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//=                         Help file for Go-Bang                         =//
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Principle of the game
---------------------
 Gobang is a board game for two players and in the case of the RiscOS
electronic version, players may be human or computerized. The aim of the game
is to align five balls of your color horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
Each opponent plays in turn, until the board's full or one of the players
reaches his goal (i.e. aligns 5 of his balls). Please note, though, that
it's different from the classical Connect4 in that no gravity interferes
because the board's an upside view.

RiscOS2 users
-------------
Definitely Yes ! As time goes by and computer technology evolves, the older
machines are rapidly left behind because no one wants to make efforts and
adapt their programs for those particular hardware and/or OS version. While
this is perfectly understandable when a major feature is lacking (filters for
example), this behaviour tend to generalize for no special reason (FreeCell
is an example -  I thank Justin Fletcher for his patch, it now works
wonderfully on my A5000 - and take most programs using the Toolbox modules).

I'm pleased with my A5000 and its longevity, and I would like this to stay
this way for some time. I suppose RO2 users will be pleased too that someone
still cares about them.

Special recommendations
-----------------------
 - The game shouldn't be run from a non writable media such as a CD-ROM, as
it will not be able to save the high-scores. 
 - If you want the game to start anew the high scores, simply delete the
GoBangScr file in the !GoBang directory.
 
Hints
-----
 - GoBang is both an attack and defense game. Carefully build your strategies
but don't forget to take a look at what does your opponent !
 - If you've got 4 balls in a row and there is space at both ends, you'll win
most of the time (i.e. if your opponent doesn't win one turn before).

Credits
-------
 * Mark Overmars for the Atari ST version that pushed me to make an
adaptation for the Arc. He's done a very good and very fast computer player.
The difficulty is also selectable up to level 6, which is an option still
lacking with my program.
  
 * Frdric Elisei for his old GoBang program (named !Align) running on the
Arc. Unfortunately for me, it was programmed in such a way that you're not
willing too much to understand it in depth and you're just happy that it runs
at all! He also told me how he programmed his evaluation function, which was
far more interesting ... Actually, I had already found a similar technique,
but his was faster.

 * A *HUGE* thank you to J.Horsnell for programming THE answer to FreeCell
and all such games on Windows: !SPatience. It's a fantastic patience game
that has nice options, an infinite UNDO/REDO, a language for defining your
own patience games, a load/save option and 7 predefined games ! SPatience is
so much outstanding that my girlfriend and my sister have played it all
summer ! If you don't know it already, take a WWW browser and get it
somewhere, I think it's freeware !

 * Special mention also go to Mike Williams for the numerous strategy games
(!Cluster, !Explode, etc ...) and Darren Salt for making them run in the
desktop ! Thanks mates, I was desperately searching for this kind of games on
the arc !

Known bugs
----------
 - You still can't select the computer AI level
 - The program does some weird crash during some shutdowns (^F12). I don't
know what's wrong (if you can help here)

What's left to do?
------------------
 - Correct the Wimp_Poll mask.
 - Halve the computation by removing the opponent tests.
 - Speed-up the search process for the cyber-player (ARM coding ?)
 - Perhaps add the possibility to save/load games (bof-bof).
 - The cyber-player shouldn't always play the first square that most scores,
   but instead, should play a random square between all squares equal to that
   maximum.

Jrme Mathevet
8, rue Maurice Genevoix
38150 ROUSSILLON
FRANCE
e-mail: speedsterh@yahoo.com (valid until ????)