PsL Monthly 1994 January

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Text File | 1989-05-31 | 14.7 KB | 338 lines

------------------------------------------------------------------ << QTFALL.EXE - QUOTE FALL PUZZLE MAKER PROGRAM by Bill Morgan >> ------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to Quote Fall! ver 2.1, 5/89 This is a fun little program that makes a kind of word puzzle called a "Quote Fall" puzzle. In this type of puzzle a quotation is laid out and then scrambled as if the letters in each column had "fallen" downward. That is, the letters for each column of the puzzle are directly above it in the clue section, but in a different vertical order. The "blocks" or filled places are the spaces between the words. (See the sample below). You can solve the puzzle by looking for little words first, common letter combinations, etc. and then crossing off those letters from the clue lines. The more you get, the easier it becomes. Soon you will have the quotation or message unfolding before your very eyes! ---------------------------------------------------------------- THE CLUES: │T│A│Z│U│H│E│S│A│A│M│U│L│E│D│A│A│T│N│L│D│I│P│H│E│H│L│E│N│T│A│P│A│T│D│F│ │T│H│I│C│L│I│E│O│L│Q│L│L│N│A│U│D│S│O│E│F│S│T│L│A│Z│R│E│M│U│E│H│L│N│I│N│ │A│U│K│N│S│T│A│R│F│A│N│N│T│O│F│I│Z│F│R│I│L│N│U│T│I│I│W│T│C│T│R│S│E│D│ │ │M│H│E│S│O│S│C│ │A│U│F│O│ │P│L│Z│O│T│A│E│ │E│N│O│D│D│S│O│T│Y│L│A│ │O│ │ │P│E│Q│E│ │ │C│ │K│I│B│U│ │H│T│I│W│L│I│L│ │P│R│Z│G│L│A│ │W│A│R│D│ │ │ │ │ │ │A│Z│ │ │ │ │ │ │M│D│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │O│ │ │ │T│ │E│ │ │ │ A SIMPLE SAMPLE PUZZLE: │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │▒│ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │ │▒│ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │▒│▒│▒│ (AND HERE IS THE ANSWER KEY:) │T│h│i│s│ │i│s│ │a│ │f│u│n│ │l│i│t│t│l│e│ │p│r│o│g│r│a│m│ │t│h│a│t│ │ │ │m│a│k│e│s│ │a│ │k│i│n│d│ │o│f│ │w│o│r│d│ │p│u│z│z│l│e│ │c│a│l│l│e│d│ │ │a│ │Q│u│o│t│e│ │F│a│l│l│ │p│u│z│z│l│e│ │I│n│ │t│h│i│s│ │t│y│p│e│ │o│f│ │p│u│z│z│l│e│ │a│ │q│u│o│t│a│t│i│o│n│ │i│s│ │l│a│i│d│ │o│u│t│ │a│n│d│ │ │t│h│e│n│ │s│c│r│a│m│b│l│e│d│ │a│s│ │i│f│ │t│h│e│ │l│e│t│t│e│r│s│ │i│n│ │ │e│a│c│h│ │c│o│l│u│m│n│ │h│a│d│ │f│a│l│l│e│n│ │d│o│w│n│w│a│r│d│ │ │ │ ---------------------------------------------------------------- The reason I wrote this program is that my mother was always wanting me to write letters to her but I am very poor at that, and anyway whenever I sat down to do it I wound up hacking instead. But since she and I both like word puzzles I thought to myself I will write a program to make puzzles out of letters (or letters out of puzzles), and that way it will be fun for me, and fun for her. She loves to solve any kind of puzzle. Thus, this program was born. It is already working since I just sent my mom the first letter I have written in over 6 months! Of course she will have to figure out what it says by solving it, but that is the whole point. Each short paragraph is a separate QUOTEFALL puzzle! ======================================================================== HOW TO MAKE A QUOTEFALL PUZZLE : MAKE A QUOTE FILE 1. Type your quotes into a text file. Quotes can span several lines in the file. Leave one (and only one) blank line between quotes. Each quote can be up to 1024 characters long. A puzzle that long is probably too big. Each file can have up to 20 quotes. You can put comments in the file by starting the line with a semicolon. Such lines will be ignored by the program. You can put author and source information in the file by starting the line with a percent sign (%). This information will be printed just after the puzzle. Author information should come AFTER the quote. NEW 1989! Now you can also put a title on your puzzle, as well as a copyright message at the end. To put a title, just put a line in your quote file, AFTER the quote, that starts with an asterisk (*). This is the "USER" character. The line that starts with this character will be printed before the puzzle. You can also define a copyright message by choosing the SETTINGS option on the menu and selecting "Copyright". You will be asked for the message. Enter your message. If you want this to be used each time you run QTFALL you can then choose "SAVE SETTINGS" and it will be recorded in the EXE file. EDIT THE QUOTE FILE 2. For making your quote files a text editor is included as part of the program. Run the program and select "Editor" from the menu, then press F1 for help with Editor. This is the Borland Binary Editor so it is like the editor with Turbo Pascal, Sidekick, et al. (EDITOR NOTES: Press F1 for a list of Editor commands. You can press F3 to pick a file. Note that if you pick a directory name, you will see the files in THAT directory, and, unlike other file pickers, you will ALSO move to that directory. NOTE : Use this feature if you want to CHANGE DIRECTORY. Just pop into the editor, MOVE around, and pop back out. There is an UNDOCUMENTED feature in this file picker: you can use the space bar to MARK files and ALT-E to ERASE them. You are asked TWICE for confirmation about this, just for safety's sake. Maximum file size is about 55K, memory permitting.) PICK A QUOTE 3. Select a quote by choosing "QUOTE" from the menu. You will be able to specify your file name. (Default = QUOTES.DAT). Next you will see the quotes and be asked which one. Specify the number of the quote you want. You can specify the quote file name on the command line when invoking QTFALL. DESIGN THE PUZZLE (SIZE) 4. Next you must design the puzzle by choosing "Columns" from the menu. This will let you change the size of the puzzle. You can use the left/right arrow keys. The thinner you make it the taller it will be. It can be up to 22 lines tall, but keep in mind that the taller a puzzle is the more difficult it is to solve. At some point it becomes impossible. Usually 5-7 lines is good. For beginners or children 3-4 lines is good. Two lines is ridiculously simple, and 1 line is, of course, no puzzle at all. You may want to pick a size that minimizes columns with only one or two letters, thus making the puzzle more difficult, or conversely, you may want to give the solver a head start. Pick a size that looks nice and is in the range of difficulty that you want. All punctuation is removed except for apostrophe. I kept this in because it seemed necessary for contractions. MAKE THE PUZZLE 5. Now the puzzle is scrambled by choosing "MAKE" from the menu. Note that you MUST size the puzzle before doing this. "MAKE" will perform the "quote-fall", scrambling the letters vertically and making the clue section. The program will check to see that no word from the puzzle (larger that two characters) exists anywhere at all in the horizontal lines of the clues. This avoids giving any subliminal help to the solver. If you don't care about this, or if the program gets "stuck" (this can happen with small puzzles or dangling words) just press a key and the program will let you accept the puzzle as it is. If it had been stuck, just re-design it ("COLUMNS"). DONE! PRINT IT OR FILE IT. 6. Now your puzzle is done! You can either print it (choose "PRINT" from the menu) or you can write it to file (choose "FILE"). If you write it to a file you have the option of Overwriting or Appending. By appending you can gradually build a sequence of puzzles in the same file. That is how I wrote my puzzle-letter to my mother. When you write to a file, the puzzle will automatically be loaded into the Editor and you can inspect it and add a title or comments, etc. PRINTER CONTROL-CODES The printer sequence just prints the puzzle and does not set up the printer in any way. If you want to set up your printer in a special way you can do it by choosing "FILE" and writing the puzzle to a file. You will be popped into the editor. Now you can put the control codes you want right into the file like this: Press CTRL-P and then continue to press CTRL and press the contol key you want to insert in the file. Thus to place a CTRL-Q (ASCII #17) in the file press CTRL-P and then CTRL-Q. More commonly, you would want to put in an escape character. This would be done by pressing CTRL-P and then CTRL-[ (ASCII #27 or control key plus left bracket). This way you can put your printer's code for condensed printing right into your file in order to print wider puzzles. Now you can print the puzzle right from the editor by marking it as a block, and pressing CTRL-K + P. (If all this is not working, check to be sure you have done the "MAKE" step before PRINTING or FILING.) If the way the puzzle is printing is not to your liking then you can "print" to a file, edit the file however you want, and then print the file! NEW! FEATURES 1989 : ------------------ Now there is an easier way to accomplish the above. You can specify a printer SETUP file. This is merely a small text file containing the printer codes to setup your particular printer. You can use the QTFALL editor to make this file. You will need to consult your printer's manual to find out what codes to send. Each code is separated from the next by EITHER a space or a comma. You can put information in the file in three ways : numeric, literal, or comments. Numeric : Just type the number of the ASCII code you want to send. The most commonly used printer code is ESCAPE which is ASCII code 27. Typing 27 in you file (followed by a space) will send an ESCAPE code to the printer. Literal : Anything surrounded by single or double quotes is just sent to the printer as it is. Putting "E" in your file will send a single capital E to the printer. Comments : Anything to the right of the comment character is ignored. This way you can put notes in the file to remember what the different codes do. EXAMPLE: 27 '@' 27 'E' 27 'F' 14 ; Clear, Bold condensed For an EPSON LQ this sends a printer reset code (ESCAPE @), a code for emphasized (ESCAPE E), for doublestrike (ESCAPE F) and a final code for condensed printing (ASCII 14). Everything after and including the semicolon is ignored. To send the comment character itself, you can just put its ascii code in the file. Or, you could redefine it from the SETTINGS menu. 7. SETTINGS Character Settings ------------------ If your printer will not print the default block and delimiter characters you can change them by choosing "SETTINGS" from the menu. You could choose the vertical bar (|) for divider and something like the pound symbol (#) for the block character. If printer does not respond, you can change the printer port number, from LPT1: to LPT3: (thanks to Richard S. Sadowsky's routine). Color Settings -------------- This is pretty obvious. Set it up how you like it and save the setup. Next time you run it will know what colors you like. File Names ---------- You can change the default file names which will be used on startup. You can specify the drive as well, but not the whole path. This is to allow a set-up with floppy drives. If the drive is not specified, the current drive is assumed. (The "Help file" is the document file which comes up if you press ALT-F1. The default is THIS file, QTFALL.DOC, but you could make it anything, including a puzzle file you are building). You must explicitly change the file name from the settings menu for it to be saved by "Save Setup". Word Checking ------------- You can also change the amount of checking for imbedded words that is done on the clues. LOOSE checking looks to see that no word has "fallen" down intact in its own column, thus making the puzzle too easy. STRICT checking makes sure that no word in the puzzle is ANYWHERE in the clues, thus assuring a really scrambled clueset. Change this by choosing "CHECK" from the "SETTINGS" sub-menu, or just press F2 to toggle it. (Check applies only to words of three characters or more). Copyright Message ----------------- This defines a string to be printed at the very end of your puzzle. It can be used to print a copyright message, or anything else that you want. Save setup ---------- Choosing save setup alters the EXE file so that the next time you run it the current settings will be used. 8. HELP! To get some brief reminders of what to do, just select INFO from the menu. This will show a couple of screens telling some of the above information. A SHORTCUT to the help is pressing the F1 key when you are at the main menu. For further help, you can press ALT-F1 and this file that you are reading ("QTFALL.DOC") will be loaded automatically into the editor for your perusal, providing it exists in any directory of your current "PATH=" setting. You can make your own help file by changing the HELP filename to whatever you want. Just select SETTINGS, then FILES, then HELPFILE. Save this setup and your own file will the new help file called up by ALT-F1. Tiny Undocumented Cosmetic Feature: Pressing F9 will restore the title screen. ================================================================= Well, that's it. Pretty simple. I guess this program has become an exercise in SOFTWARE OVERKILL but I wanted to practice using the Turbo Power routines. I hope you have as much fun making QUOTEFALL puzzles as I had writing this program. If so, send me a note! Bill Morgan c/o KENIMATION 1424 North Wilcox Hollywood, Calif. 90018 (213) 462-2680 Have Fun! ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES & CREDITS : Written in Turbo Pascal 5.0 Uses the Turbo Pascal Editor Toolbox for the binary editor unit. Uses the Turbo Professional 5.0 library routines. Inspired by the Program QTFALL.BAS by Ernest E. Mau in his book "Create Word Puzzles with your Microcomputer," Hayden Book Co., 1981. AND THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING AUTHORS: Uses RS_Asm (for LPTREADY) by Richard S. Sadowsky. Uses WRITEXEC.PAS by David Doty and David Dubois. (c) 1988, 1989 by Bill Morgan