NAME¶
xmahjongg - colorful solitaire Mah Jongg game
SYNOPSIS¶
xmahjongg [
--display display] [options]
DESCRIPTION¶
Real Mah Jongg is a social game that originated in China thousands of years ago.
Four players, named after the four winds, take tiles from a wall in turn. The
best tiles are made of ivory and wood; they click pleasantly when you knock
them together. Computer Solitaire Mah Jongg (
xmahjongg being one of the
sillier examples) is nothing like that but it's fun, or it must be, since
there are like 300 shareware versions available for Windows. This is for X11
and it's free.
HOW TO PLAY¶
The object is to remove all Mah Jongg tiles from the playing field by taking one
matching pair at a time. Generally, two tiles match if they have identical
pictures on top. There are some exceptions: any season tile (spring, summer,
autumn, or winter) matches any other season, and any flower tile (bamboo,
orchid, plum, or chrysathemum) matches any other flower. There are 144 tiles
in all -- one of each season and flower, and four copies of each of the
following: 1 to 9 dots; 1 to 9 bamboo sticks; characters for 1 to 9; the four
winds (north, south, east, and west); and three dragons (red, green, and
white).
Only
free tiles can be removed. A tile is free if its entire top face is
unobstructed and either its left or its right edge is open. (When looking at
the left and right edges, only tiles on the same level count.)
The rules are simple, but winning, it turns out, can be pretty hard. It's easy
to make a move that causes a stalemate thirty or more moves later. What's
worse, the
--any-boards option lets
xmahjongg create boards that
cannot be solved at all!
CONTROLS AND APPEARANCE¶
To select a free tile, simply click it with the left mouse button and it will
light up. Click it again to deselect it. If you try to select a non-free tile,
xmahjongg will beep at you. To remove a matched pair, just select one
of the pair and click on the other one. The number in the upper left corner
tells you how many tiles you have left. This is all you really need to know to
play the game.
Xmahjongg comes with several features that may dismay purists, but make
the game more pleasant to play. First is the
match count, an array of
small gold coins in the upper middle. Each coin represents one potential match
on the board. (If three mutually matching tiles are free, it counts as three
matches, and if four are free, that's six matches.) This will let you know
when the game is over (no gold coins means no matches -- a dead end) and when
you're getting close.
The five buttons along the top right have the following functions:
- New (keystroke: n)
- Start a new game.
- Quit (keystroke: q)
- Quit xmahjongg.
- Undo (keystroke: u)
- Undoes your last move. You can undo multiple moves by clicking multiple
times. If you change your mind about undoing a move, hold down Shift while
you click the Undo button (or press r) to redo it.
- Hint (keystroke: h)
- Gives you a hint by flashing a set of free matching tiles. You can cycle
through all existing matches by clicking multiple times. If you select a
tile and then click Hint, xmahjongg will flash any free tiles that
match that tile, or beep if there aren't any.
- Clean (keystroke: c)
- Cleans the board by automatically removing obvious matches. A match is
obvious if it involves all the remaining tiles of a given type. (For
example, if there are 2 green dragons left and they are both free, they
form an obvious match; but if there are 4 left and only 3 are free, they
don't.) Cleaning the board is guaranteed not to cause a stalemate
later.
- Solve (no button; keystroke: s)
- If you get stuck, press the s key. After the board is restored to
its original state, xmahjongg will show you one way to solve it by
removing tiles two at a time. Press s again to speed up the
solution, or press Esc to stop. This won't work if you gave the
--any-boards option (see below).
Additionally, the
Escape key deselects any selected tile.
KEYBOARD TRAVERSAL¶
You can use the arrow keys and the spacebar to play
xmahjongg without
using the mouse. These keys control the
cursor, which is shown as a
flashing tile. The arrow keys move the cursor around on the board in the
obvious directions. The spacebar is like clicking the mouse button on the
cursor tile: it either selects the tile or removes a matching pair.
The hint key, `h', is also useful for playing without the mouse. Experiment with
`h', the spacebar, and the Return key to see how this works. When a hint is
active, the spacebar is like clicking on one of the flashing hint tiles, while
the Return key is like clicking on two of them (so it removes the tiles in one
stroke). This method gives the fastest playing speed.
OPTIONS¶
If you get bored with
xmahjongg's original layout and appearance, never
fear: it comes with several tilesets (tile images) and layouts (tile
arrangements). In addition to these,
xmahjongg can read layout files
from the original xmahjongg, KDE Mahjongg, and Kyodai Mahjongg, and tilesets
in KDE Mahjongg, Gnome Mahjongg, and Kyodai Mahjongg format. (However,
tilesets must be converted to GIF format before
xmahjongg can read
them.) See the [
-l] and
[
-t] options.
Long option names can be abbreviated to their unique prefixes.
- --number
N
- -n N
- Start with board number N.
- -l
layout
- --layout
layout
- Use the specified game layout. xmahjongg comes with several
layouts. The normal layout is called default; to see the other
ones' names, run `xmahjongg --list'. You can also use an arbitrary
layout by giving its filename. Xmahjongg can read layouts in its
own simple format, in KDE kmahjongg format, or in Kyodai Mahjongg format.
(Kyodai Mahjongg is one of the more popular Windows Mah Jongg solitaire
games. It's got 3D tiles and all sorts of stuff. See http://www.kyodai.com
for more information. You can download a zip archive with more than 100
different layouts, mostly usable with xmahjongg, from
http://www.kyodai.com/.)
- --tileset
tileset
- Use the specified tileset to draw the Mah Jongg tiles. Xmahjongg
comes with several extra tilesets, particularly small (perfect for
smaller screens). There are others too; run `xmahjongg --list' for
a complete listing.
- --background
image
- --bg
image
- The background image is set to image. Run `xmahjongg --list'
to see the backgrounds that come with xmahjongg, or use an
arbitrary GIF as a background image by giving its filename.
- [--list]
- Lists all the layouts, tilesets, and backgrounds that came with
xmahjongg, then exits.
- --solvable-boards
- Always create solvable boards. This is the default.
- --any-boards
- Allow any legal board, some of which will be solvable and some of which
won't.
- --display
display
- Sets the X display to display.
- --name
name
- Specifies the application name under which resources are found, rather
than the default ``xmahjongg''. Since xmahjongg itself does not use
the resource database, this is mostly useful for communication with your
window manager.
- --geometry
geometry
- This standard X option specifies the preferred size and position for the
xmahjongg window.
- [--help]
- Prints usage information and exits.
- [--version]
- Prints the version number and some quickie warranty information and
exits.
BUGS¶
Please email suggestions, additions, patches and bugs to eddietwo@lcs.mit.edu.
The following features have not made it into 3.0 as of yet:
- *
- Tournament mode.
- *
- Board setup mode.
HISTORY¶
xmahjongg version 3 is a complete rewrite by Eddie Kohler
<eddietwo@lcs.mit.edu> of
xmahjongg versions 1 and 2 by Jeff S.
Young <jsy@cray.com>.
The default tileset was originally created in color by Dorothy Robinson
<mokuren@teleport.com> with Mark A. Holm <markh@aracnet.com>. The
publicly available version was in black-and-white. Holm copyrighted the tiles
in 1988, giving permission to copy and distribute for non-profit purposes. The
significantly altered color version that comes with
xmahjongg was
created by Eddie Kohler in 1993. The `small' tileset was found at
http://www.mahjongg.com/, and is presumably by Berrie Bloem. The `gnome' and
`gnome2' tilesets were created by Jonathan Buzzard and Max Watson. The
`dorothys' and `dorwhite' tilesets were made by Dorothy Robinson
<mokuren@teleport.com>. The `real' tileset was scanned by Mark Sanctuary
<sanctuary@jps.net>.
Many of the layouts are based on layouts designed for Kyodai Mahjongg, a fun
Windows Mah Jongg game. In particular, `arena', `ceremonial', `deepwell',
`farandole', and `theater' are by Naoki Haga, and `hourglass' and `papillon'
are by Vincent Krebs. Kyodai Mahjongg's Web homepage is
http://www.kyodai.com/.
AUTHOR¶
Eddie Kohler, eddietwo@lcs.mit.edu
http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/~eddietwo/
http://www.lcdf.org/~eddietwo/xmahjongg/
The
xmahjongg home page.