Gtkboard documentation

This is the end user documentation for gtkboard version 0.11. If you are interested in hacking gtkboard or writing a new game for gtkboard you can also read the developer documentation.

Please note that a stable version of gtkboard has not been released yet. 0.11 is a developer release and hence this documentation is necessarily incomplete.

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Installation

You can download the source tarball or the source or binary (i386) rpm from the download page. To install from the sources, do the usual
$ gzip -cd gtkboard-x.y.z.tar.gz | tar xvf - $ cd gtkboard-x.y.z $ ./configure $ make $ make install For make install to work you must be root.

To install from rpm do
$ rpm -ivh gtkboard-x.y.z-v.i386.rpm

Requirements

gtk+ version 1.2 or higher is required. However, there are a few features that will work only if gtk+ version 2.0 or higher is available.

Getting started

Gtkboard aims to provide a common platform for all board games. What this means for the user is that all games will have a common interface. The first thing you do on starting gtkboard is to select a game from the "Game->Select Game" menu. Currently over 30 games are implemented. Some are single player and some are two player games. You can find out about the game from the Help menu.

The menubar

The Game menu

From the Game menu you can select a game, reset the current game ("Game->New game"), or pause/restart the game. "Game->Highscores" displays the highscores (only for single player games) and "Game->Zap Highscores" clears it.

The File menu

Gtkboard can save your game to a file and replay it. All games are stored in a common format, called cbgf (common board game format). This is currently not fully implemented.

The move menu

You can go back and forward to any point in the current game, in other words you have infinite levels of undo and redo.

The settings menu

In two player games you can play with another person, or with the computer, or let the computer play with itself.

Flipping the board rotates it by 180°

You can also set the average time taken by the computer to move.

The game bar

Below the menu bar is the game bar (or whatever you want to call it). It is divided into 7 parts. (Not all are shown at the same time) The first shows the name of the game. The second displays "H/H", "H/M" etc indicating human vs. human, human vs. machine etc. The third shows whose turn it is, white or black (the last 2 are only for two player games). The player who moves first is always denoted by white. The fourth shows the score. The fifth is supposed to show the current move but is not yet implemented. The sixth shows the time spent so far (only for single player games). The last is a status indicator. This is available only in the gtk2 version. The color denotes as follows:

Dark green: it's your turn to move and your clock is running.
Light green: it's your turn and your clock is not running (e.g, you paused the game or the displayed position is not the current position).
Dark red: it's the computer's turn to move and it's thinking.
Light red: it's the computer's turn but it's not thinking right now.
Dark blue: In two player games with both players human, it's the second player's turn to move and their clock is running
Light blue: In two player games with... well you get the idea.
Grey: No game is selected, or the game is a saved game being replayed.

Command line options

There are a few command line options. You should know about them because there are certain things (like setting the time per move) that can currently be done only through command line options and not through the GUI. The output of gtkboard -h is shown below:

Usage: gtkboard 	[-qvh] [-g game] [-f file] [-l logfile] [-d msec]
			[-p XX] [-w wheur -b bheur] 
	-g	name of the game
	-f	file to load game from
	-l	log file to record game
	-q	don't show board
	-d	delay in milliseconds
	-p	human or machine players. Each X must be 'h' or 'm'
	-w	name of heuristic function for white
	-b	name of heuristic function for black
	-v	be verbose
	-h	print this help