Pictures ; Long description; Short description
Maldoo is an electronic board-games board, which you play by touching the point you want to play in. It plays standard Go and Reversi and additional 11 new games. What you can get here is the instructions of playing it and a simulation of the board, running on Windows machines. With the real board, the intention is that two people will play each other, but it can be switched to play one player against the board, and in the online simulation, this switch is on by default.
If you think you may be interested in being commercially involved with Maldoo, you should read this.
Here are pictures of the actual board, being played in the MSO Cambridge 2002.
The main purpose of the simulation is to get feedback about the games. In particular, I want feedback on the games Visiput, FillIt and ClearIt. I should also add that the simulation gives a feeling of the games, but a not a feeling of the board itself. That is because the main advantage of the board is that you play by touching the point that you want to play, and the simulation requires you to move the mouse and click instead.
A full description of the behaviour of the current version of Maldoo is here(~40Kb). A short description is available here. This is useful as a "quick reference card".
Here is a simulation of the board (Wintel executable, 106496 bytes), which gives quite a good idea of how the board looks. Download and execute.
On startup, the board displays Play:Game followed by the game name. To change the game click the Up-arrow/Down-arrow buttons (top right).
To start playing click the Start button.
You can learn most of the games just by trying them. FillIt is the easiest to work out; Life1, Life2 and SpeedGo are the most difficult.
The four little white rectangles indicate that the game is stopped or finished. Press Start or Stop/Cont to start/continue the game.
In the simulation, the Board Plays parameter is set, and you play as green against the computer. You can set this parameter (see How To in the instructions), but you will have to find a way of getting input from two players (most modern PCs allow you to connect another mouse).
Here is an hexagonal version of the same game, also a Wintel executable (126976 bytes). The rules are similar.
By now I have several prototypes which are pretty good, and I am looking for opportunities to test them. If you are within reasonable distance from Cambridge UK, and have a suitable event, I will be happy to bring the prototypes for people to try it.
Yehouda Harpaz=============================================
You have permission to distribute the description and the compiled software freely on computers only, and to print only for personal use. I reserve the copyright for all other manifestation of either. In particular, you are not allowed to distribute it in conjunction with any money transaction (directly or indirectly), and to distribute printed copies of it.
===================