House of Games 2 (Hi-Tech Products)/House_of_Games_II_Hi-Tech_Products.iso/games/50/read.me

Text File | 1991-07-05 | 11KB | 253 lines

        AUTOMON 3.2 - copyright 1991 Ron Mignery

MONOPOLY is a registered trademark of Parker Bros. Inc.
Their copyrights, however, have run out.


AUTOMON 3.2 is yet another version of Monopoly on computers.

To run Automon, type the following at the dos prompt:

    MON32 <-options> <save_game_filename>/<custom_board_filename>

    example: C> MON32 FEB10A/PARIS

    The save_game_filename and custom_board_filename are both optional.


The author of this MS-DOS adaptation places no restrictions on the
distribution of this program.  Comments and inquiries may be directed to
the author at this address:

            Ron Mignery
            85 Bartlett Street
            Somerville, MA 02145


AUTOMON is yet another version of Monopoly on computers.  It does however
have some features not found in other Monopoly programs.

1.     Everything is displayed on a single text screen so there are no
    distracting screen changes and no graphics hardware requirement.
    Deeds are displayed automatically when appropriate or manually by
    a view facility.  Automon is for those who have come to play
    Monopoly!  Graphics, though cute, just slow you down and distract
    from the business at hand.

2.    Up to eight players are allowed at a time.  Any printable character
    may be used for a player token.

3.    Games may be saved.  Saved games may be run directly from the
    command line with the format MON31 GAMENAME or loaded within the
    program.

4.    Any or all players may be set to automatic mode in which the
    computer generates the moves, including buying of lots and
    houses.  This mode may be changed individually at any time.

5.    Common playing variations such as pre-dealing deeds, putting tax
    money on Free Parking, relaxing color lot requirements, allowing
    rerolls on leaving jail, disabling housing shortages etc. may be
    individually enabled.

6.    All aspects of the game may be edited at any time.  Players can
    be added or subtracted, options changed, player order changed etc.
    The speed of the game (duration of delays, etc.) can also be set.
    Sound effects can be disabled.

7.    Current time and the duration of the game can be displayed.

8.    The user may exit to DOS and return at any point.

9.    The two most common actions, rolling of dice and proceeding to
    the next player, can be undone by pressing "U."

10.    Pop up menus control all actions. Submenus appear so as not to
    obscure the menu tree.

11.    Dice values can be forced for test purposes by pressing a number
    key to stop the dice rolling. When a second key is pressed, the dice
    are set to the numbers pressed.  Any roll from 1 to 18 may be
    forced in this manner.

Knowledge of the rules of Monopoly is assumed.  Playing is intuitive and
mostly obvious except for the points discussed above and for the following:

1.    Pressing ESC at the main menu will clear the screen and ask
    you if you wish to quit.  This facility can be used to redraw
    the screen if it for any reason gets garbled.

2.    Pressing a key at the main menu for a player running in automatic
    mode will overide the computer.  This would allow you to stop
    and edit a game with all players set to automatic (keep pressing).

3.    Jail residents can be distinguished from visitors by a colored
    background on their token.  Vistors have a white background on
    their tokens.

4.    Ownership of get out of jail free cards is indicated by asterisks
    at the end of the player status line.  Cards are used automatically
    to exit jail.  They may nevertheless be bought and sold.

5.    Ownership of a lot (if any) is indicated by a player token in the
    lower left corner of the lot.  Development (if any) is indicated
    by a number just above the owner token.  `0' indicates that all
    lots of that color are owned by the same player (rent is doubled)
    but that no houses have yet been built. `M' indicates that the
    lot is mortgaged.

6.    A minus sign at the start of the player information line indicates
    that the player is on average losing money with each turn.

7.    Pauses in the program when messages are displayed may be cut short
    by pressing any key during the pause.

8.      An asterisk appears after the name of players who are currently
        set to automatic mode.


Version 2.0 of AUTOMON has several features not found in AUTOMON 1.0.

1.    Customizing - the board names, rents and community chest and chance
    cards can be edited.  Type CUSTOM2 at the prompt line to run the
    customizing facility.  To use a customized board, invoke AUTOMON
    from the command line with the following format:

    MON31 <save_game_filename>/<custom_board_filename>

    example: C> MON31 FEB10A/PARIS

    The save_game_filename and custom_board_filename are both optional.

2.    Some bugs in version 1.0 relating to trade in Get Out of Jail Free
    cards have been fixed.

3.    The average income per turn for each player is displayed by
    the board view command.  This might be useful for declaring winners
    in incomplete games.  Note that if no player has a negative income,
    the game would likely continue indefinitely.


Version 2.1 of AUTOMON2 adds some bullet proofing, cosmetic changes and
    a new option to void rents of jailed landlords to version 2.0.


Version 2.2 of AUTOMON2 adds more bullet proofing, cosmetic changes and
    a new option to wait for a keypress for messages not requiring a
        response from the user.  The autoplay algorithm and the average
        income algorithm have been improved.  The computer will now
        mortgage low yield properties to buy houses.

Version 2.2a fixes a nasty bug in version 2.2.

Version 3.0 is reimplemented in Turbo C (Borland).  Previous versions
    were implemented in QuickBasic 1.0 (Microsoft).  The following
    features have been added:

1.    Direct video access now makes windows pop up much faster.
    This could create problems for non-standard systems.  To
    prevent video problems, Automon may now be started with a
    command    line switch, -v, to defeat direct video access.
    For example: mon32 -v oldgame3/burbank

2.    Another command    line switch, -s, has been added to operate
    in silent mode.  When invoked, audio is disabled, even if
    a non-silent game is loaded.

3.    Another command    line switch, -2, has been added to provide
    compatibility with Automon2 saved games.  A saved game
    generated by Automon2 may be loaded and run by Automon3 as
    in this example:  mon32 -2s old2
        When this option is invoked, all games loaded by the load
        games facility are loaded in the old format.  New format
        games may not be loaded while this option is in effect.  Note
        that all games are saved in the new format regardless of the
        setting of this option.  Automon3 remains file-compatible
        with Automon2 custom boards.

4.    A new option has been added to disable auctions.

5.    A new option has been added to allow players to remain on the
    board after bankruptcies.  These two options allow a variation
    on the basic game that "corrects" a major weakness of the standard
    game.  In a game of even just two players, there is enough money
    at the start of the game to buy every property on the board.  Any
    player who doesn't purchase a property he/she lands on is simply
    being foolish.  If players started with less money (say $200),
    could survive early bankruptcies, and would not lose properties
    on which they land to low bidders in auctions, then strategy in
    property purchases would become a viable element of the game.

6.    A hot-key, ctrl-a, has been added to set the current player to
    automatic mode at the main menu prompt.  Pressing any key
    while a player is executing in automatic mode will disable
    automatic mode for that player.  Additionally, automatic mode can
    still be changed by the editing of player data.

7.    A hot-key, ctrl-o, has been added to toggle sound at the main
    menu prompt.  Note that this can overide the -s silent mode
    command line option.

8.    The view facility has been extended to provide more information
    for the serious player (and who isn't?).  The total
    expenditure on a lot by each player, living or dead, can
    be displayed by pressing ENTER in the view screen.  Pressing
    the up or down arrow then displays the number of times each
    player has landed on the lot.  Because of jailings and transfer
    cards, not all lots are visited with the same frequency.  The
    actual frequencies for each lot can be empirically evaluated
    here.  The magnitude of the differences may surprise you.

9.    Some old bugs have been fixed.

10.    Cards are now buffered in memory rather than on disk.  No more
    of those annoying 100 millisecond waits to read Chance and
    Community Chest cards.

11.    You are now given the option to play again (with the same command
    line options) when you quit.

    features have been added:

1.    A -n command line option has been added to allow Automon to be
    run on systems with non-gray-scaling monochrome video systems.

2.    A -h or -? command line option has been added to display and
    to describe the command line options available.  Note that the
    -2 option to provide compatibility with automon2 games though
    not listed is still available.

3.    Windows now have double line borders and revised colors to aid
    in readability, especially on monchrome systems.

4.    Pause lengths for self-erasing windows have been increased.

5.    Some old bugs have been fixed.

Version 3.2 allows much larger money values to accumulate without
    crashing the system.  Previously, values above $32,000 could not
    be handled.  Additionally, the following features have been added.

1.    The number of times the dice have been rolled can
    now be viewed in the time facility.

2.    Some more old bugs have been fixed.

The following files constitute the Automon 3.2 distribution:

MON32    EXE  The game play executive file
CUSTOM3  EXE  The customizing executive file
ATL_CITY BSU  The default playing board description file
ATL_CITY CSU  The default cards and options description file
CUSTOM   BSU  A sample custom playing board description file
CUSTOM   CSU  A sample custom cards and options description file
AUTOMON  CFG  The current game configuration file
T4       MON  A sample saved game (all players set to auto)
N2       MON  A sample saved game (one player set to auto)
MIN      MON  A sample saved game (demos new options)
READ     ME   This file
DEMO     BAT  Runs saved game N2 with the CUSTOM board

***END of READ.ME***