Loadstar 248/248.d81/t.shisen-sho

Text File | 2022-08-26 | 5KB | 189 lines

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        S H I S E N - S H O

   Program and Text by K&R Slaminko


    SHISEN-SHO is a variation on Mah-
Jonng (or Shanghai). 144 tiles are
arranged in a 16x9 grid. There are
four copies of each of 36 designs,
and the goal is to remove pairs of
matching tiles until the gameboard is
empty.

    You can't just remove any old
pair, however. The tiles must either
be adjacent horizontally or
vertically, or it must be possible to
connect the tiles using no more than
three horizontal and/or vertical line
segments that don't pass through any
other tiles.

    There's no space between the
rows and columns (though it might
look like there is), but there is a
border around the grid you can use
for mentally drawing the lines. So
any matching tiles along the same
edge can be removed.

    SHISEN-SHO utilizes the Mr. Mouse
toolkit, so you can use a 1351 mouse,
joystick in port 2, or the keyboard
to manipulate tiles. The little BASIC
routine I use to make tiles flash
sometimes causes Mr.Mouse to miss a
button push. Just hold the button
down until it registers to overcome
this little problem.

    Click on a tile (it will start
flashing) then click on its mate. If
a legal path exists between the
tiles, they will be removed. Or click
the first tile again and it will be
de-selected.

    Enter your name at the start of
the program and it will be used to
keep your personal play statistics
separate from anyone else's.

    There are 32,767 unique,
repeatable layouts. One will be
randomly selected when you start
SHISEN-SHO and its number will be
shown at the top of the screen.

    Clicking on [GAME] will give you
a choice of NEW (another game chosen
at random), SELECT (enter the game
number), RESTART (the current layout)
or CANCEL (go back to playing the
game).

    Other options along the top of the
screen are [STAT], [HELP], and [QUIT].
STAT displays your statistics (games
won and lost and your best and worst
streaks). These stats are kept in
the file "sss.<yourname>" so if you
want to clear the stats, just delete
that file. Click when done looking.

    [HELP] will display a quickie set
of instructions, and give you an
option to have the computer seek out
a match, or just continue with the
game. Unless you have a SuperCPU,
use the seek option only when you
have to as it could take several
minutes to find a match.

    [QUIT] gives you the option to
either leave SHISEN-SHO or to change
your mind and keep playing.


 [STRATEGY]
 [{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}]

    Since there are 4 of each tile,
they can be paired up in different
ways. Try to look ahead and see which
pairing provides the most help in
freeing blocked tiles. Of course the
best situation is when you can remove
all four copies of a given tile.

    I've found that nipping away at
the corners generally works best, so
anytime I have a choice, I take a
corner tile. And since paths can go
through open spaces in the middle, I
like to take out interior adjacent
pairs early to open up these new
pathways.

    This is a tough game to win, but
oh so satisfying when you do. It's
highly likely that some layouts can't
be won, but maybe if you'd done
things differently early on that dang
flower tile wouldn't be trapped now.
Write down the number of "unsolvable"
layouts - maybe someone else can
figure a way through. Game 17428 is
fairly easy: I solved it first try.
For a tougher but winnable challenge,
try game number 23829 - took me about
12 tries to find a way through that
one.

    Lastly, I want to thank James King
for suggesting this game. It's been
great fun developing.


 [FENDER'S POSTMUMBLE:] It took me a
couple of games to learn to recognize
the various configurations that
constitute a "path". I'd go to HELP
and have it show me a pair and sure
enough, the ones it found were
legitimate, even though I couldn't
see them at first. I am very
impressed with Ron and Kate's
algorithm for determining if there is
a path. I'm even more impressed with
their algorithm for looking for
pairs. This was a real programming
challenge, the kind that caused many
old dog programmers from the early
days to lose their hair -- and minds.

 What's really amazing is that a game
of this caliber takes up 47 blocks of
disk space. That's less than 12K. On
the PC 12K would represent a picture
maybe an inch on a side or one or two
notes of a song in the popular MP3
format.

 I haven't played SHISEN-SHO without
the SuperCPU but at 20 MHz it is very
addictive. I use HELP way too much
but I still find the game satisfying.
James King said that he didn't know
of a version of this for the Windows
environment yet. When Dave Moorman
sees this game I'll bet he'll want to
rectify that on the first eLOADSTAR
issue he can get it on. Then you can
play it on both of your computers.

 FT

[DAVE'S CONFESSION] Hi! My name is
Dave and I'm a Shosen-Shi addict.

Hi, Dave!

As I waded through the emotional
sludge left by the tornado, I spent
many hours with Shamrocks and Shosen-
Shi. If I could make one revision to
the game, I would set "scoring" to
reflect how many times [Help] was
used. That way, the fact that the game
could not be completely cleared would
not spoil the player's day.

But I am really not up to taking apart
someone else's program.

 DMM