Abacus

Abacus is an Amiga implementation of 'Abalone' - a board game
for one or two player.

The game Abacus is played by two players on a hexagonal
board. Each player starts up with 14 marbles and the goal is
to kick the enemy marbles off the board. If a player lost 6
of his marbles he lost the game.

What the players have to do is to push one of their marbles
by turns. A marble can be pushed from its place to one of the
six neighbour places.

When the destination place is occupied by another marble,
that marble gets pushed into the same direction and so on.
This way you can push not only one but a row of marbles at
once - and if a marble is pushed over the board limits it
gets lost.

But not all kinds of moves are allowed! To push marbles of
the opponent, you got to have the majority of marbles in this
move. You are only allowed to push maximal three of your own
marbles at once, which also means that the number of pushed
enemy marbles is limited to two. The color of the marbles in
a row may not be mixed. First place have to be the marbles of
the active player followed by the marbles of the opponent.

The following list shows all possible moves. "X" marks a ball
of the active player and "O" a ball of the opponent. "." is
an empty place or a place outside the board. The push-
direction is always from left to right:

Right

 X .
 X X .
 X X X .
 X X O .
 X X X O .
 X X X O O .

Wrong

 X O .                ( no majority )
 X X O O .            ( no majority )
 X X X O O O .        ( no majority )
 X X X X .            ( more than three own balls )
 X X O X .            ( mixed ball order )
 X X X O O X .        ( mixed ball order )

Broadway moves

Despite the moves mentioned above, you may also move a row
of two or three of your marbles "broadway". That means that
they are moved all together left or right, instead of a
straight forward push direction.

The destination fields have to be empty, and you cannot push
enemy marbles with broadway moves.