README

cheech - Chinese Checkers 
http://cheech.sourceforge.net/

cheech is a networked, cross-platform Chinese Checkers game supporting a few
rule variations (please tell me if you know of other fun rule variations!),
chatting with other players, and AI computer players.

cheech runs on on *nix systems, Windows, and MacOS, and there is a 
web-based client as well.

cheech is based on Loban Rahman's Gnome Chinese Checkers
(http://gchch.sourceforge.net/).


Using cheech
============

Basic cheech
------------
Run the program called cheech.  Choose the 'Host New Board' menu item and have
your friends connect to you.  Or use the 'Join a Board' menu item if someone 
else is already hosting a cheech board.

If your friends are busy, Host a New Board, and add computer players into the 
game using the 'Setup Computer Player...' and 'Add Computer Player' menu items.
Watch out, they're not super smart, but they are thorough!

To make a move, click on the peg you want to move, then on the empty hole to 
move your peg to.  If you're making a multiple-hop move, you need to click on 
each hole that you're hopping through along your chain of hops.  When you've
finished clicking out your hopping path, double click the last hole, or press 
Enter to make your move.


Advanced cheech
---------------
If you and your friends are all behind a port-blocking firewall, you can run
a separate cheech server on some publicly accessible server.  Run cheechd
on that server, and everyone can Join to that server's address.

You can also set up a cheechweb server so that people can join your game
just by browsing to a web site.  This requires a web server that can serve php
pages.
- make sure the people trying to connect to cheechweb can access the cheechweb
  port of your computer (port 3839 by default)
- start cheechd with the -W flag, or host a game from cheech.
  (Make sure to enable cheechweb from the Host a new Board dialog in cheech.)
- point people to the url of the cheechserver.  This will be:
  http://<computerHostingCheechweb>:<cheechwebPort>/
  (by default this is http://localhost:3839/ , where other people should replace
  localhost with the IP address of your computer.)


Building cheech
===============

Build on *nix/MacOS:
--------------
- install gtkmm (on a mac, run: brew install gtkmm)
- run the below commands in the root directory of the cheech project.
  - autoreconf -i
  - automake -a
  - ./configure
  - make
  - make install


Build on Windows using Dev-C++
------------------------------
- Get gtkmm 2.8 or higher from here:
    http://www.pcpm.ucl.ac.be/~gustin/win32_ports/gtkmm.html
  and install into C:\GTK.
- Use the included Dev-C++ files to build the cheech binaries.
- Put the cheech*.exe files and the pixmap directory into a folder together
- Rename the ajax/www/com.benjie.cheech directory cheechweb, and put it into
  the same folder as cheech.exe, and it should all work.


Ben Levitt 2005-2020