This doc file is not necessary to play the game. The help screens in the game should be sufficient. This file is just a little bit more verbose.
The object of the game is to, for each level, rearrange a set of "gold bags" to certain positions. When you have solved all levels, you have won the game. There is no other score than the number of levels solved.
When you start the game the first time, the first thing you must do is to create an entry in the Players menu. As delivered, one player is defined, namely myself. Feel free to remove me; it just remains as an example.
2. Features
Since the game isn't particularly original, I didn't spend that much time polishing it. Nevertheless, it has at least two features that you wouldn't necessarily expect:
- Animation. Just simple, basic animation of the symbols over the white background. Still, better than "jumping" from grid position to grid position.
- Mouse support. You can shift-click and control-click just as well as using the keyboard, and, most important, a path finding algorithm is included, so you can click on the position you want to go to, and the game will find the shortest path and go there, if there is any path at all. (This feature is very nice on some levels where you need to go back and forth over large distances!)
The game also plays a short tune each time you solve a level, as a reward (or is this rather a punishment?)
3. Bugs, compatibility
All the screens (levels) must reside in a folder named 'MacSokoban Screens', which must be located in the same folder as the game itself. This is a clumsy solution, but it was necessary to make it easy to trade screen files between different kinds of computers.
All levels from level 1 to 50 have been tested and solved. Levels 51 to 85 have not been tested yet. They are taken from Xsokoban, which was recently distributed in comp.sources.games. They probably work, but I make no guarantees.
If you make your own levels (which is recommended), the game may fail on extremely large levels, and these levels will not be playable on a Classic Mac. It is recommended that you stay within the sizes used in the supplied levels.
The game uses the old Sound Driver to play sounds. It is possible that the Sound Driver will go away some time in the future. If MacSokoban breaks for you when it tries to play sounds (pushing bags, playing songs on completion of levels), try playing with sound off (in the Options menu).
The About and help windows might look a bit strange on some systems, especially if you don't have the font I used, or if you use ATM™. I hope you will be able to read what you need anyway.
4. References
The game is rumored to originate as a game running under MS-DOS. I first played the Unix Curses version, to which the author is unknown. The 35 extra levels were taken from Xsokoban, which is written by Joseph L. Traub (E-mail address below). The first 50 levels are said to be the same over all these versions. MacSokoban is made using only the levels and rules from the other versions. It was programmed from scratch.
5. Legal issues
This game is absolutely free of charge. I wouldn't dream of charging money for a game that is basically just a quick hack, and which has levels that I've grabbed from the Unix implementations. Have fun!
6. More levels
You can make new levels with any text editor. Brief docs for how to do it are included in the game.
If you make new levels that you think are really good, please send them to me (E-mail address below) or to Joseph L. Traub (xsokoban programmer, E-mail address jtlo@andrew.cmu.edu). In the latter case, it will probably take longer until your files reach the Mac version. You can, of course, post levels separately if you can't reach any of us. If you want more levels, you might be able to find them in new releases of the Sokoban games on other platforms.
7. Acknowledgements
The help from the testers, who found lots of strange bugs that I *really* thought I had fixed, is greatly appriciated, especially Bo Ragnemalm, who solved all 50 levels, and cokin%phakt.usc.edu, who found a particularly ugly bug i the last phase of the testing period.
