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Dots is a two-player strategy game. The board looks something like this:
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There are many small X's and O's ("dots"). The X's are player one's dots, and the O's are player two's. Player one wants to connect any of the X's at the far left (which start all connected to each other) to any of the X's at the far right. Meanwhile, player two is trying to connect any of the O's at the top to any of the O's at the bottom.
Players take turns, making one segment at a time. Players may not cross their opponent's lines.
So, after each player has played two turns, the board might look like this:
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And that's all there is to the game. There can never be a tie. All games will eventually lead to a winner.
If the sound is on, there is a beep indicating which player's turn it is; one beep for player one, two beeps for player two. To make your move, merely tap in between the two dots you want to connect. If you tap in a spot where either you or your opponent has already drawn a segment, there is a low-pitched beep, followed by the player's beep again.
Tapping on the word "PASS" at the left hand side of the screen will skip the current player's turn, and will beep to indicate the other player's turn. Since it is unlikely that passing could be strategically advantageous at any time, this feature is really intended only to be used to allow player two to start the game if so desired, by having player one pass on his/her first turn.
As a default, sound is turned on. Tapping the word "SOUND" toggles this setting.
Tapping on the word "QUIT" at the right hand side of the screen quits. Note that under the current version of cbasPad, if the program was run by hitting "SelectAll" and "Exec", the screen will still have the graphics. Tap "Done" and then "Edit" to return to the actual Basic code.
When you run the program, it will immediately draw the the dots and initial lines, and then, it'll take a moment to actually read the entire program into the interpreter. After it finishes reading the program, it will draw the words "PASS", "SOUND", and "QUIT", and then it will beep once to indicate player one's turn.
The program does not have any "AI" for playing against the computer. (Such an algorithm would probably not be doable in cbasPad!) So you have to play with two players, or else play against yourself.
Also, it doesn't recognize when a player has won. It's assumed that the user can see when the game is over. And again, in Basic, it would be rather difficult to check for final positions...
So here it is: dots.bas. You'll probably have to copy and paste it into a memo in your Pilot Desktop software, and then copy from there into cbasPad. It's too big to fit on the Pilot's clipboard, so you'll have to copy it in three or four chunks.
Please mail me, derf@brown.edu if you use this, or just try it once and like it, or think it's stupid, or whatever you think! Thanks...