Free Awale is a game of Awalé.

Free Awale is another implementation of the african mancala game Oware in the Ivory Coast variant Awalé, a game of capturing stones.

Free Awale is a free software distributed under the distributed under the GNU general public licence. You can freely download, use, modify and re-distribute free awale provided the GPL licence is maintained.

Rules

Rules of Ivory Coast

Awale game contains two lines of six holes. Each player plays a single line, the upper line for the computer and the lower line for the player. Other pair of holes are used for eaten stones.

Every holes contain four stones at the beginning of the game.

One plays alternately. One never play two turns, one cannot pass his turn.

When playing, take all the stones of a hole in your line and distribute it in successive holes turning counterclock wise, one stone per hole. Do not put a stone in the starting hole (this case arrives when the starting hole contains more than twelve stones.)

The stones of the arrival hole are eaten when the arrival hole lies in the opponent line and contains two or three stones (after all stones are distributed). All contiguous previous holes which meet this condition are also eaten. It is possible to eat a maximum of four holes, when five holes are eatable, only the last four ones are eaten.

Players have to play so as the opponent always has at least one stone. In case it is impossible, the game stops.

The winner is the player who has eaten the most stones.

Variants

Various rules are played in west Africa. Here are the rules generally played in Ivory Coast. However, even in Ivory Coast, several variants can be encountered.

The first variant is concerned with the maximum number of holes that can be eaten. Generally the maximum is four, but sometimes, african players admit that there is no maximum (indeed, six is then the maximum).

Another variant is that when you are in position to eat more than four holes and you play it, you eat nothing at all. In this implementation of the game, we have admitted that the maximum number of holes to be eaten is four, and that when more than four holes are eatable, you eat the last four holes.

It exists an additional rule tacitly admitted. The winner let the last stone of the game to its challenger. This rule is not implemented in free awale.

Africans play very rapidly. A maximum of few seconds of thought is tolerated. But usually, you must decide your move almost immediatly. This game is based on a rapid assessment of the position and on memory rather than a long thought. Typical duration for a game is about ten minutes.

Requirements:

· Tcl/Tk

What's New in This Release:

· The rule can now be configured in order to match other standard rules.
· Permanent save of language.
· Implementation of cyclic end game.