‘The Giant’. © 1992 Ralph S. Sutherland
Game #4 from the Card Shell.            v1.0.3

Contents:
Apocryphal background
The Aim
The Deck
The Layout and Deal
Moves
Miss Milligan Rules (OK?)
Special moves
Sequences
Scoring
Cool features of the Card Shell games
Artwork
Legal Bits
Credits

Apocryphal background
‘The Giant’ is variation on the classic two pack solitaire “Miss Milligan”.   
“Miss Milligan” is one of the oldest double pack games and unfortunately 
it's origin is unknown.  

‘The Giant’ is a variant designed to make this normally very difficult game
a little more likely to work out.  (quite little actually...)  The variations can be
turned off so that the original Miss Milligan game can be played.

The Aim
The aim is to simply build up the eight foundations from Aces to Kings each in
strict suit order.

The Deck
A deck of 104 cards is used, comprising of two normal 52 card decks.  Solitaire
decks like this often have complementary but distinctive back patterns.   The user
can choose card back patterns using the Special menu.  The background pattern
may also be selected from a list of patterns.

The Layout and Deal
•Eight columns of one card are dealt face up, these are the 'columns'.
•The remaining cards for the 'stock' and are placed face down in  a single pile in the
upper left corner.
•Adjacent to the columns on the right  is a space for holding a 'waived' card 
during the course of the game.
•Any Aces dealt onto the piles are layed off onto the foundations before any play
commences.
•All this is achieved using the New Game item (⌘N) on the File menu.

Moves
•Any sequence or part of a sequence may be moved at a time.
•At any time a single card may be put aside or ‘waived’.  It can be placed on the
space adjacent to the columns to the right.  Any card can go here, even when
Miss Milligan Rules. 
•Sequences are built up according to the sequence matching rules in force.
•Cards may be built up on the foundations at any time.  The foundations are built
from Aces up to Kings in strict suit.
•Cards from the foundations may be played back onto the tableau if desired.
•Cards are dealt from the stock eight cards at a time, one per column, at any time.
Simply click on the stock to deal the next lot of eight cards.
•When a column has been cleared then it may be filled by any sequence.
•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.

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.  Since 'The Giant' has hidden cards this has the potential to permit
cheating peeks at hidden cards.  While non-revealing use of the Forward (⌘F) 
and Backward (⌘B) is permitted under the rules,  it left to the conscience of
the player whether to use it to peek at unexposed cards or not.  I think this kind of
restraint is an essential feature of 'real' Solitaire games, so, you can cheat, but
you have serious problems if you persist in cheating yourself like this.
•An automatic layoff option (⌘L) can be used to check for all possible layoffs from
exposed packets and columns.  It doesn't check the stock or talon.  It may be used
at any time and can save a lot of mousing around at the end of the game.
•Holding down the shift key while clicking on a card will test it for layoff onto
a foundation.
•Because of the very long columns that can arise during play, each column has a 
spacing control immediately above it.  The up arrow compacts the column, the 
dot resets the spacing and the down arrow expands the spacing.
•Fast forward and rewind options are useful for game replays, these use multiple
forward and backward command with sound off and fast animation on.
 
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 
alternating colour.  This may be changed to be simple descending rank, regardless
of suit, or descending sequence in the some suit only.   The choice of matching rule
affects the scoring. (see below)
•In general the simple rank rule is easiest and the strict suit rule is hardest.

Miss Milligan Rules (OK?)
•When Miss Milligan rules, only sequences starting with a King can be moved into
vacancies and cards may not be moved off the foundations.  This makes for a 
very difficult game when the harder matching rules are in force.

Scoring
The scoring is a points system that depends on the rules in use for a given game
and the number of cards that have been laid off:

       Rule                                       Win 

                        Loss
       Match any suit                         (#cards-40) / 4         (#cards-40) / 4
       Match alternating colour          2*(#cards-20) / 2     (#cards-20) / 2

 Match same suit only               4*(#cards-10)           (#cards-10)

It is possible to score some points with a losing game if enough cards have been 
laid off.
•When Miss Milligan rules, scores are doubled (both ways).

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.

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.

For commercial usage please contact me for negotiations. 

Please make postal orders and Bank Drafts payable to:

Ralph S. Sutherland
c/o- E. B. Newell
RMB #3 Knox Close
New South Wales 2620
AUSTRALIA

Personal cheques and credit cards NOT accepted.

Email address:
ralph@zwicky.colorado.edu

Credits
Special thanks to Neville Smythe for brave and dedicated Alpha testing. 
Artwork with Colour MacCheese, thanks to Baseline and the MacCheese gang.
Help Text with Imaj from the Data Suite.