| ★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ AYO: THE GAME OF AFRICA (c) COMPUTING WITH THE AMSTRAD ★ |
Computing with the Amstrad |
AYO is a computerised version of a traditional African board game, Mancala, involving a lot of skill and a little luck too. You can play it with a friend or against the computer. The latter is guaranteed to give you a hard time. The game is traditionally played on a long wooden board into which two rows of six cup-like hollows are carved. These are referred to as houses. In addition there are usually two large score houses at opposite ends of the board. Often these boards are decora-tively carved and they may be hinged, as are many Egyptian and Asian game boards, so that the board may be closed like a box when not in use. The counters used in Ayo are traditionally seeds of the plant caesalpinia crista, which grows in West Africa. When you run the program the screen display will show you a plan view of the Ayo board. The first player plays with the lower row of houses and the second with the upper row. The score house on the right belongs to the first player and the one on the left to the second player. The second player may be the computer if you wish. When you first run the program the computer player will be "on”. Pressing C will toggle between on and off as required. At the start of the game four counters or seeds will be placed in each house. The score houses will be empty. Note that the seeds may be placed on top of each other to make it difficult to tell exactly how many seeds there are in a house. One of the rules of Ayo is that the seeds may never be counted properly. The players may only look and guesstimate the number in a house, so it is possible to misjudge the number and play a bad move - this is where an aspect of luck comes in. When the message START GAME appears briefly in the centre of the Ayo board a bell-like sound rings and the first player may begin. Note the panels below the first player's score house and above the second player's score house. A yellow diamond in the panel means that it is that player's turn. A C in the top panel means that the computer is playing as the second player. The digits refer to the cumulative number of seeds captured by each player in previous games. Thus, at the start, the digit in each score panel is 0. This will change at the end of the first game or the beginning of the second and at the beginning of every successive game. You may do one of five things during your turn, one of which is to actually make your move. The remaining four are:
The houses on both sides are numbered. Pressing any number between 1 and 6 inclusive moves the contents of a house on your side. You will see the seeds removed from the chosen house and distributed around the other houses in an anti-clockwise One seed is dropped into each house until no more seeds are left. The seeds may be sowed into your houses or your opponent's houses, but not into the score houses. If the house into which the last seed falls belongs to your opponent, and that house then contains two or three seeds, those seeds are eaten by you. They will be removed from play and placed in your score house. Note that the eaten seeds are not counted until the end of the game, so your score will not change straight away. Furthermore, any preceding houses which belong to your opponent and which now contain two or three seeds will also be eaten, providing that any intervening houses contain no more than three seeds. This may sound confusing at first so try playing against the computer and see how it goes. This should help you understand the rules. But don't worry, they will soon become second nature. The object is to eat as many of your opponent's seeds as you can while stopping your opponent from eating your own seeds. Thus you can play both aggressively or defensively. How you play is up to you - this is the skill of Ayo. The game eventually ends of its own accord, even if you do not press R or S. This happens if either player begins his turn with no seeds to move, or both players have less than two seeds each. If it ends in either of these ways the seeds left on the board are not counted towards either player's score. When the game ends the message GAME OVER will appear briefly and the bell will ring. The board will be cleared, including the score houses. The seeds are redistributed around the board, four in each house, and a new game begins. The scores in the score panels are now updated. CWTA |
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Page créée en 568 millisecondes et consultée 1506 fois L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko. |
