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============================================
Star Traders: A Game of Interstellar Trading
============================================

Welcome to Star Traders!  This is a simple game of interstellar trading,
where the objective is to create companies, buy and sell shares, borrow
and repay money, in order to become the wealthiest player (the winner).


Installation
============

Full instructions for installing Star Traders are contained in the file
`INSTALL`.  Please note that that file does *not* contain generic GNU
Autoconf instructions!  For the impatient, the short version is::

    ./configure
    make
    make install

The final command needs to be run as the system administrator (root), of
course.


How to Play
===========

Star Traders comes with quite extensive in-built instructions on how to
play the game.  Start by running ``trader`` from the command line.  You
will be prompted for the number of players; from one to eight people can
play (although, in this version, they will all have to share the one
keyboard and screen!).  After entering the names of the players, you will
have the opportunity to read instructions on how to play the game.  Do
so—and good luck in the game!

The manual page for Star Traders contains more information on command
line options, as well as some suggestions for running a retro-computing
green-screen nostalgia-tour version of the game…  Try running the
following, for example (all on one line)::

    xterm -g 80x24 -fa Mono -fs 18 -bg '#181818' -fg '#2CAB00' -bc +sb \
        +bdc +fbx -xrm 'XTerm*colorBD: #41FF00' -e trader --no-colour &

To read the manual page, type ``man trader`` from the command line.


Feedback
========

Your comments, suggestions, corrections and enhancements are always
warmly welcomed!  Please send these to:

    :Postal:  | John Zaitseff,
              | The ZAP Group Australia,
              | Unit 6, 116 Woodburn Road,
              | Berala, NSW, 2141,
              | Australia
    :Email:   | J.Zaitseff@zap.org.au
    :Web:     | https://www.zap.org.au/projects/trader/
    :FTP:     | https://ftp.zap.org.au/pub/trader/
    :Git:     | https://git.zap.org.au/git/trader.git


Copyright
=========

**Copyright © 1990–2026, John Zaitseff.**

Star Traders is free software that is distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of that License as published by the Free Software
Foundation, either version 3 or (at your option) any later version.

This game is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License in
the file `COPYING` for more details.
