mnkeyfog

A command-line implementation of kriegspiel and/or synchronous m,n,k games such as Zach Weinersmith's proposed game 'Kriegspiel Tic Tac Toe', and a few inventions of my own such as "Fog Gomoku" and "Mnkeyfog Match3".

see https://mastodon.social/@ZachWeinersmith/111896904870106666

Basically, the idea is that it's blind tic-tac-toe where you can only see your opponent's spaces if you hit the same space.

I (Pxtl) got carried away gold-plating, so this is now a generalized tool for command-line kriegspiel and synchronous m,n,k games.

1. Arbitrary square board size.
2. Arbitrary player count. Players must be unique single-character names.
3. Both hotseat and file-based network multiplayer.

Install and Run

This program is implemented in C# using dotnet core 10.

to install dotnet core 10 SDK on Windows:

winget install dotnet-sdk-10

but possibly dotnet runtime 10 will be sufficient.

winget install dotnet-runtime-10

to run it in basic gameplay from source (Weinersmith's Kriegspiel Tic-Tac-Toe, hotseat mode).

dotnet run --project ./mnkeyfog/src/MnkeyFog -- game kriegspiel-tictactoe

Description:
  Start a new game using a pre-defined game template.

Usage:
  MnkeyFog game [command] [options]

Options:
  -p, --players <players>  Players mark characters.  Provide them space-separated, eg '-p A B C X Y Z' for a 6-player game. [default: X|O]
  -r, --random             Randomize player order.
  -?, -h, --help           Show help and usage information
  -f, --file <file>        Path to the json file where gamestate is stored.  Will be resumed automatically if you kill the game (ctrl-C). Use a fileshare for network multiplayer. [default: /home/pxtl/.config/MnkeyFog.json]
  -j, --join <join>        Join as given player char mark. Must match a mark in players list. Hotseat mode if not provided.

Commands:
  kriegspiel-tictactoe  Zach Weinersmith's Kriegspiel Tic-Tac-Toe.
  tictactoe             Basic simple tic-tac-toe.

to see the other commands to launch the game for play, run

dotnet run --project ./mnkeyfog/src/MnkeyFog -- -?

Command game is for predefined gametypes, custom for custom game, and load to load a previous game. Each command can be called with a -? parameter to see its respective options.

Alternately, if you build the dotnet executable file and place it so you can call it from elsewhere, you can skip the dotnet run formality and just run it directly.

So, to start a simple 3-player hotseat game between Alice, Bob, and Carol on a 4x4 screen, the command would be

mnkeyfog custom -p A B C --boards 1 --size 4 --kriegspiel

Conversely, to start a multiplayer game with the default rules (2 players X and O on a 3x3 board) on a fileshare named \\kosmos\storage with random start-player, the command would be

mnkeyfog -f \\kosmos\storage\temp\ksttt.json -j X -r

And then your friend (on another computer with similar access to \\kosmos\storage\) can join with

mnkeyfog -f \\kosmos\storage\temp\ksttt.json -j O

any game-rule options you pass in when joining an existing game like size, players, or randomization will be ignored.

Synchronous Mode

Use the --synchronous flag to enable synchronous mode.

In synchronous mode:

• All moves in a round are buffered until every player in the round takes their turn
• If two players move to the same square in the same round, it becomes an impasse marker (█)
• Impasse markers cannot be used to win and block all players from that square

See Synchronous Mode Usage

Contributing

See CONTRIB.md

Bugs

If I do something crazy like have 3 players all running as player X, or join an online game in hotseat mode, the game is broken and bad

Don't do that.

Other Bugs

Infinite. I have no idea. Half of this was a one-evening hackathon. The other half was experimenting with a pretty weak local-hosted AI.