gobang       Weiming Wu & Niping Wu


Introduction

Our final project is to design and implement a Gobang game under
X-Window3.2 environment, using the Haskell programming language. Users
can play the game human-vs-human.  The program also provides a robot
player with whom the user can play the game with.  We wrote altogether
ten modules which were saved in different files to control the whole
game.


About Gobang

The checkerboard of Gobang consists of 19 vertical lines and 19
horizontal lines.  Two players in turn place a unit on the
checkerboard.  Each unit should be put on an unoccupied intersection
of a vertical and a horizontal line.  The winner is the player who
first makes five consecutive units on either vertical, horizontal or
diagonal direction.

The program is able to perform the following tasks: 1) Use a new
window under X-Window interface to display the checkerboard.  Players
will use a mouse to place units onto the chessboard, where a unit is a
circle with the color black or white.  2) Prompt for the names of both
players and display them.  3) Calculate the time both players have
used up.  4) Supervise the progress of the game, declare winner and
end the game once one player wins.  5) At each point of the game,
store the progress of the game, so players can review each step during
the game.  6) There are five buttons on the screen which would provide
some special services such as starting a new game, quitting the game,
saving the game, importing the saved game, or reviewing the game as
soon as the user selects the corresponding buttons.  7) Provide a
moderately well robot player for that game (using minimum-maximum
algorithm).


Running Gobang

A window titled "gobang" will appear on the screen.  On it is a
checkerboard, clocks and buttons.  There will be an instruction saying
"Please enter the name of player-1".  The user can do two things:
either enter the name of a player or choose the "import" button. Once
the "import" button is selected, an unfinished game, which was saved
in the file "###go.bhs###" will be imported.  Please notice that the
character "@" is reserved for the robot player, so if the user types
in @ as the name of the first player, it is assumed that player-1 is
the robot player.  Then the name of player 2 is prompted.  The game
starts and at each turn an instruction like "Please enter your play."
would appear on the screen.  The user should put a unit onto the
checkerboard.  If the button is clicked on a wrong place or a unit is
put onto an occupied position, an error message saying "Wrong Point.
Please reenter." will appear on the screen and the user should reenter
his play.  The marker next to the name of a player indicates whose
turn it is.  At any point of the game the user can choose the other
four buttons.  If the "new" button is selected, the present game will
be terminated and a new blank checkerboard will be displayed on the
screen; if the "review" button is selected, one step of the previous
plays will be displayed each time after the user hits any key; if the
"save" button is selected, the steps so far will be saved into the
file "###go.bhs###"; if the "quit" button is selected, the game will
be terminated.