boraygammon64 Commodore 64 game

Features

Plays a fairly intelligent backgammon.

You can play against the computer, play with a friend or let the computer play against itself.

You can either use the internal random generator for dice, or use external ones (which is useful if you want to make it play against other programs).

Score counting

Several levels of difficulty.

Save current game function (works on both tape and disk)

1351 mouse support (C64 only)


Lack of features

• No doubling cube
  
  
  How to play?
  
  Never played backgammon before? Don't worry, I'll teach you!
  
  
  You are black (or rather hollow) and Vic is white. In the picture above, you have thrown the dice 6 and 1. You use the keyboard to move. All the keys you can press are highlighted in green. Now just move one checker with each dice by pressing the key on the keyboard corresponding to the letter at the checker you want to move. The dice to the left is used first. You can swap the dice with each other by pressing "P". If you made a mistake, press "<-" to undo. When ready, press return. That's basically it. If you have never played backgammon before, you'll probably need a little more information though:
  
  You move according to the green arrows:
  
  Your first goal is to get all of your checkers into the area marked A. When that is done, you can move them out to B. The player getting all of his checkers out first will win.
  
  That would be easy enough if you didn't have an opponent moving in the opposite direction, able to hit your checkers that are alone/single. When a checker get hit, it's put on the "bar" (marked "I"), and you have to play it into the game again from the start before you are able to move any other checker (yellow dotted line). To enter a checker into the game again, you press "I" (for IN).
  
  If you were in the middle of the end play and taking out checkers from "A" to "B" when you got hit, you can't take out any checkers to "B" until the hit checker has entered the game again, gone around the board and reached "A" again.
  
  
  A checker lying by itself is vulnerable and can be hit by the opponent. More than one checker on the same point means they are safe. But not only that, the opponent can't land on that point at all. So having two (or more) checkers on 6 points in a row means the opponent can't pass at all.
  
  
  Help!?
  
  If nothing happens when you try to move a checker, there could be a number of reasons why:
  
  1. The point where the checker is to land, is blocked by the opponent. Try switching dice by pressing "P".
  
  2. You have a checker on the bar that has to enter the game before you can move anything else. Press "I" to enter it. You may have to press "P" first as well to switch dice.
  
  3. The checker you try to move is in your own home board and there is simply nowhere to go because all of your checkers have to reach "A" before you can take them out.
  
  4. You are trying to move your opponents checker or there is no checker by the letter you press.
  
  Have the sound turned on. It gives you information about what happens, when you get hit, when all dices are blocked etc.
  
  In case you don't find the undo key in your emulator, it's the key located below Esc in VICE.
  
  If you have started a game where Vic plays against Vic and don't want to wait until the end, you can simply restart the game by pressing Run/Stop+Restore and then RUN.
  
  
  Difficulty Levels
  
  There are three different "players" you can choose to play against (or if you let them play against each other):
  
  The bars to the right illustrates how strong the players are. In other words: Clever Vic is about twice as good as Beginner Bo while Reckless Ray is somewhere in between. That Clever Vic is twice as good as Beginner Bo does not mean it always will win, but rather that if they play a 100 point match, Clever Vic will win and Bo will get around 50 points. (Yes, I've done that many times, running the VICE emulator at 3000% speed). The players have their own personalities. Bo is cautious like the beginner he is, while Reckless Ray is more... well... reckless.
  
  
  And now?
  
  Just start Boray Gammon up and begin to explore it! You will get the hang of it. There are a lot more to backgammon than I've written in these few words, but I felt it would be nice with a little shortcut into the game for you. If you want to study the game a bit more carefully, I would recommend this site.
  
  One way to learn, is to watch Boray Gammon play against itself for a while: