README for Games::Alak

                         Games::Alak

[Partially excerpted from the POD.]

NAME
    Games::Alak -- simple game-tree implementation of a gomoku-like game


DESCRIPTION
    This module implements a simple game-tree system for the
    computer to play against the user in a game of Alak.  You
    can just play the game for fun; or you can use this module
    as a starting point for understanding game trees (and
    implementing smarter strategy -- the module's current logic
    is fairly simple-minded), particularly after reading my Perl
    Journal #18 article on trees, which discusses this module's
    implementation of game trees as an example of general tree-
    shaped data structures.

RULES
    Alak was invented by the mathematician A. K.  Dewdney, and
    described in his 1984 book Planiverse. The rules of Alak are
    simple -- at least as I've (mis?)understood them and
    implemented them here:

    * Alak is a two-player game played on a one-dimensional
    board with eleven slots on it.  Each slot can hold at most
    one piece at a time.  There's two kinds of pieces, which I
    represent here as "x" and "o" -- x's belong to one player
    (called X -- that's the computer), o's to the other (called
    O -- that's you).

    * The initial configuration of the board is:

       xxxx___oooo

    For sake of reference, the slots are numbered from 1 (on the left) to
    11 (on the right), and X always has the first move.

    * The players take turns moving.  At each turn, each player
    can move only one piece, once.  (This is unlike checkers,
    where you move one piece per move but get to keep moving it
    if you jump an your opponent's piece.) A player cannot pass
    up on his turn.  A player can move any one of his pieces to
    the next unoccupied slot to its right or left, which may
    involve jumping over occupied slots.  A player cannot move a
    piece off the side of the board.

    * If a move creates a pattern where the opponent's pieces
    are surrounded, on both sides, by two pieces of the mover's
    color (with no intervening unoccupied blank slot), then
    those surrounded pieces are removed from the board.

    * The goal of the game is to remove all of your opponent's
    pieces, at which point the game ends.  Removing all-but-one
    ends the game as well, since the opponent can't surround you
    with one piece, and so will always lose within a few moves
    anyway.

SAMPLE GAME
    A game between X (computer) and a particularly dim O
    (human):

      xxxx___oooo
        ^         Move 1: X moves from 3 (shown with caret) to 5
                   (Note that any of X's pieces could move, but
                   that the only place they could move to is 5.)
      xx_xx__oooo
              ^   Move 2: O moves from 9 to 7.
      xx_xx_oo_oo
         ^        Move 3: X moves from 4 to 6.
      xx__xxoo_oo
               ^  Move 4: O (stupidly) moves from 10 to 9.
      xx__xxooo_o
          ^       Move 5: X moves from 5 to 10, making the board
                  "xx___xoooxo".  The three o's that X just
                  surrounded are removed.
      xx___x___xo
                  O has only one piece, so has lost.

PREREQUISITES

This suite requires Perl 5; I've only used it under Perl 5.004, so for
anything lower, you're on your own.

Games::Alak uses the module Term::ReadLine, which I understand is a
standard Perl module these days.


INTERFACE
    This module uses Term::ReadLine to give you a prompt at
    which you can type commands.

    Entering "h" for help at that prompt will give instructions
    on how to interact with the game.

    When in doubt, consult the source -- it's made to be fairly
    clear.

REFERENCES
    Burke, Sean M.  2000.  "Trees".  (In submission: actual
    article title may differ.)  Article in The Perl Journal #18.
    http://www.tpj.com/ [Portions of this POD are excerpted from
    that article.]

    Dewdney, A[lexander] K[eewatin].  1984.  Planiverse:
    Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World.  Poseidon
    Press, New York.


INSTALLATION

You install Games::Alak, as you would install any Perl module
library, by running these commands:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

If you want to install a private copy of Games::Alak in your home
directory, then you should try to produce the initial Makefile with
something like this command:

 perl Makefile.PL LIB=~/perl


DOCUMENTATION

POD-format documentation is included in Alak.pm.  POD is readable
with the 'perldoc' utility.  See ChangeLog for recent changes.


MACPERL INSTALLATION NOTES

Don't bother with the makefiles.  Just make a Games directory in your
MacPerl site_lib or lib directory, and move Alak.pm into there.


AVAILABILITY

The latest version of Games::Alak is available from the
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).  Visit
<http://www.perl.com/CPAN/> to find a CPAN site near you.

AUTHOR
    Current maintainer Avi Finkel, [email protected];
                Original author Sean M. Burke, [email protected]

    Thanks to A. K. Dewdney (http://www.dewdney.com/) for his
    encouragement in writing my (abovementioned) TPJ article, as
    well as for having written the enjoyable book where he
    briefly describes it.