Table of Contents
XAtaxx - a strategy game
xataxx [ -l number ] [ -j ] [ -n ] [ -p
] [ -d player-two-display ]
- -l:
- Specifies the number of moves the robot will
look ahead. Accepted values are 0 through 9. A good level is two or three.
Searching too far ahead slows the game horrendously.
- -j:
- Zots only the piece
moved.
- -n:
- Turns off zotting completely.
- -d:
- Allows play against a second person
instead of the computer. A player 2 display must be specified and player
2 must be xhosted to your machine. Starting xataxx without a player 2 display
automatically calls the robot player. On a typical Andrew machine his display
name must be entered as machine-name:0. Thus, if Jello Biafra was logged
into armstrong.res.andrew.cmu.edu, and his friend Eeyore was on circe.weh.andrew.cmu.edu,
Eeyore should type 'xhost armstrong.res', and Jello should type 'xataxx circe.weh:0'.
- -p:
- Make it perfect. (obscure Wizard of Time reference)
XAtaxx
is a strategy game based on Ataxx, a popular arcade video game. It is a
game of position and movement. The object is to have the most pieces of
your color on the board at the end of the game.
You must be running
the X Windowing system to run XAtaxx. When you start up XAtaxx, you should
see a title screen. Clicking on the title screen causes it to change to
the game board. The board you see should be square, with two black pieces
in diagonal corners, two white pieces in diagonal corners, and variously
placed obstacles. At the bottom of the window should be a listing of the
number of pieces, or globs, each player has.
The game has two types
of movement. There is a move, and a jump. To move a glob, click on a glob
of your color and click on an adjacent empty square. Your piece will split
off a new glob to occupy that square. To jump , click on a piece, and click
on an empty space that is separated from the source glob by one other space.
Your piece will jump to the new spot, over whatever obstacles, friendly
pieces, or enemy pieces are in the way. You may not move or jump onto an
obstacle or another glob. When you land next to a glob or many globs of
the opponents color, your glob will split off pieces and take over those
adjacent globs. If there are no possible movements for a player, he forefeits
his turn. The winner of the game is the person who has the most globs on
the screen when no more movements can be made. The winner and scores will
be displayed at the bottom of the window. Clicking in the window will reset
the board, and waiting will display the title screen. Waiting even longer
will cause the game to go into demo mode, with two robot players playing
each other. Clicking on the demo game will bring back the title screen.
Hitting 'q' while either the end of a game, the title screen, or
a demo is showing will exit the game.
The game currently buffers
clicks and key presses. Clicking too many times can put you into unfortunate
positions or reset the board to start before you have a chance to see the
scores.
The zotting options have been added. The bug which
caused the game to lock up has been fixed (it now really understands whose
turn it is, and whether a move is impossible for a player) Goofy color
errors on monochrome suns have been fixed Various bogosities in the bitmap
code have been wiped from the face of the earth
A smarter robot, and its options have been added.
Still could be. Mail
to jz1j@andrew.cmu.edu
Code by:
Steven Gifford <sg10+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Jim Zelenka <jz1j+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Andrew Plotkin <ap1i+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Bitmaps by:
Benjamin Peal <bp14+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Elliott C. Evans <ee0r+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Special ThanksBug Tracing:
Jay Schmidgall <shmdgljd@rchvmw3.vnet.ibm.com>