Through the preferences screen, the program allows you to create several sets of options and a set of options can be chosen before starting a game.
A set of options includes the rule adaptation options, the end-of-game options, the program operation options, and a special player initialization possibility.
Rule adaptation options
Compared to the standard rules corresponding to the defaults, it is possible to modify:
the number of collectible squares during a stroke, between 1 and 6 (default 6),
the option not to collect if there are more collectible squares than the maximum (default false),
the option to collect only when there are two seeds (default false),
the initial number of seeds per square between 1 and 8 (default 4).
End-of-game options
By default the game ends when a player is starving and can no longer be fed, or that there are very few seeds left on the tray. But you can introduce other stopping criteria:
set a number of seeds at most for stopping the game between 1 and 12 (default 6), if the number is set lower than 2 there can be no effect,
stop when a player has more than half of the seeds (default false),
stop on loop detection (default true),
When stopping the remaining seeds are distributed between the players, by default there is equal distribution of the remains, otherwise each player recovers the remaining seeds from his camp.
Program operating options
the automate level can be chosen between 1 and 7 (default 4),
the option to always show all counts (default false),
the option to show timers (default false).
Special initialization of players
Normally all the squares receive at the start the same number of seeds, 4 seeds by default, a number that can be modified by an option of the game rules.
However it is possible to define a different distribution of seeds at the start. This mechanism had been set up at the start to test the software, but it seemed useful to me to leave it as an option for users (if the fields are left empty, we have the standard initialization):
this can allow to put the game in a particular situation to replay a sequence, study a strategy...
this can allow to vary the game by starting from different initialization.
This mechanism is only activated if the special initialization field of at least one of the players is not left empty, and 1 to 6 characters are entered (if there are less than 6 characters, the last one is repeated to complete), each character corresponds to the number of seeds of a square in an extended hexadecimal type coding (digits 0 to 9 for numbers from 0 to 9, then letters from A to F for numbers from 10 to 15, then the following letters from G to N for numbers from 16 to 23).
There are only three limitations: squares cannot have more than 23 seeds, a player cannot have all his squares at 0, and there must be less than 100 seeds in total.