‘The Smith’. © 1992 Ralph S. Sutherland Game #7 from the Card Shell. v1.0.5 Contents: Apocryphal background The Aim The Deck The Layout and Deal Moves Special moves Sequences Scoring Cool features of the Card Shell games Artwork Legal Bits Credits Apocryphal background Spider is often called the king of the solitaires. Addicts will agree that it is certainly one of the best. When researching this game a friend described Spider very enthusiasticly, but quite differently to anyone else! The principle of the movable unit being a descending sequence in one suit, while the matching rule for packing is the simple descending rank rule reguardless of suit was there, but the Tableau layout is different. ‘The Smith’ is Neville's variation on this classic two pack solitaire. ‘The Smith’ is a well balanced and challenging game where skill will often triumph. However, changing the matching rules for packing can alter the balance against the player and it rapidly becomes very difficult indeed. The Aim The aim is to simply build up the eight foundations from Aces to Kings each in strict suit order. The unusual feature is that a foundation has to be built up in one step by placing the entire suit sequence on the foundation in one go. The Deck A deck of 104 cards is used, comprising of two normal 52 card decks. Solitaire decks like this often have complementary but distinctive back patterns. The user can choose card back patterns using the Special menu. The background pattern may also be selected from a list of patterns. The Layout and Deal •Eight columns of three cards are dealt face up, these are the 'columns'. •The remaining cards for the 'stock' and are placed face down in a single pile in the upper left corner. •All this is achieved using the New Game item (⌘N) on the File menu. Moves •Any single moveable unit may be moved at a time. •A moveable unit consists of one or more cards in descending rank and strict suit. •Sequences are built up according to the sequence matching rules in force. The exception to this is that sequences may always be built in strict suit order irrespective of the current packing rule. This is most important with the alternating colour packing rule. •Cards may be built up on the foundations once a complete sequence from King down to Ace in a suit is formed. The whole sequence is dragged to the foundation. •Cards are dealt from the stock eight cards at a time, one per column, at any time. Simply click on the stock to deal the next lot of eight cards. •All spaces must be filled before the cards can be dealt. •When a column has been cleared then it may be filled by any moveable unit. •The game is lost if no further foundation layoffs are possible. Scoring is done after choosing New Game (⌘N)from the File menu, before the new game is dealt. Special moves •Each move made is recorded by the computer. Using the Moves menu the player can step back through previous steps and forward again to the most recent move. This means that an erroneous move can be undone. In fact the entire game can be replayed. Since 'The Giant' has hidden cards this has the potential to permit cheating peeks at hidden cards. While non-revealing use of the Forward (⌘F) and Backward (⌘B) is permitted under the rules, it left to the conscience of the player whether to use it to peek at unexposed cards or not. I think this kind of restraint is an essential feature of 'real' Solitaire games, so, you can cheat, but you have serious problems if you persist in cheating yourself like this. •Because of the very long columns that can arise during play, each column has a spacing control immediately above it. The up arrow compacts the column, the dot resets the spacing and the down arrow expands the spacing. •Fast forward and rewind options are useful for game replays, these use multiple forward and backward command with sound off and fast animation on. Sequences •Sequences in columns may be built up according to the rule currently in force. The rules may be selected using the Moves menu with the Sequences… item. •The standard rule says that sequences are built in descending rank regardless of suit. This may be changed to be descending rank in alternating colour, or descending sequence in the one suit only. The choice of matching rule affects the scoring. (see below) •In general the simple rank rule is standard and the strict suit rule is hopelessly hard. Scoring The scoring is a points system that depends on the rules in use for a given game and the number of cards that have been laid off: Rule Win Loss Match any suit 2pt -2pt Match alternating colour 4pt -1pt Match same suit only 16pt 0pt The scores are recorded along with some other statistics such as winning/losing streaks and game move counts. Overall points and winning percentages as well as a breakdown by rule type is given at the end of each game and at any other time using Scores… from the Special menu. Cool features of the Card Shell games •Automatic saving means that you can quit at any time and when you restart the game is restored as it was left off. •All the games from the card shell can simultaneously share the same 'Cards' file. This contains the sounds and cards pictures. This saves duplicating ~400k of common data for each new game. The games themselves come out about 50k each. •The very first time a Card Shell game is started, it looks for the Cards file in the same folder as the game. If it cannot find it the user is prompted to find it. Once found its location is recorded along with identification and search info. so that the 'Cards' file can subsequently be moved anywhere else on the disk and still be found. •The card graphics have be optimised to work equally well on B&W monitor settings as well as 4,16,256,thousands and millions of colours. The layout will fit (just) on the small 9" monitor of an SE/30, and on larger screens the window can be moved anywhere on a multiple monitor set-up. Artwork •The court cards are quite symbolic. I have included motifs of the original card suits: Staffs, Cups, Swords and Coins on their modern counterparts:Spades Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs. This means that I have moved the characteristic 'oops I've just stuck a sword though my head!' from the King of Hearts to the King of Diamonds, and given the King of Hearts a nice drink (cup) instead. •The other common convention in the court cards is the identities of the one eyed cards: Jack Hearts, Jack Diamonds and King of Diamonds. This will permit the playing of some obscure Poker variants that actually depend on this. •The cards are in the form of colour icons in the 'Cards' file. The cicns also contain modified B&W versions that will look better in mono than just letting quickdraw do it's stuff. Legal Bits ©1992 Ralph S. Sutherland. Written with THINK Pascal, ResEdit and MPW Pascal & Asm. Portions © Symantec Corp. This software is freeware, it may not be sold or resold. Source code for THINK Pascal 4.0 and MPW Pascal/Asm is available for US $50 which includes licence to use the code to make and distribute freeware and/or shareware applications that depend in essence on this code. For commercial usage please contact me for negotiations. Please make postal orders and Bank Drafts payable to: Ralph S. Sutherland c/o- E. B. Newell RMB #3 Knox Close New South Wales 2620 AUSTRALIA Personal cheques and credit cards NOT accepted. Email address: ralph@zwicky.colorado.edu Credits Special thanks to Neville Smythe for brave and dedicated Alpha testing. Artwork with Colour MacCheese, thanks to Baseline and the MacCheese gang. Help Text with Imaj from the Data Suite.