Sokoban for the Macintosh, version 1.1.1, by Scott Lindhurst
Major changes in version 1.1:
(Thanks to Russell Owen for suggesting the interface improvements and for designing the new icons. His suggestions were a great help to me.)
• Better looking walls and graphics.
• Bigger undo buffer (now you can undo 500 moves)
• New movement options: click to move to a square, option-arrow to select a square to move to, drag with the mouse to move the player.
• Faster shortest path algorithm (the old one was brain dead).
• Supports drag-and-drop of screen files (text files).
• What is Sokoban? •
Sokoban is a puzzle game. The object is to push treasures into safe places. What makes it hard is that you can only push one at a time (they’re too heavy to push two at once), and there are no handholds (you can only push, not pull). So you have to make sure that you don’t get a treasure stuck in a corner, or that you don’t get two of them stuck against each other. It will usually take some thought (maybe quite a bit) to figure out how to solve a level. But all 85 levels are solvable. And you can make your own levels when you get tired of the ones included.
• How do I play? •
To start playing, select New Player… from the Players menu, and make an entry for yourself. Sokoban will keep track of which levels you have solved in the “Sokoban Scores” file in the Preferences folder (under system 7), or in your System Folder (under previous systems).
The first level looks like this (of course, it’s in color on color monitors):
The treasures are the round things lying all over the place, and your job is to push them to the shaded squares. There are several ways to move. The easiest way is probably to use the arrow keys to move up, down, left, or right. Shift-arrowkey will move you as far as possible in that direction, including pushing treasures. Control-arrowkey (if you have a control key) will move you as far as possible without pushing.
Instead of using the arrow keys, you can also use the traditional “vi keys” h, j, k, l to move left, down, up, right respectively (those are the keys used by the Unix version). Or use w, a, s, d or 2, 4, 6, 8. Of course, shift and control work with all of these.
You can also use the mouse to move. The cursor indicates which way you’ll move if you press the button (and you can drag the man around, too). If you see a cross hair cursor, then clicking will move you to where you clicked by the shortest possible route. Or if you don’t want to use the mouse to move long distances, hold down the option key. Then move the marquee around (with your favorite movement keys); when you let go of the option key, the player will zip to the square you selected (if there’s a clear path).
There are also several menu items that will help you. From the File menu, you can restart the level if you get stuck. You can also make a temporary save before you mess up, and revert to it when you get stuck later. Or if you’re really stuck, you can move on and try another level, then come back later and work on the unsolved levels.
The Edit menu will let you undo (and then redo) up to 500 of your last moves. So a couple of extra key presses in the heat of playing doesn’t mean having to start the level over.
If you want to design your own levels, it’s easy. Just create a text file in your favorite word processor (use a monospaced font like Monaco). Then use the Play Screen From File… command in the File menu to try it out. If you are using system 7, you can also drag the text file to Sokoban’s icon. For example, this is a file for level 1, along with an explanation of the symbols to use (the actual file is also included in the archive for your information):
There is a limit of 31 columns and 17 rows (that’s 11 columns and 1 row more than any of the included levels use). Additional rows and columns will be ignored. If you make your own screens, send them to me and I’ll include them in the next release of the program.
• History •
Sokoban first came out around 1982 or 1984 as a commercial game for NEC computers, and won a computer game contest in Japan. “Sokoban” is Japanese for “warehouse keeper”, and the object was to push corrugated cardboard boxes around. (Thanks to Takeshi Miyazaki for this information).
Several years ago, someone wrote versions of Sokoban for MS-DOS and Unix machines. The version I first played only had levels 1–50. Then Joseph L. Traub (jt1o@andrew.cmu.edu) collected another 35 levels and included them with his version for XWindows. Those are levels 51 to 85.
• Freeware • (CommentWare? BugWare?)
Sokoban is Freeware. However, I would like to know if you like it. Send me comments, criticisms, features you would like, and bug reports. If you’re the first to report a given bug or if you make good suggestions, I’ll thank you in the about box of the next version of Sokoban.
You may distribute Sokoban unmodified as much as you want, as long as this documentation file is included. Sokoban is copyright by me, Scott Lindhurst, so if you try to claim it as your own, I’ll get mad. Source code is available if you ask nicely.
• About the Author •
I’m a grad student in mathematics. Programming has been a hobby of mine since my parents got an Apple ][+ almost 10 years ago. When I got my Mac Plus, I wanted to learn all about it. Eventually (after about 4 years and some minor projects), I decided to implement Sokoban and finally learn about programming with the Macintosh toolbox. And it worked. So if you want to hire someone working his way up the Mac learning curve (programming in Think Pascal, including some Object Pascal; I also like LISP), I’m available at least part time while I’m in school. Drop me a line.
Sokoban was written in Think Pascal 3.0, on a Mac Plus running System 6, then System 7. It has been tested on many Macintosh models, color and no color, System 6 and 7. It will even work under System 4.1, the oldest one I have.
