Index
`Five in a Row'  Help Index

How to Play
Overview
Rules of the Game
Playing the Game
Game Options


Overview

`Five in a Row' (also called Gomoku) is a classic `classroom' game where two players alternate on entering `noughts and crosses' on a piece of paper. The first who manages to position five symbol in line wins.

This computerized version of the game enables loners to play against the program, friends to play against each other, and lazy ones to watch the computer play both parts. It was first of all written to let me know a bit about computer game playing, and is thus not perfect. The levels of the program range from the lightning fast Stupid mode (which is really stupid) to the all too slow Experienced. None of the levels are unbeatable.


Rules of the Game

The winner is the player who first manages to line up five pieces in a row, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

Any free square can be occupied.

Players alternate taking turns until either one player wins, or no free squares remain. If neither player wins, the game is a draw.

In this implementation, player one use red crosses, while player two use blue circles.


Playing the Game

Since both players can be either a human or the computer, this game has four different player combinations. To choose player types, call up Options on the Game menu.

If you wish to play against the computer, make one of the players Human and the other Computer. Player One always starts. Note that the contents of the Level box applies to Computer players only.

To start the game, choose New on the Game menu. If a game is already running, it will be aborted.

During the computer's moves, the menu will contain a Stop-field only. This can be used to abort a lengthy move. The computer chooses the best move found until then, not very often a good one. If the computer plays both sides, Stop will fully abort the game.

If either player wins, the program will flash the winning line. A new game can be started by choosing New on the Game menu.


Game Options

How the game is played can be changed at any time by choosing Options on the Game menu. This pops up an Options dialog box which contains the following fields:

Player One and Player Two
These fields are used to enter player types, and in case a player is Computer, the level of playing. The default level is Beginner. Levels before that, are seldom usable.

Flash last move
When checked, this will cause the last move by any player to be flashed. With a large number of pieces on the board, it might be hard to spot where the last move was.

Beep when ready
Make the computer sound the beeper when a move is calculated.

All options are saved in a file called FIVEROW.INI, together with the position and size of the window. This file is read in whenever the program is started.