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).  The program was written by Sverre H. Huseby and Glenn
       T. Lines.

                                          13 March 2001                                MANCALA(6)