1. After double-clicking on the application you will be presented with a title-screen that is displayed for a few seconds while the program initialises itself. Once this disappears various game options (explained later) can be set by selecting the ‘Game options...’ command from the options menu. If you are new to Strip-Mac! ignore them for the time being, and start the game by selecting the ‘New game…’ command from the File menu.
2. You will now be presented with a dialog asking you if you wish to have the program generate random opponents. To learn more about this facility read the section of this manual entitled ‘Random opponents’, but for now click on the ‘No’ button.
3. Next you will be presented with a dialogue box asking how many people will be playing the game—enter a number from two to eight. You will then be asked to enter the name and gender for each player and also to indicate what clothes they are wearing when they start the game. (If you wish to change the available selection of clothing, see the section entitled ‘Notes to ResEdit™ hackers’.)
4. The application’s main window will now appear. Before beginning play, though, take note of the two rightmost menus. The ‘Players’ menu contains the name of each player. In response to selecting a player’s name from this menu, the rightmost menu (the clothing menu) changes its title to the selected player’s name and displays a list of clothing appropriate to that player’s gender.
As the game progresses and peoples’ clothes slowly disappear it is up to you to make changes to the clothing menus so that the application knows who is wearing what. Select an item of clothing from this menu and a tick will appear next to the item to indicate it is being worn; select the item again and the tick will disappear to indicate that this item of clothing is no longer being worn.
Playing the game
The first player draws a card by clicking the mouse button or pressing a key. If a numbered card is revealed (i.e. a 2 through to a 10) then nothing exciting happens and play is passed to the next player who then draws a card in turn. On the other hand, if the first player turned up:
(a) an ace then the next player has up to four opportunities to turn over an ace or a picture card;
(b) a king then the next player has up to three opportunities to turn over an ace or a picture card;
(c) a queen then the next player has up to two opportunities to turn over an ace or a picture card;
(d) a jack then the next player has only one opportunity to turn over an ace or a picture card.
If this player (let’s call him or her the ‘choosing player’) fails to turn over an ace or a picture card in the required number of turns then s/he is said to have ‘lost a trick’ and must choose one of the following options:
(a) Remove a piece of clothing.
This option is one of the more dramatic and is generally only selected if the choosing player is short of credits—the game’s currency. Selecting this option gains the player 35 credits.
(b) Select a punishment card.
A randomly chosen punishment is displayed that the choosing player must follow. These punishments may range from kissing another player's feet to any of a range of more intimate activities. Selecting this option gains the player 10 credits if the computer randomly selects an G-rated punishment or 15 credits if it’s R- or X-rated. (You can restrict the computer to specific ratings using the ‘Game options...’ command in the ‘Options’ menu.)
If you are given a punishment card that you don’t want to perform, you may be able to get out of it by selecting the ‘I don’t like this card’ command (described later) from the Players menu.
(c) Select a reward card.
A randomly chosen reward is displayed for the choosing player’s enjoyment. Selecting this option costs the player 15 credits. It is in order to finance these reward cards that people choose options (a) or (b).
(d) Give a randomly chosen card to a random player.
Here a player is chosen randomly by the computer (it may even be the choosing player). This player is then given a randomly chosen card—perhaps a punishment, perhaps a reward. This option will cost the choosing player only 5 credits and is useful if s/he is short on credits but doesn’t wish to remove a piece of clothing or take a punishment card.
(e) Play the ‘dice game’.
Here the computer rolls four six-sided dice. Statistics tell us that the sum of the four dice will be normally-distributed around fourteen. If the choosing player is lucky enough to roll exactly fourteen then s/he will receive four reward cards. If s/he rolls a total particularly far from fourteen then s/he receives four punishment cards. Rolls somewhere in between receive a varying number of reward or punishment card depending upon how close they are to fourteen.
Selecting this option will cost the selecting player only 10 credits. This option gives potentially the best payoff for very little cost—you could end up getting four reward cards for only 10 credits. It also is potentially the most disastrous— after all, who wants to be given four punishment cards? (‘I do!, I do’, they all cry! :-) )
Random opponents
If you select the ‘Yes’ button when asked if you wish to play against randomly generated opponents you will be presented with a dialog box. In the first three fields of this dialog you indicate to the program how many ‘real’ people will be playing and how many male and female virtual players are to be generated. (If left blank, the latter two fields will be given randomly generated values.) Note that at least one real person must be playing the game.
The ‘Dress opponents’ check box, when selected, will ‘dress’ each of the virtual players with a random (but reasoned) selection of clothes.
The Options menu
Sexual orientation
The ‘Sexual orientation...’ menu item will allow the player currently selected in the ‘Players’ menu to designate a sexual preference of either heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. All subsequent punishment or reward cards will take into account this player’s stated sexual preferences.
Sexual fetishes
The ‘Sexual fetishes...’ menu item will allow the player currently selected in the ‘Players’ menu to designate a set of sexual fetishes that he or she subscribes to. Most punishment or reward cards involve fairly ‘standard’, non-fetishest activities, such as kissing or removing pieces of clothing. If the ‘Include fetishes’ game option is activated (see below) then additional cards are brought into play that involve various fetishes. Only the players who select fetishes using this menu item will receive fetish cards, and then only if the ‘Include fetishes’ option is activated. Note that in the standard card set distributed with the program relatively few of the cards are fetishes, so fetish cards will occur only infrequently. It will be explained later how to write your own additional cards.
Game options
[Read ‘The preferences file’ section of this manual for more information.]
While the above two menu items customise the environment for individual players, the ‘Game options...’ menu item sets options that apply to all players. The ‘Game rating’ options allow the participants to limit the game to G-rated cards only; G- and R-rated cards only; or G-, R- and X-rated cards. The three ratings have the following broad properties:
G-rated: This limits the range of sexual activities to the fairly tame level of kissing, cuddling and removing pieces of clothing. Most cards in the card set distributed with the program are G-rated.
R-rated: More intimate activities that generally involve physical contact with someone else’s naked body.
X-rated: More intimate still.
If you write your own cards it would be consistent to try to maintain these conventions. (Please do not distribute the game with any but the standard set of cards, though. Thanks.) See the ‘Writing your own cards’ section for how to specify a card’s rating.
The ‘Game length’ options determine how many punishment cards will be dispensed by the computer before the ‘deck’ is said to have been used up. Once all the punishment cards have been used then players losing a trick are limited in their choices to removing a piece of clothing or taking a reward card. The intention here is to prevent the game from drawing on endlessly. Once the game has started the game-length parameter cannot be changed; all other settings in this dialog box can be changed at any time.
The ‘Surprise cards’ options determine the frequency with which play will be interrupted by a surprise card. Such cards contain instructions that might be directed at all players at once, or at only one or two players; they may be pleasant or punishing.
If the ‘Include fetishes’ check box is selected then those players who have selected sexual fetishes from the ‘Sexual fetishes...’ menu item have the possibility of receiving such cards when next they draw a punishment or reward card. The frequency with which they are drawn will depend upon their prevalence in the card sets. If the ‘Include fetishes’ check box is not selected then no players will receive fetish cards—regardless of their settings in the ‘Sexual fetishes...’ menu item.
If the ‘Stop as soon as first player loses’ check box is selected then the game will finish the first time any player ‘loses’; i.e. is without both credits and clothes. This player must then grant a ‘favour’ to each remaining player. If this checkbox is not selected, then the game continues until all but one player has lost. This makes for a longer game and guarantees that all players (or all but one) will be naked before the day is out! This winning player may then demand a ‘favour’ of every other player.
If the ‘Censor nude pictures’ box is checked then the pictures in the various dialog boxes (such as the opening screen) that depict female nudity will be censored. The game is now shipped with this option enabled. It can be disabled using the Game Options dialog.
Set Parameters
This dialog allows you to change various constants used within the game— constants such as the cost of taking a pleasure card. While the default values of these constants are carefully chosen to give the game the correct pace, you may, nonetheless, after having played the game a few times, wish to alter some of these values to suit your own tastes.
Show Descriptions
This command will only be present in the Options menu if you are playing against one or more randomly generated opponents. When selected, it displays a dialog giving you a brief computer-generated description of each of your virtual opponents. [Suggestions regarding how to enhance these descriptions are welcome.]
The Players menu
Choose a random player
This command will display the name of a randomly selected player. All names have equal chance of selection. You may also choose to limit the selection to players of a particular gender.
I don’t like this card!
If you are required to take a punishment card and are given one that you really don’t want to do—never fear—you do have a chance for salvation. If you select the ‘I don’t like this card’ command while the punishment is still on the screen, you might get lucky and be let off. The possible outcomes of selecting this command are listed below, together with their probability of appearance.
Probability Response
25% You may ignore this card.
25% Sorry, but you must still take this card.
50% You must take this card AND another one as well!
[Are these probabilities too harsh?]
Buy back a piece of clothing
At any time, the player whose name appears atop the clothing menu may choose to spend 35 credits (if s/he has them) to buy an extra piece of clothing. Remember to indicate which item has been purchased by selecting it in the clothing menu.
Game parameters
The following restrictions are hard-wired into the application:
Maximum number of punishment cards
in the file STRIP-MAC! PUNISHMENTS: 400
Maximum number of reward cards
in the file STRIP-MAC! PLEASURES: 400
Maximum number of surprise cards
in the file STRIP-MAC! SURPRISES: 400
Maximum length of an individual card: 500 characters.
Maximum number of players: 8
[If any of these seem unreasonable, drop me a line—they’re all easily changed.]
Notes to ResEdit‚Ñ¢ hackers
STR 128, as discussed in the next section, is used to add a password to the game. STR# 128 is the list of clothing items available to male players. STR# 129 is the list of clothing items available to female players. A maximum of 24 items is permitted in each list. American players may wish to change the string ‘jumper’ to ‘sweater’. No other resources but these should be changed. If you do play with things, though, please don’t distribute modified versions of the program.
Note that if you use your favourite word processor to add extra cards to the punishment, reward and/or surprise files, you might lose their icons if the word processor changes the creator field of the files. If so just use ResEdit to restore the creator field to ‘SMAC’ (the type should be ‘TEXT’). If you still don’t see the nifty icons then rebuild the desktop. (See Apple’s documentation for how to do this.)
Adding a password
Given that our societies are going through a phase that regards anything even remotely connected with sex as a taboo, you may wish to add password-protection to Strip-Mac!. Rather than have password-entry as an annoying default, however, I decided to make it an option that you would activate only if you wished to. You need to be able to use ResEdit in order to do this, though. If you don’t know what ResEdit is, or you’re not sure how to use it, then have a knowledgeable friend read this section and do it for you. Be careful—tampering with ResEdit could damage this and other software on your machine.
To activate the password software built into the code just create a non-null STR resource with ID 128. From now on, you will be prompted to enter this string before being able to run the game. To remove the need for a password (or if you forget it) just remove the STR resource or replace it with a null string.
The preferences file
All settings in the ‘Game Options’ dialog box are now saved to disk at the end of each game. These settings (occupying only a few bytes) are stored in the file ‘Strip-Mac! Preferences’. This file must be in the same folder as the application and should not be renamed.
Strip-Mac! is pretty casual about its preferences file. If it can’t find the preferences file then it simply uses default settings—no error is reported. Similarly, if it can’t successfully save the values into the file (perhaps because the disk is locked) no error is reported, the values just don’t get saved.
Copyright notice
While this application is distributed as freeware, it is still copyrighted in my name, and all rights are reserved. Please feel free to make as many copies of it as you wish, but you may not charge people for these copies and may not use the product to derive a profit either directly or indirectly without first receiving my direct, written permission. Please do not distribute this program or its associated text files in modified form.
Known bugs in this version
When the ‘Censor pictures’ option is on and you select the ‘About Strip-Mac!’ command, the two overlapping PICT items are being redrawn causing a distinct ‘flicker’. (Colour Macs only.) It’s not actually a bug—it seems to be a spurious update event—but it is a little annoying.
The preferences file is not always saved in the correct folder. If, having selected either of the ‘Help’ items from the Apple menu, you select the ‘Save’ button and change folders using the standard ‘Put File’ dialog then this newly chosen folder is where Strip-Mac! will write its preferences file when the game ends.
Author and credits
Snail-mail
Tim North
Villa 1, 66 Park Street
Como
Perth Western Australia 6152
Internet
North_TJ@cc.curtin.edu.au
Thanks to:
James W. Walker (76367.2271@compuserve.com) for his neat
Show_help() routine;
Greg Anderson (greggor@apple.com) for explaining why not to use
ParamText() in modeless dialogs;
‘Usenet Macintosh Programmers Guide’ (particularly Brian Bechtel
for the password filter and Matthew Xavier Mora for editing and
producing the guide);
Symantec for their fabulous development environment—Think C™;
John Norstad (the author of Disinfectant ) for keeping my Macintosh virus
