This readme file is intended to serve as a reference to the Difficulty dialog and to some other stuff that might need explaining.
About The Game:
I'm not going to try to be too philosophical about the inner meaning of this game, so here it is: when playing with another person, you take turns making drawings (or importing saved ones). When you have completed your drawing, you give your opponent a glimpse of it, and then they are presented with six separate images, each resembling the original. Only one of the images matches the original drawing exactly. When they have selected the proper match, it becomes their turn to make a drawing for you. All of the parameters governing how the pictures should be changed, etc. are controlled by the Difficulty dialog.
When playing a one player game, the computer lets you peek at a random pattern it made up and then you must select the match, just as in a two player game. When you select the right image, the computer gives you another one. Sort of like Solitaire, except its not for Windows, and therefore makes everybody happier.
About The Difficulty Dialog Box:
Well, it'd be nice if I knew how to implement balloon help, but never mind. As always, the absolute best way to figure out what everything does is experimentation. Techinically, you should not even be bothering to read this.
'Length of Peek' Ñ This determines how long you actually get to examine pictures that are being glimpsed. Someday I might get around to using real units of time instead of arbitrary lengths such as 'Really Short' and 'Rather Long.'
'Number of Changes' Ñ This sets the maximum number of changes that could be made to each of the five images that do not match the original. The higher the maximum the easier to tell the fake ones apart. This is a good master difficulty control.
'Number of Guesses' Ñ This sets how many wrong guesses the guesser is allowed, or more precisely how many are allowed before the game is over in the other player's favor.
'Matches must be made on the first try' Ñ This means that a player's score will only increase when they guess the proper image on the first try; so if they don't get it right away their score will not improve even if they do guess it before the limit is up.
'Allow images to be flipped' Ñ When checked, sometimes the five images that don't match will appear horizontally or vertically inverted, which can be a surprisingly good way of making things trickier without making it impossible.
'Scribble Changes' / 'Wiggle Changes' Ñ There are two categories of changes that may be applied to the false matches presented to the guesser. Only one type may be used per game. Simply put, scribbles change the drawing by adding or erasing parts. Wiggles change the image be transforming it (moving it around, basically).
'Brushes' - Scribbles Ñ Allows one sort of scribble change to be the addition/erasure of random squiggly lines. (Tastefully called brushes.)
'Lines' - Scribbles Ñ Allows one sort of scribble change to be the addition/erasure of random straight lines.
'Rectangles' - Scribbles Ñ Allows one sort of scribble change to be the addition/erasure of rectangles, both the outline and filled varieties.
'Ovals' - Scribbles Ñ Same deal as with rectangles, but with ellipses instead.
'Easy/Normal/Hard' - Wiggles Ñ This menu determines how perceptible the wiggles should be. Hard can sometimes be very difficult, while Easy can sometimes be too obvious.
'Grow/Shrink' - Wiggles Ñ Allows one sort of wiggle change to be zooming in or out on the image.
'Slide' - Wiggles Ñ Allows one sort of change to be sliding the image around. (Mathematically speaking, translation.)
'Spin' - Wiggles Ñ Allows one sort of change to be the rotation of the image.
'OK/Cancel' Ñ Um, that thing in your hands is a mouse.
I ought to mention that if no types of changes are selected then all the images except the proper one will be inverted. So trying to make it impossibly hard will actually make it incredibly easy.
About Other Stuff:
Well, everything else ought to pretty self-explanatory. The painting tools in the two-player game are pretty much your generic painting tools. Checking 'Erase' makes whatever tool is being used erase rather than draw. 'Filled' applies to rectangles and ovals, determining whether they appear hollow or not. Insert and Save, in the File menu, do exactly that: Insert allows you to paste just about any graphics file (PICT, GIF, JPEG, etc) into what is being drawn. They will be scaled and converted to black and white if they are not already. (Note that in order to insert file formats other than PICTs you must have QuickTime installed on your Mac.) The Save command saves your drawing so you can use it later or open it in another painting program if you want.
There exist keyboard commands for many actions. It is possible to play a single-player game without the mouse. But I'm not gonna tell you what they all are. You really do need to do some experimenting; look how much of the readme you've read!
Some More About Scribbles:
More than anything else, the purpose of this project was to get acquainted with programming the Mac interface. As I'm a busy kid, I can't promise to continue working on Scribbles anytime soon, let alone provide regular updates and revisions. I've starting puttering around with Apple's nifty GameSprockets, and am liable to spend what time I can working with them rather than this. However, I'd be more than happy to listen to any comments or suggestions you might have concerning Scribbles, programming in general, or what have you. I'll try to respond to everything.
Jim DeVona
anoved@softhome.net
3/26/1999
This game can be included on any CD-ROM distribution provided I am notified prior to the manufacturing of the CD's. I might want a copy.
