# kalah manpage

## NAME

         kalah - oriental board game

## SYNOPSIS

         kalah  [-s portnumber] [-c hostname -p port]

## DESCRIPTION

         kalah is an ancient board game in which the players have  to
         gain  beans  or  other  stuff in their master- (or winning-)
         cups. The other six cups are the playing cups. Please  check
         out Mattias' kalah page for further information on the game.

         With this imlientation of kalah you cannot play against the
         computer.   However, it  is  planned  to implement this as a
         playing mode. Currently you can play against  yourself  (for
         examining  a efficent winning strategy ;-} ) or you can play
         against a other person over the network.

         To play in network mode one player has  to  start  kalah  in
         server mode,  the  other  in  client mode. As this is a two
         players game in  original,  only  two  players  can  connect
         together over the network to play this game.

         As we are "computer  scientists"  the  amount  of  beans  is
         displayed  simply  as numbers. Maybe there is a version with
         animated rolling  beans  in  the  future  ;-}.   The  XFORMS
         library was used to implient Kalah.

## RULES

         The rules of the game haven't been written down by Matthias.

## OPTIONS

         -s portnumber
              starts the game  in  network  mode  as  a  server  that
              listens  on port portnumber. In network mode your coun-
              terpart is a human player  sitting  on  a  riote  host
              instead  ot  the computer. The execution of the program
              is freezed until a client player connects successfully.
              The  client  player  will get the first move. The lower
              cups and the kalah  to  the  right  are  always  yours,
              regardless of playing in client or server mode.

         -c hostname
              starts the game in network mode as  a  client.  Try  to
              connect  to  a  already established kalah server on the
              riote host hostname. This works only if you give  also
              the -p option.

         -p port
              specify the portnumber to connect to a kalah server  in
              network mode. You must have given the -c option before.

## ENVIRONMENT

         No environment variables are used

## SEE ALSO

         socket(2), forms(3X)

## BUGS

         No spaces are allowed between the flag and the corresponding
         argument. Assume that the server hosname is 'grobi' and the
         client hostname is 'kermit'. Example:
         The player on 'grobi' types at first:

    	kalah -s34567

         then the other player on 'kermit' types:

    	kalah -cgrobi -p34567

         The -c flag must be set before the -p flag.

## AUTHOR

         Thomas   Pantzer,   pantec@aix520.informatik.uni-leipzig.de, 1998
         Matthias  Neumeister,  neumeist@aix520.informatik.uni-leipzig.de, 1998