ENG

Users manual - the main window
 

The main window The game board The players History panel Navigation buttons Current mode Current coordinates Messages Menubar Function buttons History focus History rollback Gauges

The menu
Here you can reach all the important functions such as saving/reloading a game, customizing computer AI level, transposing the current gameboard, getting help, etc. For more details, see the menu section.

The board
This is the place where a game is played. According to the skin you choose, the players will place black and white stones subsequently in order to make a five-in-a-row. Whoever makes it first will win the game, except if there are other special rules. Most of the skins contain specially marked stones to show you, which stone was the last on the board. For more details on skins, see the audiovisual settings section.

The players
Here you can see the players involved in the current game. For human players you can customize the appearance and name by clicking on the blackhead icon or the name below the icon.

The gauges
In this section you can find the score counter, the chance-o-meter, and the timer to show the remaining time. The score counter is a one-session counter, thus it will reset whenever you restart the application. You can also reset it manually, by clicking on the 'score' label. The chance-o-meter tries to calculate the outcome of the game on a 0-100 scale. Every game is started with 50-50 chances and ends up with a 100 percent chance for the winning party. The time counter resets itself to the preset time whenever a new game is started and ticks down to 00:00:00. If a player reaches time zero, he will automatically lose the game. If there are no rules restricting the time of the game. the time counter will show nothing, and of course, there is no need to worry about it.

The function buttons
Here you can find two function buttons, which change their behaviour (and label of course) according to the mode selected. In Computer vs. Human mode they are 'Give hint' and 'New game' buttons.
By pressing the 'give hint' button, you can see, where would the computer place it's stone, if it were you. You can also select this function by pressing the 'h' key or by selecting the 'show hints' from the view menu. Please be aware, that in some cases, you will not be able to see the hint given, because the skin selected is not supporting that. If you can't see anything after pressing the 'give hint' key, try to load a different skin, and try again.
The 'new game' button does what it says: starts a new game. You can also do that by pressing 'F2' or selecting the new game menuitem from the game menu. If there is already more than one stone placed on the board and the game has not been ended with a victory (or draw) yet, you will receive a warning.

The history panel
Here you can see all the previous coordinates, where a stone was placed in the format 'no. x,y', where x is the column number starting with 0 by the leftnmost column, and y is the row number starting with 0 by the topmost row. If you select any item in the history list, the action will depend on the status of the focus and rollback buttons above the history panel. If any of the board transpositions is applied, the history coordinates will also be transposed.

The history focus button
This is a two-state button. If it is down, the selected history item will be highlighted on the board. (quite poorly in v0.16 yet). If neither history buttons are down, selecting a history item will result in absolutely nothing.

The history rollback button
This is a two-state button. If it is down, the game will be rolled back to the selected history item (or one step before). You can also do this by pressing the back button on the navigation panel as long as the last history item will be the one you need. If neither history buttons are down, selecting a history item will result in absolutely nothing.

The navigation panel
Not much to explain. The double left arrow will rewind the game to the beginning, the simple left arrow will roll back one or two steps according to the mode. The simple right arrow will undo a simple rollback and the double right arrow will undo all the rollbacks you have made. A simple rollback can also be achieved by pressing the backspace key. Please note, if you rollback the history to a given board position and choose another place to put your stone to, the history will change in that moment, and you can no longer undo your former rollbacks.

The mode display
This section of the statusbar is to show the current mode selected. Possible modes are:
Computer vs. Human
Human vs. Network
Computer vs. Network
Designer

The coords display
This section shows you the coordinates whenever you hover your mouse over the board. Remember that coordinates are indexed from 0, and the origin is in the top left corner. If you see a value of -1 that means, that the mouse is currently pointing to an off-board position.

The messages section
Here you can find short messages and status reports from the application. This is the place where the title will display if a new music is loaded from the '/music' subdirectory, assuming you have enabled music playback.