                        Blind galaxy FAQ

Sections:
  I) Differences
 II) Obtaining the Rules and Source
III) Mailing lists

                        Differences

The more obvious differences between standard Galaxy v3 and Blind Galaxy are 

1) Blind galaxy supports different options that standard galaxy-
   Standard: twocol, namecase, underscores
   Blind:smartmap, map, fullreports, unknown, battlesum, longbattle,
         techplus, fulltype, showopts, forecast, longforecast, upgradecost,
         twospace, sortplanets, showopts, centerx, centery
   Common: sortgroups, autounload, production

2) Blind galaxy allows you to be at guard (only shoot at someone over your
   planets), in addition to peace and war.

3) Blind galaxy supports a selective planet defense (K command) which 
   allows you to override war/peace/guard on a planet by planet basis
   at systems you own.

4) Blind's production occurs after routes & population growth.

5) Blind industrial growth is ~80% faster.

6) Blind galaxy supports 2 names for planets. A non-changing #, and
   a player setable name.

7) Blind galaxy has "Full Reports" for systems, which include all the
   information found elsewhere in the report, grouped by planet.
   [I.e. groups, fleets, routes, alien groups, incoming reports, etc
   are listed under a "Full report on system xxx" section]

8) Blind galaxy has a more diverse planet mixture than standard galaxy
   including size 0 words, and worlds larger than homeworlds.

9) Blind galaxy does not support spaces in names, or quoted strings (a later
   release may do so)

10) Blind galaxy reports are generally incompatible with standard galaxy
   analysis tools.

11) Blind galaxy battles can (with the correct option) give you a blow by blow
   account of the battle so that you can analyze ship performance (such a
   program exists at the ftp site).

12) Blind galaxy has wraparound maps.

13) Blind galaxy does not support sending messages through the game 
   (the @ command).

14) Blind galaxy does not support the player lookup command 'F',
   the quit command 'Q', passwords (yet) 'Y', or changing one's 
   e-mail address 'Z'. All these features are done by the GM.

15) Blind galaxy does not have a built in way of maintaining player's orders
   (that is, if you submit 15 sets of orders, the GM or a program has to
   remove the 14 old sets)

16) Blind galaxy doesn't keep track of players. The GM needs to provide an
   outside mechanism for doing this. (See 14 & 15 above)

17) Blind galaxy has a tendency to have more bugs, and is presently evolving
   faster than standard galaxy.

18) Blind galaxy has an integrated, stable forecaster. Standard galaxy's
   forecaster/order checker are separate programs, and at the present
   not 100% accurate.

19) Standard galaxy has been ported to more systems, and will compile
   out of the box on non ansi machines.

20) Blind galaxy comes complete with an example server which supports
   anonymous message forwarding and order checking/forecasts.


                        Obtaining the Rules and Source

  The complete documentation and the source code for the current 
release are available via ftp from

cs.utk.edu /pub/bampton/Blind

Rob Novak (rnovak@nyx.cs.du.edu) runs a mail server which has the 
rules and source.

Howard Bampton (bampton@cs.utk.edu) also can send the code if you don't 
have any other way to get it. Please specify either tar & compressed or 
zip'ed format.


                        Mailing lists

There is a mailing list for discussing the Blind variant of galaxy:
blindwork-list@gnu.ai.mit.edu

Send a message to blindwork-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu with one of the following
commands in the subject for more information:


        command                 what it does
        -------                 -------------
        subscribe               join the list
        unsubscribe             quit the list
        help                    gets a help message

