Pente(6)

📦 version 2.2.5, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

👑 PENTE(6) — the games manual, but make it cute 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to Pente — it's literally the game of five in a row and it's about to be your whole personality. this page lives in the Games Manual section (section 6, iykyk) 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

pente — Game of five in a row 🌈

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

pente -help

pente [ <options> ]

like, that's it. that's the whole vibe check. -help is your bestie, <options> is the buffet 🍓

🌸 HOW TO PLAY PENTE 🌸

okay so storytime: Pente is the American name of a Japanese game called ni-nuki, which is itself a variant of the ancient game go-moku. so it's giving generational icon energy, we love a game with lineage 💜

here's the setup, no cap:

  • you play on a 19x19 grid with stones of two different colors 🌈
  • each player picks one set of stones
  • then you take turns placing your stones on any unoccupied intersection
  • you keep going until somebody wins

the two ways to win (yes there are two, we contain multitudes):

  1. if a player makes five or more stones in a straight line — across, down, or diagonally — that player wins. periodt. 👑
  2. OR if a player captures five pairs of their opponent's stones, that player also wins.

about capturing — and this part matters, so listen up bestie:

  • stones may be captured in pairs only. no solo snatching. 🚫
  • to capture a pair of stones, a player must place one stone on either side of the pair. flank them. iconic behavior honestly 💅

about the first moves:

  • the first move is placed in the center of the board 🎯
  • and because going first is highkey an advantage, the first player's second move must be at least three spaces from their first. yes this sounds confusing — don't worry about it. just play, and if the computer won't let you move where you want on your second move, play somewhere farther away. the computer is not being mean, it's being fair 🫶

and that's it!! these directions are pretty terse ngl, but if you have an X display there are better directions available through the help button ✨ you can also just play a few games — the rules are simple enough that you'll pick them up easily just by playing. lowkey the best tutorial is vibes 🌸

🔥 THE PROGRAM 🔥

this program has support for many different display types, because it's versatile like that. depending on the compile options used, X Windows, Curses, and a plain text format may be available 📺

  • the exact display type used will be chosen by the program itself
  • or it may be selected with a command line switch
  • info on the switches is available with pente -help

most of the command line switches can also be set with the setup window of the X interface 🎀 any changes you make there will be saved in the .pente.ad file and remembered the next time that you play. it remembers. it's a good friend like that 💖

you can also set the command line switches with an X default. for example, if you want to set black and white to be the default mode:

  • you can run pente with pente -nocolor
  • or you can add pente*color: 0 to your X defaults
  • or you can just turn off color in the setup window

three routes, one destination, choose your fighter ⭐

and here's the handy part: Pente will store a new .pente.ad file every time you run it. in this file it will save the current state of Pente. this is handy! you don't normally have to set command line switches since Pente will remember them in the .pente.ad file. it's literally keeping receipts (affectionately) 🧚

💀 BUGS 💀

sometimes the .pente.ad file gets some bad data in it 😭

just delete the file and then you can start from scratch again. that's the whole fix. unhinged? maybe. effective? absolutely. 🙈

💖 AUTHOR 💖

  • Bill Shubert (wms@igoweb.org)
  • French text by Eric Dupas (dupas@univ-mlv.fr)
  • Italian text by Andrea Borgia (email: borgia@cs.unibo.it; homepage: http://www.cs.unibo.it/~borgia)

international icons only 🌍👑

and that's the page bestie!! this whole thing is from 31 July 2001, from the Games Manual — yeah it's been serving five-in-a-row realness since way before you were born and it's still ate 💅✨ slay, go capture some pairs, mwah 🫶

📦 where this page comes from