PC-SIG: World of Games

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Pyramids User Manual Notes Version 4.0 Pyramids is Shareware software. That means you get a chance to try it before you buy it. If you like Pyramids, please register your copy by sending $10 to: Helios Software Box 22869 Seattle, WA 98122 Pyramids took a lot of work to write, and $10 is not much to ask of someone who wants to play it. Your support for my efforts and the Shareware concept is appreciated. You are welcome to distribute unmodified disks to friends and BBS's. Theme Pyramids is a strategy game based on an ancient Egyptian theme. You and the pharaoh Cheops are contending to discover the other's pyramid before your own is discovered. You each have a set of pieces consisting of sphinxes, lions, bulls, rams, wolves, hawks, camels, cats, antelopes and a cobra. Every animal has special powers: A sphinx remains behind to protect the pyramid. It cannot move but it will defeat anything which attacks it, except a sacred cat. A lion, bull, ram or wolf relies on its strength. A hawk can fly over the animal nearest it to the space on the other side. A camel can cross directly across a desert. A sacred cat can use its magic to overcome a sphinx. An antelope can cover great distances in a single move. Only the cobra can defeat the lion. Rules of Play Game Board Pyramids is played on an 11 x 11 board with two deserts in the middle. Pieces Each side begins with 44 pieces; Cheops' pieces are arranged along the top of the board, while yours are along the bottom. A piece set consists of one pyramid, one cobra and 42 other pieces which you may configure with the SETUP program explained below. At the beginning you will not know the ranks of Cheops' pieces and he will not know yours. The identities of pieces become known only through attacks and by moves which are unique to specific ranks. Objective The winner is whoever first finds his opponent's pyramid or eliminates all of his opponent's mobile pieces. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 1 Start of Game Each side first lays out his pieces along his side of the board. You may decide whether Cheops' pieces should be arranged randomly or in a strategic setup. Random setups always position the pyramid in one of the two back rows. Strategic setups usually fortify the pyramid with sphinxes. Your setup also may be random or strategic. For a strategic setup you may select from a file of setups you have created previously or create a new one. Up to 255 strategic setups may be stored at a time. Movement Cheops and you take turns, moving one piece each turn; the first turn in the game is assigned at random. You may move a piece forward, backward, left or right according to these rules: 1) The pyramid and the sphinxes cannot move. 2) All other pieces can move along a straight line to a vacant square, so long as all intervening squares are vacant and the distance of the move is not greater than the allowable 'slide' (see Changing the Slide under Game Options below). 3) An antelope (rank 8) can move through any number of vacant squares, regardless of the slide. 4) A hawk can fly over an adjacent piece to an empty square on the other side. 5) A camel can cross directly from one side of a desert to the other side. 6) A piece resting on a 'power square' in one of the lanes can move directly to a vacant power square in another lane. Attacks An attack occurs when a piece tries to occupy the square of an opponent piece. These rules govern attacks: 1) A piece may attack an opponent piece to which it is adjacent by attempting to occupy its square. 2) A hawk (rank 5) can attack an opponent piece by flying over an adjacent piece. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 2 Resolution of Attacks Attacks are resolved according to these rules: 1) Any piece can capture the pyramid. 2) An attacking piece can defeat any numeric piece of greater or equal number. 3) A cat (rank 7) can overpower a sphinx. 4) The cobra can defeat the lion (rank 1) if it attacks; any piece, including the lion, can defeat the cobra by attacking it. The losing piece is removed from the board. If the attacker wins, it immediately occupies the square of the loser; if the defender wins, it remains in place. The identity of the winning piece is revealed to the opponent (except see Hiding Attacks in Game Options below). Move Repetition No piece may move from square A to square B and then back to square A in three consecutive moves. End of Game When the game has ended you will be given the opportunity to watch the game be replayed automatically. You can watch the entire replay or press <ESC> to stop the replay. Then, you can either begin a new game or exit Pyramids to the DOS prompt. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 3 Game Options Changing the Level (Function Key 1) Cheops can play at four skill levels; level '1' is the lowest and level '4' is the highest. At higher levels Cheops examines his moves in greater depth, and so is better able to find effective attack combinations and to direct his pieces against squares where your pyramid may be located. Approximate timings for moves on an AT personal computer follow: ................................................... . . . L E V E L . . 1 2 3 4 . . ................................... . . . . . . . . . S 1 . 1 . 1 . 2 . 8 . . . . . . . . . . L ................................... . . . . . . . . . I 2 . 1 . 1 . 3 . 12 . . . . . . . . . . D ................................... . . . . . . . . . E 3 . 1 . 2 . 4 . 16 . . . . . . . . . . ................................... . . Times in seconds . . . ................................................... While Cheops is thinking, you can terminate his search process by pressing any key; Cheops will select the best move he has found thus far. Although Cheops looks at his most promising moves first (just as you do), he performs a depth-first search on them, that is, he examines each move sequence in detail before looking at the next move. If Cheops' actual best move is not among the first that he looks at, terminating a search too quickly at a high skill level could actually yield a worse move than would the same amount of time at a lower level. It is best to use the search termination feature when you have waited at least one-fourth the normal time required for the skill level-slide settings. This gives Cheops a chance to find a good move in a short time while freeing you from waiting longer while he looks for a surprise game buster. The Watching the Move Selection Process option (Function Key 6) explained below allows you see how long it usually takes Cheops to find his best move. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 4 Changing the Slide (Function Key 2) The slide determines the number of vacant squares across which pieces can move. The slide can be set from one to three squares. Antelopes have an unlimited slide and are not affected by this option. The setting of the slide has a profound influence on the style of play. With the slide set at '1', the lanes between the deserts in the middle of the board can be protected by a single powerful piece; no piece of lesser or equal rank can get by it. With the slide set at '2' or '3' the lanes are much more difficult to control, with the result that games are more wide-open and aggressive. Hiding Attacks (Function Key 3) When this option is set, the identity of Cheops' pieces remain concealed if they win an attack, except for sphinxes and the cobra. All you learn is that they were powerful enough to win. This is an advanced option for players who are confident of their skill. Hiding Cheops' Pieces (Function Key 4) With this option, Cheops' pieces are displayed only while they are moving; at all other times, they are invisible. This option, combined with Level 1 and Slide 3, creates a fast, 'arcade-like' game with lots of surprises. Controlling the Sound Effects (Function Key 5) Normally, sound effects are played during the game to signal attacks, captures and special moves, and error bells are rung after illegal keyboard entry. This option may be switched on or off with the F5 function key. Watching the Move Selection Process (Function Key 6) You can watch while Cheops selects his next move by activating this option. The board will come alive as Cheops considers all important move combinations. Initial and final scores for each move are displayed in the message box on the left, while intermediary scores for each level of the move are shown on the bottom line. The message box on the right shows the current best move and its score. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 5 Loading a Saved Game (Function Key 7) At any time you can stop playing the current game and load an unfinished game that you had saved previously. Type in the name of the game you want to finish. After the game is complete it will be erased from the disk. (Also see Command Line Parameters below.) Saving the Current Game (Function Key 8) This option allows you to save the game in progress to finish at another time. Type in the name under which to save the game. Saved games are assigned the extension .GAM. Starting a New Game (Function Key 9) If you don't want to finish the current game, you can start a new one with this option. Quitting the Current Game (Function Key 10) Press <F10> at any time to quit the game you are playing and return to the DOS prompt. If you have not first saved the current game, you will be given the opportunity to do so. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 6 The Setup Program Program SETUP allows you to configure the piece sets, colors (if you have a color monitor) and display speed. Run SETUPS before you start program PYRAMIDS to change these configurations. Configuring the piece set You can decide how many sphinxes, lions, rams, etc. you want to have for your side and for Cheops' side. Simply add and subtract from each piece rank, making sure that you finish with a surplus of zero for each side. There must be one pyramid and one cobra on each side. The new configuration will be used for random setups in new games and for new strategic setups you create. All of Cheops' strategic setups are based on the original configuration. Configuring the colors (color monitor only) The display shows a sample game position with the current color configuration. Press the function keys as indicated to cycle through the colors available to find a combination you like and then save the changes. All subsequent games you play will use the new colors. Configuring the display speed You can change the speed at which the display updates piece movements, messages and so forth. Set the speed faster or slower and then save the change. When you next run PYRAMIDS it will use the new speed. This configuration affects only the display speed. Set the skill level for each game to determine Cheops' movement selection speed. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 7 Move Selection Algorithm Pyramids uses a recursive min-max move selection algorithm with tree pruning on refutation. For each level, all legal moves are assigned initial values based on a criterion list. At levels above the terminal nodes of the tree, the moves are sorted by these initial values; moves are then selected for recursion which are deemed to be 'hot' (attacks and so forth) or which have the highest initial values. Cheops' moves in the recursion are evaluated according to his perception of the board, including inferences made about your unknown pieces. Your moves in the recursion are evaluated according to Cheops' inferences about your perception of the board, including both his inferences about your unknown pieces and inferences you might have made about Cheops' unknown pieces. In other words, Cheops never knows more about your pieces than a human opponent would. This two-layered uncertainty creates unique problems for a computer solution to Pyramids. At times Cheops must infer that you will make a bad move without himself being fooled by your high assessment of it. Therefore, the min-max algorithm is modified to return not only a maximum value for each node, but also both the extent to which the parent of that node perceives the child to have been fooled by the selected best move ('He thinks he'll win the attack, but I know better.') and the extent to which the child's child (and thus the parent, who is the same player) was fooled ('My child thinks he'll win the attack. I know better, but I'm not telling my parent, only my grandparent.') In the peculiar genetics of the min-max world, players are reborn as their own grandchildren, in perpetual competition with their children, who are reborn as their grandchildren. Inferences made about your pieces are probabilistic in nature. If you aggressively move an unknown piece against one of Cheops' pieces, sometimes he will assume you are in earnest and sometimes he will call your bluff. If he does back off, at some point he will change his mind and come after your piece to find out what it really is. Cheops' depth of search is the user-selected skill level plus one, that is, a maximum of three moves. However, the game of Pyramids requires a sense of the board which goes much deeper than three moves ahead. To achieve this vision over distance without full-depth recursion, Cheops draws a 'force field' over the board which attracts pieces of various ranks according to the positions of your pieces. This is similar to the process you employ in moving a piece 'closer' to where you think Cheops' pyramid is. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 8 System Requirements IBM PC, PC Jr, XT, AT, PS/2 or true compatible with at least: one floppy disk drive 256 KB memory monochrome or color monitor DOS 2.0 or higher. Command Line Parameters Pyramids may be started from the DOS prompt in these ways: 1) Type: PYRAMIDS. This starts a new game. 2) Type: PYRAMIDS <filename>. This resumes the game saved under <filename> 3) Type: PYRAMIDS /NM. This turns off all sound effects at the beginning of the program. 4) Type: PYRAMIDS /NH. This turns off the help messages which describe the pieces. Any combination of these parameters may be used. File Extensions File extensions have these meanings: .EXE program file .PYR internal data files .GAM saved game. PYRAMIDS MANUAL 9