NCURSES Derby Files

readme.txt

 Created on: Aug 10, 2015
     Author: John Winston Pierce
     		 jwpierce1830@yahoo.com

INTRODUCTION

This is the first release of NCURSES Derby horserace. This program is designed
to be ran in Linux terminals using the command shell. It is a simulation of
a horse race using characters ( ~/^\^ ) to represent the horses on a straight
horizontal track.

This program is released under the Gnu Public License. For license information 
see the license.txt file. For installation information see the INSTALL section
of this document.

REQUIREMENTS

This program has been tested on Ubuntu 14.0 and Slackware 14 systems. This 
program as you could probably guess needs NCURSES to run. It also needs the 
menu library and I have plans to add the form library soon. It should not
be too hard to port to other systems since NCURSES is a fairly standard 
library.

INSTALL

On Linux systems you can use the make utility by being in the directory 
where you have the source files entering the command make. The make file has
options to make clean which will delete the .o files and make very-clean to 
also remove the executable.

RUNNING

To start the program enter the shell command ./horserace in the directory
where the executable file is created or any directory where you move the 
executable produced by the make process. If you build the application from
the shell prompt directly (gcc horserace.c -lncurses -lmenu -o <executable>)
then you must enter your own executable name to run the application.

The program is menu driven. Use the up and down arrow keys to make menu 
choices and enter to execute your choice. To start you should choose which 
horse and what place you expect them to finish under "2. Betting". Then use 
the "3. Race" menu choice to watch the race. The "4. Results" will show you 
the finish results and payoff. Move the highlight to "Exit" and press enter 
to leave the program and return to a shell prompt.

Their is very little error checking currently so wrong choices in the 
betting window are not caught. Enter only a horse number then W, P or S
and the C to continue or R to change your "ticket".

You will see your choice of horse and finish position on the lower left
corner of the racing window. If you have picked a not existent horse or
something other the W for win P for place or S for show then you will
always loose.

Horse moves are random with no horse given a higher chance of winning. You
should not notice any constant winners or losers. Currently payoffs are
lower for lower numbered horses and bigger for higher numbered horses and
the odds and payoffs never change. 

KNOWN BUGS

CHANGE LOG