Welcome to 1812!

===========================
  ABOUT
===========================

1812 was written in seven days, as part of the Seven Day 
Roguelike Challenge.

    The year is 1812 and the world is ablaze.  The fate of a continent
    is to be determined: a "mere matter of marching" will instead prove
    to dent the dreams of a Manifest Destiny.

    That is all half a world away, however.  Europe doesn't want to be
    left out so has its own skirmish.  The Grand Armee is marching
    into your land.  Napoleon wants a head-on confrontation, so naturally
    your general has been avoiding it.  But the aristocracy is fed up
    with no brilliant successes, so you've been assigned a division to
    provide a noble victory.

    One of the Grand Armee's divisions has been located by your scouts
    nearby.  It is time to destroy the illusion that the Little
    Corporal cannot be defeated!

===========================
  HOW TO START
===========================

If you are a windows user, run it from windows/1812.exe.

If you are a linux user, run it from linux/1812.sh.
You may need to install SDL.

If you are a source diver, go into the src directory.
Look for BUILD.TXT files to try and guide you, there is one under
each of the porting subdirectories.

===========================
  HOW TO PLAY
===========================

You are commanding a division of musketmen, a truly awesome amount
of manpower and firepower.  But in this theater the French
have their own division!  No doubt superior strategy will
allow you to make short work of them.

You are embedded in the 0th Regiment, so all your orders need
to come from there, and all updates regarding the battlefield
will be sent there.  You can use your telescope, however, to
view anywhere.  But do not be surprised if units are not at
their last reported coordinates!

===========================
  CUSTOMIZING 
===========================

If you don't like the default font, you can change it!

Go to the windows directory and replace terminal.png with another font
compatible with The Doryen Library.

If you have a slow machine, you may want to turn off bullet display.
But if you have a slow machine you may be sad regardless.

===========================
  ARTISTIC MESSAGE
===========================

The War of 1812, being such a pivotal moment in the curbing of the
American Manifest Destiny, is thus well studied and known.  I thought
I had a good idea of the state of the world at that time as it was
commonly covered in school history classes.  I then by chance read
a little known work of historical fiction.  This rather lengthy tome
consists of two threads of narrative.  One involves forgettable human
relationships.  But the other involves the nature of warfare.  It
seems at the same time the War of 1812 was raging across North America,
there was an internecine conflict active in Europe!

The description of these conflicts captivated me.  The strong central
message was the futility of top down command.  I've seen this commonly
play out in the corporate world: the higher you are in the chain, the
less information you have, so the less able you are to make good decisions.
But the brutal painting of it by this author (Leo Tolstoy) was impressive.
Indeed, if you can track down a copy of the work, I'd recommend it.
The title is a generic sounding "War and Peace" so I hope it isn't too
hard to google.

One idea for a roguelike I've had kicking around was to have you control
a massive army from the viewpoint of the general.  This means that you
stare at the map in your command tent as messengers update reported
troop movements and positions.  All reports and orders have to be carried
by foot, so if messengers are intercepted, so is your control!  The problem
I always faced was how to engage in any meaningful strategy at that
level of remove.  Which brings us to Tolstoy's book: the failure isn't
in my failure to design a game; it is intrinsic to the problem.

Thus we have 1812.  Two divisions of soldiers face each other cross
a battle field 10km on each direction, starting around 3km apart.  They
know the initial layout of the opposing forces.  But not how they will
move after that.  Can you make a coherent strategy in this environment?

Simulation purists should never toggle the overmap and work entirely with
the view of the map.  But I think the telescope (perhaps lofted on a
hot air balloon not to be too anachronistic?) lets one viscerally feel
the effect of your orders arriving too late to have any real effect
on the tide of battle.

And if you read this far, I'll point out that [z] will let you spy on
the command tent of the foe so you can see their information and
orders are also subject to the fog of war!

Obligatory Poe's Law: Tone of historical ignorance is for humour.

===========================
  CREDITS
===========================

This is a Seven Day Roguelike.  It was written in a 168 hour time
frame.  Hopefully it doesn't feel like that was the case, however.

1812 is written by Jeff Lait and uses The Doryen Library
for graphical output.  

You can contact Jeff Lait at: jmlait [snail] gmail [dot] com.

===========================
  FINAL IMPORTANT NOTE
===========================

Have fun!
