Spellcast is a strange little strategy game, which I found on the Net and have implemented for X.
Basically, two or more players try to vaporize each other with a wide assortment of wizardly spells. For the complete rules, see the man page (spellcast.6), which goes into exhaustive detail.
Compiling should be straightforward; spellcast uses only Xlib, with no widget sets or other libraries.
NOTE: Some (all?) versions of SunOS have a buggy realloc(), which causes spellcast to crash early and often. If you're on a Sparc and you have this problem, the fix is to compile with -lbsdmalloc. Uncomment the OTHERLIBS line in the Makefile.
The Makefile begins with a few definitions which you
can change:
the directories where everything gets installed;
the default fonts that the program tries to load (usually
times 14, helvetica 12, and fixed, in that order); the directory in which game transcripts are stored (usually
/tmp.)
Type "make" or "make spellcast" to create the executable.
"make stupid" will create a version of the game with a terribly stupid, text-only interface -- this is not very playable, and is really only good for testing. You enter all the players' moves in a single string at the prompt, and answer questions as they appear.
The file spelllist.ps is a PostScript document showing all the available spells, in two columns: one sorted by gesture, and one sorted by name. By default, it will be installed as DESTDIR/lib/spellcast/spelllist.ps.
The original paper-and-pencil version of this game was created by Richard Bartle (76703.3042@compuserve.com). This implementation is by Andrew Plotkin (ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu). It is copyright 1993 by Andrew Plotkin. The source code may be freely copied, distributed, and modified, as long as this copyright notice is retained. The source code and any derivative works may not be sold for profit without the permission of Andrew Plotkin and Richard Bartle.