NETTOE(6)

🎀 NAME 🎀

nettoe — it's Tic Tac Toe, bestie, but make it networked and make it live in your console. 🌈

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nettoe [OPTIONS]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So netToe is a console-based glow-up of the classic game "Tic Tac Toe". You can play it against a computer AI 🤖, against another human on the same machine 👯, or against somebody across the network 🌐. All three, no cap. Periodt.

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🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -4, --ipv4 — only IPv4 networking, nothing else invited to the party.
• -6, --ipv6 — only IPv6 networking, IPv4 can stay home.
• -nc, --no-colors — disable colors. Monochrome era, I guess. 😭
• -nb, --no-beep — disable beeps. Silence, bestie. 🤫
• -h, --help — display usage hints, then exit. It's giving helpful. 🫶
• -v, --version — output version information, then exit. Iconic info dump. 👑

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🌐 HOW TO PLAY VIA NETWORK 🌐

Okay so first things first: y'all gotta decide who's hosting — you or your opponent. Whoever's hosting does all of this, in order:

• Start nettoe. ⭐
• Pick the third option (Two players over network) of the Main Menu.
• Choose the first option (Host the Game) at the Network Game Menu.
• Type name, or nickname.
• Communicate the IP address to the other player. Hostnames work, if registered. We hope you know how to get your own IP address. 🙈
• Wait for the other player to connect to your host.

Now the other player, the one connecting to the game server, must:

• Start nettoe. ⭐
• Pick the third option (Two players over network) of the Main Menu.
• Use the second option (Connect to a host) at the Network Game Menu.
• Type name, or nickname.
• Type the IP address of the server host, or its hostname. Examples include 192.168.0.5 and ::1, or fenrir.foe.org and localhost.
• Wait for the game to start.

Enjoy yourselves. If you have any problem, just let us know. 💖

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🦋 NETWORK PORTS 🦋

netToe uses TCP port 7501 as the listening port of the server engine, unless it was configured otherwise during build time. Run nettoe -v to display the configured port. 🔍

So that port has to be usable as a destination port over the network. Otherwise remote games would not be possible. For a local game this is of course mostly irrelevant, but filtering firewalls might intercept connections in general. 👀

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🧚 USING THE AI MODES 🧚

netToe offers a mode of play where the computer acts as opponent, with some limited built-in abilities to simulate dynamic decisions. Three levels of AI strength are made available:

• The weaker level first checks a small set of blocking moves, then some winning moves, and falls back to simple moves in a fixed priority order. Since neither set is adaptive, the computer is easily fooled. 😌
• The normal level uses slightly larger sets of moves at each step, but is most importantly playing more aggressively than the weaker level does. It happens in the sense that initial checks are for winning moves, only later falling back to blocking moves. This avoids some obvious counterfeit strategy by a human player. 🧠
• The better of the three levels is implemented differently. Its first action is to scan a complete set of winning moves. That leading nowhere, it scans through all possible blocking moves, and finally falls back to an ordered list of simple moves. Since not even this level of play is using a look-ahead search, a human player can set up traps, but finding those already demands a fair amount of insight into the game! 💀

There are plans for a further level using a look-ahead search of depth two. This would improve the usefulness of netToe as an educational tool. A further level, which is learning from past plays within each session, could also be an interesting enhancement. ✨

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🌸 AVAILABILITY 🌸

The latest version of this program can be found at

http://nettoe.sourceforge.net/

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💀 BUGS 💀

Report bugs to <meand@users.sourceforge.net>. For a list of known bugs, see the BUGS file in the netToe source package. 🐛

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

netToe is written by Gabriele Giorgetti <ggdev@users.sourceforge.net> and by Mats Erik Andersson <meand@users.sourceforge.net>.

This manual page was initially written by Andras Bali <bali@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system, and was later rewritten by Gabriele Giorgetti to be distributed in the netToe source package.

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright © 2000,2001 Gabriele Giorgetti,
          © 2001 Andras Bali,
          © 2012,2013,2014 Mats Erik Andersson.

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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And that's the whole page, bestie — this was netToe 1.5.1, dated March 21, 2014, straight out of the Games Manual. Go win some rounds. 🎀✨🦋