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The Best of Select: Games Special 4
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THE BEST OF SELECT Games Special 4 (Select CD-ROM)(1996).iso
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dosgames
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mcarlo
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mc.doc
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1991-10-28
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Monte Carlo
Version 1.13
Copyright 1991 By
Randy Rasa
18215 Troost
Olathe, KS 66062
What Is It? ___________
Monte Carlo, also known as "Weddings" and "Double and Quits", is a
solitaire card game that is simple and restful, yet challenging and
addictive as well. The origin of the name "Monte Carlo" is
unknown, but the game belongs to the "matching" family of solitaire
games. The game offers a reasonable opportunity for skill, yet
winning often depends as much on luck as making the right moves.
Program Requirements ____________________
Monte Carlo requires 256K of memory, EGA or higher graphics
capability, and a Microsoft-compatible mouse. If you are not sure
you have the right hardware, just run the program. If there's a
problem, the program will let you know.
In addition to the program file (MC.EXE), the game requires that
the card definition files (CARDS.CD1 and CARDS.CD2) be in the
current directory. These files contain the bit-maps for each
cardface in the deck.
Using The Mouse _______________
The mouse pointer will appear as a white arrow with black edges.
In general, the left button is used to select the object being
pointed to (a card or an on-screen button), while the right button
is used to exit menus or prompts.
If you have a three-button mouse, the middle button will blank the
screen. This can also be accomplished by pressing the left and
right buttons simultaneously.
The right button acts as an "Undo" key. Refer to the paragraph
describing the undo feature in the "How To Play" section for more
details.
Monte Carlo Documentation Page 2
How To Play ___________
Monte Carlo uses a standard 52-card deck (no jokers). To begin the
game the deck is shuffled, then dealt face-up, one card at a time,
into five rows of five cards each (the tableau), with the remainder
of the deck held in reserve for later play.
The object of the game is to remove pairs of cards from the
tableau. These cards can be any combination of colors, but must be
of the same rank (eg: a 3 of hearts and a 3 of spades), and must be
located adjacent to each other in a row, column or diagonal. Note
that the removal of a card does not make the two cards beside it
"adjacent".
After removing all possible pairs, the tableau must be
consolidated, which means that the remaining cards in the tableau
must be "backed up" (moved to the left, then up, keeping the
original order) to fill in the blank spaces created by the removed
pairs. Cards from the reserve are then dealt into the newly-
created spaces and the process of removing pairs begins again. The
tableau can be consolidated and re-dealt as many times as
necessary.
The game is won when the entire deck has been removed, or lost when
no more moves can be made.
The Undo feature can be used to "un-remove" cards (that is, to
return them to the screen sfter they've been removed). The program
keeps an undo buffer that contains all the cards that have been
removed since the last deal. You can pull these cards back into
play by pressing the right mouse button. The buffer is "last-in-
first-out" -- the last cards you've removed from the screen will be
the first cards returned. The only limitation to the undo feature
is that it cannot go back further than the last deal. So once you
remove some cards and press "Deal", they're gone for good.
Buttons _______
Along the right side of the screen are a number of "buttons", which
may be selected by pointing and clicking with the mouse. The
buttons are:
Deal: This button will initiate a re-deal, in which the cards
remaining in the tableau are consolidated, and new cards are
dealt from the reserve.
Hint: Selecting this button will cause the program to step
through all the possible pairs in the tableau. After each
pair is displayed, you will be asked to continue (press the
left mouse button), or exit (right mouse button). If no
pairs can be made, a "No more pairs" message will be
displayed.
Monte Carlo Documentation Page 3
Options: This button brings up the options menu, which you can
use to set your preferences for the following:
Sound: Select "Off" to disable the beeps, click, and various
other noises the program makes. Select "On" to enable the
sounds.
Session Statistics: When this option is set to "On", the
program will keep track of your statistics (games played,
games won, change in average score) throughout the game
and then display them when you quit. (Note: During play,
you can also display the session statistics by clicking on
the score box.)
Background Color: Click on the up-arrow and down-arrow to
step through the available background colors, until you
find one that suits your tastes.
Card Back: Click on the up-arrow and down-arrow to cycle
through the available card designs until you find one you
like. You can also click on the card back itself to bring
up a dialog box which will show you all the available card
backs and allow you to choose one.
Once you've set things to your liking, you may click on the
"OK" button to save your preferences to disk, or on the
"Cancel" button to exit the Options menu without changing
anything.
Help: This button will bring up several pages of help screens,
which you can view by clicking on the "Next" or "Prev"
buttons to move from page to page. When you are finished
reading the help, click on the "Done" button to exit.
New Game: This button will end the current game, update your
statistics, and start a new game. Note that the stats will
only be updated if you have a score greater than zero. This
allows you to evaluate the layout of the cards and, if you
don't like what you see, to begin a new game without having
it count against you.
Quit: Click on this button to exit the program. If you have a
score greater than zero, your statistics will be updated and
displayed briefly before returning you to DOS. Another way
to exit the game is to press the "Abort" key (F10). If you
press F10 (and select the "Exit This Program" option in the
pop-up dialog box or press F10 again), the program will quit
to DOS without saving the data file (and thus not giving you
a low score if you have to quit the program in the middle of
a game). Of course you realize this is cheating, don't you?
Monte Carlo Documentation Page 4
Command-Line Options ____________________
/LCD -- This option may improve the screen di