WA-TOR FOR WINDOWS

Welcome to Wa-Tor, the sharks and fish game for Microsoft
Windows. This program allows you to create your own world,
populated with tasty fish and hungry sharks, and watch how the
population changes through time.

You can change parameters that determine how often the sharks and
fish breed and how soon the sharks will starve if they can't eat
a fish. If you get the settings right, the populations will live
for a long time. Get them wrong, however, and the sharks might
eat up all the fish, then starve to death. They might also all
die off before finding any fish to feed on.

It is fun to cheer on the sharks and fish as they battle it out,
but this game is also a simulation of some ideas from population
ecology, although it is a very simplistic model.

The idea for this game comes from A.K. Dewdney's "Computer
Recreations" column in the December 1984 issue of Scientific
American.

INSTALLATION

The Wa-Tor program consists of two files, WATORW.EXE and
WATORW.HLP. To install Wa-Tor, simply copy these two files onto
your hard disk in any directory you desire. You can then create
an icon for it in the Program Manager (PM) by either using the
"File/New" option in PM, or by dragging the file from the File
Manager directly to a PM group.

STARTING WA-TOR

When you first start Wa-Tor, you will see the blank game board
and the population graph. You can first change the initial
parameters through the Options menu, then start or stop the
simulation through the Game menu. You can view other types of
graphs through the Graphs menu.

The game board can be cleared and a new game started by choosing
"New" from the Game menu. Changes made to the parameters in the
middle of a run take effect immediately.

GAME BOARD

Wa-Tor is a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) planet completely covered
by an ocean. The game board shows a map of the planet flattened
out into a square. If a fish or shark moves off one edge of the
map, it will reappear on the other side.

At the start of the game, fish and sharks are placed randomly
around the board. You control how many are there at the start
through the options menu. When the game starts, each fish and
shark moves once during a chronon (time unit). Fish move onto
the next adjacent space, chosen randomly. Sharks will first look
around to see if a fish is within snapping distance; if not it
too will move onto an unoccupied space.

After all fish and sharks have moved once, the scoreboard will be
updated to show the current population. The movements for the
next chronon will then begin.

Wa-Tor has a full on-line help system that gives more details
about using the menuing system. There is also information about
the different graph types and a brief introduction to population
ecology.

COMMENTS, COMPLAINTS, COMPLIMENTS AND BUGS
These should be addressed to me at the address below. There are
numerous improvements that could be made in this game, both in
the presentation and in the actual mechanics and assumptions.
For instance, adding a requirement for sexual reproduction could
have interesting results in the population dynamics. If you have
any suggestions please let me know. Thank you!

REGISTRATION

Wa-Tor is a shareware game. This means that you can freely copy
it and give it to friends and colleagues. A charge may be made
for distribution to cover costs, but it may not exceed UKœ5 (or
US$10) per disk.

If you like the program and wish to support the programming
effort, a registration fee of UKœ10 (or US$20) would be
appreciated. In return, you will be notified of any updates to
Wa-Tor, as well as of any other programs that I produce.

If you wish to use the program for teaching, then you must
register. A copy of Wa-Tor must be purchased for each machine it
is used on. Discounts are available for purchases of multiple
copies of Wa-Tor, according to the following table:

Copies Price per copy
------ --------------
1-10 œ10 ($20)
11-20 œ8 ($16)
21-50 œ6 ($12)
51-100 œ4 ($8)

Payment may be made by cheque in UK pounds or US dollars (drawn
on a UK or US bank), by international money order in pounds or
dollars, by Eurocheque in pounds, or (if you want to risk it) by
sending banknotes through the post. Cheques should be made
payable to Dr. Warren L. Kovach. Please send your payment to:

Dr. Warren L. Kovach
Kovach Computing Services
85 Nant-Y-Felin
Pentraeth, Anglesey LL75 8UY
Wales, U.K.

e-mail: warrenk@cix.compulink.co.uk
CompuServe: 100016,2265

THANK YOU!