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Nim-Asm

A clone of the game Nim I wrote in 80x86 16-bit assembly as a project for high school. The game graphics were inspired (more accurately copied since I have zero skills in anything related to art and graphics) from the online game Pearls before swine.

Rules

In the game, there are rows of pearls. In your turn, you can remove as many pearls as you want from a single row. The goal is to leave the last pearl for your opponent. You have 5 levels to complete and 3 lives (tries).

In your turn, mark the pearls you wish to remove and then press ENTER. Then, the computer will play his turn. Press R to reset the level (and lose a life) and press ESCAPE to exit the game.

Note that the computer is smart, and one wrong move is all it takes to lose the game.

Installation

In order to compile and run the game follow these steps:

  1. Clone or download the repository to your computer.
  2. Download and install dosbox. This program emulates an old DOS system with a 80x86 16-bit Intel CPU.
  3. After dosbox is installed, open its settings file dosbox-VERSION.conf with a text editor, where VERSION is the version of dosbox (0.74-3 at this time). If you have trouble locating this file, run dosbox and look at the console. It usually prints the location of this file. Once the file is opened in a text editor, modify the following settings:

    • Under [autoexec] add the following block of code:

       @echo off
 mount D: {REPO_PATH}
 D:
 set PATH=%PATH%;D:\TASM\

      and replace REPO_PATH with the path to the cloned repository on your computer. This will mount the drive D: to this repository, so that dosbox treats it as its file system (dosbox will see this repository as its D: drive).

      In addition, the TASM directory will be added to the PATH environment variable of dosbox, so the assembly compiler, linker and debugger are available at the command prompt of dosbox.

    • (Optional) Under the [sdl] section, set fullresolution to your screen resolution (for example: 1920x1080) and output to ddraw. This will make the emulator work better when using full screen (can be used by the keyboard shortcut Alt+Enter). The default settings tend to change your screen resolution in full screen mode and move other windows around which I find annoying.

    • (Optional) Under [sdl] set windowresolution to the window size you prefer.

  4. Open dosbox. If the previous step was done correctly, typing the command dir in the console should print this repository's contents. Navigate to the Nim directory: cd NIM.
  5. A pre-compiled NIM.EXE program is provided in the NIM directory. Alternatively, you can compile the program using the included TASM assembler:
    • Compile NIM.ASM by running the command tasm /zi NIM.ASM. The /zi option creates debug symbols which could be useful.
    • Link the program by running tlink /v NIM.OBJ. The /v option creates debug symbols. This will create the executable NIM.EXE.
  6. Finally, run the pre-compiled or generated NIM.EXE and play the game.