MANCALA(6)

💅 MANCALA 💅

okay bestie, buckle up, we're playing mancala — it's a simple board game for a human player and a computer. you vs. the machine. the vibes are immaculate. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

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

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so this manual page is gonna briefly document the mancala and xmancala commands. it was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program literally does not have a manual page — not me having to write one from scratch, but here we are, and honestly? it ate. 💅

mancala runs the game in the console, while xmancala is the fancy X-interface version — highkey giving main character energy with actual graphics. and mancala-text is a shell script whose whole job is running mancala in a console, launched from the Debian menu system. tiny script, big responsibility. 🫶

when you run it as xmancala, the program has no options, and it should be self-explanatory (ngl it really is). built-in buttons and sliders control the difficulty level (default 4), and they also bring up the rules of the game. sliders AND rules in one window? iconic. ✨

the console version, mancala, has no access to the rules — so no, bestie, you can't peek. and the difficulty level can only be set on the command line (scroll down, it's all in OPTIONS). when it's your turn to play, you enter the letter of the cell you wanna move the stones from: A to F (case insensitive, so be as loud or as quiet about it as you want, it literally does not care). the rules are chilling in the file /usr/share/doc/mancala/RULES. 💜

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

when you run it as mancala, the program normally takes two arguments, level-top and level-bottom. one of them should be 0 to represent the human player (that's you, bestie 💖), and the other should be in the range 1 to 9, representing the skill level of the computer player. also, super important: the first argument represents the top player, who starts. so whoever you slot into that first spot goes first. no takebacks. 🌈

• alternatively, you can give a single argument or two non-zero arguments to just watch the computer playing itself. yes, that's a thing. it's giving "let them cook" 🍓
• or, you can give two zero arguments to play against another human player on the same console. local co-op, we love to see it. 👑

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. same energy, sliders-adjacent. ✨

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 it will pause when the game is finished, to enable the player to view the final screen. so you get to sit there and admire your win (or your loss, no judgement 🫶) for as long as you like.

💀 SEE ALSO 💀

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

go read up, iykyk 📚

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

this manual page was written by Andrew Gray <ajpg@debian.org> for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others, sharing is caring 💜). the program was written by Sverre H. Huseby and Glenn T. Lines. absolute legends, no cap. 👑

fr fr, that's the whole page. go play. 💅

and that's a wrap on this lil Games Manual page, bestie — source is MANCALA(6), dated 13 March 2001. she's vintage and she's still slaying. 💖✨