Towers is a shareware program. This means that you can evaluate it for your own use and distribute it to others (for their evaluation) at no charge. But, if you use Towers on a regular basis, you are obligated to register it. The registration fee for Towers is $15.00 (US). To register, send a check for this amount to
Peninsula Software
28510 Blythewood Drive
Palos Verdes CA 90274
In return you will receive a diskette containing the latest version of Towers that has been registered specifically to you. Registered copies of the program do not have the "Registration Motivator" dialog box and contain the registered user's name in the "About" screen. Otherwise, registered versions of the program are identical to the shareware version.
Unless you specify otherwise, registered versions are distributed on 3 1/2" 720K diskettes.
Thank you for supporting Towers and the shareware concept.
BOARD LAYOUT
-- Spots
In the center of the Towers window are ten spots where cards can be stacked. These are similar to the 7 piles in normal Solitaire. The biggest difference between Towers' spots and Solitaire's piles is that in Towers, all of the cards are face-up. There is no limit to the number of cards that can be stacked on one spot. At the start of the game, each spot has five cards stacked on it.
-- Suits
The two areas in the upper right and left corners of the window are where you stack each of the four suits of cards. This part of the game is exactly like Solitaire; each suit is stacked one card at a time, beginning with Ace and ending with King.
-- Depots
At the top center of the window are four depots. Each depot can hold only one card. At the start of the game, two of the depots have cards on them, and two are empty. A card can be placed on a depot any time when it is empty, and can be removed any time there is another legal place to put it.
-- Command Buttons
The bottom of the Towers window has four command buttons: Take back move, Restore move, Reset game, and New game. Towers enables and disables the buttons automatically. You can click on any enabled button at any time. The Game menu provides the same actions as the command buttons. There are also keyboard shortcuts for the four commands. The "How to Play" section has details on what the buttons do.
-- Won/Lost windows
In the lower left and right corners of the window, Towers displays the number of games you have won and lost. These scores are saved in the status file (TOWERS.DAT), so they are cumulative from the last time they were reset. The scores can be reset to zero from the Game menu.
HOW TO PLAY
Anyone familiar with Solitaire should have little trouble playing Towers; the rules are similar.
-- How to Win
The object of Towers is to get all 52 cards stacked in increasing order by suit, just like Solitaire. At the start of the game, the suit locations are empty. The first card placed on the suit location must be the appropriate Ace. Once the Ace is there, the Two can be placed on top of it, and so on up to the King. Towers has the option of automatically moving cards to the suits when possible. You control this feature from the Options menu, described below.
It is possible to win Towers about 90% of the time, but it is rarely easy. This is what makes Towers a better game than Solitaire: whether you win or lose depends more on how well you play than on how the cards were shuffled.
-- Rules of the Game
In addition to the suit stacks, there are two other places for cards: spots and depots. Cards can be stacked on the spots, but each depot can only hold one card. Any card can be placed on an empty depot. To stack cards on the spots, they must be placed in descending order by suit. For example, the Six of Clubs can only be stacked on top of the Seven of Clubs. Kings can be moved to any spot that has no cards on it.
The cards are shuffled at the beginning of each game. Then five cards are stacked on each of the ten spots, and the remaining two cards are placed on depots. You can only move the top card on each of the spots, and can only move it to a suit, an empty depot, or stack it on the next higher card of the same suit. Towers will not let you make an illegal move, so experiment to learn the rules.
-- Moving Cards
There are two ways to move cards: Click and Drag. You can use the Options menu to switch between the two modes. With Drag mode, you move a card by dragging it to a new place with the mouse. It doesn't matter what mouse button you use. In Click mode, you can move a card just by clicking on it. When Click mode is enabled Towers first checks to see if the card can be moved up to the suit stack, and moves it there if it can. If the card can't be placed on the suit stack, Towers tries to move it to a different spot stack. If there isn't a legal move onto a different stack, the card will move to an empty depot. If no depots are empty, there are no legal moves with the card, and nothing happens. Towers saves the current mode in its status file, so when you play the game again it will keep the same setting.
-- Take Back Move
If at any time in the game you realize that you made a mistake (this usually happens), you can take back moves with the "Take back move" command button. (You can also use the Game menu, or Ctrl-T) The most recent move will be reversed. You can take back as many moves as you want: a few at a time, or back to the beginning of the game. Whenever there are no moves to take back, the "Take back move" button will be automatically disabled.
-- Restore Move
If you take back moves, and then change your mind again, you can replay the "undone" moves with the "Restore move" command button. (This function is also in the Game menu, or you can use Ctrl-R) You can use "Take back move" and "Restore move" to review what you did, or change your mind as often as you want. The "Restore move" button is automatically disabled any time that there are no "undone" moves to restore.
-- Reset Game
When you realize you've made a major error you can use the "Reset game" command button to put the cards back in their original positions. When you click this button, select Reset game from the Game menu, or Press Ctrl-G, the cards will be removed from the playing board and redealt in their original positions, so you can begin again. After redealing, you can use "Restore move" to duplicate the first few moves of the game.
-- New Game
Sometimes, you reach the point where it's time to throw in the towel. The "New Game" command button will deal out a new hand. You can also forfeit by selecting New game from the Game menu or pressing Ctrl-N.
FILE MENU
The file menu lets you save games for later, either to challenge your friends ("You figure this one out...") or if you're interrupted. Towers will save up to 10 games in the files TOWERS1.DAT, TOWERS2.DAT, etc. You can enter some comments for each saved game to help you remember which is which.
-- Load Game
This menu option lets you load a saved game from disk. When the Load window comes up, select the game number you want to restore and press OK (or hit Enter). Towers will load the game from the disk file, deal out the cards, and quickly play through the moves that have already been made. Once the game is back to the position where it was saved, you can continue playing as if nothing happened. All of the previous moves are stored, so you can take them back, or reset the game to the beginning.
-- Save Game
To save a game, use the list box to pick an empty game number (or an old one you want to overwrite.) Press Tab to move the cursor to the comment window, where you can enter comments. When you have the comments and game number entered correctly, press Enter (or click OK) and the game will be saved. Towers will display a message box to let you know that the game was successfully saved.
-- Exit
This menu option will end the game and return you to Windows.
GAME MENU
The Game menu has four choices that duplicate the functions of the four command buttons: Take back move, Restore move, Reset game, and New game. They are automatically enabled and disabled appropriately. The fifth option on the Game menu resets the Won and Lost scores to zero. Towers saves the scores in a data file, so unless you reset the scores from the Game menu, they will be cumulative, no matter how many times you start and exit the program.
OPTIONS MENU
The options menu lets you control two features of the game: automatic moves and the card moving mode. The settings for both of these options are saved in the data file, so you don't have to reset them every time you start the program.
-- Automatic Moves
When automatic moves is enabled, Towers will always move cards up to the suit stacks whenever that is possible. With automatic moves on, you don't have to worry about not seeing a possible move. On the other hand, sometimes it's hard to tell what's going on when lots of cards suddenly move by themselves. Automatic moves are recorded just like moves that you make by yourself, so you can take them back and restore them with the command buttons (or the Game menu choices).
-- Click
When Click mode is enabled, you can move a card by just clicking on it with any mouse button. Towers will check the suit stacks, the other spots, and the depots (in that order) for a legal move. The card will move to the first legal opening that is available.
-- Drag
With Drag mode enabled, you move cards by dragging them with the mouse from one part of the playing board to another. This makes it easier to keep track of what's going on, but once you are more familiar with the game, you'll probably want to switch to Click mode because it's faster.
HELP MENU
-- Help
This menu choice displays this file while the game is running, so you can check up on anything you're not sure about.
-- About
About displays the about screen, which has the version number and registration infomation for the game.
TOWERS DATA FILES
Towers has three program files: TOWERS.EXE, VBRUN100.DLL, and PICCLIP.VBX. VBRUN100.DLL and PICCLIP.VBX are Visual Basic Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL). They must be placed in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM subdirectory.
Towers also uses several data files. TOWERS.DAT contains the settings for the Automatic moves, Click, and Drag options, the Won and Lost scores, and the comments for the saved games. TOWERSxx.DAT (where xx is a number from 1 to 10) are the saved games. TOWERS.HLP is this help file, and TOWERS.IDX is the help index. All of these .DAT files should be in the same directory as TOWERS.EXE.
DEMONSTRATION GAMES
Towers comes with two demonstration games, saved as games 1 and 2. When you load these games from the File menu, Towers will quickly run through all the moves to the end. To replay the action more slowly, reset the game, and use "Restore move" and "Take back move" to see what's going on. Looking at the demonstration games should make the rules pretty clear.
HINTS
Towers is a challenging game; most of the time you can only win if you're careful, and think about what you're doing. Making moves just because they are possible usually won't get you very far.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you can easily "trap" low-number cards under higher-number cards, which can make winning impossible. The things to watch out for are making big stacks of cards on a spot that has lower-number cards underneath. This is especially true if the lower-number cards are the same suit. For example, if you have the King, Queen, Jack, and Ten of Clubs stacked on top of the Two of Clubs, you're in big trouble. The only way you can move the King, Queen, Jack, and Ten is if there are three empty depots (to hold the Queen, Jack, and Ten while you move the King to an empty spot). It's usually pretty hard to get three depots open at one time. And if you put the Nine and Eight of Clubs on the Ten, then it will be impossible to win, since the Two of Clubs will be permanently trapped because the King through Eight can never be moved to a different spot. (If this paragraph confuses you, try playing the game a few times and come back and re-read it. Understanding this paragraph is key to developing winning strategies.)
Keeping depots empty as much as possible should be a major goal. Empty depots mean more flexibility in moving cards around. If you wantonly toss cards up onto the depots, you will quickly run out of options. Before you put a card on a depot, think about how soon you'll be able to get it back down. Often it is impossible to get a card back down once it's been placed on a depot, so watch out that you only do that when it's necessary.
The most tempting strategy is to try and uncover Aces and other low cards so you can move cards up onto the suit stacks quickly. This isn't always the best strategyr. Usually the better strategy is to get high cards out of the way first. If you do that, the low cards come uncovered without much effort. You should look for spots that can easily be emptied, so you can move a King there, and then build down from it. The more face cards you have stacked on empty spots, the fewer low-number cards you'll have trapped.
Finally, use the Take back move, Restore move, and Reset game features frequently, especially when first learning the game. Even experienced players win very few games without taking any moves back. It's easy to make mistakes in this game, and occasionally you have to start over three or four times before you win. And remember that almost every game is winnable; you just have to employ the proper strategy.
Good luck!
CARD DECK IMAGES
Programmers wishing to use the card deck images from Towers may obtain then from Peninsula Software by sending a check for $10.00 (US) to
Peninsula Software
28510 Blythewood Drive
Palos Verdes CA 90274
In return you will receive a 3.5" 720K diskette containing the bitmap images used by Towers for the card faces (52 cards in one bitmap), suits (4 large suit images in one bitmap), and a sample card back. All bitmaps are in standard Windows BMP format and were created with the standard Windows Paintbrush utility. You will be able to edit these images yourself or use them as is in your own programs.
SOURCE CODE
To encourage other programmers, Peninsula Software is making the full, commented source code and bitmap images for Towers available for $50.00 (US). Towers is written using the Microsoft Visual Basic Version 1.0 programming language, and makes use of a custom control from the Microsoft Professional Toolkit for Visual Basic. Microsoft allows this custom control to be distributed with applications that use it, so programmers without the Visual Basic Professional Toolkit could still use the Towers source code files as a basis for their own programs.
To obtain the Towers source code, send a check for $50.00 to
Peninsula Software
28510 Blythewood Drive
Palos Verdes CA 90274
In return you will receive a 3.5" 720K diskette with all of the files required to create the Towers application. You must supply your own copy of Visual Basic.
