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Text File | 1990-10-30 | 23.1 KB | 474 lines

FILE: RUMMY.DOC Rummy v1.00 By Simon Preene Copyright Amiga Computing, 1990 Contents Introduction Requirements Rules Scoring Screen Layout Use Of The Program (short tutorial) Modes Of Play Reference Description Of Source Code Introduction. This text file contains the instructions for and some notes on the operation of Rummy. The program is designed to play the card game of Rummy. I have played a number of variations of this game (variously called Rummy, Gin-Rummy, or Sets), but they all have the same basic objective: the collection of sets of cards which share some property. A more detailed description of the game rules is included in the Rules section below. To start the program either double-click on the rummy icon, or type rummy at the shell prompt. Requirements. The program consists of a single file on disk of about 80k in size, and this contains all graphics and data needed by the program. Once loaded the program appears to require about 160k. This is mainly used by the three plane 640*200 screen. Consequently there should be no problem running the game on an unexpanded A500. Rules. This section explains how to play the card game; using the program is explained below. The game is for either two or three players. A game consists of a number of rounds (or hands), the overall objective being to achieve a score lower than that of the other competitors (see scoring). The defualt number of rounds is seven, but this can be easily changed. At the start of each round, seven cards are dealt to each player taking part. The players take turns to go first (round 1 player 1,round player 2...). After dealing the top card of the pack is turned over to form what will be referred to as the face up pile of cards, and the remaining cards are placed to the left of this, face down, to form the face down pile. The objective in each round is for the players to get rid of all their cards by forming sets of three or more cards and submitting them, or by adding cards to sets which have already been submitted. Sets for submission must consist of 3,4,5,6, or 7 cards which share some common property, for example they may have the same number (such as 3diamonds, 3clubs, 3spades) (these are referred to as numsets in the coding), or they may be a run of cards of the same suit (e.g. 5clubs, 6clubs, 7clubs) (these are referred to as suitsets in the coding). For sets of the same suit the ace can come before the two or after the king. Cards to be added to an existing set must continue the progression of cards already in the set. For example 3c (c means clubs, etc for d,s,h) could be added to a set of 3d-3h-3s or 4c-5c-6c, but not to 5d-5s-5h or 4d-5d-6d. The following lists some other examples SET POSSIBLE ADDITIONS 1. jd-qd-kd 10d,ad 2. ad-ac-as ah 3. 2h-3h-4h-5h ah,6h It is possible to add more than one card at a time, so if a player had the 9d and 10d, then both could be added to the set 1 above. For sets of the same suit, cards can be added to either end. Any number of valid additions can be made to any number of sets while it is a players turn. However a player can only add or submit cards when it is his turn, and not when it is that of another player. If a player cannot get rid of all his cards when it is his turn then he has the option to exchange one of them for another card in one of the following ways : 1. Take the card on the current face up pile, and replace it with one of his own cards which is of no use; 2. Take the card on the current face down pile, and place one of his own cards which is of no use on the face up pile; 3. If after seeing the face down card it is thought to be of no use, he may place this on the face up pile. Any one of the above can be chosen, but after seeing the face down card it is only possible to take it in exchange for another, or put it directly on the face up pile: i.e. the face up card is no longer available. After one of these actions has been taken the player has a second opportunity to add or submit cards if this is possible. If the player still has cards left at the end of his turn, the next player then takes a turn and so on until one player has no cards left. When this happens, the players' scores are updated based on how many cards they have left and the round is over. Scoring. The scores are updated at the end of each round by adding the value of the cards held by the player together and adding that to his current score. For this purpose the cards are valued as one to thirteen for the cards ace,2,3,...,10,jack,queen,king. The player with the lowest score after all rounds have been played is the winner. Screen Layout In the top left corner of the screen are two piles of cards, the left of which is referred to as the face down pile, and the right the face up pile. When the program starts both are face down (showing the reverse of a card). During a game the right will show a card face. Just to the right of this is an area in which messages are displayed explaining what is happening, e.g. the next players name, what that player has done, whether operations completed successfully or not etc. There is also a gadget controlling the number of rounds in a game (see below for how to change this). The continue gadget also appears here. Below the two packs are the status areas for each of the three players. These consist of the cards the player is holding, which may be face up or down during a game, but are blank initially since no game is in progress. To the right of these are five pieces of information about each player. The player's name is in a red box; this is a gadget allowing the player's name to be changed. Other information is the value of the player's hand (not displayed if the player's cards are not on view), which is the amount which will be added to the score should that player lose before getting another turn. The number of wins that player has had, and the current score are also shown. The number of turns taken appear last. Player one's data is at the top, then player two, and finally player three. On the far right of the screen are the face up sets which have been submitted by the players. This area of the display is managed so that the display of sets does not overflow into the rest of the display. For this reason when new sets are submitted or additions made to existing sets, the order in which the sets appear may change. Use of the Program. This section describes an example game using the default settings. The program can be started from either the Workbench or the shell. From the shell, typing rummy executes the program. When the program starts it opens its own screen and displays some initial information together with a message inviting the user to "use menus to play". The menus are described in detail below, but for now use the project menu to select the play submenu, and then the Three player game. Seven cards will then be dealt to each of the three players. Those of player one (user) will be visible to you, those of Lisa and Mike will be face down. The face up pile will now have its top card overturned. It is initially your turn (user appears on line two, and the pointer has a 1 under it, signifying player one). The cards of your hand will be sorted into ascending order, by number within suit (see Reorder option below to change the display order). At this point, if you can identify a set of three or more cards in your hand, you may submit it now. To do this select each member of the set (it will then be complemented to grey). If you select a card which is not in the set, deselect it by clicking on it again with the mouse. Once each member of the set is selected, click on the "submit new set" gadget. At this point, if the selected cards form a valid set they will be removed from your hand and displayed as a "face up set" on the right side of the screen; if on the other hand they do not form a valid set the selected cards will remain your hand of cards, still selected. At this point you should check that 1. All selected cards form a SINGLE valid set 2. At least three cards are selected You may have selected a card which is not part of the set; if so deselect it and try again. As yet there will be no existing sets, so addition is not possible. After submitting any sets (or before if you like) if you have any cards left in your hand you must make an exchange, which is one of the three action detailed in the Rules section above. The methods are as follows: 1. To take the face up card: select it with the mouse so that it has a box around it; then select the card from your hand which you want to drop. The exchange then takes place. 2. To take the face down card or take no card: select facedown card and it will be turned face up. Then to take this card select the card you want to drop and the exchange occurs; or to take no card select the face up pile (the right hand one) and the card from the face down pack (which is now face up) will be copied to the face up pack, and the face down pack is once again displayed as the reverse of a card. Whichever of these actions is taken, a message appears asking the player to click on the continue gadget to go on. At this point, either do this for the next player to have his turn, or you may submit further sets, as described before. Pressing continue before an exchange has been made will display a message telling you that no exchange has been made; so make one before selecting the gadget again. When you legitimately press continue, the pointer becomes a 2, and the player name on line two becomes Lisa. You may at this point see a message "... is thinking", depending on the complexity of the situtation. When a move has been decided upon a message appears informing you of which pile the card was taken from, and the number of cards submitted. When you have read this hit continue again, and it will become Mike's turn. After he has made a move a short description is again displayed, and pressing continue again means it is your turn again. See reference section for details of how to add cards to existing sets. This cycle continues until one player has no cards left, at which point the end of round requester appears to announce the winner. This lists how many points each player has, the number of rounds in the game and the number of the round just completed, and then waits for you to select its 'proceed' gadget, when the next round will begin as before, if any remain in the current game. If not the end of game requester appears to announce which player has won the overall game. Selecting proceed from here will return the program to its initial state, from where another game can be started. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Modes Of Play The program has been designed to allow various combinations of human and AutoPlayers to compete, of which the following is a list 3 human players 2 human players 3 AutoPlayers 2 AutoPlayers 2 human players with one AutoPlayer 1 human player with two AutoPlayers 1 human with 1 AutoPlayer These various combinations are achieved using the SPECIAL->MANUAL CONTROL submenu explained in the reference section below. When there is more than one human player competing at the start of a round, in order that the players have time to change places without cheating occuring, the program will automatically wait for the continue gadget to be pressed before showing the human players cards, by which time the previous player will have turned away. As a further security measure, if when the player comes to take his turn, the turn number shown is his status area is not the same as it was at the end of his last turn, then the previous player must have cheated by going around each player and looking at their cards. When continue is selected the turn number is increased by 1. The continuous play option (see below) is included for games with no human players; although it can be used when there are some, doing so means that the players will not be able to read the descriptions of what the AutoPlayers are doing, and the round winners will not be announced. Note that when games are played with more than one human player, all of the viewcards menu items should be unchecked; the cards of each of the human players are then automatically displayed at the start of their turn, and then hidden again at the end. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reference. This section gives details on how to perform actions in the game, and on what the menus do. actions: Making an exchange When it is your turn, to take the face up card, click on it so that a box appears around it, and then click on the card you want to drop. When it is your turn, to take the face down card, click on it so that a box appears around it, and then click on the card you want to drop. When it is your turn, to take no card, click on the face down card, and then on the face up card to make the exchange. (Look at it first to see if you want it.) Changing player names At any time, click on a player name gadget (the name with the box around it) and edit it to the new name. Changing the number of rounds in a game. DEFAULT:7 During a game click on the number of rounds gadget on line four and edit it to a new number. Entering a number less than the current round number will cause the game to end after the completion of the current round. Submitting a set When it is your turn, select the cards which form a set (according to the rules described above) and then click on the "submit new set" gadget on the right of the screen. If the cards selected form a valid set they will be removed from your hand and displayed on the right of the screen. If they do not form a valid set, you will know this because the cards will remain selected in your hand and will not appear in the sets area. This means that either there were less than three cards selected (at least this many are needed for submission) or one or more of the selected cards does not fit in with the rest. You should then check which cards are selected, and try again after making any changes. YOU CAN ONLY SUBMIT ONE SET AT A TIME. If you have the cards 3d-4d-5d-9d-9h-9s-9c, selecting them all at once for submission will not work. You must select the 3-4-5, press submit gadget, then select 9-9-9-9 and press the submit gadget again to win. ***** The program has now been updated to display a message telling the player whether or not the submission was accepted. Adding to a set When it is your turn, select the cards you want to add to a single set, in any order, and to add to a set of cards of the same suit you can select cards to add at both ends all in one go. After this select the set you want to add them to by clicking on one of the cards in the set. Now any selected cards which can be added to that set will be removed from your hand and added to the set; any highlighted cards in your hand will return to normal. If no highlighted cards could be added to the set the will remain highlighted in the hand of the player. Any number of cards can be added to a set. ***** The program has now been updated to display a message to tell the player whether or not any of the selected cards were added to the selected set. All other actions are carried out through menu options described below. PROJECT->PLAY-> This submenu allows either a two or a three player game to be started or ended. The end game option is active only during a game, and the start game options are active only when no game is in progress. When the exit game option is selected, a message appears in the title bar asking you to verify your choice with the verification menu. Either select the verify menu item to confirm, or reselect the exit game item on this menu to cancel. Normal play can continue throughout. PROJECT->REORDER This item allows the cards of the current player's hand to be reordered. When selected, you are asked to select the players's cards in the order they should appear from left to right. As the last card is selected the cards are redisplayed in the new order. PROJECT->ABOUT Description of program. PROJECT->QUIT Exit program. This causes a message to appear in the title bar asking you to select VERIFY->VERIFYQUITPROGRAM to confirm. Doing this will end the current game (if in progress) and display the result, and then end the program. Note: the request can be cancelled by reselecting the PROJECT->QUIT option. Normal play can continue while the message is present in the title bar. INTELLIGENCE-> DEFAULT:4 for each player This menu controls the characteristics of the AutoPlayers. There is an intelligence setting for each player: level 1 is the easiest, and level 10 is the hardest. The level has no effect for players under manual control. SPECIAL->VIEWCARDS This submenu controls whether the cards of each player are always visible; there is a subitem for each player which, if checked, means that player's cards are always visible. NB: Changing these items only takes effect when the player concerned has their next turn. NB: If a player is under manual control their cards are automatically displayed when it is their turn, and only hidden if their viewcards item is unchecked. SPECIAL->MANUAL DEAL This item allows the player to select the cards for each player at the start of the round. When selected, at the start of the round a requester is displayed with every card in it. The number of the player for whom the cards are currently being selected appears under the pointer. Click on a card and it appears in that players hand. Click on it again and it is removed. Once seven cards are selected no more can be added. When you have selected all the cards for a player select ACCEPT to select cards for the next player. After the cards for each player have been selected, ACCEPT begins the game. NB: any number of cards upto seven may be dealt to a player. NB: the AUTODEAL gadget can be selected at any time to automatically deal seven cards per player from a shuffled pack. SPECIAL->MANUAL CONTROL This submenu has items to determine whether each player is under manual control or AutoPlayer control (checked means manual). Changes here take effect at the begining of that player's next turn. Changes may be made here at any time. SPECIAL->MODIFYMEMORY Each player has their own memory describing where they think that each card is. There is an entry for each card containing the following flags CURRPLRHOLDS Current player holds NEXTPLRHOLDS Next player holds PREVPLRHOLDS Previous player holds CURRPLRDROPD Current player dropped NEXTPLRDROPD Next player dropped PREVPLRDROPD Previous player dropped INFUPSET In face up set on right of screen GONEPAST In face up Pack The flags are used in the score function to decide which cards are likely to still be available. The modify memory option allows you to change and inspect the contents of each player's memory. Selecting card displays the flags currently set for that card. At this point the gadgets can be used to change the flags set for that card in the memory. When the changes have been made use SAVE to store the changes before selecting another card. After making all the changes you want to use ACCEPT exit the requester and store the changes in the player's memory, or CANCEL to exit and discard the changes. NB: Intelligence levels are partially implemented by randomly corrupting player memory. SPECIAL->OPENNEWPACK-> This submenu allows you to determine when the a new pack is opened, after each hand is played or after each game, or not at all. This does not have very much effect. NB: So far as I am aware there is no possibility of cards "disappearing", but if you think that they are, then select AFTEREACHHAND from this menu. SPECIAL->SHUFFLE-> This is similar to the previous option but controls when cards are shuffled instead. Again it has little effect. SPECIAL->CONTINUOUSPLAY This option means that there is no delay after an AutoPlayer takes a turn while continue is pressed, and the the round winner requester is not displayed. I.e. if left playing with all players in AutoPlayer mode the game will progress to completion on its own and the final result will be displayed. ***** There appears to be an intermittent bug which causes players to change themselves to manual control. It only appears rarely - I have only seen it once. VERIFY-> This contains the verification items for exiting a game and quitting the program. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Description of source code The source code is contained in a number of modules so that changes are easier to make. There are seven C modules and two header files: C source CARDDECL.C graphics for cards DECL.C data declarations MENUS.C menu declaraions GAME.C main program, exception handler, open libraries etc. PLAYGAME.C main game loop and associated functions TURN.C functions to allow the user to take a turn AUTOTURN.C functions to allow the AutoPlayers to take a turn C headers DEFNS.H structure templates, #DEFINE constants and macros EXTERNS.H externally visible objects (including function prototypes) The code was developed and compiled using Lattice Cv5.05, with the following compiler options: -cfist -v -y -oram: -L. The last of which invokes the linker automatically. Most of the code is (or was) fairly well structured, apart from the AUTOTURN.C functions which underwent many ammendments during development. So far as I am aware there are not any bugs left in the code which cause a system crash. Most (see below) of the quirks in the machine's gameplay appear to have been removed. * One bug appears to remain, which means there is a chance that when three AutoPlayers play together with each of them being on level 10 and each of them has a single card left, a situation may arrise where each player takes the faceup card each time, and drops the card they selected last time (since it is the only one they hold). As a result the same cards keep going around each player. If this happens simply take manual control of any one player, when it is their turn select the face down card; then return control to AutoPlayer. This cannot happen when a human is playing, neither can it happen when any one player is on less than level 10 since in that case a random decision is bound to be used eventually. As mentioned, this does not affect games with any human competitors . ****** When the program first starts running you may see a window open and then close on the WorkBench screen. This window seems to open automatically when the program is run from the icon, and does not happen when the shell is used. Using Iconx only creates further problems. The only way I have found to remove the problem is to fclose() both stdin and stdout, which is what the program now does. Note that when viewing the source code, tab stops should not be larger than four characters, otherwise much of the code disappears off the right of the screen. Coding and Graphics by Simon Preene, July - October 1990