“Sokoban” is Japanese for “warehouse keeper”. The object of the game is to rearrange the money bags to their destination positions on each level. Winning the game involves solving all the levels.
The man responds to the mouse or keyboard. Keyboard movement uses the arrow keys, the numeric keypad, or i-j-k-l. K, comma, spacebar, 5, 2, and 0 all move the man down. Clicking with the mouse in a neighbor square has the same effect as pressing keys. Each move must be either vertical or horizontal; no diagonal moves are allowed.
Holding down shift while pressing one of the directional keys or clicking in the same row or column as the man will make the man move in that direction as far as he can. Holding down control will make the man move as far as he can without pushing any bags.
The man can move the money bags by pushing them in front of himself, one at a time. If you push a bag into a corner, it is stuck. When you mess up (which will happen more than you think) you can restart the level, or undo the last push. Undo is supported for every push on the current level. To get an idea of the general strategy, try out the level 1 demo (under the File menu). You can speed up the demo by holding down the option key, or stop it by pressing command-period.
If you click the mouse somewhere more than one square away, the man will move to where you clicked if there is a path. When you click somewhere you can’t go, JSokoban will play the “bonk” sound. You can drag the man around, too.
Pressing the diagonal keys (7, 9, 1, and 3 or U, O, M, and period) is equivalent to clicking on the analogous square immediately diagonal from the man.
Sokoban History
The original Sokoban won a Japanese computer game contest in the early 80’s. It became a commercial game on NEC computers. (Info from Takeshi Miyazaki.)
Much later, a version for Unix (Curses) materialized (author unknown). The 40 “Extra” levels are from xsokoban, by Andrew Myers (andru@lcs.mit.edu). The 50 “Default” levels are the same over all Sokoban versions. (Info from Ingemar Ragnemalm, Scott Lindhurst.)
There are two other Sokobans for the Mac, MacSokoban by Ingemar Ragnemalm (ingemar@isy.liu.se) and Sokoban by Scott Lindhurst (lindhurs@math.wisc.edu).
Requirements
JSokoban should run under System 6.0.7 or later in color, grayscale or B&W. System 7 is recommended for non-68000 machines. For best display of the graphics, use 8-bit color or better. Sound Manager 3.0 or System 7.5 or later is required for multichannel sound. My goal is to make JSokoban support as many setups as possible, so if it doesn’t work on your Mac, let me know!
JSokoban may be included on a commercial CD as long as I get a free copy. JSokoban may not be distributed commercially on floppies. (This means you, Educorp!)
You can always check my web page <http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~townsend/programs.html> for the latest version of JSokoban.
Acknowledgements
Several people have contributed to the development of this game. Charles Turner explained many Mac pascal concepts to me, including type-casting. Ryan Schmidt demanded B&W/System 6 support, so I had to oblige him. Both Ryan and Charles had good suggestions for new features or better ways of doing old things. (And bug reports too!)
Jason Best created the awesome graphics that replaced my clunky originals.
I would also like to thank my beta testers Ryan Schmidt, Jason Best, Ben Judson, Charles Turner, Alex Kac, John Fenton, Scott Lindhurst, and Florian Keller.
And thanks to everyone who sent me positive feedback about JSokoban 1.0. You have made this a truly rewarding experience!
JSokoban was written in THINK Pascal 4.0.2 on an LC 575/PPC 20/540.
Reactions to JSokoban 1.0
“It is absolutely fantastic. I am utterly addicted.”
— Marianne Foley (via Internet)
“Very nice job. I really like the way the pieces look…”
— D. Brooks Seymore (via eWorld)
“…JSokoban is great.”
— Nathan Rice (via America Online)
“I have passed hours now happily playing JSokoban, and have had to limit myself to one level per day to ensure I get anything else accomplished.”
— Steve Roszell (via Internet)
“I’m hooked! I love this game!”
— W Clark Buchanan (via America Online)
“Rating: 4 (out of 5)”
— Ted Stresen-Reuter, eWorld Review
How to Contact Me
Please send me any comments, suggestions, or (heaven forbid) bug reports. I can be reached at the following addresses:
Internet:
JasonTownsend@mail.utexas.edu
Snail mail:
Jason Townsend
6306 Sunview
San Antonio, TX 78238
JSokoban 1.0.1 changes:
• New “Reactions to JSokoban 1.0” section.
• Added balloon help for all menu commands.
• Fixed spelling in error messages.
• Removed blue color from first line of this doc. It caused problems with Tex-Edit and Tex-Edit Plus.
• Clarified distribution policy.
Future plans for JSokoban: (in approximate order of priority)
• Support for importing and exporting new multilevel text-only external files.
• PowerPC native code. (requires porting to CodeWarrior)
• Faster updates.
• Move/push counting with low move/push records. (like MacSokoban)
