‘The Garden’. © 1992 Ralph S. Sutherland Game #2 from the Card Shell. v1.0.1 Contents: Apocryphal background The Aim The Deck The Layout and Deal Moves Special moves Sequences Endgame Scoring Strategies Cool features of the Card Shell games Artwork Legal Bits Credits Apocryphal background This is a skill based, rather than luck based game. Good play will almost always result in success. It is actually quite easy, and it is quite a nice beginners solitaire game. The Aim The aim is to simply build up the four foundations from Aces to Kings each in strict suit order. The Deck A deck of 52 cards is used, comprising of a normal Ace low deck. The Layout and Deal •Six columns of six cards are dealt to form the “flower beds”. The remaining 16 cards are the boquet and each boquet card is placed in it's own single card pile. •Aces are layed of immediately, before the game starts. •All this is achieved using the New Game item (⌘N) on the File menu. Moves •Whole sequences may be moved at once. •Any sequence of cards may be played into a vacant column. •Cards are layed off automaticly. •Foundation cards are not available to play. Special moves •Each move made is recorded by the computer. Using the Moves menu the player can step back through previous steps and forward again to the most recent move. This means that an erroneous move can be undone. In fact the entire game can be replayed. Use of the Forward (⌘F) and Backward (⌘B) is permitted under the rules, it is in fact encouraged. Sequences •Sequences in columns may be built up according to the rule currently in force. The rules may be selected using the Moves menu with the Sequences… item. •The standard rule says that sequences are built in descending rank sequences of the same suit. This may be changed to be simple descending rank, regardless of suit, or descending sequence in alternating. •In general the simple rank rule is too easy while the strict suit rule is probably impossible. Endgame •The game is lost if no further foundation layoffs are possible. Scoring is done after choosing New Game (⌘N)from the File menu, before the new game is dealt. Scoring The scoring is a points system that depends on the rules in use for a given game according to the following table: Rule Win Loss Match any suit 1pt -4pt Match alternating colour 4pt -1pt Match same suit only 16pt 0pt The scores are recorded along with some other statistics such as winning/losing streaks and game move counts. Overall points and winning percentages as well as a breakdown by rule type is given at the end of each game and at any other time using Scores… from the Special menu. Strategies •Don't play boquet cards until absolutely necessary. Cool features of the Card Shell games •Automatic saving means that you can quit at any time and when you restart the game is restored as it was left off. •All the games from the card shell can simultaneously share the same 'Cards' file. This contains the sounds and cards pictures. This saves duplicating ~400k of common data for each new game. The games themselves come out about 50k each. •The very first time a Card Shell game is started, it looks for the Cards file in the same folder as the game. If it cannot find it the user is prompted to find it. Once found its location is recorded along with identification and search info. so that the 'Cards' file can subsequently be moved anywhere else on the disk and still be found. •The card graphics have be optimised to work equally well on B&W monitor settings as well as 4,16,256,thousands and millions of colours. The layout will fit (just) on the small 9" monitor of an SE/30, and on larger screens the window can be moved anywhere on a multiple monitor set-up. Artwork •The court cards are quite symbolic. I have included motifs of the original card suits: Staffs, Cups, Swords and Coins on their modern counterparts:Spades Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs. This means that I have moved the characteristic 'oops I've just stuck a sword though my head!' from the King of Hearts to the King of Diamonds, and given the King of Hearts a nice drink (cup) instead. •The other common convention in the court cards is the identities of the one eyed cards: Jack Hearts, Jack Diamonds and King of Diamonds. This will permit the playing of some obscure Poker variants that actually depend on this. •The cards are in the form of colour icons in the 'Cards' file. The cicns also contain modified B&W versions that will look better in mono than just letting quickdraw do it's stuff. Legal Bits ©1992 Ralph S. Sutherland. Written with THINK Pascal, ResEdit and MPW Pascal & Asm. Portions © Symantec Corp. This software is freeware, it may not be sold or resold. Source code for THINK Pascal 4.0 and MPW Pascal/Asm is available for US $50 which includes licence to use the code to make and distribute freeware and/or shareware applications that depend in essence on this code as long as suitable credit is given for the origins of the code. For commercial usage please contact me for negotiations. Please make postal orders and Bank Drafts payable to: Ralph S. Sutherland #9 Mt. Stromlo Observatory Private Bag Weston P.O. A.C.T. 2611 AUSTRALIA. Personal cheques and credit cards NOT accepted. Email address: ralph@merlin.anu.edu.au Voice: (06) 2880492(Australia AEST after hours) Credits Special thanks to Neville Smythe for brave and dedicated Alpha testing and Kim Holburn through the turbulent Beta stages as well. Artwork with Colour MacCheese, thanks to Baseline and the MacCheese gang. Help Text with Imaj from the Data Suite.