Chip 2001 Mobile/Chip_Mobile_2001.iso/palm/spiele/handigol/handigol.exe/DOC/manual.txt

Text File | 2000-08-28 | 17KB | 334 lines

                          HandiGolf User's Manual

          Introduction

HandiGolf is a Palm Pilot program which allows you to play golf on your
Palm III or better handheld. You play from an overhead view on the fairways
and a view from the green when putting. The program has fairways, greens,
sand traps, water, and trees. HandiGolf keeps track of your score and up to
3 other players, and saves any games which are interrupted. HandiGolf comes
with a separate program to build the courses called HandiEdit.

This program is shareware, until you register the program you will be
nagged when you start up to register. Also, when you register the program
you will get notified of any updates or new courses. You will also have
access to other courses that we have made, or that other registered users
have made.

NOTE: I believe the problem with Palm Vx's is now fixed (It works on mine).

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Installation

Follow the standard PalmPilot installation procedure for HandiGolf:

First, unzip HANDI.ZIP somewhere on your PC or Mac. Then from Windows, run
the PALMPILOT INSTALL TOOL program which will be in the same group as your
PalmPilot Desktop application. When the install dialog comes up, click on
the BROWSE button and navigate to the directory where you unzipped the PRC
files. Select HANDI.PRC, TheLinks.PDB, StNasty.PDB, Duffers.PDB, and
HEDIT.PRC by double-clicking it in the FILE OPEN dialog and then click on
the INSTALL button. On the next HotSync, the HandiGolf application will
appear in your list of applications.

The 5 files you installed are: HANDI.PRC - the actual golf program,
TheLinks.PDB - a 9 hole course, Duffers.PDB - an 18 hole course,
StNasty.PDB - a difficult 18 hole course, and HEDIT.PRC which is the course
editor. HandiGolf uses databases of type PGlf (I was going to call the
program a different name and registered PGlf) as courses, which is what
HEDIT will make, so over time you will have databases of this type on your
Palm device for each course that you have installed or created. HandiGolf
also creates a small database on your Palm Pilot with registration
information, and the status of the last game played.

As of this writing, this program has only been tested on PalmOS 3.0, but I
believe it will work on all platforms, I will update this as I get
information back.

WARNING: This game occasionally does not work with HackMaster installed. It
runs in a timing loop to do the golf club swings, and HackMaster slows down
the loop to the point of where the program dies. Uninstall hackmaster or
turn it off before running HandiGolf. Or, if you feel daring, please try it
out and let me know if it works now. I made a fix that might have fixed the
problem.

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Shareware Registration

There are several ways to register this shareware program:

1) Go to www.palmgear.com and register on-line, where they can take the
usual credit cards and such. They also handle phone orders at 800 741-9070
or fax at 817 640-6614. They can handle getting you the registration code.

2) Send a check or money order for $15 US to:

Rick Eesley
1804 Middle Road
Martinsville, NJ 08836 (USA)

Include an email address or return address so I can mail you the code to
enter in the shareware screen. If there are problems contact me via Email
at: [e-mail].

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Operation

The program operates similarly to most Palm applications, most of the major
dialogs are described in some detail below.

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          Starting

When you bring up HandiGolf you will be presented with a screen which asks
if you would like to start a new game, load a previous game, or practice
your drives or putting. Normally you will select New Game to start a new
match. If you choose to practice drives or putts you will moved to a screen
where you can work on your timing and test the lengths that different clubs
will hit on the fairway. To reload a previous game click Reload Game and
the last game that you were playing will come up.

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          Players Form

Once you have selected to start a new game you must enter the names of the
players, or the program will cleverly choose names for you like Plyr1 and
Plyr2. You also must select the number of players, by default there is only
1 player. If you enter more than one name but forget to set the number of
players to more than one, the other names are ignored and the first name is
used as the one players name. When you are finished entering the players
names click done. Keep the players names short as they must be displayed on
the Swinging form in the control area which is fairly small. Names much
longer than about 6 characters will be brutally truncated.

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          Course Form

The names of all the courses installed on your Palm device will be listed
here, pick one of them to play. If there are none listed then you must
install at least one course from the Palm Desktop. To create other courses
you use the HEDIT program which is documented somewhere else, and only
available to registered users. If you want to play a course someone else
has written just download their course.PDB file to your Palm device using
the Palm Desktop. If it was created by HEDIT it will magically show up in
your list of courses.

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          The Swing Form

This brings us to the actual play of the game, the Swing Form indicates
whose turn it is, the current hole, the distance from the ball to the hole,
and the number of strokes the indicated player has spent trying to complete
this hole. The ball generally start on the tee and the idea is to hit it
into the hole in as few strokes as possible. The different shading
indicates the type of playing surface, the light shading is used for greens
and fairways, medium shading is the rough, dark shading is used for trees
and water, and no shading is used for the ball and for sand traps. The hole
is indicated by the flag sticking up, and the ball flashes black and white.

The scale of the hole varies depending on how long the hole is, the longest
holes are scaled so the screen covers 600 yards, medium length holes cover
just shy of 300 yards, and short holes somewhat less than 150 yards. You
must pay attention to this when determining how hard to hit a shot.

The Swinging screen is divided into two areas, the control area on the left
and the overhead view on the right. The control area has status
information, along with the current club selection, the direction the ball
is going to be hit, and the hitting meter.

To hit a shot, first determine where you want to aim and what club to use.
The box in the lower right corner of the control indicates the direction
the shot will travel. When this form comes up it points directly at the
hole, this will often be the direction you want to hit, but other times you
will need to change it so as not to hit into the rough or some other
obstacle. To change the direction tap on the screen with your pen, the
arrow in the direction box will change to follow it. Next pick the club you
want to use from the club pulldown form. You must be aware of what surface
you are hitting the ball from when selecting a club. For example, when you
are in the rough clubs hit with approximately 20% less power, when in the
trees it is 40% less power. If you are in a sand trap you hit with 20% less
power, and if you do not use a pitching wedge you will hit with 80% less
power on top of that. Once that is set, hold down any of the four buttons
along the bottom of your Palm device. A bar will come up the left side of
the driving meter to determine the swing power, try and stop it at the bar
across the meter by releasing the button. After that the bar will come up
the right side of the meter to determine slice and hook, again try and stop
it at the bar across the meter. There will be times when you don't want to
hit full power, and times when you want to hit with some hook or slice,
just experiment until you get the hang of it.

Once the swing is completed the path of the ball is traced out until it
comes to rest, then information about your drive is displayed on the screen
for about 5 seconds. This information includes what surface you landed on,
such as sand, trees, water, the rough, the green, or on the fairway. If you
land in water you will be penalized a stroke and have to hit from the same
location you did last time. If there is more than one person playing this
goes on in order until all players complete the hole.

Just a couple of technical notes on this form, if you hit the ball so hard
that it goes off the screen it stops at the edge of the screen. You can
cheat with this sometimes by whacking a ball with a 1 wood and get right to
the top of the screen on shorter holes. Someday I may do something better
with this, but for now HandiGolf acts like you hit the end of the world
when you go off the drawn course. Additionally, you may notice that holes
are scaled differently to fit on the screen. There are 3 scale factors; 1,
2, and 4. Holes drawn on a scale of 1 have one pixel to the yard, so the
maximum lenght of a hole is 160 yards if the pin is right at the top, and
the tee right at the bottom. Realistically this results in holes of about
130 yards maximum. At scale factor two you can have holes up to 260 yards,
and scale 4 goes up to about 520 yard holes. You can usually figure out the
scale by the length of the hole, so be careful to choose the right club
based on the distance to the hole HandiGolf says, and not by the size of
the screen.

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          Putting Form

Once you make it onto the green HandiGolf switches from the overhead view
to the putting view. In the putting view you can only using the putter, and
you cannot putt off the screen, it will just stop at the edge.
Additionally, you cannot putt off of the green, no matter how hard you
whack the ball. Putting also undergoes some scaling so you must carefully
watch the distance to the pin when determining how hard to putt the ball.
The direction arrow works the same for putting as for driving, and is
normally set pointing right at the pin. Hitting works the same too except
for that instead of hook and slice, the putt is just skewed to the left or
right to make it harder to putt.

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          Score

After all the players complete the hole the scoreboard is displayed, when
you are finished reading it tap on the Done button and you will go to the
next hole. If you have completed the course then you will return to the
course form where you can pick another course to play.

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          HandiEdit

HandiEdit creates golf courses for HandiGolf, it is still a little raw, if
you try to break it you will probably be able to. To run HandiEdit, leave
HandiGolf and go to the Applications list by tapping on the applciations
button. Tap on HandiEdit. When you start HandiEdit you will be in a form
which allows you to create a new course or delete any old ones. To create a
new course enter a name for it and click the New button. To go to the
course deleting form click on the Dele button.

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          Deleting Courses

The course deleting form puts up a list box with all the courses installed
on your Palm device, select one and click the Del button to remove it. When
you are finished click Done to return to the previous form.

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          Describing a Hole

After naming your course and clicking on New from the main form, you go to
this form to describe the hole. Make sure and set all the fields you are
interested in before going to the Next screen, you cannot come back. The
fields are: Hole, Par, Scale, Green Lean, Lean Amt, Wind, and Wind Amt. Do
not set Hole, that is automatic. Set Par to the par for the current hole.
Set Scale to 1, 2 or 4, where 1 is for holes in a 100 X 160 yard area, 2 is
for holes in a 200 X 320 yard area, and 4 is for holes in a 400 X 640 yard
area. Green Lean is a direction such as N for North, or NW for north west,
this is the direction that the green leans. The Lean Amt is how sharp the
green leans, it can be 0 for no lean up to 4. Wind is the direction of the
wind, North is the top of the screen. Wind Amt is a value from 0 to 4 to
specify how strong the wind is. Once these values are entered click the
Next button.

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          Entering the Hole Layout

On the next screen you will do the actual hole layout. You MUST enter a
Hole location and a Tee location, if you enter more than one, only the last
one is remembered. In order to be uniform, the tee should be on the bottom
of the screen, and the hole somewhere on the top of the screen. Then click
one of Fairway, Green, Sand, Tree, or Water to enter those things. Trees
are single points on the screen, just tap the pen where you want them. The
other things are polygons, enter a series of points and then click EndPgn
to end the polygon and close it. Make sure NOT to enter any points twice.
When you are finished putting up obstacles click Done to go to the overhead
page which draws the final version of the hole.

There are a few restrictions on data you can enter into the course. First,
there are limits to how much data a course can have. It is safe to have a
few fairways, a green, 3 or 4 sand traps and 3 or 4 water traps, along with
20 or so trees. Much more than that and you will run into data limitations
which will now allow you to continue the current hole. It is hard to give
exact limits for the amount of data because the space limitation is really
the number of scan line events (math goop). The program will warn you and
require you to re-enter the hole. There are severe restrictions on the
polygons you enter for course topography. FIrst, polygons cannot cross
themselves or other polygons. No figure 8 type polygons are allowed. You
cannot have a sand trap intersect water, or a fairway, instead you must
leave room on the fairway for the sand trap. There are no holes allowed in
the polygons, because you cannot make a hole without self crossing.
Although these restrictions may sound severe, in practice they rarely come
up.

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          Accepting the Hole Layout

Click Okay to accept the hole, Redo to do it again, and Finish to complete
the entire course. When entering the polygon data make every effort not to
cross lines, or draw figure 8's, or repeat points. If you do they should be
trapped and you will have to redo the entire hole.

Next time you start up HandiGolf you will see this new course in the list
of courses

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Release Notes

Release 1.3

Fixed a number of bugs:

- Finally got the elusive huge par number bug, it turned out the courses
had the wrong par's in them.

- There were places that referred to a 2 wood and 4 wood, now the only
woods are a 1 and 3 wood consistently.

- Added random comments in.

Release 1.2

Added St Nasty course, a much more difficult course

Release 1.1

Ported to Palm OS3.5 (not as easy as it sounds). I expect this to clear up
a number of problems that I have had on newer platforms. In particular,
this game now works with Palm Vx's and Color Palms.

Fixed a number of bugs reported by users, mostly to do with restarting a
saved game.

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Last Updated: Apr, 2000
[e-mail]