‘The Smith’. © 1992 Ralph S. Sutherland
Game #7 from the Card Shell.            v1.0.5

Contents:
Apocryphal background
The Aim
The Deck
The Layout and Deal
Moves
Special moves
Sequences
Scoring
Cool features of the Card Shell games
Artwork
Legal Bits
Credits

Apocryphal background
Spider is often called the king of the solitaires.  Addicts will agree that it is
certainly one of the best.  When researching this game a friend described Spider
very enthusiasticly, but quite differently to anyone else!  The principle of the
movable unit being a descending sequence in one suit, while the matching rule for 
packing is the simple descending rank rule reguardless of suit was there, but the 
Tableau layout is different.  ‘The Smith’ is Neville's variation on this classic two
pack solitaire.   

‘The Smith’ is a well balanced and challenging game where skill will often triumph.
However, changing the matching rules for packing can alter the balance against the
player and it rapidly becomes very difficult indeed.

The Aim
The aim is to simply build up the eight foundations from Aces to Kings each in
strict suit order.  The unusual feature is that a foundation has to be built up in
one step by placing the entire suit sequence on the foundation in one go.

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 three cards 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.
•All this is achieved using the New Game item (⌘N) on the File menu.

Moves
•Any single moveable unit may be moved at a time.
•A moveable unit consists of one or more cards in descending rank and strict suit. 
•Sequences are built up according to the sequence matching rules in force.  The 
exception to this is that sequences may always be built in strict suit order 
irrespective of the current packing rule.  This is most important with the 
alternating colour packing rule.
•Cards may be built up on the foundations once a complete sequence from King
down to Ace in a suit is formed.  The whole sequence is dragged to the foundation.
•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.
•All spaces must be filled before the cards can be dealt.
•When a column has been cleared then it may be filled by any moveable unit.
•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.
•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 regardless of 
suit.  This may be changed to be descending rank in alternating colour, or descending
sequence in the one suit only.   The choice of matching rule affects the scoring. 
(see below)
•In general the simple rank rule is standard and the strict suit rule is hopelessly 
hard.

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                         2pt                              -2pt
       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.

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.