Cream of the Crop 12

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Text File | 1996-02-03 | 22.2 KB | 547 lines

╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ CorpSoft BBS (815) 886-3233 ║ ║ (815) 886-9381 ║ ║ (815) 886-9388 ║ ║ ║ ║ Z - W O R D Z ║ ║ v3.5 ║ ║ ║ ║ MULTI-BBS Support ║ ║ Supporting PCBoard, Wildcat!, Gap, QBBS, RBBS, Spitfire, ║ ║ UltraBBS, Telegard, TriTel, and Remote Access ║ ║ ║ ║ Copyright 1996 ║ ║ by Robert Neal ║ ║ 317 Hickory Avenue ║ ║ Romeoville, IL 60446 ║ ║ ║ ╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Z-Wordz is released as SHAREWARE. You are granted a limited license to evaluate the program. Try it out, if you continue to use it you are required to register the program. To register the program send $15.00 along with your name and BBS phone # to: Robert Neal, 317 Hickory Avenue, Romeoville, IL 60446. See the file MAILER.TXT for additonal pricing information and special discounts available. You may also register ONLINE with Visa or MasterCard by calling the support BBS at (815) 886-3233 or (815) 886-9381. Simply type CHARGE at the main menu. Once you register Z-Wordz, you will be given your own unique registration number that will inform Z-Wordz that the program is registered. The BBS name supplied with payment will be the name used to create your unique registration number. THIS SOFTWARE AND ACCOMPANYING MATERIALS ARE DISTRIBUTED "AS IS" WITHOUT CHARGE AND WITHOUT WARRANTY, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL ANYONE INVOLVED WITH THE CREATION AND PRODUCTION OF THIS PRODUCT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, ARISING OUT OF ANY USE THEREOF OR BREACH OF ANY WARRANTY. Z-Wordz is a online game, based somewhat on the board game CrossWords. It's easy to play, making it great for all ages (my 7 year old son finds it fun to play - and it stimulates his vocabulary), but it's also challenging to keep players busy trying over and over to improve their Z-Wordz average. Z-Wordz is a game where the player tries to complete the Z-WORDZ (you'll understand when you see the game) by completing three words all linked together forming the Z-WORDZ (believe me, you'll understand when you see the game) from a random selection of letters. In each round the player is displayed a letter, this letter may be placed in the Z-WORDZ or discarded. Players are limited to only 10 discards per round. Once the Z-WORDZ are filled, Z-Wordz checks the words created against it's own dictionary. Z-Wordz awards points for each correct word based on a set value for each letter. Invalid words are ignored. Refer to the WORDZ.HLP file for additional playing information. As distributed, Z-Wordz has a dictionary file of over 950 three letter words. Feel free to add your own to the WORDZ.DIC file using your favorite text editor. Don't worry about making sure the list is sorted as Z-Wordz doesn't require a sorted listing. You may make the WORDZ.DIC file almost as large as you'd like, a test file of 3200 words was used to test Z-Wordz. The routine used to validate words is so fast that even with 3200 words, Z-Wordz was able to validate all three words almost instantaneously. Z-Wordz keeps track of dual scoreboards, one ranking each player on their overall monthly average per round and a second ranking the top 10 Z-Wordz scores for the month. Z-Wordz will automatically reset the scoreboard at the start of each month, requiring no sysop maintenance after initial set-up. FEATURES OF Z-Wordz: - Easy to install and requires no maintenance. - Ansi colors and display. - Terminates cleanly through exit code even on runtime error. - Automatically creates a top score listing suitable for inclusion as a text/bulletin file for display within your BBS. Both an ANSI and ASCII file is created. - Detects loss of carrier. - Operates in local mode (either direct from BBS or from command line). - Sysop function keys to return to the board, chat mode, user stats, increase/decrease time, etc. - Direct support for PCBoard, WildCat!, Gap, QBBS, RBBS, Ultra BBS, Telegard, TriTel and Remote Access. - Support for baud rates up to 115,200 - Support for COM1-15. Optional command line for non-standard IRQ's. - Supports PCBoard environment variables %PCBDRIVE% and %PCBDIR% - Support Fossil Drivers. A Fossil driver is not required to use the program. - Fully Multi-Node compatible. - Support for multi-port digiboards, for use with PCBoard /M. - Yearly scoreboard with rolling 12 month top scores FIRST TIME OPERATIONS Simply create a directory for Z-Wordz and copy all files distributed with Z-Wordz to this directory. Additional data files will automatically be created the first time Z-Wordz is run. CONFIGURING THE PROGRAM Using your favorite text editor, edit the file WORDZ.CFG. Below is the layout of this file: C:\PCB\PCBOARD.SYS Corporate Headquarters Bob Neal 15 0 0 NA 5 Line 1 = Full pathname of your door file. Formats supported by this program are: PCBOARD.SYS, USERS.SYS, DOOR.SYS, USERINFO.DAT, CALLINFO.BBS, DORINFOx.DEF, SFDOORS.DAT and GTUSER.BBS, DOOR.SYS, and TRIBBS.SYS. When using USERINFO.DAT, DOOR.SYS must be in the same directory as USERINFO.DAT. Line 2 = BBS name Line 3 = Sysop First Name Line 4 = Sysop Last Name Line 5 = number of rounds per day that a player may play. I suggest a daily limit of 5 to 10, but tailor to your own needs. Line 6 = Registration number. Leave as 0 if unregistered. Line 7 = Minimum percentage of plays to be included in the scoreboard. Very useful for systems which use the average scoring method. This percentage is applied against the highest number of games by any player, all players then need to play this percentage of games to be included in the scoreboard. I recommend a setting of 10-20%. If set at 10%, if the highest number of games played by a player this month is 200, a player would need to have played at least 20 games to be included in the scoreboard. This is a handy feature to prevent users from playing only once or twice and racking up a lucky high score (and average) and ruining the interest for other players. Line 8 = You can place the name of the user who helped pay for the registration of the door. Several sysops have specified that users have paid the reigstration fee for Z-Wordz. You can now place their name on this line and their name will be proudly displayed at the end of the game so that others may recognize their contribtion to the operation of your BBS. Leave this blank or NA if you do not wish to use this option. Line 9 = Maximum number of make up games per day. You can allow your users to make up games lost because they were unable to call and play. Enter the number of GAMES (not days) you allow them to make up each day. Line10 = Scoring method, either cummulative or average. Average scoring was used in versions prior to v3.0. Due to feedback, we converted to cummulative based scoring. We again had feedback that users liked the average method - now you can select which method you want to use on your board to keep your users happy. Note: This door supports the PCBoard environment variables %PCBDRIVE% and %PCBDIR%. Non-PCBoard systems may also use these variables by including the following either in your BBS batch or AUTOEXEC.BAT file: SET PCBDRIVE=C: <- Drive letter of your BBS files SET PCBDIR=\BBS <- Path of your BBS files Then, in your WORDZ.CFG file, on the first line you may put: %PCBDRIVE%%PCBDIR%\PCBOARD.SYS, %PCBDRIVE%%PCBDIR%\DOOR.SYS, etc. This allows you to use just one .CFG file for multi-node operation. EXECUTING PROGRAM To execute the program, enter the filename followed by the config file name (ie ZWORDZ ZWORDZ.CFG). If you are running the program from the command line, you may optionally enter ZWORDZ LOCAL. The only problem with this is the default user name sysop is used instead of the name on your board. This is good for testing the game before putting it on your system, but you should once play begins, execute the program locally from your BBS or consistantly run the game from the command line when you play. You may also specify a non-standard IRQ. Put the IRQ number after the .CFG on the command line. For example: ZWORDZ ZWORDZ.CFG /5. This example tells the program to use IRQ 5 instead of the standard IRQ. You may also use the procedure above and create a variable IRQ so that you can pass the IRQ setting as: ZWORDZ ZWORDZ.CFG /%IRQ% Some users may have had conflicts when using non-standard IRQ's on Novell/Netware systems. Novell seems to use the "/" character for parameter passing. You may not optionally use the "*" character instead of the "/", for example ZWORDZ ZWORDZ.CFG *%IRQ% is valid. Both "*" and "/" will work. AUTOMATIC MAINTENANCE The program will automatically during the first play of each new month reset it's user file and top score listing. The previous months scoreboard will automatically be renamed to ZWORDZ.OLD and ZWORDZG.OLD. This can then be included as a text file to display the previous months winners. You should be aware of this so if you are starting a new game for the first time towards the end of the month, the game will automatically perform the maintenace come the first of the month. As an option, you may pass the parameter "NEW" on the command line, for example ZWORDZ NEW. This will reset _all_ Z-Wordz data files, including the overall high scorer information. FOSSIL DRIVER Z-Wordz now includes support for FOSSIL drivers. This means that the program will now work with Digiboard (for Wildcat M and PCBoard/M versions) and other multi-port boards. To activate the Fossil driver support just include /FD on the command line in your door batch file. For example: ZWORDZ ZWORDZ.CFG /FD If no Fossil driver is available, Z-Wordz will display a message indicating such and exit cleanly. This documentation will not go into the mechanics of how you set-up a door program on your BBS. It is assumed that you have a working knowledge of how to complete this task. It would be impossible for me to explain how to install a door for all BBS programs supported by Z-Wordz. SYSOP KEYS ACTIVE F3 - Toggles the printer On/Off. Value is passed to PCBoard and/or written to DOOR.SYS and USERS.SYS F4 - Toggles the Page Bell on/off. Value is passed to PCBoard and/or written to DOOR.SYS and USERS.SYS F5 - DOS Shell. Allows SysOp to exit to DOS from inside a DOOR. F7 - Toggles the Caller Alarm On/Off. Value is passed to PCBoard and/or written to DOOR.SYS and USERS.SYS F8 - Returns the caller involuntarily to the BBS. F9 - Toggles the local display On/Off. Value is passed to PCBoard and/or written to DOOR.SYS and USERS.SYS F10 - Activates SysOp CHAT mode within the DOOR. ESC - Deactivates CHAT mode. DOOR is resumed. UP - Give the caller extra time while in the DOOR. DN - Subtract time from the caller while in the DOOR. HOME - HELP key for Status Line options. ALT-N - SysOp next on toggle. Value passed to PCBoard. (PCBoard only) ALT-X - PCBoard will exit after current caller logs off. Value is passed to PCBoard. Not available on non-PCBoard systems. FILES USED AND CREATED ZWORDZ.EXE - The program itself ZWORDZ.DOC - Documentation for the sysop to run Z-Wordz ZWORDZ.DIC - Dictionary file ZWORDZ.CFG - Configuration file The following files will be created by Z-Wordz ZWORDZ.USR - User file of current players ZWORDZ - Top 10 scores in ascii format can be used as a bulletin ZWORDZG - Top 10 scores in ANSI format ZWORDZ.OLD - Previous month top 10 ascii bulletin ZWORDZG.OLD - Previous month top 10 ANSI bulletin ZWORDZ.DAT - Contains information for scoreboard ZWORDZ.HI - Contains overall high score information ZWORDZ.AVG - Data file for scoreboard ZWORDZ.TOT - Data file for scoreboard CONTACT ME FOR SUPPORT If you encounter any problems you may contact me at Corporate Headquarters BBS (815) 886-3233 or (815) 886-9381. I can also be reached via the RIME network in the SYSOP, DOORS, SHAREWARE and BBS SOFTWARE conferences as well as the COMMON conference. I can also be reached via Internet e-mail at bob.neal@corpsoft.com. I can also be reached via FIDO at 1:2235/886. If you have any suggestions for improvements for this program, please feel free to let me know. This game has included suggestions from users of my BBS during beta testing. TROUBLESHOOTING ===================== If you are running this on a 486 system with co-processor and experience problems running Z-Wordz, you may need to put 'SET NO87=ON' in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file or you may place this in the ZWORDZ batch file just before the line ZWORDZ ZWORDZ.CFG, for example: @ECHO OFF C: CD \PCBURM SET NO87=ON PCBURM PCBURM.CFG %PCBDRIVE% CD %PCBDIR% IF (%INPCB%)==(Y) EXIT BOARD If you are running on a 486 system with co-processor under DesqView, you may alternately set Math Coprocessor in each window to YES. VERSION HISTORY v3.5 - More work on the letter selection, looking better each time ;) Revised the word dictionary files adding several new words to the list, now at 978 words. v3.4 - With the new year I found that the yearly scoreboards displayed an incorrect date for the December rollover information, the date was shown as 12/96 instead of 12/95. Fixed. Also, the incorrect yearly scoreboard information will be corrected the first time that the "Y"early scoreboard is displayed within the game. Still having problems with poor letter selection. Seems that the PC just doesn't generate a very random random number. Rewrote routine which hopefully resolves the problem with too many repeated letters showing up once and for all. Had four other systems test the results all with positive results. If you still have problems, let me know. v3.3 - Getting reports of the same letter being selected one after the other. Revised the letter selection routine to check for the same letter number being selected. The revised routine should prevent the same letter from being selected over and over - let me know if this still occurs. Revised Help section. v3.2 - Added option to select scoring method, either cummulative or average scoring. Revised letter selection routine so that all players have the same letters to play in each game number. Updated word dictionary, 11 new words added. Compiled with new I/O library version. v3.1 - Made change to the routine used to display the ANSI screens. Appears that some systems would pause during the display of the file. This problem appears to be limited to specific hardware and software, therefore it was not widely released due to the minor upgrade. v3.0 - You must run ZWCONFIG CONVERT to conver your user file to the new format used for this version. Added option to make up missed games. Added YEARLY scoreboard to show the top scores for each month on a 12 month rolling basis. Revised scoring to now reflect accumulative scoring. Removed option for minimum number of plays in light of the revised scoring. Revised letter selection routine to try and avoid too many "Q", "Z" and "X"'s from always appearing. v2.2 - Found that the minimum number of plays routine would not always filter out players with less than the minimum number of plays. v2.1 - Had a sysop mention that ZWordz would never return ANSI graphics for his users. Odd set-up, OS/2 with fossil driver. Added option to check if ANSI, if not, ZWordz will now ask the user if they have ANSI. This now allows those odd setups to run ZWordz. v2.0 - Rewrote scoring options for program. Prior version gave multiplier credit for word placement, now multiplier is based on number of words completed. This should make the game more challenging as users won't be so inclined to load the word #3 with high rated points and ignore the first two words. Also added bonus points for unused discards. Revised scoreboard. Previous version based inclusion of user score based on static minimum # of plays. The minimum # of plays is now based on a percentage of the highest # of plays of all players. This restricts players from simply popping in and playing a few rounds and knocking off your regulars who have many more plays. Fixed quirk that allowed a player to quit in the middle of the game. Found that some users may do this if his score is not going to be high. Now if the player quits, he's given 0 points and the round is included in his stats. Fixed problem with erratic display with multi-port boards. Thanks to Steve and Pat of Midwest BBS for taking the time to work through this problem with me. Added option to display who adopted the door. Several sysops have indicated that users have assisted in the registration fees for my doors. This now gives you a chance to give that user recognition. v1.4 - v1.3 was a major screw-up. I picked up what I thought was the v1.2 final release code and recompiled for v1.3. As I changed nothing in the code (purpose of new release pertained to revised I/O library only), I didn't do any testing before release. Bad move, code I picked up for 1.2 was not the final code. Needless to say, v1.3 used OLD filename conventions of Z-Wordz for the data files. This release fixes the above problem and includes the new I/O library for the fix of fossil based multi-port boards. v1.3 - Recompiled using new I/O routines. These new routines fix problem with fossil based multi-port users who were experiencing random characters at the start of the program. With the revised I/O routines, Z-Wordz no longer support CHAIN.TXT BBS format. The author of the I/O routines has removed support for this file format, sorry. v1.2 - Recompiled using routines which support PCBoard /M and WildCat IM digiboard versions. Renamed data file names to be consistent with ZWORDZ program name (must run ZWUPDATE.BAT after installing new version to automatically rename the files) Added file ZWCONFIG.EXE, configuration file editor. Makes creating and/or editing the configuration file easy to do, simply fill in the blanks. v1.1 - First, a new name. Previously named WORD-Z, now called Z-WORDZ. Users upgrading from v1.0 will need to rename their WORDZ.CFG file to ZWORDZ.CFG and update their door file batch and menu files. All data filename for Z-Wordz has been kept the same from Word-Z. Revised the routine that randomly selected letters, a vowel now has a better chance of being selected. Expanded and refined the dictionary file. Now over 950 words and based on the words found in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. Added option to require a minimum number of plays before a players score is shown in the top 10 scoreboard. This prevents a user from playing 1 time and getting a high score that is impossible to be with repeated plays. Fixed a bug where a player was allowed to play one more time than the sysop had configured. Fixed a problem with the file I/O. Did not have all file access opened for SHARED I/O. Users with a multi-node system may find that a user was suddenly kicked out of the game. Now fixed, all file read/writes are done under a SHARED access. v1.0 - (03/05/93) Initial Release *DISTRIBUTION SITES* As always you can find the latest version of Z-Wordz available for downloading from CorpSoft BBS. CorpSoft BBS (815) 886-9388 (3 nodes with automatic ring-down, running USR 28800 v.everything) Also, I have a support conference on Salt Air BBS (home of PCBoard). Join conference #71 (CorpSoft Support). I will always have the current version available for download on there as well as answer technical support question. We also accept Visa and Mastercard. Register online with your Visa or Mastercard by calling CorpSoft BBS, simply type CHARGE at the main menu prompt. User's with FIDO capabilities can FREQ the latest version of my software from me at 1:2235/886. The magic names for my software are: WOTW War of the Words KING Kings are Wild Solitaire CARD Card Sharks BOWL BBS Bowling Solitaire GOLF Links Golf ZWORD Z-Wordz CORPSOFT All my shareware releases Those with FTP capabilities can FTP my software from: europa.com cd /outoing/DOORS/corpsoft To further make it convenient for people to download my software, you can also login to my support BBS by enter CORPSOFT GUEST when prompted for your name. You will not need to go through the new user information questionaire and will immediately be able to download my shareware. Please note that if you wish to register online, you will need to set-up a user account so that your registration keys can be made available to you.