This game is similar to the arcade game, CENTIPEDE.  As written, 
it must be played on a VT100 video terminal.  You have a gun, which you
can move around on the bottom third of the screen (player's zone) and with 
which you can shoot at various invading creatures.  Bullets from your gun 
travel upwards until they either hit a target or the top of the screen.  
No more than one bullet can be on the screen at a time.  Centipedes appear 
at various times on the screen, consisting of a head and from zero to eleven 
body segments. Centipedes move back and forth across the screen, descending 
a level when they hit a screen boundary, a mushroom, or another centipede.  
When they reach the bottom of the screen they begin to ascend in the same 
manner, but remain within the player's zone.  The object of the game is to 
kill these centipedes before they eat your gun.  

When you hit a centipede with a bullet, he becomes one segment shorter.  (Thus
if he only had a head, he is now completely destroyed.)  If you hit the head,
the next segment becomes the new head.  If you hit the tail, it is destroyed.
If you hit anything in between, that segment is destroyed and the centipede
becomes two smaller centipedes.  In all cases, the segment destroyed becomes 
a mushroom.

A spider appears almost continuously in the player's zone.  He starts at one
end and moves randomly across to the other side of the screen.  He can kill
you and you can kill him.  He eliminates any mushrooms he contacts, but you
get no credit for destroying them.  To make matters more difficult, two
other creature types start appearing after you have reached certain scores.
Fleas move straight down from the top of the screen, dropping mushrooms behind
them periodically.  They can, like the spider, kill you or be shot by you.
Scorpions move horizontally across the screen, and poison any mushrooms they
contact.  When a centipede hits a poison mushroom, it zigzags straight down to
the bottom of the player's zone and then resumes normal motion.

You fire the gun by pressing any alphabetic key or the space bar.  Holding the
pressed key down will cause rapid fire (limited to one bullet on the screen 
at one time).  You move your gun with the keypad numeric keys.  There are 
eight directions of motion.  The 2, 4, 6, and 8 keys give you horizontal and 
vertical motion, and the 1, 3, 7, and 9 keys give you diagonal motion.  One 
push of a direction key moves you one square.  You can hold a key down for 
rapid motion.  NOTE!!! Due to the nature of the VT100 autorepeat key feature, 
you cannot have rapid motion and fire, or rapid fire and motion, at the same 
time.  Thus, if you hold both the firing space bar and a direction key down 
at the same time, nothing happens!!

You get three guns, plus a bonus one every 12000 points.  The game continues
until you run out of guns.  The game can be put on 'hold' by typing a 
control-S (noscroll) and resumed by typing a control-Q (noscroll).  You can 
end the game at any time by typing a control-C.

The scoring of the game is as follows:

each centipede head killed:          -  100 points
each centipede body segment killed:  -   10 points
each mushroom destroyed:             -    1 point 
   (note that it takes 4 shots to destroy a mushroom)
each spider killed                   -  300, 600, or 900 points
   (depends on how close spider is to gun)
each flea killed                     -  200 points
each scorpion killed                 - 1000 points

When a gun is killed, all damaged and poisoned mushrooms are repaired.
You get 5 points for each one.


Enjoy!!

Glen Hoffing
RCA Gov't Communications Systems
Front and Cooper Sts.   10-4-6
Camden, NJ  08102