FOUR-IN-A-ROW
				=============

			©1993 By R.G.J. Odekerken
				 Flakkeesestraat 27-b
				 3083 CA Rotterdam
				 The Netherlands
				 Tel. 31-10-4807983
				 Email: a73ae019@is.twi.tudelft.nl
				 
THIS PROGRAM IS FREELY DISTRIBUTABLE, AS LONG AS THIS FILE ACCOMPANIES IT.
NO CHANGES MAY BE MADE TO EITHER THE PROGRAM OR THIS FILE WITHOUT MY
WRITTEN PERMISSION. THIS PROGRAM MAY NOT BE SOLD FOR A PRICE HIGHER THAN
ITS MEDIUM (I.E. DISK). THIS PROGRAM MAY NOT BE INCLUDED IN ANY DISK MAGA-
ZINE WITHOUT MY WRITTEN PERMISSION.
THIS PROGRAM MAY BE INCLUDED IN THE FRED FISH AMIGALIBDISK LIBRARY.

THIS PROGRAM IS POSTCARDWARE:
IF YOU LIKE AND USE THIS PROGRAM, PLEASE SEND A POSTCARD TO THE ABOVE ADRESS.




The aim of this game is to get four stones of your colour (white) in a row.
Rows can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.
The player and the computer alternately put a stone on the board. There is
gravity, so when you enter a stone into a certain column, it will 'fall down'
onto the lowest free place.
Simple, isn't it?




This game was written on an Amiga 500 running Kickstart 1.3, with 
2.5 meg fast ram and one meg of chip, and a 20 meg A590 harddisk.
As far as I know, the game works on all Amiga models and configurations,
up to the A4000. The only thing you need is reqtools.library copied into
your LIBS: directory.

From the workbench, just doubleclick the FourInARow icon,
From the CLI, type FourInARow, and press ENTER.

To play a stone, you can click on a column with the mouse, or you can press
a key 1-7 on the keyboard.
There are also four control buttons in the window:

About	:	Gives you information about the game. (Shortcut key: A).
Back	:	Replays the last two moves. (Shortcut key: B).
Quit	:	Quit the program, or start a new game. (Shortcut key: Q).
Help	:	Gives you a hint. (Shortcut key: H).

Have fun!


I am still looking for ways to improve my algorithm. Therefore I would 
appreciate it very much if you sent me any information you have about a
certain algorithm for this game developed by someone called J. Murphy,
or about the alpha-beta-minus algorithm (which I'm already using in some
form in this game).
Of course all kinds of information, bug reports, and suggestions for
improvements are welcome.