REVE

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Reve is played on an 8 x 8 board, with pieces which should be considered to be black on one side and white on the other. A legal move consists of placing a piece of one's own color on the board so as to "sandwich" one or more rows (orthogonal or diagonal) of pieces of the opposite color between the piece just placed and another piece of the same color. All pieces so sandwiched are flipped over to reveal the color of the other side (your own color).

The object of the game, is to have more pieces than the opponent at the end of the game (ie. when the board is full or neither side has a legal move). If you have no legal move, you simply miss a turn. Black goes first.

With reve, to place one of your own pieces simply click with the mouse over the square in which you want your piece to go. Note that it is also possible to supply a number and a letter pair, to indicate where you would like your new piece to go. This is the only method to place pieces with the dumb tty interface.

There are various buttons and cyclic selections available. Their meanings are given below, plus an indication of their keyboard equivalents. With the cyclic selections, clicking over the left half of the cycle item increments the selection, and clicking over the right half of the cycle item decrements the selection. With the SunView and XView versions, it is also possible to make a selection from a popup menu using the right mouse button.

By default, a human will play black, and the computer will play white. If you want a human vs human startup or some other combination, then you should use the appropriate command line options (see below).  

REVE BUTTONS

With the graphics versions, there are eight buttons that are normally displayed at the top of the Reve window. Each of these buttons, except the "done" button has a keyboard equivalent which is given in brackets below.

last [ l ]

Show the last move played.

load [ L ]

Load a game file. The format of this game file is given below. With the graphical versions, a text field is displayed between the done and quit buttons for you to enter the filename of this game file. Clicking over the cancel button or pressing the Escape key will cancel the load operation. When you press the Return key, filename entry is complete, and the program will try to load this file. If it's unsuccessful, it will stop on the invalid line, and display an error message. As each line is successfully read from the game file, the piece is displayed on the board, and the appropriate pieces flipped.

new game [ n ]

Start a new game of reve

save [ S ]

Save the current game to file. See the entry for the load button above for details of how to enter the filename.

suggest [ s ]

Let the computer suggest a good move for you. This move will be dependent upon the current level of difficulty set.

undo [ u ]

Undo the last "move". If the opponent is the computer, the two "moves" are undone. A "move" is considered to be all previous consecutive moves by the opponent.

done [ No keyboard equivalent]

Change reve to an icon.

quit [ q ]

Exit the reve program.

REVE CYCLIC SELECTIONS

Black: [ B ]

Select whether the black player should be a human or the computer. The keyboard equivalents are 'h' for human, and 'c' for computer.

White: [ W ]

Select whether the white player should be a human or the computer. The keyboard equivalents are the same as for the Black: item.

Difficulty: [ D ]

Sets the degree of difficulty for the computers moves. Keyboard selection values are in the range '1' to '9'. The computer move is determined on a time basis. The degree of difficulty determines the total amount of time that the computer will take to make all its moves. Here are the time periods for each level of difficulty:

       Difficulty      Time

       1               Time allocation disabled (fast simple move).

       2               1 minutes.

       3               3 minutes.

       4               5 minutes.

       5               10 minutes.

       6               15 minutes.

       7               20 minutes.

       8               30 minutes.

       9               60 minutes.

Level eight is tournament level.

Notes: [ N ]

Select whether computer notes are displayed. When you are playing against the computer, the note gives the position of the last computer move, and an indication of whether it was a good or bad move.

OPTIONS

-b [ display ]

Black will be played by a human. With the X11 variant of reve it is possible to give an optional display value.

-c

The computer will play. Presence or absence of -b and -w options determine which piece the computer plays.

-d difficulty

The level of difficulty for computer moves. See the Difficulty: cyclic item description above for more information.

-eedgefile

Specify an alternate location for the reve edge stability table file. Normally the location of this file is compiled in when the program is created, but reve will search every directory on your search path looking file a file called reve.edgetable.

-g geometry

Used with the X11 variant of reve to give geometry information.

-i

Invert the reve window before displaying it. For use by people who started their graphics environment in inverse mode. This option is currently only implemented for the SunView version.

-l gamefile

Load a game file. The format of this game file is given below. The board will be setup with these pieces.

-n

Display computer notes.

-?

Print the version number and usage message for this release of the reve program.

-v

Print the version number and usage message for this release of the reve program.

-w [ display ]

White will be played by a human. With the X11 variant of reve it is possible to give an optional display value.

-Wi

Start the reve program up in iconic form. The SunView and XView version of reve will automatically uses this flag, but the X11 version will also.

-Wp x y

Start the open window position at x y

-WP x y

Start the icon position at x y

REVE GAMES FILE FORMAT

       1,      <C-4>   -       [ remarks field ]

       2,      -       <E-3>   [ remarks field ]

There is one move per line. Lines starting with a '#' and blank lines are ignored. The first field of each line is the move number. This will be present before the comma. It is used as a consistency check. Next are the black and white fields. If the '<' character is present before the white. The three characters between the '<' and '>' are the move, and give the column and row. The column letter can be in either lower or upper case.

It is possible for one piece to have two or more consequentive moves, hence the need for the above scheme. Reve is flexible about white space (except between the '<' and '>' characters). The remarks field is ignored. The program will stop on the first line it thinks is in error, and display the reason for this. As valid lines are read from a game file, the board is updated.  

FILES

/usr/local/lib/reve.edgetable

edge stability table for all possible edge combinations.

BUGS

AUTHORS

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

REVE BUTTONS

REVE CYCLIC SELECTIONS

OPTIONS

REVE GAMES FILE FORMAT

FILES

BUGS

AUTHORS