® See the About Box for the legal stuff about the registered trademark Abalone.
Description
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Abalone® is a very nice commercially available stratetic board game for two or three players. If you don't know the game, read the explanation of the rules in the About box.
Each of the two or three Abalone players can be humans (local or remote on the network) or Macs, so you can use the program
- in 'demo mode' (all Mac players),
- to play against the Mac (one Mac player and one human player [you]),
- to play against others, either using one Mac or using two or three networked Macs.
Currently, four different but similar strategies can be chosen for a Mac player, and each strategy can be played at several different levels.
More strategies may be implemented in the future; good ideas for this are welcome. If your idea sounds promising and is easy to implement, I probably will do so some day.
Requirements
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THIS PROGRAM REQUIRES SYSTEM 7.
It definately won't run under earlier system software versions.
I'm sorry if this requirement makes the game unuseable for you.
The program's memory requirements are modest. The 1.0 version seemed to run fine in 128K on a IIsi. The current version does require a bit more memory, but I did not spend much time testing finding out exactly how much. The advised 300K is on the safe side; expiriment yourself if you find it too much.
Compatibility
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Abalone is System 7-dependant, 32-bit compatible and Apple-Event aware.
As of version 1.3, Abalone runs in native mode on a Power Macintosh.
Abalone does not feature balloon help.
This program should be fully useable on all System-7 capable Macintosh models,
with the following limitations:
Compact Mac users will find no use for the bigger of the two possible board sizes.
The optional 3D colorizing is always enables, but looks lousy using less than 4 bits/pixel.
Abalone 1.3 has been tested on the following Macintoshes:
- a IIsi with an 8-bit 12'' monochrome screen,
- a Power Macintosh 7100/66 with a 16-bit 14'' color screen
(not extensive enough yet, but it seems to work).
Earlier versions have been tested on the following Macintoshes as well:
- a Plus,
- a SE/30.
- a IIfx with an 1-bit 12'' monochrome screen and
- a Centris 610 with an 8-bit 13'' color screen,
- a Centris 650 with a 16-bit 13'' color screen.
Please let me know if you think the current version of Abalone is incompatible with your Macintosh.
General
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When you quit this game, your settings are automatically saved in a Preferences file (in the Preferences Folder inside the System Folder, where they belong).
If you decide to trash this program, remember to remove the Abalone Preferences file as well; this will save you yet another 1K of disk space.
Bug reports, questions, postcards, comments, good ideas etc. can be sent at my home address, or at my mail address. You will find these addresses in the About box.
I hope you'll enjoy playing this game,
Peter Tax
Version History:
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1.3
Added Power PC native code.
1.2 ß 2
Added 'greedy' board evaluation function, used in a new strategy.
Added 'status icons' in Settings menu.
1.2 ß 1
Implemented network play.
Recoded Terminator III strategy in assembly.
Rewrote the About stuff, adding explanation of the rules.
Colorized board lines.
Fixed a memory leak causing a loss of approx. 1k of memory each time a color was changed.
Fixed a bug in reading game files sometimes making it impossible to read an (otherwise valid) game file.
1.1
Implemented the 3D colorizing option.
Improved the board appearance, also making the board slightly larger on both sizes.
Enabled the other accidentaly disabled menu items in the 1.1 ß1 version (oops).
Fixed a bug causing wrong colors in window updates after the color settings had been changed.
1.1 ß1
Replaced the old strategies by better ones.
Added alfa-beta pruning.
Added University of Waterloo contest notation.
Added University of Waterloo contest KO rule (replaces the randomness in 1.0 final)
Some performance optimization.
Undo is now multi-level.
1.0 final
General code cleanup and performance optimization, making it about twice as fast (performance at the higher level is now acceptable on a Mac Plus).
Added sound play option.
Added some randomness in selection of move for computer players (making them a little bit less predictable, and preventing endless repetitions in demo games).
Added UserItems counting and showing the balls already pushed off the board.
Improved screen updating.
1.0 ß3
Fixed a bug that made the computer make another move after you had won.
Some minor performance improvements in the computer players.
Added 'How to play' and 'Strategies' help windows and mail address to About.
Added a third strategy.
Added Jack Repenning's Finder color icons (thanks!), and modified the black&white icon to match these.
1.0 ß2
Fixed a bug that crashed the program on machines without Color Quickdraw.
