home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The Datafile PD-CD 3
/
PDCD_3.iso
/
games
/
horses
/
!Horses
/
!Help
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1995-04-16
|
7KB
|
197 lines
Horses
By Software7
No copyright- This is PD
A simulation of betting on horse races without losing money.
Scientificly proven to help prevent adiction to gambling in
children when they grow older. Well I study physics & chemistry
and my colleague is a right swat who studies all sciences
so that qualifys me us as scientists.
For good printing you should have a driver pre loaded.
This game uses the Font Manager and Colour Trans so it
is best to have Risc OS 3 though it should be backwardly
compatible. You need the Font Manager 3.0 or better.
The game should work with 1 Megabyte RAM but only if
nothing else at all is loaded, we recomend that you restart
the computer before playing. If there is still not enough
memory open the task display from the task managers menu
and set the RAM disc to 0k, the Module area to as little
as possible and if you have a high resolution monitor
select screen mode 15 not 28 or 32 and try again. If the
memory problems persist write to us at Software7, address
at end of file.
The game runs outside the desktop and is for 1-8 players.
After the loading screen which I admit is a bit boring,
a mouse driven menu with 5 icons will appear. These are:
Configuration: This screen lets you select various options. eg:
Mouse or Keyboard driven bookmakers.
Sound Effects On/Off
Outline fonts used
Load Saved Game: This allows you to recall a previous game which you saved or the program saved before it crashed.
Start new game: This lets you begin a fresh game and asks you to enter the
number of players and their names before beginning betting.
Quit: What do you think it does?
Help: This option gives basic instructions for those who do not
understand the principal behind the Help option on the file menu so have not seen this and will not know what the icon does!
Starting A new game
===================
You will be presented with a screen requesting the number of players
and their names.Then you will be taken to the bookmakers stall and
shown a list of the horses running in the race and asked to pick one
to place your bet upon. Each player must pick a horse to bet on. the same
horse may be picked more than once. All players start with £100. You must
place at least £20 on each race, any less will be made up to £20. If the
horse that you picked wins the race you get your money multiplied by 4. If
your horse is second then it is tripled and third gets it doubled.
If you run out of money you are out of the game.
Loading a saved game
====================
This option lets you type in the filename of the saved game file which is
hidden from the user and then you can carry on your game from where you left off.
Configuration
=============
We haven't written that menu yet.
More options
============
After the first race you will be shown a screen with the current scores and
the results of the last race. After this there will be a menu screen with
4 icons. From the top:
Print: Lets you print the current scores on to paper.
If a printer driver is loaded it will print using outline
fonts else it will be plain text.
Save: This option lets you save your current game and scores.
Race: This takes you back to the bookies and continue betting
Quit: This option aborts the game, current scores are lost.
Customisation
=============
The names of the horses are in a text file inside the !Horses directory.
There are 64 of them and they can easily be changed to suit. No programing
knoledge is required, they simply need deleted and retyped as can be done to
this file. If you are a programer and wish to borow any part of this program
don't hesitate to do so, it belongs to the public- not me. If you don't
understand any part of the code or want to know how a particular bit works
so you can use it in your own program then drop me a line or a letter.
Error Handling
==============
If there is a serious bug in the program or the user makes an action that
the program can't handle it will inevitably crash. There are quite lengthy
routines to ensure that you can't select a horse that isn't there or bet
to much money but if an error does creep in then the game will crash but
before it quits it will save the current game as "ErrorGame" so you can
reload it. This also works if [Escape] is pressed. If you press escape
before the player options menu the data that will attempt to be saved will
not yet exist so the computer will inevitably hang. If you have a Risc PC
or are using TaskKill then [Alt] [Break] or [Alt] [#] will free the machine
again.
Risc PC / ARM 3 Notes
=====================
This game was started on my A3000 with ARM 2 but half way through I upgraded
to the Risc PC and foun that the game ran to fast. Rather than have to turn
the procesor cache off I altered the code. On fast machines the speed is
about right but on older computers it may be slightly slow. This only
affects the racing scene which is dodgey enough as it is. The rest of the
game should be OK.
Saving Notes
============
The saved game files are stored inside the application directory. You do not
need to get at them to use them. They are coded to prevent hacking though
I'm sure that some of you could hack them. There is a cheat in the program
somewhere so you don't need to hack.
Printing Notes
==============
If you have a Risc OS Printer Driver loaded you can select a high quality
print mode. With 9 pin dot matrix printers the quality may actually be
worse than with Text printing. The printing routines were designed for
Risc OS 3 printer drivers using OS 2 drivers may crash the program.
I do not expect full compatability with OS 2. On some printers depending on
how their switches are set the text printing may not be correct eg.
Horse Race Scores
Race number 1
Player 1 (John)
Currently has Ú100
There is no obvoius fix for this other than using the non text print option.#
The Ú is what most printers display instead of a pound sign.
Known bugs
==========
Occasionaly the same horse can come 1st & 2nd or 3rd. This causes the sprite to be over plotted on the screen but should not affect the scores because
the program checks to see if you won before checking for 2nd or 3rd place.
After the race when the winners are displayed the 2nd & 3rd place horse
always have the same name. Not critical just read their numbers.
Address
=======
Write to either:
Software7
15 Stewarton Drive
Cambuslang
Glasgow
Scotland
G72 8DF
or
9 Calder Drive
Cambuslang
Glasgow
Scotland
G72 8NE
or
Software7
44 Brownside Road
Cambuslang
Glasgow
Scotland
G72 8NJ
Please, sensible letters only. (They don't have to be clean)
Remember to address all letters as we will write back.
Also by Software7
=================
BootAce; The definitive startup manager
SpaceHulk mission designer.
Wimp utilities suite
and much much more.
Write for details.