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10/02/1991 S T r a b b l e ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ User Manual by Warwick Allison **** NOTICE **** STrabble is provided for the enjoyment of ALL Atari computer users, and may only be distibuted free-of-charge. The author, Warwick Allison, retains the Copyright, but expressly permits distribution without charge. **** OVERVIEW **** STrabble is cosmetically similar to the crossword game Scrabble. The primary difference being that this version can be played with just one player - against a computer. This release runs in BOTH MONOCHROME (High) and COLOUR (Medium) resolutions! Due to the size of the dictionary, a 45000 word monster in a highly sophisticated structure, this program will not execute on a machine with less than ONE MEGABYTE OF MEMORY. A smaller dictionary will be made available if any interest is shown. ** Quick clues In order to let you avoid reading this manual, you can just take note of these few clues: * Select PLAYERS from the GAME menu, then click on the top two CPU3 buttons. Once you press OKAY, the two super-brainy computers will battle it out. Click on END GAME to stop them - you will have to wait until they are not thinking. * To play, click on tiles in the lower-left corner, then click-and-hold on the square of the board you want to put your word at, then drag in the direction you want to place the word. The program has many other features, so you should experiment with the menu options. Some menu options may be disabled. This has NOT been done to hide or disable features, it's just that these features have not been implemented yet! Without doubt, those and many other features will be implemented in due course - keep an eye on your software source! **** PLAYING STrabble **** STrabble is a game for up to six players. The game centres around forming words from a group of letters, producing something like a crossword puzzle display. If you are unfamiliar with the game of Scrabble, we suggest you read the short description in the RULES section, or better still, buy the board game! ** Starting The initial game setup is for one human player against a moderately powerful computerised opponent, with both players given tiles. The human player will be able to go first. We describe play from this point now, and leave the description of changing the setup until later. ** Choosing your word In the lower right side of the screen is a box, which we will call the "edit box", containing your seven tiles. The top seven squares form an area we will call the "active area". Immediately below the active area is a small arrow, the "cursor", pointing up at the active area. The bottom seven squares - which initially contain all seven of your tiles - we will call the "inactive area". The edit box is used to choose the letters you intend to use on the board. Clicking on different parts of the edit box will produce different results. The actions are very intuitive, but we will explain them all, to make sure you don't miss a useful one: * Inactive area You may either click on a tile or a blank space in this area. - Clicking on a tile in the inactive area will cause it to be moved up into the active area, at the current position of the cursor. - Clicking on a blank space in the inactive area will cause all of the tiles in the active area to be moved down into the inactive area. * Active area Clicking on a tile in the active area will cause it to be moved down into the inactive area, and the cursor to be moved to the point of removal. * Cursor Clicking on the area just below the active area will move the cursor to that position - but not past the end of the tiles in the active area. Also available, are "keyboard equivalents" for the above functions, and these we list below: * [A to Z] Pressing a letter key will cause a tile with that letter to be moved into the active area. Of course, if your don't have such a letter in your inactive tile, nothing happens. * [Space] Pressing the space bar will move a blank tile into the active area, provided you have one. * [Escape] Pressing ESC will cause all tiles from the active area to be moved into the inactive area. * [<-- and -->] Pressing an arrow key will move the cursor, but not past either end of the active tiles. * [Backspace] Pressing the backspace key will cause the tile to the left of the cursor position to be moved down into the inactive area. * [Delete] Pressing the delete key will cause the tile to the right of the cursor position to be moved down into the active area. When choosing letters for your word, you will usually be intending to use a letter or some letters on the board as part of the word. Just leave those letters out of those you put in the active area, and they will be filled in when you place your word. ** Placing your letters on the board To place your word on the board, move the mouse pointer to the point on the board where you want to place the first tile in your active letters. Then click and drag in the direction you want the word to go - a rubber box will show you what your doing. Release the mouse button when you have sufficiently described the direction you want. You DO NOT have to drag a rubber box to the exact size of the word you are placing, just enough to give an indication. If you just click and release, your word will be placed acrosswards on the board. You DO NOT have to worry too much, because if you misplace your word, it will probably indicate rubbish words on the board, which the computer will check and refuse. ** Automatic spell-checking If you attempt (perhaps accidentally) to place a word on the board which is not in the STrabble dictionary, the computer will display a warning alert, allowing you to change your mind about the placement by pressing the CANCEL, to ignore the fact that the word is nonsense (IGNORE), or to actually add it to the dictionary (ADD)! Unlike Scrabble, there is no penalty for attempting to use a wrong word. The spell checking feature can be disabled by clicking on the CHECK SPELLING button in the OPTIONS menu. You might wish to do this just to experiment. The ability to add words to the dictionary can be disabled by clicking on the LOCK DICTIONARY button in the OPTIONS menu. You might do this when people who are unfamiliar with the game are playing. ** Swapping tiles Occasionally you will not be able to think of a word to play because of poor available tiles. You may swap from zero to all of your tiles with new ones (not necessarily new - if you are nearing the end of the game, you may get the same tiles back!) by moving them into the active area, then clicking on the SWAP button on the desktop. Some players like to do this even when they can go, with a small score, in the hope of collecting better letters - for example if you have six E's and a C, you might think you are better off swapping some of the E's for new tiles. ** Your new tiles After playing your tiles, you will be given new ones to bring your total back to seven. The next tile it is your turn, the new tiles will be in the active section so that you know what they are. There are only one hundred tiles available, so if there are insufficient tiles, then you will be given as many as possible (see the END OF THE GAME section). ** Loading and Saving games Games can be loaded and saved freely. Two particular games are kept recorded by the computer: 1. The game with the highest combined score of all players. 2. The game with the highest score for a single player. These two special games are stored as BESTGAME.SAV and TOPSCORE.SAV respectively, and are stored in the DATA directory. All other games will be stored in the GAMES directory - unless you change the path in the fileselector when you save them! STrabble games are pretty important things, so the computer keeps track of whether you have saved the game, so if you stand to lose it, you will be warned and given the option of saving. For example, if you quit or attempt to load another game without ending the current game, you will be warned. * Please note that this feature is NOT one of those `dumb' ones where the computer just mindlessly asks for confirmation - if the computer says you haven't saved the game, then you haven't * **** THE DICTIONARY **** STrabble is supplied with a 45000 word dictionary to give the excellent performance achieved by the computer opponents, to check your spelling without annoying you with checks on words that are real, and to let you peruse the dictionary to help you play. ** Searching for words You may search the dictionary at any time by clicking on the SEARCH DICTIONARY option under the WORDS menu. The window you are given may be left on the screen, and moved around like any normal GEM window. To use the dictionary, click in the area at the top, and type your word just as you would with any normal edit line in a GEM dialog box, with the exception that you must press RETURN before you can do anything else. (This must be done, because this is a WINDOW, rather than the usual FORM - forms cannot be moved around) As well as simply typing a word to search for, you can also you special characters (wild cards): The character '*' represents any 1 or more letters, except when used at the end of your word, when it means 0 or more. The character '?' represents any 1 letter. for example: HE*O Matches HELLO, HERO, HERETO, and HEREUNTO. MO?SE] Matches MOOSE, MORSE, and MOUSE. P*TR??E Matches just PROTRUDE. This feature is intended to help you with your game --- but you may prefer to play against a less powerful computer and not use the dictionary. In the original Scrabble game, the use of a dictionary was strictly prohibited, but if the computer is using the dictionary then why shouldn't you? ** Changing the dictionary Every so often, you will come up with a really good word, and the computer will not know it. You will be allowed at that time to add the word to the dictionary. You may also edit the dictionary at your leisure by selecting the EDIT WORDS option in the WORDS menu. You can add or delete words by typing the word then pressing the appropriate button. This feature is very underdeveloped, because you really shouldn't have to edit the dictionary. You should certainly be very careful when removing words from the dictionary: Honestly, "zo" is a word; Just because your dictionary does not have the word, don't delete it. Some of the words are, admittedly, obscure. For example: alfa, n. the name of a North African grass of the genus Stipa; also, its fiber, used in the manufacture of paper, baskets, etc. - Webster Dictionary, 1960 zo, zho, or dzo n., pl. zos, zhos, dzos or zo, zho, dzo. A Tibetan breed of cattle, developed by crossing the yak with common cattle. [C20: from Tibetan] - Collins Dictionary, 1981 So you think the Tibetans must play Scrabble too? Fancy breeding cattle just to get rid of a Z! You may save the dictionary at any time, but if you have added (or removed) words to the dictionary and you select QUIT, then you will be warned, and given the opportunity to save the dictionary befure exiting. **** RULES OF THE GAME **** In this section, we give a description of the game itself. If you are unfamiliar with the game and you find this overly brief, then we suggest you obtain a copy of the board game Scrabble. ** Allowable moves The rules for STrabble are very simple, basically, you may place any number of tiles on the board at once, provided: * They are in a straight line vertically or horizontally. * Every word on the board is a real one after your turn. * Your word does not go off the edges of the board. * Your word touches another tile adjacently (diagonally does not count), unless you are the very first player, in which case, your word must cover the star in the middle of the board. All of these rules are enforced automatically. ** Scoring You score points for every NEW word you make. If you place a tile on a square marked Double Letter Score or Triple Letter Score, then that tile is worth double or triple its base value in every word it forms part of. If you place a tile on a square marked Double Word Score or Triple Word Score, then every word that tile forms part of will be worth double or triple its base value. If a word covers more than one word-bonus square (two, but possibly three - unlikely), then the word will be worth the product of those bonuses. If you use all seven tiles from your collection in a sinlge move, then you receive a bonus of fifty points on top of the total of all your words you formed (it is not possible that this bonus be doubled or tripled). A blank, which represents any letter chosen by the player who originally used it, has a base value of zero points, and thus is never worth any points in total. ** At the end of the game The game ends when the END GAME button in pressed, or when one player uses all of his/her tiles and no more are available to replace them. When the game ends, the total base value of each players tiles is subtracted from his/her score. If one player has no remaining tiles, then that player has the total values of all opponents remaining tiles added to his/her score. If all players are computerised, then they will end the game if none of them can find a word, just as human players may do by pressing the END GAME button. **** INSTALLATION **** Place the two files STRABBLE.PRG and STRABBLE.RSC somewhere on your disk (eg. in your games directory; on a blank floppy disk). Then create a folder called DATA and place all other files there. Then create a folder called GAMES, where your games will reside. The largest file in the distribution is one called DICT.DAT, this is the dictionary. It can be placed in the DATA directory, or you may like to put it elsewhere (eg. in a data directory), because a number of other programs by the author of STrabble will be able to use it too. Simply set the environment variable STRDICT to be the path of the dictionary, eg. C:\DATA - you may need a special program to set environment variables, but we assume that if you are using a hard disk, then you will probably already have this, if not many public domain programs exist for the purpose.