NOTES ABOUT SOME OF THE GAMES ON THIS DISC BUGS.COM To use this just type: 'BUGS' and sit back and watch. GOLF.COM This is a golf simulation. Instructions on-screen for options and rules of play. To get started just type 'GOLF' LIFE.COM Life is a simulation, to get started just type 'LIFE' Cells survive/die according to the following rules: - Cells that have two or three immediate neighbors will survive this generation. - Cells that have less than two immediate neighbors will die. - Cells having four or more immediate neighbors will die. - New cells are generated when any space is surrounded by three cells. Cell patterns are entered using any key but the '*' will probably be a wise choice. The entering sequence is as follows: **** *** *** and so on, to end the entering process type a full stop and press return. The outcome of the 'life' cell generation, or decline, depends upon the cell pattern entered to begin with. MASTMIND.COM This is a version of the famous game where you have to guess the code selected by the computer. You are advised after each guess, how many correct letters you have picked and how many are in the right position. The following extensions are available:- MASTMIND -b gives number of possible solutions before each guess MASTMIND -cn sets number n of different characters (defaults to 6) MASTMIND -pn sets number n of positions in solution string (defaults to 4) MASTMIND -k disables kibitzing (sic) - enabled by default Thus for example the invocation MASTMIND -c10 -p3 would simulate the game of "Bagels" where the layout is 10 different characters in3 positions (but Bagels doesn't allow repetitions). PRESSUP.COM The board is an n by n array of pegs, each of which is standing up at the start of the game. Pegs come in three colours: Red (yours), Blue (the computer's) and White (full stops) which are neutral. The first player to move must "push down" a neutral peg. Thereafter players take turns pushing down neutral pegs, where each peg pushed must be adjacent to the last one pushed. Pegs are named by giving a letter and a number for the row and column of the desired peg. As soon as a player gets all of his pegs down, he wins. When there are no more legal moves to play the most of his colour pegs down, wins. Watch out at search depths of 6 or more! Extensions to the game are:- PRESSUP -f Machine goes first PRESSUP -dn search depth is n moves - defaults to 3 PRESSUP -b print computer's evaluation of its moves SNAKE SNAKE.COM An attractively presented graphics game which looks easy when started but gets progressively harder. STONE.COM This version written by Terry Hayes & Clark Baker and modified by Leor Zolman. The algorithm used for STONE is a common one to Artificial Intelligence people: the"Alpha- Beta" pruning heuristic. By searching up and down a tree of possible moves and keeping record of the minimum and maximum scores from the terminal static evaluations,it becomes possible to pinpoint move variations which can in no way affect the outcome of the search. Thus, those variations can be simply discarded, saving expensive static evaluation time. To have the program print out some search statistics for every move evaluation, type the command as:- STONE -d To also see a move-by-move trace of each terminal evaluation, type:- STONE -a Rules of the game ----------------- Each player has six pits in front of him and a "home" pit on one side (the computer's home pit is on the left; your home pit is on the right.) At the start of the game, all pits except the home pits are filled with n stones, where n can be anything from 1 to 6. To make a move, a player picks one of the six pits on his side of the board that has stones in it, and redistributes the stones one-by-one going counter- clockwise around the board, starting with the pit following the one picked. The opponent's HOME pit is never deposited into. If the LAST stone happens to fall in that player's home pit, he moves again. If the LAST stone falls into an empty pit on the moving player's side of board, then any stones in the pit OPPOSITE to that go into the moving player's home pit. When either player clears the six pits on his side of the board, the game is over. The other player takes all stones in his six pits and places them in his home pit. Then, the player with the most stones in his home pit is the winner. The six pits on the human side are numbered one to six from left to right; the six pits on the computer's side are numbered one to six right to left. The standard game seems to be with three stones; Less stones make it somewhat easier (for both you AND the computer), while more stones complicate the game. As far as difficulty goes, well...it USED to be on a scale of 1 to 50 but has been changed to 1-1000 to make life more bearable. POLISH-PONG by Robert H Halstead PPONG.COM Possibly a forerunner of the modern "arcade" games, this one requires you to remove a series of ten targets randomly placed around the screen using a controllable "ball". You can guide your little ball around the screen by setting up and removing blockade sections. All control is via the keypad; "4" and "6" cause blockades to be formed at the current position of the roving ball, while pressing "5" at the exact moment the ball hits a blockade should make that blockade disappear. If you hit a blockade you will be diverted in a different direction. The point of all this is to make the ball hit the little square target; once this is done, the square will disappear and reappear somewhere else, to be hit again. Go for hitting the target the specified number of times AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. Your score is how many seconds you took; the lower the better. Keys "8" and "2" speed up and slow down the ball; as you get better, try it at a faster speed! MAZE.COM After entering MAZE, you will be asked for size of maze - after that the computer does all the work. For printed mazes press ALT P before entering the program. NEWPUZ.COM For those of you who enjoy doing the familiar word-search puzzle, this program will generate as many as you want. Just specify the parameters and type in the words and the computer will work out the puzzle. The printer is turned on by the program itself so there is no need to use the ALT P function. BIO.COM This will generate charts and comment on the results after you have entered your birth date and the current date in the form:- yymmdd,yymmdd eg 601211,851114 [ENTER] BIRTH CURRENT BIRTH CURRENT If you want a hard copy of the chart on your printer, at the A> prompt type in BIO then hold down ALT key and press P then press [ENTER]