Welcome to Xconq version 7.5 Prerelease!

Xconq is a general strategy game system.  It is a complete system that
includes all the components: a portable engine, graphical interfaces
for Unix/Linux/X11, Macintosh, and Windows, multiple AIs, networking
for multi-player games, and an extensive games library.

In addition to Xconq's "default" game, which is similar to the
classic Empire/Empire Deluxe games of years ago, the games library
includes games for ancient civilizations, the Peloponnesian War, the
Roman Civil War, Frederician strategy, Napoleonic strategy, Gettysburg
at a brigade scale, the Russian revolution, the Normandy invasion,
WWII at scales from tactical to grand strategic, Beirut street
fighting, voyages of discovery, African exploration, and many others,
including space and fantasy games.

As befits its emphasis on strategy, Xconq's forte is turn-based play
using overhead views of a tiled world.  The world is basically
two-dimensional, although varying elevations are available for games
that need elevation effects or line-of-sight.  Xconq is especially
interesting for games about unusual or lesser-known strategic
situations; it is unique in providing a single system for modelling
the conflicts and strategies of any period in history.

Xconq games may include hundreds of types of units, hundreds of
materials (ammo, fuel, etc), hundreds of types of terrain, and
hundreds of types of technological advances.  Worlds may be up to
32,767 x 32,767 in size, over a billion cells (hexagons)!  The largest
map currently in the library is a monster 800x320 map of the Earth.
Xconq can also synthesize new worlds for its games.

Up to 31 sides may participate in a game, with any mix of human and AI
players.  Xconq networking is peer-to-peer, so no separate server is
required.

To set up new types of games, Xconq includes an interpreter for a game
design language (GDL).  While the syntax resembles Lisp, GDL is a
declarative language, where you create a game just by defining the
properties of types and objects, and then filling in tables describing
their interactions.  There are literally hundreds of properties
available, and hundreds of tables relating units, materials, terrain,
and advances.  Xconq is capable of emulating many other strategy
games, and Xconq's generic AI includes the ability to analyze a set of
rules and to figure out (usually!) how to play it.

In addition, the game designer gets a collection of nearly a thousand
graphic images available for use in games, including unit icons,
terrain tiles, and national emblems.  It's also easy to import
additional graphics content of your choice.

To help keep the both new and experienced designers from being lost in
the complexity, Xconq includes a game designer's manual that describes
all of this machinery in detail.

If you are compiling your own of Xconq from sources, you may wish to 
look at the INSTALL files in the doc directory.  Xconq has been tested 
in a wide variety of systems and environments, including most versions of 
Unix, Linux, Macintosh (PowerPC only), and Windows.

Once Xconq is installed, depending on your system you should be able
to either type "xconq" at a shell or click on the program's icon.  The
program will guide you the rest of the way.  If this is your first
time playing Xconq, choose the "Introductory" game; this is a simple
preset scenario that uses the standard rules.

There are also alternative user interfaces for Xconq.  The Curses interface 
can be used in terminals and text consoles; it is generally invoked as 
"cconq".  The SDL interface is being developed as a sleeker, faster, easier-
to-use replacement to the Tcl/Tk interface; it can be invoked as "sdlconq", 
or, on Windows, by locating it in "Start Menu | Programs" as 
"Xconq (Experimental)".

Xconq calls several different sites home.  For a number of years now, Xconq 
has been found at

	http://sources.redhat.com/xconq

But, this is not its only home, and most development is now taking place at

	http://sourceforge.net/projects/xconq

and discussion and news can be found at

	http://www.xconq.org

These pages include information about new versions of Xconq, screenshots,
online versions of the manuals, and so forth.

A number of mailing lists are available.  Information on these lists can 
be found at

	http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=124062

and at

	http://sources.redhat.com/xconq/lists.html

Xconq is free software, and is licensed under the Gnu Public License,
version 2; see the file COPYING for more details.

Since Xconq is free, you can copy it, hack on it, and redistribute the
hacked version as you like; but PLEASE identify clearly any changes
you make to an "official" release - this will be of immeasurable help
to me, other Xconq hackers, and users.  I always enjoy hearing about
and seeing any improvements, fixes, or suggestions, and will try to
incorporate the best ones into future versions of Xconq.


						Stan Shebs
						shebs@shebs.cnchost.com

						(with updates by)
						Eric McDonald
						mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu


Thanks to the many Xconq players and hackers around the net who have
contributed literally hundreds of suggestions, fixes, and improvements
since Xconq's first release to comp.sources.games in 1987.  The manual
includes more detailed acknowledgments.

