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# ThudBoard - User Guide

## Getting started

ThudBoard is rather easy to use. If you need to read this text, I may be mistaken in my previous assumption.

The screen can be separated in three parts: the playing board, the moves list and the rest.

The next section assumes that you have downloaded ThudBoard and started the application, so you'll recognize the different areas. If you haven't, then, at the very least, have a look at the screenshot on the index page (click on that image to see the full screenshot).

## The Thud Board

Simply click and drag a piece and release it where you want it placed. If you pick it up again and move it further, that is considered as part of the same move. If you put it back in its original position, the move is not played.

If you drop the piece on another piece, this piece is taken off the board. Another way to take pieces off the board is to right-click them. Do not attempt to capture pieces by dragging them off the board (and into the captures-bar located at the right side of the board), as this will not work.

A move is finalized when you left-click anywhere on the board except for the piece that was moved. Note that you can start a new move this way too.

## The Moves List

Click on any line to view the position the board was in after that move was played. You can usually continue playing from here, except if you are before the save-line (marked with a lock-icon). To move the save-line, simply select the line you wish as the new save-line, and click the 'Quicksave' option. The selected line is highlighted, and will be called the battle-line from now on. This move and all previous moves are now locked.

When you start a new move on the board, the line below the battle-line will light up and record the move you are playing. If you finalize this line, all lines that are after the battle-line will be lost. This is known as exploring alternate futures.

To get to the position the board was in before any moves were played, click on the name of the battle above the list. If this name has a little text-balloon to the left of it, that means the battle contains comments. If they are not enabled, you can enable the from the 'Options' menu.

The lines at the top and bottom with the little arrows on them can be used to scroll through the list. If the comments are enabled, a text-box is visible below the bottom scroll-line. This box contains the comment for the current move and can be modified at will.

How to read a single line: the first character in the line indicates a move by either a dwarf ('d') or a troll ('T'), followed by the 'from-to' coordinates. Additional text will indicate captured pieces, which are written as a coordinate prefixed by an 'x' (e.g. 'xF15'). Captured pieces are presented on lines below the actual battle-line and these capture-lines are indented. Since version 1.0, Dwarf moves are now prefixed with the move-number.

## Copy/Paste in the Moves List

Copy/Paste will come in handy for playing by mail or icq or the like. Pressing Control-c will copy the current battle-line to the clipboard.
Pressing Control-v will try to paste the clipboard-contents below the current battle-line. This may fail when the move on the clipboard cannot be performed. The same actions may be performed by clicking the copy/paste icons on the battle- line. Notice that the paste-icon has three forms: disabled (no thudmove on the clipboard), partially disabled (a thudmove was found, but it can't be played from this position) or fully enabled (the thudmove can be played here, provided you are not in a locked part of the battle).

## The Rest

The rest consists of the logo and menu at the top and the url at the bottom. Clicking the url will start your browser with the link to the Thud website. The menu at the top has four options. These options are named 'File', 'Quicksave', 'Options' and 'Help'.

If you click 'File', you can choose between 'new', 'open', 'save as', and 'save snapshot'. Below these, a list of Most Recently Used files (mru) is kept, which you can use to quickly open files. 'New', 'open', and 'save as' work as expected. 'Save snapshot' will save the current position on the board in a file. The history and the future of the battle are discarded. This will not affect the current battle, it is more like a snapshot of it. If you wish to play from a saved position, simply open it through the 'File' option.

Files are usually saved in the 'battles' subdirectory of the ThudBoard application or in your personal folder (look for '~/.thudboard/battles'), but can be located anywhere.

The 'Quicksave' option will save the current battle, including history and future and the current position of the battle-line.

Use 'Options' to toggle various settings. 'boardmap' toggles between the coordinate boardmap or the regular board. 'highlight' turns the board highlighter on or off. 'score' toggles the display of the score between captured-pieces-count and pieces-remaining-count. 'comment' toggles the visibility of the comments-textbox. The options are auto-magically preserved for the next time you start ThudBoard.

The 'Help' options provides this 'howto' and also a 'contents' and an 'about' section that give a bit more info about Thud and ThudBoard.

You can quit the application by closing the window in the normal way (which is clicking the 'x' in the title bar on Windows).

### Copyright © 2003, 2004, Marc Boeren