DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

XAtaxx(6)                   DragonFly Games Manual                   XAtaxx(6)

NAME
       XAtaxx - a strategy game

SYNOPIS
       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)

DESCRIPTION
       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.

STARTING
       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.

PLAYING
       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.

QUITTING
       Hitting 'q' while either the end of a game, the title screen, or a demo
       is showing will exit the game.

WARNINGS
       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.

RECENT CHANGES
       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.

BUGS
       Still could be. Mail to jz1j@andrew.cmu.edu

AUTHORS
       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 THANKS
       Bug Tracing:
       Jay Schmidgall <shmdgljd@rchvmw3.vnet.ibm.com>

                                 9 April 1991                        XAtaxx(6)