Pasang?
That's a typical answer you would get if you ask somebody about the pasang game, even in Brunei from whence the game originated. The accompanying deep frown would make a good background texture for web pages.
That was my answer in year 2000 when a former student suggested to me to write a computer program to play pasang. If he brought his camera with him, he could have a nice looking wrinkly background texture for his blog.
I accepted his suggestion. Unfortunately, his exposition on pasang, scrambled on a cafeteria napkin, was too sketchy. Fortunately there was a library book on pasang. Unfortunately, the book was rather vague and inconsistent. Fortunately, I knew someone who turned out to be a veteran player. I learnt pasang under his guidance and finally produced a working program.
The first version was playable, but looked unappealing. The user interface was in Malay tinged a bit with Brunei dialect. Here is a screen shot:
An eyesore! An insult! Having these two additional themes didn't save the day:
But that last theme... ignore its ugliness... doesn't it tickle your artistic fancy? The playing arena doesn't have to be a conventional board strewn with tangible pieces. It can be a field with rubbish to be collected, or a galaxy with planets to be explored, or a gloomy night scene with haunted houses to be exorcised, or (for the sadistic players) a savannah with wandering animals to be hunted. No... cancel that last one. Rest assured, I won't create or distribute any grotesque theme.
Not that it matters much for the first version. Themes were hard-wired to the program code. There was no easy way for even the geekiest user to modify or add themes. It was like having a TV with fixed channels (search your attic, may be you have one).
This first version had a very limited circulation. It had a brief public exposure in Inforama 2001 (Inforama is an annual national competition) when a team of students kindly put it into showcase in their booth. The number of wrinkled faces they witnessed passing their booth must have been a world record.
Computer programmers understand that the first version of a program is meant to be thrown away (and I'm not making this up as an excuse for my own sloppy first version). This I did. In its place was a much improved version. Like an organic being, Pasang Emas grew.
