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- ‘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 (‚åòN)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 (‚åòF)
- and Backward (‚åòB) 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.
-
-