Cyberzul -Mode: On!
We are in the early days of cyber civilization. The legendary Queen MaXIne has just visited our beloved Zulias for the very first time. Awestruck by the interior beauty of the rectangular slabs of baked bits and bytes (for simplicity we will refer to them as „tiles“) used in our home city, she decided to make it the center of her queendom. A seemingly endless tiling phase has just begun! Cyberzul is a game that not only allows all players to gain the skills to help her establish her empire and lead our civilization into a golden age. No! Beyond that, the winner will be honored by being allowed to help Queen MaXIne build her Cyber Palace with our beautiful cyber tiles!
Cyberzul-Mode: Off!
It is a game from our project for LMU in the summer term 2022. With it the player can play the Cyberzul Game on his/her personal computer. For features that are going to come in the future, we refer to our CHANGELOG. Currently, one is able to play the game in hot seat, network, and single player mode.
We use Java 17 and JUnit 5.8.1 for this project. It was tested on Windows 11 with Java 17.0.3, so no other guarantees can be made.
Everything is already compiled. Make sure you have installed Java version 17 on your computer. Execute the jar-file with command:
java -jar Cyberzul.jar
Cyberzul-Mode: On again!
I see you have come here because you want to be more, not just another byty traveller, but a mighty tiler - a tiler of cyber tiles … lucky you!, you have come to the right place.
In this section we will explain to you how to play Cyberzul. We’ll start with the basics: how to lay out tiles according to the centuries-old tradition of the game. But we will come all the way to how to win a game of Cyberzul - that is to be honored with the permission to lay out your tiles in Queen MaXIne's cyber palace.
First, you will have to pick a mode: Solo, hot seat or network mode. What do all of them have in common? You will have to type at least one nickname for the game and you will play with either two, three, or four players afterwards. Moreover, you are able to choose, if you want to enable Bullet-Mode ... that is every player will have 12 seconds and 12 seconds only to make his/her move, otherwise an AI will make the move for him/her. (We suggest Cyberzul-Newbys to their first games with Bullet-Mode turned off.)
- Solo: Here you will play alone - against one, two, or three AI-players.
- Hot seat: Here you play on one device - against the players you add before. Type the players into the input field and add them. And as soon as you have enough players, you can start the game.
- Network: Here you are able to play with your friends via Wi-Fi. The first player must create a server, others are then able to join him/her by typing in the IP-address used.
Timer will only be visible in Bullet-Mode. The ranking board on the upper right is updated after each turn.
You can choose a tile either from the Cyber Mines or the Stack - both are located above your player board. By clicking a tile of any color, you will receive ALL of the tiles of that color on that Cyber Mine or in the Stack. If you are the one to make the first move of a round, you should click on a tile from the Cyber Mines as you can just see the Starting Player Marker on the Stack in the beginning of each round.
Next, we will explain to you how tiles get into the Stack. So then you will be able to choose tiles from the Stack, too. It works the same. However, if you are the first player of a given round to take a tile from the Stack, the Starting Player Marker will be placed in your floor line automatically. On the one hand, this means minus points; on the other hand, you will be the player to start the next round. Choose wisely!
Oh, and by the way: This is Cyberzul. It is fun, it is fancy, and it is fast. You have 12 seconds for your move. … So, choose wisely … and do not take too much time for it, otherwise, the AI will make the move for you. (But no worries, only you have Bullet-mode turned on; otherwise, you have all the time in the world.)
The tile(s) you have picked should be placed on the pattern lines. Pick one by clicking on it. However, there are some rules.
- You shall not place tiles in a pattern line, that already holds tiles of a different color. And once all spaces of a pattern line are filled, that line is considered complete. If you have picked up more tiles than you can place in your chosen pattern line, you must place the excess tiles in the floor line. (Huh? Floor line? Wait a minute, we will get to that.)
- You shall not place tiles in a pattern line, that already has a tile of the chosen color activated on the wall. ( Huh_2? Wall? Yes, we will get to that. For the first round: Don’t worry about the second rule.)
- Sometimes horrible things happen. Sometimes, as the game goes on, you will not be able to place any tiles in any of the pattern lines. Then you will have to put them onto the floor line directly. You might have guessed: It is better to avoid that.
As soon as you place your tile(s), all other tiles of that Cyber Mine will be placed in the Stack.
But … don’t worry. … Let’s be honest, we all have been beginner tilers. When we just started out playing Cyberzul ( back then it had a different name), we basically did everything wrong one could do, so we decided to create Cyberzul in a way that you would (and in fact could only) play it correctly. The game will tell you, when you might have clicked on a pattern line, where you cannot place your chosen tiles.
A round finishes when there are no tiles anymore: neither on the Cyber Mines, nor in the Stack. If the game hasn’t finished yet, the next round will begin afterwards with fresh tiles on the Cyber Mines.
Tiling! We start tilin’! At the end of a round, all full pattern lines activate a cyber tile at your wall! And that’s not just beautiful, you will receive points for that, too.
The game ends after the round in which at least one player has completed a horizontal line of five consecutive tiles on his/her wall.
The winner is the player with the most points at the end of the game. "How do I get points?“, you ask. And here is the answer:
We have already mentioned, a full pattern line will lead to the activation of a cyber tile on your wall. Here is how you then get points:
- If there are no tiles directly adjacent (vertically or horizontally) to the newly placed tile, you get one point.
- If there are any tiles adjacent, however, the following happens:
- The game checks if there are one or more tiles horizontally linked to the newly placed cyber tile. If so, it counts all these linked tiles (including the newly placed one) and rewards you with that many points.
- Then it checks if there are one or more cyber tiles vertically linked to the newly placed tile. If so, it counts all these linked tiles (including the newly placed tile) and rewards you with that many points.
Finally, at the end of the wall-tiling phase, it checks if you have any tiles in the floor line. For the first two tiles, you lose one point each, for the next three tiles, you lose two points each, and for the last two tiles, you loos three points each.
The game ends right after the wall-tiling phase in wich at least one player has completed at leas one horizontal line of five consecutive tiles on his/her wall.
Once the game has ended, you will be rewarded with additional points if you have achieved the following goals:
- Two points for each complete horizontal line of five consecutive tiles on your wall
- Seven points for each complete vertical line of five consecutive tiles on your wall
- Ten points for each color of which you have placed all five tiles on your wall
The player with the most points on his/her score track wins the game. In the case of a tie, the tied player with more complete horizontal lines wins the game. If that does not break the tie, the win will be shared.
The most important rule is to have fun playing the game!
May Tilora, the goddess of home building and cyber tiling, be with you,
Your Cybermasters - also known as Gang of Five
P.S.: Cyberzul is based on an even older, an ancient game, you might say, called Azul. Here are the instructions for that game:
Cyberzul-Mode: Off!
You can find game instructions for the Azul game on this website.
TODO