with  a
	    subdirectory trader, to store game files.  If this environment vari-
	    able  is  not  set or does not start with "/", ~/.local/share/trader
	    will be used instead, where "~" represents your home  directory,  as
	    contained in the HOME environment variable.

     LINES, COLUMNS
	    Star  Traders  uses  the  Curses  library for displaying text on the
	    screen.  As such, it will access these two environment variables  if
	    the  underlying  Curses library does so (see, for example, the ENVI-
	    RONMENT section in the ncurses(3) manual page for in-depth details).
	    It requires a text console or window of at least 80x24 in size.

     LANG, LC_ALL, etc.
	    This version of Star Traders has full support for locales  and  will
	    use appropriate settings.  In particular, messages will be displayed
	    using  LC_MESSAGES and LANGUAGE (if Star Traders has been translated
	    into that language).  In addition, numeric quantities will	be  dis-
	    played  using  LC_NUMERIC  and monetary quantities will use LC_MONE-
	    TARY.  See the locale(7) or setlocale(3) manual pages for  more  de-
	    tails on locale settings.

     TEXTDOMAINDIR
	    If	set,  Star  Traders will use this path as the base with which to
	    locate its message catalogs instead of  the  compiled-in  path;  the
	    relevant  trader.mo  files should be located in language-code subdi-
	    rectories (such as en_AU), in LC_MESSAGES sub-subdirectories.

FILES
     ~/.local/share/trader/gameN
	    Star Traders stores saved game files in the .local/share/trader sub-
	    directory  in  your  home  directory  (unless  overridden	by   the
	    XDG_DATA_HOME  environment variable).  N is a number between 1 and 9
	    inclusive.	The game file is scrambled to prevent you or others from
	    casually cheating!

     ~/.trader/gameN
	    If the ~/.trader directory exists, game files will be read from  and
	    saved to this location instead.  This is for compatibility with ver-
	    sions of Star Traders prior to version 7.15.

BUGS
     None yet known...

FEEDBACK
     Your  comments, suggestions, corrections and enhancements are always warmly
     welcomed!	Please send these to:

     Postal:   John Zaitseff,
	       The ZAP Group Australia,
	       Unit 6, 116 Woodburn Road,
	       Berala, NSW, 2141,
	       Australia

     Email:    J.Zaitseff@zap.org.au
     Web:      <https://www.zap.org.au/projects/trader/>
     FTP:      <https://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/>
     Git:      <https://git.zap.org.au/git/trader.git>

COPYRIGHT
     Copyright (C) 1990-2026, John Zaitseff.

     Star Traders is free software that is distributed under the  terms  of  the
     GNU General Public License.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it under
     the terms of that License as published by the Free Software Foundation, ei-
     ther version 3 or (at your option) any later version.

     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
     ANY  WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FIT-
     NESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more
     details.

     You should have received a copy of the GNU  General  Public  License  along
     with this program.  If not, see the GNU licenses web page <https://
     www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

     Even  though  the	GNU  General Public License does not require you to send
     your modifications back to the author, it is considered "good form"  to  do
     so,  as  this allows your modifications to be incorporated into future ver-
     sions of the program, allowing others to benefit from them.

HISTORY
     The original (and very primitive) game was written by Steven Faber and pub-
     lished as Star Lanes on pages 131-138 in Interface Age, June 1977.  It  was
     described by the magazine's software editor as:

	    ... a new imaginative Monopoly-type microcomputer game that everyone
	    can and will want to play if you have a microcomputer.  Like the Mo-
	    nopoly game, STAR LANES combines financial and positional strategies
	    as players attempt to lay claim to valuable pieces of space real es-
	    tate between the stars in the Galaxy.
	    -- Robert A. Stevens, page 123, Interface Age, June 1977.

     S.  J.  Singer  took Star Lanes and republished it in 1984 as Star Traders.
     His version was modified by John Zaitseff for Microsoft Basic (MBASIC) run-
     ning under the CP/M-80 operating system; it  was  released  on  7th  March,
     1988.

     Star  Traders  was then completely rewritten in 1990 for the Australian-de-
     signed 8-bit MicroBee computer running CP/M-80 on a  Zilog  Z80  processor,
     using  Turbo  Pascal  3.01a.   Essentially,  only the name of the game, the
     names of the first five companies and some of the key ideas  were	retained
     in  this  version.  Version 4.1 of Star Traders was released on 1st August,
     1991.

     In 1992, it was recompiled for the NEC  Advanced  Personal  Computer  (with
     8-inch  floppy  drives!)  running CP/M-86 on an 8086 processor, using Turbo
     Pascal 2.0.  This version had colour added to it in the form of ANSI escape
     sequences; version 4.4 was released on 2nd August, 1993.

     The next version came in 1993, when the program was recompiled  to  run  on
     IBM-compatible  machines running MS-DOS and ANSI.SYS.  Turbo Pascal 6.0 was
     used for this.  The ANSI escape sequences were slightly different under MS-
     DOS than under the NEC, in that the NEC supported a number of extra charac-
     ter attributes.  In other words, the MS-DOS version looked worse  than  the
     one running under CP/M-86!

     Star  Traders was recompiled again in 1994 for IBM-compatible machines with
     VGA/EGA/CGA video graphics adapters.  The output routines were  recoded  to
     use a "windowed" look.  Borland Pascal 7.0 was used for this purpose, along
     with  a  number  of  text window manipulation modules.  Version 5.4 was re-
     leased on 1st June, 1994.

     In 1995, Star Traders was completely rewritten  for  the  16-bit  Microsoft
     Windows 3.1 graphical environment.  Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 was used for
     this  purpose.  Although completely rewritten, the original algorithms were
     reused from previous versions.  Version 6.0 of the  game  was  released  on
     15th September, 1995.

     Star  Traders  was then to languish until almost 16 years later... when the
     game was rewritten once again, this time in  the  C  programming  language.
     Version 7.0 was released on 25th July, 2011 for Unix-like operating systems
     such  as  Linux, with subsequent releases to add features and correct bugs.
     Now you, too, can run this small piece of computing history!

SEE ALSO
     Star Traders home page <https://www.zap.org.au/projects/trader/>

Unix-like systems		 17th May, 2026 		       TRADER(6)

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