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 implementation  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