Iagno is a computer version of the game Reversi, more popularly called Othello. Iagno is a two player strategy game similar to Go. The board is 8 by 8 with tiles that are black on one side and white on the other side. The object of Iagno is to flip as many of your opponent's tiles to your color as possible without your opponent flipping your tiles. This is done by trapping your opponent's tiles between two tiles of your own color.

Iagno also features multiplayer support with two human players in hotseat or network mode.

To run Iagno, select Iagno from the Games submenu of the Main Menu, or type iagno on the command line.

You're probably wondering why this game is called Iagno instead of Othello or even gnothello. The answer is complicated, and involves things like trademarks and lawyers and whatnot. Instead of leaving it at that, I'll tell you a long and complicated lie about the origin of the name Iagno.

On a stormy night, like those depicted so much in England, a lonely programmer was sitting in front of his computer screen. Ian had finished his masterpiece in gaming. It was a fully interactive game of Othello and he decided to play a pun with the name and called it gnothello for the game was written using GNOME.

Later his buddies came over and like all programmers he showed off his masterpiece. They all laughed in his face and told Ian that his game was worthless and a pitiful attempt to be a true hacker. After Ian kicked them out he decided to rename his program Iago 1 for the evil which had manifested itself due to his game. Yet it still didn't sound right. All GNOME programs have some part of GNOME in it, Ian thought. After much thought he decided on the name we have come to cherish, Iagno .

When you start Iagno the human player plays black and the computer player plays white with the first level of difficulty. Using the Game tab in the Preferences dialog you can set the type of player for each color. Human is of course you, level one is the easiest computer player and level three is the hardest. You can set both to human to play against a friend or set both to computer to watch the computer play itself.

This option is in the Settings menu. Then go to the Preferences submenu in the Game tab and it is initially off. When enabled this option makes the computer player place its tiles faster.

The last option of the Game tab in the Preferences dialog allows you to enable or disable all sounds when playing in Iagno.

Figure 4 The Preferences menu with the Game tab highlighted.

This option controls the amount of animation present when each tile is flipped, using radio buttons. Selecting the option none will cause the tiles to change color instantaneously. Selecting the option partial will cause the animation to flip the tiles slowly. Selecting the complete option will cause the tiles to flip slowly and smoothly.

This option causes captured tiles along a row, column, or diagonal to flip one after another, like dominoes, instead of all flipping simultaneously. It has no effect on game play, but looks cool.

This option will display a grid on top of the playing surface. The grid is useful to display because it shows the player exactly where they are placing each tile.

This option moves all the black tiles to the top of the board and all the white tiles to the bottom of the board at the end of the game. This allows you to visually see the outcome of the game.

This option lets you choose the type of board and tiles which are displayed. If you want to make your own tile sets use the classic tile set as a template and change the texture and colors for different effects. When you make a new tile set that works with Iagno send it to Ian Peters <itp@gnu.org> and he will include it with the next distribution.

Figure 5 The Preferences menu with the Appearance tab highlighted.

The Iagno connection dialog is shown initially when starting a new network game. This dialog allows you to select a server to connect to, and the username that you will have while connected to that server.

It is possible to connect to a server with either a guest account or a normal registered account. Guest accounts allows you to anonymously login, while a normal login account allows you to reserve your own username which is protected by the password that you choose.

The Guest Login option should be selected if you want an anonymous guest account. If you want to create a new login account, then select the First-time Login option, with the username, password and email of your choice. If you have already created your account, you can connect by selecting the Normal Login option, and enter the username and password that you have chosen.

To connect to a server, click on the Connect button.

Figure 6 The Iagno network connection dialog.

Once you have successfully connected to a server, you can choose which game room to join. To play a multiplayer game of Iagno, select the Iagno room. If you want to host your own game, then click on the Launch button. This creates a new table where other players can participate in a game against you. If there are any other games already started, then you can double-click on an existing game table to join it. The list of game tables on the right shows you the number of available seats, which means the number of players that can join the game table.

Figure 7 This Iagno network dialog allows you to join a game room to find other players.

When creating a new table for Iagno games, a preference dialog is displayed which allows you to customize the game, such as set the minimum number of players for the game. Once the total number of seats have been taken, then no more players are allowed to join that game table.

It is possible to chat with other players in network games. Ask for advice or help playing the games, but please be polite against other players.

Once you have successfully joined a game table, then you have to wait until enough players have joined the table. The Players List menu item allows you to see a list of the players who have joined the game. The game will begin immediately when the total number of players in the the game have been reached.

Multiplayer Iagno games have pretty much the same rules as normal Iagno games, except that you are now playing against human players. This means that other strategies might possibly be better than when playing against AI players.

Once a player has won, the game ends and you can return to the initial network game screen. Then you can play yet another game of addictive Iagno multiplayer!