Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.

Xt/Xaw Xconq

Maps

Once the game has started, you have at least one "map window" open. (For brevity, these can be called just "maps"). Each map window has identical capabilities, so you can play by using just one, or have one for each area of interest, or have some of them serve specialized purposes. For instance, you can have a map window that shows the entire world.

Map Parts

Each map window consists of a number of panes, whose size you may adjust by dragging the small square grips that may be seen on the the pane boundaries.

----------------------------------------------------------
|                                     |                  |
|           history/notices           |                  |
|                                     |                  |
|-------------------------------------|     sides        |
|           command prompt            |                  |
|-------------------------------------|                  |
|             turn/date               |------------------|
|-------------------------------------|                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |      unit/cell info         |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |-----------------------------|                  |
|       |                             |    unit types    |
|       |                             |                  |
| ctrl  |                             |                  |
| panel |                             |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |         map view            |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |------------------|
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |     panner       |
|       |                             |                  |
|       |                             |                  |
----------------------------------------------------------

The map view is the actual display of the world.

Each map may have one current position and one current unit. The current position is specially highlighted, and the info subwindow displays information about it. If in addition there is a current unit at the current position, then it will be highlighted rather than the entire cell, and the info pane will describe it in detail. The current unit is the one to which your commands apply; it will always be a unit that you control. If the current position includes a picture of someone else's unit, the info will describe its type and owner but no more.

The info pane has the general form

<unit owner, type, name>       <hp> <acp>|<cp> <cxp>
<location>                     <other units here>
<occupants>                    <supply>
<plan>                         <more supply>
<tasks>                        <even more supply>

Items like <hp> and acp have the form current/max, so that you can get an idea of how the value compares to what it could be.

Scrolling

It will nearly always be the case that the world is too large to be seen all at once. You can scroll around in two ways. First, if you are in survey mode, and click near any edge of the view, Xconq will put the position you clicked at the center of the view. By clicking in the same place repeatedly, you can "walk" the view in any desired direction.

If you want to go directly to a particular part of the world, use the panner in the bottom right corner of the map window. To use the panner, click and drag the shadowed box inside the panner. The panner is sized to match the map, and the shadowed box is sized to match the view, so you can get a general idea of of where the map is within the world.

View Control Popup

If you click the button labelled "More..." in the leftside controls, you will get a popup dialog that is a full set of viewing controls. Unlike the leftside view controls, these do not act at once; instead, you toggle them on or off, then click on "Apply" or "Done" to see the effects. This allows you to make a number of changes, but only redraw the map once when you are ready to see the results. "Apply" leaves the popup in place, while "Done" makes it go away. You can leave the popup up permanently and continue play, if you like.

Note that each map will have its own separate view control popup, and that they're not clearly distinguished from each other. Fortunately, these only affect display, not the game itself.

Play

The basic idea of play is to be in move mode, let the program select the next unit to do something, then give it a command, either by clicking the mouse or by typing on the keyboard.

Each map may be in either survey or move mode independently of the others. In survey mode, the default actions are not to do anything, while in move mode, the default actions are to do things. This principle applies to both mouse and keyboard commands. For instance, 'h' in survey mode moves the current position west by one cell, but in move mode it causes the current unit to try to move west by one cell.

Using the Mouse, excuse me, Pointer

Although in classic X style, all the actions may be arbitrarily rebound, for simplicity the default Xconq setup uses the left button for the most important actions.

Using the Keyboard

The general commands all work.

Commands that operate on units will be applied to the current unit of the map. If the map has no current unit, then you will get an error message.

Commands that need further input will generally request it from the prompt subwindow that is sandwiched between the history subwindow and the date subwindow. You do not need to put the cursor over the prompt window to type into it however; when a prompt is up, any typed characters will be considered to be part of the answer to the prompt. You can type in an escape (`C-[') character to cancel the command and clear the prompt.

If the request is for a unit type, such as when choosing a type to construct, you can choose the type either by typing its character, or by clicking on its entry in the unit type list.

The Xt/Xaw interface defines these options to the `map' command:

close
Close a map window.
meridians
Toggle display of meridians. Prefix argument sets spacing in arc minutes.
rv
Switch to reverse video.
pattern
Prefer patterns for drawing terrain.
solid
Prefer solid colors for drawing terrain.
mono
Switch to monochrome display. (debugging) This is really meant for debugging only, and is only available if debugging was compiled in.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.