REVERSI(6) Games Manual REVERSI(6)NAME
reversi - a game of dramatic reversals
SYNOPSIS
/usr/games/reversi [ [ -r ] file ]
DESCRIPTION
Reversi (also known as `friends', `Chinese friends' and `Othello') is played on an 8x8 board using two-sided tokens. Each player takes his
turn by placing a token with his side up in an empty square. During the first four turns, players may only place tokens in the four cen-
tral squares of the board. Subsequently, with each turn, a player must capture one or more of his opponent's tokens. He does this by
placing one of his tokens such that it and another of his tokens embrace a solid line of his opponent's horizontally, vertically or diago-
nally. Captured tokens are flipped over and thus can be re-captured. If a player cannot outflank his opponent he forfeits his turn. The
play continues until the board is filled or until no more outflanking is possible.
In this game, your tokens are asterisks and the machine's are at-signs. You move by typing in the row and column at which you want to
place your token as two digits (1-8), optionally separated by blanks or tabs. You can also type
c to continue the game after hitting break (this is only necessary if you interrupt the machine while it is deliberating).
g n to start reversi playing against itself for the next n moves (or until the break key is hit).
n to stop printing the board after each move.
o to start it up again.
p to print the board regardless.
q to quit (without dishonor).
s to print the score.
Reversi also recognizes several commands which are valid only at the start of the game, before any moves have been made. They are
f to let the machine go first.
h n to ask for a handicap of from one to four corner squares. If you're good, you can give the machine a handicap by typing a negative
number.
l n to set the amount of lookahead used by the machine in searching for moves. Zero means none at all. Four is the default. Greater
than six means you may fall asleep waiting for the machine to move.
t n to tell reversi that you will only need n seconds to consider each move. If you fail to respond in the alloted time, you forfeit
your turn.
If reversi is given a file name as an argument, it will checkpoint the game, move by move, by dumping the board onto file. The -r option
will cause reversi to restart the game from file and continue logging.
REVERSI(6)
Check Out this Related Man Page
xchain(6) Games Manual xchain(6)NAME
xchain - Chain Reaction, Strategy game for 2-4 players
SYNOPSIS
xchain [-v] [--version] [-h] [--help] [path to wish]
DESCRIPTION
Rules of the game
Chain Reaction is played on an 8 by 8 board. Players take turns to move. On each move, the player may select an empty square, or one they
already own. Squares belonging to other players may not be chosen. If the square was unowned, it becomes the property of the player, and
is given a value of 1. If the square was owned by the player, the value is incremented.
If the value of a square ever exceeds the maximum permitted of that square, it explodes. Squares in the corner have a maximum of 1, squares
touching an edge, but not on a corner have a maximum of 2, and squares in the interior have a maximum of 3.
When a square explodes, it becomes unowned, and it's value is reset to 0. The 4 squares touching it become owned by the owner of the
exploding square, and their values are incremented. If any of these are above their maximum, they explode, giving rise to the chain reac-
tion.
If, at the end of a move, any of the players have no squares, they are dead, and get no more turns. When there is only one person left,
they are the winner.
Game options
On loading the game, a 2 player game with a blank board is loaded. To change this, edit the settings to suit, and click on "New Game".
Clicking on this in the middle of a game will abandon it, and start a new one.
To select the number of players, click on the numbered radio buttons. To the right of these are entry boxes to fill in player names, if
desired. The background to these shows the colour of the players' squares. Names and colours are only updated when "New Game" is clicked
on. To the right of these, are counters of the number of squares belonging to each player.
If a shorter game is desired, squares can be set for the players before the game starts. This can be up to 4 rows and columns, or a random
placement. For 2 players, up to 32 squares each may be chosen. For 3 players, up to 21 each, and for 4 players, up to 16 each.
Whoever goes first has quite an advantage. To offset this, a random first person can be chosen. On clicking "New game", the status bar
below the board shows who this will be.
OPTIONS -h, --help
Show summary of options.
-v, --version
Show version of program.
path to wish
Chain Reaction requires the wish tcl/tk interpreter. By default it uses /usr/bin/wish (The default for Debian GNU/Linux, and most
other Unix-like systems). Use this option to force a different location.
FILES
/usr/bin/wish
Default location of wish tcl/tk interpreter.
BUGS
Not guaranteed to be free of potential buffer overflows. Do not use setuid, or with greater privilege than the players using it.
WISH LIST
Network support.
A way to save game settings - either environment variables, or a settings file.
HISTORY
First seen many years ago on the (as it was then) Acorn Archimedes. Original author unknown. Written for Unix by Alistair Cunningham
<ac212@cam.ac.uk>
http://thor.cam.ac.uk/~ac212/xchain/
xchain(6)