MacWorld 1996 April/Macworld (1996-04).dmg/Shareware World/Entertainment/Card Games/Strip Mac 2.0.1/Strip-Mac! 2.0.1/Strip-Mac!/Strip-Mac!.rsrc/TEXT_300_Help (general).txt

Text File | 1994-07-22 | 12KB | 151 lines

 






A quick outline of the game
‘Strip-Mac!’ is a risqué, computer-moderated card game for adults. Briefly, the game plays as follows. Players take turns in drawing a playing card from the deck. If a player fails to turn up an appropriate card then s/he must choose between options that include:
    (a)  removing a piece of clothing;
    (b)  taking a ‘punishment’; and
    (c)  purchasing a ‘reward’.

Play continues until one or all players are naked. What happens next is up to you.  :-)

Starting the game
1. After double-clicking on the application you will be presented with a title-screen that is displayed while the program initialises itself. Click the mouse button or hit any key to make it go away.

Various game options (explained later) can then be set by selecting the ‘Game Options...’ command from the Options menu. If you are new to Strip-Mac! ignore them for the time being, and start the game by selecting the ‘New Game…’ command from the File menu.

2. You will now be presented with a dialog asking you if you wish to have the program generate random opponents. To learn more about this facility read the section of this manual entitled ‘Random Opponents’, but for now click on the ‘No’ button.

3. Next you will be presented with a dialogue box asking how many people will be playing the game — enter a number from two to eight. You will then be asked to enter the name and gender for each player and also to indicate what clothes they are wearing when they start the game. (If you wish to change the available selection of clothing, see the section of this online help entitled ‘Specify available male/female clothing’.)

4. The application’s main window will now appear. Before beginning play, though, take note of the two rightmost menus. The ‘Players’ menu contains the name of each player. In response to selecting a player’s name from this menu, the rightmost menu (the clothing menu) changes its title to the selected player’s name and displays a list of clothing appropriate to that player’s gender.

As the game progresses and peoples’ clothes slowly disappear it is up to you to make changes to the clothing menus so that the application knows who is wearing what.  (Short of interfacing to a video camera, there is really no way of fully automating this.)

If you select an item of clothing from this menu a tick will appear next to the item to indicate that it is being worn; select the item again and the tick will disappear to indicate that this item of clothing is no longer being worn.

Playing the game
The first player draws a playing card by clicking the mouse button or pressing a key. If a numbered card is revealed (i.e. a 2 through to a 10) then nothing exciting happens and play is passed to the next player who draws a card in turn. On the other hand, if the first player turned up:

(a) an ace  then the next player has up to four opportunities to turn over an ace or a picture card;

(b) a king  then the next player has up to three opportunities to turn over an ace or a picture card;

(c) a queen  then the next player has up to two opportunities to turn over an ace or a picture card;

(d) a jack  then the next player has only one opportunity to turn over an ace or a picture card.

If this player (let’s call him or her the ‘choosing player’) fails to turn over an ace or a picture card in the required number of turns then s/he is said to have ‘lost a trick’ and must choose one of the following options:

(a) Remove a piece of clothing.
This option is one of the more dramatic and is generally only selected if the choosing player is short of credits — the game’s currency. Selecting this option earns the player 40 credits.

(b) Take a punishment.
A randomly chosen punishment is displayed that the choosing player must follow. These punishments may range from silly things like kissing another player’s feet to any of a range of more intimate activities. Selecting this option gains the choosing player 10 credits if the computer selected a G-rated punishment or 15 credits if it selects an  R- or X-rated punishment. (You can restrict the computer to certain ratings using the ‘Game Options...’ command in the ‘Options’ menu.)

If you are given a punishment card that you don’t really want to perform, you might  be able to get out of it by selecting the ‘I Don’t Like This Card!’ command (described elsewhere) from the Players menu.

(c) Take a reward.
A randomly chosen reward is displayed for the choosing player’s enjoyment. Selecting this option costs the player 15 credits. It is in order to finance these reward that people choose options (a) or (b).

(d) Give a randomly chosen card to a random player.
Here a player is chosen randomly by the computer (it may even be the choosing  player). This player is then given a randomly chosen card — perhaps a punishment, perhaps a reward. This option will cost the choosing player only 5 credits and is useful if s/he is short on credits but doesn’t wish to remove a piece of clothing or take a punishment.

(e) Play the dice game.
Here the computer rolls four six-sided dice. Statistics tell us that the sum of the four dice will be a number that is normally-distributed around fourteen. If the choosing player is lucky enough to roll exactly fourteen then s/he will receive four rewards! However, if s/he rolls a total particularly far from fourteen then s/he will receive four punishments. Rolls somewhere in between receive a varying number of rewards or punishments depending upon how close the roll is to fourteen.

Selecting this option will cost the selecting player only 10 credits. This option gives potentially the best payoff for very little cost — you could end up getting four rewards for only 10 credits. It also is potentially the most disastrous —  after all, who wants to be given four punishments? (If you answered ‘I do!’,then you’re a very sick individual, and you’ll probably love this game. :-) )

Losing the game
If a player who has less than zero credits loses a trick then s/he is required by way of penalty to remove a piece of clothing.

If a player who has no clothing loses a trick then s/he is required to pay a penalty of 15 credits.

If a player who has less than zero credits and  no clothing loses a trick then s/he has ‘lost’. Depending on the settings in the Game Options dialog this may be the end of the game or the game may continue until all but one remaining player has lost.

Finally, consider the case where a player is naked and has exactly zero credits. This player has not lost yet as s/he can still take a punishment. But what if  all the punishments have been used up? (Quite likely towards the end of the game.) In this case a player with no clothes and zero credits has no options at all and so loses.

Random opponents
If you select the ‘Yes’ button when asked if you wish to play against randomly generated opponents you will be presented with a dialog box. In the first three fields of this dialog you indicate to the program how many ‘real’ people will be playing and how many ‘virtual’ male and female players are to be generated. (If left blank, the latter two fields will be given randomly generated values.) Note that at least one real person must be playing the game.

The ‘Dress opponents’ check box, when selected, will ‘dress’ each of the virtual players with a random (but reasoned) selection of clothes.

Note, though, that if you have used either of the ‘Specify available male/female clothes’ commands to alter the default set of clothing items then the ‘Dress opponents’ algorithm may dress the virtual players in strange combinations of clothing.

Game parameters
The following restrictions are hard-wired into the application. (If any of these seem unreasonable, drop me a line — all but the last are easily changed.)

    Maximum number of punishments
    in the file STRIP-MAC! PUNISHMENTS:     400

    Maximum number of rewards
    in the file STRIP-MAC! REWARDS:         400

    Maximum number of surprises
    in the file STRIP-MAC! SURPRISES:       400

    Maximum length of an individual
    punishment, reward or surprise:         500 characters.

    Maximum number of players:              8

Adding a password
Given that our societies are going through a phase that regards anything even remotely connected with sex as a taboo, you may wish to add password-protection to Strip-Mac!. Rather than have password-entry as an annoying default, however, I decided to make it an option that you would activate only if you wished to. This is dealt with further in the ‘Help (menus)’ section of this online manual.

The preferences file
Various game settings are saved to disk at the end of each game. These settings are stored in the file ‘Strip-Mac! Prefs 2.x’. For users of system 7.0 (or later) this file can be found in the ‘Preferences’ folder within the System Folder. Users of system software 6.x.x or earlier will find the file directly within the System Folder.

Strip-Mac! is pretty casual about its preferences file. If it can’t find the preferences file then it simply uses its default settings — no error is reported. Similarly, if it can’t successfully save the values into the file (perhaps because the disk or file is locked) no error is reported, and the values will not be saved. No big drama.

The ‘Card PICTs’ file
This file consists of pictures of the 52 playing cards. If the file is present in the same folder as the application then these pictures will be used during the game. Without this file, a simpler generic playing card picture will be used for all cards. For those people running off floppy disk or with limited space left on their hard disk, the ‘Card PICTs’ file (about 57K) may be removed and the game will still be completely usable — just not quite as flashy.

Copyright notice
While this  application is distributed as freeware,  it is still copyrighted in my name, and all rights are reserved. Please feel free to make as many copies of it as you wish, but you may not charge people for these copies and may not use the product to derive a profit either directly or indirectly without first receiving my direct, written permission. Please do not distribute this program or its associated text files in modified form.

Known bugs in this version
None known. Comments, suggestions and bug-reports eagerly solicited, though.

Author and credits
Snail-mail:
          Tim North
          Villa 1,  66 Park Street
          Como
          Perth  Western Australia  6152

Internet:
           [e-mail]

Thanks to:
           James W. Walker for his neat Show_help() routine;

           Greg Anderson for help with modeless dialogs;

           ‘Usenet Macintosh Programmers Guide’ (particularly Brian
           Bechtel for the password filter and Matthew Xavier Mora for
           editing and producing the guide — thanks, guys!);

           John Norstad (the author of Disinfectant ) for keeping my Mac
           virus free for the last few years. Include this man in your
           prayers at night!

           John L. for lots and lots of extra cards (‘Amazon death grip’
           indeed!)

           Gregg Krall and Bruce Hamilton for lots of neat suggestions.

           Daniel E. Rudman for publicly releasing his ‘SpinCursor’ library.

           Sean Crist for publicly releasing his ‘Simplifying the list
           manager’ code.

           All those people who have sent postcards.