# &app; Manual

## Introduction

### The Game

At first here's a brief introduction about the classic game that this one resembles (source: wikipedia).

Mastermind is a code-breaking game for two players, invented in 1970 by Mordecai Meirowitz, that has been very popular during the 80s.

The game is played by 2 players: the codemaker and the codebreaker. The codemaker, places in its side of the board (hidden from the other), a combination of 4 colors. The codebreaker has to guess that pattern (both order and colors) with the least number of tries. At each turn (12 in the most common version), the codebreaker tries a pattern and the codemaker gives him feedback placing a white peg for each right color with wrong position and a colored peg for each both color and position right item of the combination guessed, in the score grid.

Once he got feedback, the codebreaker tries another guess following codemaker hints. Obviously the game is won by codemaker if the codebreaker fails every guess.

### This Game

&app; is a solitaire version that resembles the classic game. The codemaker role is taken by computer.

The player has to guess a four color combination (note that each color can be repeated). Computer prints (with default theme selected) a red peg for each right color in the right position and a white peg for each right color misplaced.

### Getting Started

You can start &app; in the following ways:

From Applications menu,

- Choose Games Mastermind .

Command line

- To start &app; from a command line, type the following command, then press Return:

  `gnome-mastermind`

Here follows a screenshot of &app;, typical play session

#### &app; Start Up Window

Shows &app; main window. Contains titlebar, menubar, toolbar, display area, and scrollbars. Menubar contains File, View, Settings, and Help menus.

At first let's investigate on the game interface. From top to bottom:

Menubar.

- The menus on the menubar contain all of the commands you need to work with &app;.

Toolbar.

- The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you usually will access more often.

Main game area.

- From left to right you can see main grid where pegs are placed, and score grid where computer gives us feedback

Tray area.

- That's the colored pegs tray. Click here with first mouse button to select a ball. Click then in a main grid active cell to place the peg.

  Middle click on a peg in the tray area places it in the first available cell.

### Shortcuts

- First button click

  Select peg if done in tray area. Place it if done in main grid cells.

- First button Drag and Drop

  Place peg moving it from the tray area to an active cell.

- First button double click or Middle button single click

  Available only in tray area, place ball to first free active cell.

- Ctrl + Z

  Undo last move.

- Shift + Ctrl + Z

  Repeat last undone move.

- Ctrl + N

  Start a new game.

- Ctrl + Q

  Quit game window.

- Ctrl + P

  Open preferences dialog.

- F1

  Show this manual.

- You can also place pegs over already placed pegs (on the current row).

- Placing the last peg of a row starts current guess validation (with no chance to undo or replace it) so be careful if you are not sure.

### Walk through a game session

Let's now take a look at the previous session screen step by step:

#### &app; First row

First row

This is the first guess. As you can see the score grid is empty because no right peg has been chosen.

#### &app; Second row

Second row

Here we have 3 white score pegs. It means that we catched 3 right colors but placed them in wrong order. We are following the good path.

#### &app; Third row

Third row

Leaving the same color combination and changing order leads us to the solution. But we still have to understand which one is wrong!

#### &app; Fourth row

Fourth row

Inserting a random color make a white score peg come out. Since we didn't change other color pegs order we've just found the missing color!

#### &app; Last row

Last row

Yeah! Restoring removed peg and replacing another one with the new right color makes everything turn right. We won :D!

### Coming Soon

Next releases will hopefully contain a more detailed manual that better explains each settings in the preferences menu. It will also contain a simple guide to draw and submit new themes.

## About &app;

&app; was written by Filippo Argiolas (filippo.argiolas@gmail.com). To find more information about &app;, please visit the &app; webpage.

For copyright issues check the about dialog and, most of all, copyright and copyright-artwork files in source tree or in the package data dir (usually /usr/share/gnome-mastermind).

Please report any bug at Bug tracker at gna.org or sign-up to the public mailing-list listed in the project homepage to give us feedback.

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public license as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license is included with this documentation; another can be found in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program.