Re: [pbmserv-dev] about Abalone

[Richard Rognlie <rrognlie@gamerz.net>]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 10:37:56AM -0500, Douglas Zander wrote:
> Hi, I wish to talk to the programmer of Abalone.  I wish to correct

That'd be me.

> the bug when a player attempts to move more than 3 of his men and 
> is allowed to.  I wish to ask what the "-long" and "-push" options
> were intended to do.  
> * I believe the "-long" option was meant to 
> allow more than 3 marbles to be moved, but how many more?  should I
> allow 4 marbles or 5 or 6 marbles to be moved by the player with
> this option?   

Yep.  Any number of marbles would be able to push any number of marbles
fewer than the number of marbles pushing.  not the artificial limit
of "you can only move up to 3 marbles"

> * I believe the "-push" option was meant to allow the player to push as
> many marbles as he is moving?  1 push 1, 2 push 2, etc...

Hrm.  I don't recall what I was planning there.  It's been forever since I
touched *that* code...

The long code is already in place (in that I never enforce the "you can 
only move 3 marbles rule").  It'd really just be a matter of when we're
doing the move checking, add a check for

    if (len > 3 && LongEnabled())
        return (char *)Error("you are attempting to move %d marbles, and long moves are not enabled\n",len);

around line 208.  And, of course, making the Init string and Read/Write
routines aware of the Init option...

"-push"?   I don't recall.  but the idea of being able to push an equal
number of marbles will kill the stalemate problem.  but significantly
change the game, too, I'd think.

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