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NAME

       mancala - simple board game for human player and computer

SYNOPSIS

       mancala level-top level-bottom number-of-stones
       xmancala [-stones N]
       mancala-text

DESCRIPTION

       This  manual  page documents briefly the mancala and xmancala commands.
       This manual page was written  for  the  Debian  GNU/Linux  distribution
       because the original program does not have a manual page.

       mancala  runs  the  game  in  the  console,  while  xmancala is a fancy
       X-interface.  mancala-text is a  shell  script  to  run  mancala  in  a
       console from the Debian menu system.

       When  run  as  xmancala  the  program  has  no  options,  and should be
       self-explanatory.  Built in buttons and sliders control the  difficulty
       level (default 4), and bring up the rules of the game.

       The  console  version,  mancala,  has  no  access to the rules, and the
       difficulty level can only be set on the command line (see below).  When
       it is your turn to play, you enter the letter of the cell that you want
       to move the stones from, A to F  (case  insensitive).   The  rules  are
       contained in the file /usr/share/doc/mancala/RULES.

OPTIONS

       When  run  as  mancala,  the  program  normally  takes  two  arguments,
       level-top and level-bottom, one of which should be 0 to  represent  the
       human  player  (you),  and  the other should be in the range 1 to 9, to
       represent the skill level of the computer player.  The  first  argument
       represents the top player, who starts.

       Alternatively,   you  can  give  a  single  argument  or  two  non-zero
       arguments, to watch the computer playing itself, or two zero arguments,
       to play against another human player on the same console.

       For  the  console  version, you can add a third argument to specify the
       number of stones per hole. For xmancala you can specify the  number  of
       stones per hole using the -stones N argument.

       On  Debian  systems,  the  shell  script  mancala-text  is  provided to
       facilitate running mancala in a console, from the Debian  menu  system.
       This  script  will  run  mancala with a difficulty level of 4, and will
       pause when the game is finished, to enable the player to view the final
       screen.

SEE ALSO

       <http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala>

AUTHOR

       This  manual  page was written by Andrew Gray <ajpg@debian.org> for the
       Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).

                                 13 March 2001                      MANCALA(6)