Morpion is a simple solitaire game (although, as with most solitaire games it has a habbit of becoming a group sport :-). I saw this on a friends Newton (the program there written by Henri Lamiraux), and I wrote a Mac version to avoid watching some boring videos.
• Using Anarchie
Come on, you don’t exactly need a PhD to figure it out. Choose New Game, click randomly. To make life even easier, you can have the computer show you all the moves, and even make random moves for you.
Henri says:
“Morpion is a simple solitaire game I used to play on paper when I was a kid.
Over the years I have been programming it on various platforms I have been in
contact with. This is usually the first application I write to familiarize
myself with a new system or language.
The goal of Morpion is to draw as many line segments as possible. A segment can
be drawn by using five existing dots or by adding a fifth dot to four existing
dots. In the latest case, the position of the missing dot doesn’t matter. It
can be at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of the segment.”
Henri says with some practice you should be able to go above 100 and that he could go to around 200. The computer can get a score around 60. My best so far is 34 (I gave up, its a solitaire game, who can be bothered playing it when Bolo is around?). A friend wrote a computer player on the Amiga, and it managed 80 something. None of my friends have managed to crack 100.
• Limitations
Morpion should work with pretty much any Mac, System 6 or 7, and you don’t even need MacTCP!
• Small Print
This program is totally free. Don’t send me any cash for it, you can send a postcard if you really want to, but its not necessary.
You MAY NOT DISTRIBUTE Morpion on any disk costing more than $5 without my explicit permission.
• Warranty
This program should do what I’ve described in this document. If it doesn’t, you can simply stop using it, and I’ll refund your money. Oh, you’re not paying me for it are you? Well, what doy ou expect then?
• Fine Print
Peter Lewis hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Peter Lewis will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if Peter Lewis or an agent of his has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Peter Lewis be liable for any damages, regardless of the form of the claim. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software.
• How It Works
I’ll probably release the source code and then you can figure it out for yourself.
• Version History
Todo: Avoid adding any more silly features to this program.
1.0.0
• Acknowledgements
Thanks to Henri Lamiraux for the game design and allowing me to plagerise it.
Thanks to Jager for suggestions and the Show Moves code (see, he was bored with the videos too!).
FetchNews 1.0.0b - Fetch News for use with NewsWatcher’s demo mode.
MacTCP Watcher 1.1.0 - Display MacTCP’s state information.
Bolo Finder 1.0.2 - Display the results from Mike Ellis' Bolo Tracker.
Bolo RandomMap 1.1.0 - Generate a random map for Bolo.
Morpion 1.0.0 - A simple solitaire game.
French versions of some of my programs may be available from ftp.sri.ucl.ac.be:/pub.
You can sometimes get the latest development versions from redback.cs.uwa.edu.au:/others/peterlewis, but please use the major archives for released version if at all possible. Redback is a long long way from most people, and using it wastes bandwidth on the Australian-US satelite link which is overly congested already. So use the versions posted to the archives (like sumex-aim.stanford.edu or mac.archive.umich.edu), and only use the development versions if you have some specific problem - in which case you should tell me, especially since the development versions on redback are often not the latest versions I have)
Send postcards, comments, bug reports, wishes, and payments to:
