═══ 1. Introduction ═══ Howzit! My name is Dan and I'm one of the two people in the picture you see below. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which. The other person is my beautiful wife, Ke'Aloha Akini. We were both rich beyond your wildest imagination even before we got married and so now we are twice that rich. We live on a small island in Hawaii (our own island) and I transmitted this program via my personal satellite uplink connected to the Cray II that I purchased last year with some loose pocket change. NOT! Actually, I am but a poor, starving college student in a dinky apartment in downtown Honolulu (that I got a great deal on) and the other person in the photo is just a girl that poses with just about every haole tourist at Paradise Cove Luau. Welcome to my first attempt at programming. This game is the culmination of about 10 programming books, eight bucks worth of overdue book fines, numerous magazine articles, a few promptly answered questions on Compuserve, and a Summer in Hawaii spent peering at this damn screen when I should have been out exploring the wonders of tropical life -- or perhaps even doing some schoolwork. BUMMER! for OS/2 is, of course, an OS/2 Presentation Manager representation of the classic board game by Parker Brothers. The rules are quite simple (unless you happen to be programming them) and the program should be pretty much self-explanatory. Version 1.1, although it may not look like it on the surface, is a major rewrite of the game. Speed has been improved and there are new options available in the settings dialog. ═══ 2. Rules of the Game ═══ There's RULES?? Come on Man, I thought this was supposed to be a game! Click here for an explanation of each of the cards Bart's objections aside, there ARE rules to this game. Fortunately, they are quite simple. Objective The object of the game is to move all of your pawns from the 'START' circle to the 'HOME' circle. Generally, you must move your pawns in a clockwise manner, although there are some exceptions, which will be discussed in a moment. Pawns are moved like any other object in OS/2. Just click on a pawn with the right mouse button, drag it to where you want it to be, and release. Start There are three ways to get your pawn out of the 'START' circle. If you get a one or a two, you can simply take the pawn out and place it on the circle in front of the 'START' circle. If you get a BUMMER card, you can take one of your pawns from 'START' and place it on an opponents square, thus sending them back to their 'START'. Unfortunately, they can do the same thing to you! Home Once you have made it around the board, you can enter the colored entryway to your 'HOME'. It takes an exact roll to actually get into 'HOME', but you are protected just by being in the entryway. You cannot be sent back to 'START' unless you suffer the misfortune of being forced back onto the general pathway with a four or ten card. Bummer There are two ways to send an opponent back to start. One has already been mentioned... drawing a BUMMER card. The second is equally simple. You just land on the square occupied by an opponent and back they go! In fact, you do not always have to land directly on your opponent, sometimes you can slide into them... Sliding There are eight colored slides located around the board, two for each player. In order to slide you must land on the large triangle at the beginning of the slide. You will then slide automatically to the end, obliterating any opponents in your path! Note, however, that you cannot use a slide of your own color, only those of your opponents. Passing Unfortunately, you do not always receive the card you need straight away. If it is not possible for you to make a move, then you may pass by clicking on the large "I must Pass" button in the lower right of the window. If the Allow Illegal Pass option is set in the Settings dialog, you may do this even if you don't really have to pass (such as when you don't want a four to take you out of HOME) but this is considered to be CHEATING! One exception to this rule is the eleven card. If it is not possible to move forward eleven spaces, you may (legally) pass, even though there may be possible moves if you were to trade places with an opponent. ═══ 3. The Cards ═══ Many of the cards in BUMMER! for OS/2 have unique features. 1 Card This card will allow a pawn to either leave 'START' or advance one square. 2 Card The two card, like the one card, allows a pawn to move from 'START'. Otherwise, a pawn may be moved forward two spaces. Additionally, you may draw another card and play on it. 3 Card This card is very straight-forward. Move 3 spaces. 4 Card The four card reverses the pawns direction of travel. This can be very convenient when near the start. Often, a four card will allow you to bypass 95% of the board, and go directly to 'HOME'. It can be a disadvantage, however, when you are in your entryway, and then the four card forces you back out onto the general pathway. 5 Card This card has no unique features. Move 5 spaces. 7 Card The seven card is very unique. You may use this card to divide up your seven moves between two different pawns... on the same turn! If the corresponding option is enabled, you may also divide the seven into two moves for the SAME pawn. This can be advantageous when there is a slide a short distance away. 8 Card The eight card has no unusual features. Move forward 8 spaces. 10 Card The ten card gives you two options. You can, of course, move forward 10 spaces. You can also move backwards 1 space. This may seem like a slow mode of travel, but it can come in handy at times. 11 Card The eleven card also give you a couple of options. You may move forward eleven spaces. Or, if you would rather, you can change places with any opponent, so long as they are on the general pathway. In this regard, it is much like the BUMMER card, except that you trade places instead of sending them back to start. It is important to keep this in mind, as you may actually end up helping your opponent more than yourself. 12 Card The twelve card has no unusual features other than being the largest card. Incidentally, if you have just gotten out of 'START' and get a twelve card, you will end up sliding every time. BUMMER! Card This is what its all about! Get this card while you are in 'START', and you can send any of your opponents crawling back to where they came from... BUMMER DUDE! ═══ 4. Game Menu ═══ The File menu has four choices. Start New Game This option is self explanatory. Save Game You can save and retrieve your old BUMMER! games. This option brings up a standard OS/2 file dialog. Load Game This option loads an old game. It is no longer necessary to start a new game before loading an old one. Close Exits the program. If you have started a new game, you will be prompted to save it. Hit OK to save your game, or Cancel to exit. ═══ 5. Options Menu ═══ The Options menu has two choices: Settings Undo Last Move ═══ 6. Settings Dialog ═══ The settings dialog contains three areas which allow you to customize the game to fit your preferences: Players Miscellaneous Computer Speed ═══ 7. Computer Speed ═══ The slide at the bottom of the dialog controls the amount of time the computer pauses before moving. When set to fast, you may not even be able to see what card the computer is playing on. It even becomes difficult to tell who's turn it is. If set to slow, you may notice a long period of unresponsiveness, depending on your computer speeds. A little experimentation enable you to determine the optimum setting for your computer / playing style. ═══ 8. Players Options ═══ The Players box contains two subtitles, "Type" and "Name". The check boxes beneath the "Type" heading are three state buttons. If they are checked, then that player will be human. If they are shaded, the corresponding player will be controlled by the computer. If they are not selected at all, then that player will not play at all. This offers a higher degree of customization than was previously available. The entry boxes beneath the "Name" heading contain the name assigned to each of the players. You may use the default, or assign your own name. If you click the down arrow next to the entry field, up to five of your previous names for that player will be displayed and you may select any one of them. So, in the picture above, "Green Beret" is a human player. "Red Sonya" is controlled by the computer. "Big Blue" and "Yellow Belly" are both inactive. ═══ 9. Miscellaneous Options ═══ Display Move Options Display Turn Indicator Play Till All Finish Split Seven on Single Pawn Allow Illegal Pass Enable Sound Allow Undo ═══ 10. Display Move Options ═══ If this option is enabled, all the possible moves will be highlighted each time you select a pawn. Note that on slower computers this option may slow down responsiveness. Also, the calculation that displays the highliting for the home circles is very math intensive. I've noticed that on computers which do not have a math coprocessor (SX's), there may be a delay of up to a couple seconds. ═══ 11. Display Turn Indicator ═══ The turn indicator displays an enlarged image of the current player's pawn, along with an identifying string for the player. This can be especially useful when playing the computer and you can't keep up with who's turn it is. Again, on slower machines or those with slow graphics cards, this option may slow things down. ═══ 12. Play Till All Finish ═══ The default (unchecked) value will end the game as soon as the first player gets all four of his pawns into Home. If, however, this option is selected, play will continue until every last player has gone around the board. This is how it worked in Bummer version 1.0. ═══ 13. Split Seven on Single Pawn ═══ Normally, the seven card is meant to be divided by two pawns. However, it can be advantageous to split a single pawn's moves. This adds a bit more complexity to the game as you may now be able to slide twice or send home an opponent that is less than seven spaces away. ═══ 14. Allow Illegal Pass ═══ If this option is enabled, you may pass even when there is a possible move for one of your players. This can be especially useful when you are in the Home entryway and you get a Four card. Still, a diehard Bummer player would rather die than enable this option (if there are any.) Note that this is not an option for the poor computer. ═══ 15. Enable Sound ═══ Sound has not been implemented yet. Look for it in the next version. ═══ 16. Allow Undo ═══ This option has not been fully implemented yet. I encountered bugs and decided to wait until the next version to release it. ═══ 17. Registering ═══ Why you should register... 1. You will be free of that annoying dialog box that pops up every time you make a move. You will also be able to save your preferences between games. You will be able to save and load games. You may also experience a warm, fuzzy feeling derived from the knowledge that you are an honest person with real integrity. 2. I will continue to enhance this product, probably at a rate thats proportional to the number of registrations I receive. You, if you have registered for free upgrades, will receive updates for as long as I continue to create them, which should be quite a while considering all the plans I have in store for it. 3. When (if) I receive money for this product, I will finally pay to register the last few shareware programs residing (guiltily) on my hard drive. Thus your registration will not only benefit you (future upgrades, clear conscience, etc.), me (money to continue development and perhaps further my education), it will also be helping other Shareware authors in the OS/2 community. To Register If you would like free upgrades forever, please send $20. If you would like only to register the current version, send $5. For information on what to expect in later versions, please refer to the future. Send money, version # of Bummer, your name and address to: Dan Libby RE: Bummer for OS/2 1313 Limekiln Rd Hollister, CA 95023 I will send you a password to register your copy with. If you have an e-mail account, please leave that and I will try to get ahold of you that way before resorting to snail mail. ═══ 18. Bugs / Contacting the Author ═══ If you have a bug to report, suggestion for the game, or if you just want to chat, you can reach me via e-mail at: Compuserve: 73672,3002 Internet: dandaman@aloha.com America Online: Dan1234 ═══ 19. Screen Considerations ═══ Resolution BUMMER! for OS/2 currently only supports resolutions of 800 x 600 and above. This is because the size of the squares is determined by the size of the icons in OS/2. Each icon is 32 pixels (or so) wide and there are 16 squares on each side of the board. Since 16 x 32 = 512, the board itself is already larger than the height of a standard VGA screen. There is probably a way around this, using smaller icon files or something, so if any of you programmers out there know of a way around the problem, perhaps I could implement a fully scaleable version in the future. Black Screen Problem I have had problems on a test machine that was using a 16 color driver where the bitmaps would not show up. This problems seems to go away when using non-compressed bitmaps, but the size of the game increases considerably. Let me know if this is a problem for you (blackness where pictures should be) and I will try to accomodate. You may find that changing your driver will also eliminate the problem. ═══ 20. The Future ═══ In the near future, I plan to add: 2. Sound! First I will have to learn how to program with MMPM/2 -- but hey, how hard can it be? Then I need to find some really cool sounds that I can associate with different events in the game. Some of the events I had in mind were: begin new game, win or end game, drawing new card, eleven card trading places, BUMMER!, two card -- go again, pawn made it out of start, and turn completed. If you have any ideas for other areas of the game that might be enhanced by sound, or if (even better) you have a sound file that goes with one of these events, please e-mail it to me. 3. Performance Enhancements The game is still single-threaded. I had hoped to change that in this version but after losing half my source file, I had enough trouble just getting the game back to how it was, much less implementing new features. Look for a multi-threaded version in the near future. In the distant future, I would like to: 1. Fully integrate the game with the workplace shell. Eventually, games should be able to be saved by dragging the titlebar into a folder or onto the desktop. A new game would be started by simply pulling a game off the BUMMER! template. The color and scheme palettes, as well as the font box, should be supported. 2. Customize the graphics a bit more. I think that a 3-d look for the board and the cards would look nice. I might also include different card backs, or load the card bitmaps externally so that users can customize them. Of course, I would have to get some sort of demand for this before I tried it. She might fit in well somewhere too! 3. Modem Play. Admittedly, this is very far off, and even if I did implement this feature, probably no one would ever use it. Nevertheless, I would like to try, since this program is, after all, a learning experience and I think it would be beneficial for me to know something about computer communications since we are reaching the era of connectivity, after all. By the same token, I might implement some sort of printing option in both B/W and Color (I hate programs that don't take advantage of my color printer) since that is something I would like to learn about as well.