Hearts 3.1.1 (FAT)
David Skelly
All rights reserved.
©2000
9/17/2000
General:
Hearts 3 improves on the simple layout and gameplay of Hearts 2.0.4 to give an even more advanced and customized game of Hearts that, most importantly, provides for an excellent playing experience! The updates and enhancements are quite numerous. Examples include - new sound, asynchonous sound play, better scoreboard, new upside facing cards, expandible card design folder, support for plugin-artificial intelligence, more rules options, more aesthetic options, last trick window, preferences window and more. Due to the time and effort put into this release, it is being released as Shareware. This means that you may play several games of Hearts, and if you decide that you like the software, you must register it. By registering, you will get rid of the annoying splash screen, become eligible to shoot the moon, and also help me pay my bills :) For ordering information, please see the section at the bottom of this document.
Hearts Rules:
Hearts is a card game for 4 players. The object of the game is have the lowest score when one person gets more than 100 points. The game starts by dealing 13 cards to each player. Players then choose 3 cards from this hand to pass to the person on their left. The person with the 2 of clubs leads on the first trick. Play is standard trick-taking* without trumps until the hand is gone. Players may not lead hearts until they have been "broken" (already played on a previous trick), unless hearts are the only suit left in the player's hand. Playing the queen of spades also breaks hearts.
Scores are calculated at the end of each hand. Every heart taken is worth 1 point. The queen of spades is worth 13 points and the jack of diamonds -10. If a player manages to take all 13 hearts and the queen of spades (called "shooting the moon") then instead of adding 26 points to their score, they subtract 26. Or they may choose to take 0 points and give each of their opponents 26 points.
The game ends when one person gets more than 100 points. The winner is the player with the lowest score. If, however, at the end of the hand a player has exactly 100 points, they are declared the winner.
*Standard trick-taking is described as follows: Players must follow the suit of the card lead. The player who plays the highest card (aces high) of the suit lead takes the trick. If a player does not have a card of the suit lead, they are free to play whatever card they want. The player who takes the trick then leads the next trick.
Manual:
Hearts 3's memory requirements have been moved up a bit. Given that many people are using new iMacs and dual-processor G4's (wow, those look cool!) I doubt this will be a problem for most people. Hearts 3 requires System 7.5.5 (may work on earlier systems, but is unsupported), the Thread Manager, and 1000K of memory to run.
Menus: The menus in Hearts should be pretty self-explanatory. Before exiting the program, users are asked if they want to save their player. A player's game statistics and options are stored in this file. Players that have a file are automatically saved thereafter before quitting. The player menus are filled with the names of the plugin CPU's found in the folder "CPU Players" (the default is Stan, short for Standard). A C/C++ programmer can program their own Hearts players to play against... so if you know one, or are one, go download the development kit from the Hearts site! In order to have one show up in the menu, just drop it in the folder. The same idea goes for the Card Design folder as well. Drop you favorite pictures/images in that folder to have them show up in the Card Design menu. If you are a graphics artist or have created a card that looks nifty, send it to me, I will try to distribute it on my website. (As you can probably tell, I'm not much of an artist.)
Hearts games can be customized using the options dialog.
---- game customizations ----
- Disable Sound- this turns off the sounds in the game
- Clear Trick W/Mouse - at the end of each trick, the cards stay on the table until the mouse is
clicked (useful if you need more time to examine the cards played)
- Disable Checkering- the game attempts to keep your cards arranged by suits
black/red/black/red, and if this option is checked then cards are arranged
spades/hearts/clubs/diamonds
- Auto Rearrange Hand - this centers the hand after each card is played (may go slow on older
machines)
- Jumbo Cards - if you have trouble seeing the smaller cards, use this
- Random Card Designs - ummm, I forget what this does
- Show Cards After Hand - displays the cards each player took
- Hilite- Striped/Inverted/Outline - the hilighting style of a playing card that is clicked on
---- rule customizations ----
- Rotate Lead - the lead rotates between the players instead going to the 2 of clubs
- Jack is 0 Points - the jack of diamonds counts as 0 points, not -10
- Don't Pass 3 - at the beginning of a hand, no cards are passed
- Taking 0 Tricks is -5 - if you haven't taken any tricks at the end of a hand, you get -5 points
- Queen Doesn't Break Hearts - playing the queen of spades does not break hearts
- Allow Bleeding on the First Trick - players can play hearts or the black lady on the first
trick
- Game To - sets the score that ends the game
- Exact Score Wins - since many people do not play this way, it is now an option
- Shooting the Sun - if you manage to take every trick in a hand, you are awarded a bonus -24 points to your score. This makes the effective score total -60 for you after your moonshoot and jack of diamonds.
Clicking the default button will set the dialog to the 'standard' rules.
Choosing Finish Hand from the game menu will play out the rest of the hand as a computer player would. This can be canceled by choosing Finish Hand from the game menu again. Control-clicking a card will also play out the rest of the hand.
The statistics window shows the stats for the current player. QJ Same Trick/Hand is the queen of spades and jack of diamonds taken on the same trick/hand. Sortof an interesting statistic. Cover/Didn't Cover is used with the jack of diamonds. If you are 3rd to play in a trick and you play a diamond higher than the jack and the player to your left has the jack in his hand, you 'covered'. If you are 3rd to play in a trick and you have a diamond higher than the jack in your hand but you don't play it and the player to your left plays the jack, you 'didn't cover'. Clicking on the 'Average' button calculates each stat divided by number of games played.
Shooting the Moon- When you shoot the moon, you will be given the choice between subtracting 26 points from your score, or adding 26 points to everybody elses score. The computer will usually choose to subtract 26 points from its score.
System Requirements:
Hearts requires a 68k or PPC Macintosh running System 7.5.5, color quickdraw, and 1000k of memory. Additionally, Hearts will make use of Navigation Services, Internet Config and Quicktime when available.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to my (semi) beta tester JP for testing this thing out. Thanks to Troy Gaul for his floating windows Windoids. Thanks to Macintosh C: A Hobbyist's Guide to Programming the Mac OS in C for helping me get Troy's windoids to actually float. This program was written in C with Codewarrior.
Legal:
This program is distributed as is. I, the author, am not responsible for any direct or indirect damage this program might do to your computer. This program may be distributed (on CD's or other media as well) as long as this notice and any other files accompanying the program originally are included. If the CD or other media is being used for profit, written permission from myself must also be obtained. All rights reserved. ©2000 David Skelly
Extra:
So, you think you've got the brains to create Artificial Intelligence huh? (you must have, you're the only one still reading this document) A special artificial intelligence developer edition of Hearts is available for download on my website. You'll get all the information you need to develop one there. If you want to create card designs, as I said earlier, drop them into the Card Design Folder.
Ordering Information:
Hearts is priced at $14.95 for a single user license. Hopefully this price is not too expensive for the casual user and still justifies the amount of work I put into this project. To order, you can use the Register application that came with Hearts, or you can go to the webpage at kagi to order securely online with a credit card. If you you will be using Hearts in your home that has more than one computer, and more than one person will be using Hearts, you should purchase the Household license that will allow you to install copies of Hearts on each of your computers at home, for up to a total of 4 computers. This option is available at the reduced rate of $25.95. Anybody wishing to purchase larger quantities of Hearts can, through the use of the Register program, buy a minimum of 10 copies for $10 each. (9/27/00 this option is not currently available for purchase through the internet- use the register program)
Any suggestions, comments and bug reports should be sent to
dskelly@kagi.com
David Skelly
HardScrabble Rd
Lyme, NH 03768