KAbalone
The KDE version of Abalone
Contents
Abalone is a simple board strategy game. It's played by two players.
There are red and yellow types of pieces for the different players.
Beginning from a start position where each player has 14 pieces,
moves are drawn till one player has pushed 6 pieces of his opponent out
of the board.
1. Red always moves first.
2. Two types of moves are allowed:
- Normal
One, two or three pieces of yours in a row can be moved be one in the 6
directions. Side moves are allowed too.
Press a mouse button on the first
of the pieces you want to move. The piece will be highlighted. Now drag the
mouse in the wished direction. If the move is valid, the cursor will change
to a arrow in that direction and all the pieces of the move are highlighted.
If that's the move you want to draw release the mouse button.
Side moves are handled another way: For two adjacent pieces click between
them and drag; for three pieces press the middle mouse button on the middle
piece - if a side move is allowed for the pieces they all are highlighted.
Otherwise only the middle one is highlighted and you draw a normal move.
- Pushing
You can push a maximum of two pieces of the opponent in front of your own
pieces as long as the number of the drawn pieces of yours is greater than
that of the opponent pieces. That means with three own pieces you can
push one or two of the opponent and with two pieces one.
Special pushing moves are those which push a piece of the opponent out of
the board. If you have drawn 6 of those moves you have won.
If you still don't know what's all about, look at a game where the computer
plays both sides. After executing KAbalone, select Options/Computer plays/Both
and start a new game.
Drawing moves should be obvious (see remarks in Rules above).
The buttons in the toolbar have the same meaning as entries in the Files
menu.
The Files menu:
- New Game
Start a new game, even in a running game.
- Save position
You can save the actual position and retrieve it later with Restore position.
Positions are saved even after quitting the program.
- Restore position
If there is a previously saved position, this position is restored.
- Stop search
When the computer is thinking, his depth search is interrupted and he draws
the best move he has found so far.
- Take back
Take back your move. Two (!) moves are undone: the opponents move and your
last move. So it's your turn again. About 100 moves are remembered; so don't
hesitate to take back moves till you are at the beginning of the game
(faster is a F2 key press).
- Hint
A hint for your next move is shown. Only possible if you play at level
normal or above, the move number is 2 or greater and you don't have undone
your move.
The Options menu:
- Level
The computer can play at four different levels. This influences the number
of moves he's searching in advance to calculate the best move. You can
interrupt the search by pressing the S key.
- Computer plays
You can make the computer play Red, Yellow or both sides. Choose between
these options before starting a new game. Of course it works in a game too
if you want to change side.
- Moving slow
A move drawn by the computer normally (when this option is checked) is shown
by blinking and highlighting of the pieces used in this move. Uncheck this
option if you don't want to wait for this (pseudo) animation: Then only a
quick highlighting is done.
- Spy
If option Spion is checked, that means: If it's your turn, you can see the
computer's rating of the move you want to play in the status bar. If it's the
computer's turn you can see (in status bar and hightlighted pieces) the
move he actually thinks is the best to play. Of course this changes along his
search.
- Save
Save options in application config file. Options are restored at each start
of the program.
The rest should be obvious.
"kabalone" is part of the KDE (Kool Desktop
Environment) project. It was written in September 1997 by
Josef Weidendorfer.
Don't hesitate to contact me if you find bugs or if you have
questions/suggestions on the implementation (... my
homepage).
The program is
published under the GNU GPL.
The original program was developed in 1993 for DOS and pure Xlib. For KDE
there was a major rewrite.
Notice: The game idea is not by me. It's a real board game vendored by a
German game producing firm (I think).
Josef Weidendorfer, 9/97