Más de 2,500 Juegos/CD4.iso/zipdat/3502/3502.txt

Text File | 1996-05-10 | 11.8 KB | 204 lines

                                 PUZZLE MAKER
                                Copyright 1996
                        Castle Oaks Computer Services
                            Post Office Box 36082
                         Indianapolis, IN 46236-0082
                                [phone]

PUZZLE MAKER is a word search puzzle generator.

You may create puzzles which you produce for publication.  If you publish a
puzzle, registration is required ($10) and a royalty is payable in some cases.

The following rules must be followed in such cases:

     1.  Puzzles must be in good taste as judged by the mores of the
         general population.

     2.  The puzzle must display the copyright and its owner, Castle Oaks
         Computer Services.

     3.  In some cases, a royalty payment is required for published
         puzzles. If you have purchased the program for non-profit group,
         then you may publish puzzles in your newsletter or for use in
         class without royalty. If you submit a puzzle for more general
         distribution, then a royalty must be paid for each puzzle
         published. The fee is $5.00 or 15% of the amount received
         for the puzzle, whichever is greater.

     4.  A copy of the puzzle being published must be sent to Castle Oaks
         along with the royalty payment. Also include the name and date
         of the publication in which it will appear.

Failure to abide by the above rules will lead to legal action.



                                    USAGE

PUZZLE MAKER is easy and fun to use. It is great for creating puzzles for
educational use.  Or you might want to use it for entertainment at a party.
You can make up puzzles containing the names, interests, etc. of persons
attending the party. The only installation required is to copy the executable
file (PM.EXE) to a directory or disk of your choice. To run the program, just
enter:

PM

on the command line.

You can run the program from a floppy disk by including the drive letter on
the command line. There are certain requirements and restrictions.

     a.  You must have a printer and it must be turned on, on-line and the
         paper should be positioned at top-of-form. Your printer must be
         capable of backspacing. If it does not have that capability, some
         lines in the solution printout may not be correct. The solution
         will probably look best when printed in draft mode. You should
         experiment with number of characters per inch and number of lines
         per inch on your printer to achieve the most pleasing printout.
         In order to show the connections between words, it was necessary
         to add extra lines in the solution. This was done so that the
         solution could be displayed on most printers; therefore the aspect
         ratio of the solution will be different from that of the puzzle.

         (Actually the program may be run without the printer. When asked
         for number of copies to be printed you may respond with zero.
         However, the program is not very useful without hard copy output
         unless you have saved the puzzle and/or solution to file for later
         printing.)

     b.  Your puzzle can have dimensions of up to 40 by 40. In most cases,
         much smaller puzzles, 20 by 20 or smaller, are quite satisfactory.
         (Note: Dimensions are to be given in columns and lines.) Your
         puzzle can have as many as 100 words. Usually 25 words is adequate.

On-screen prompts are provided to guide you through the process of building a
puzzle. You are first asked for the width (in columns) and the length (in
lines). Then you are asked for a title for the puzzle. This title may not
exceed 77 characters. (If you need more than 77 characters, you can save the
puzzle to a file after it has been made and then using an editor, you can add
as much text as you wish.)

You are then asked if you want to input the words from a file or from the
keyboard. If you input from a file, the file should be either one that was
saved earlier from within the program or it may be one you have created sepa-
rately using an editor. In the latter case, the file must be constructed in
the correct format. Each line must contain a single word followed by a car-
riage return and a line feed. An entry must contain only alphabetic characters
and no spaces. (Note: If you enter lower case letters, they will be converted
to upper case.)

If you choose to enter words from the keyboard, you will be prompted appro-
priately to build your list. When you are prompted for a word to be entered,
the display will show a box whose length is the lesser of the width and length
of the puzzle. If you try to enter more characters than the space provided,
the program will not accept any extra characters. When finished with entering
words, just press ENTER (when prompted for a new word) to terminate the pro-
cess.

After entering your words, either from a file or the keyboard, the words will
be displayed and you will be given the option of changing any one of the
entries. If the number you enter is negative, and if its absolute value is in
the range 1 through the highest entry number, the corresponding entry will be
deleted and the range will be reduced by one. If you enter a number whose
absolute value is not in the range 1 through the highest entry number, you
will be prompted that the number is out of range; and given the option of
adding an entry or not. If you answer "yes", you will be prompted for a new
entry and it will be added as the next one, no matter what value you entered.

If you respond "no" and the number you entered was positive you are asked to
input the number of the entry you want to change. If you respond "no", and the
number you entered was negative, you will be asked if you want to change an
entry. After making changes, if any, the program will build the puzzle.

If you have entered the words from the keyboard, or if you have entered them
from a file and changed one or more words, the program will ask if you want to
save the words to a file. If you save the words, the file will be in suitable
form to be read by the program at some other time.

As the puzzle is built, the program will display each word as it attempts to
insert it. If the program cannot insert a word, you will be alerted (in the
bottom border) and given the option of starting over (in the hope that a new
try will allow the word to be inserted) or discarding the word. If you elect
to start over, you will also be given the option of increasing both the width
and length of the puzzle by one unit. People have the tendency to try to make
puzzles as small as possible. This not only makes it difficult to place all of
the words, it also leads to puzzles where many words are placed side by side
in very few different directions. Larger puzzle sizes result in puzzles with a
better distribution of directions of insertion.

It may be difficult to evaluate the esthetics of the puzzle from the screen
display. Therefore, you are given the option of printing the puzzle solution
which shows how the words have been laid into the puzzle. You may then contin-
ue, have the program re-position the words or abort the program.

When you continue, you will be given the opportunity of saving the puzzle and
solution to file and you can specify the number of copies that you want to
have printed. (CAUTION! When asked to respond with a Y or N, do not follow
that response with pressing ENTER. It is not necessary and will be interpreted
as a null response to the next prompt.) In general, you only terminate a
response with an ENTER when you input a string of characters or a number.

Two special features are included for avoiding situations that might be unde-
sirable. For example, you may want to enter the two words, "BACKROOM" and
"ROOMMATE". If you do, there is the possibility that they will share all the
letters of "ROOM". You may like that or you may not, if not, just prefix
"ROOMMATE" with an 'X'. The 'X' will not be printed in the puzzle or the word
list. This means that no words can begin with a single letter 'X'. If you want
a word to begin with an 'X', just prefix it with another 'X' which will be
purged from the word list. Another example where you would be more likely to
use this feature is when one word would be contained entirely in another word.
"VIRGINIA" and WESTVIRGINIA" or "THE" and "EITHER". In such cases, just prefix
the shorter word with an 'X'. Also, note that a word might be contained en-
tirely in another one but in reverse order; example: "TEN" and "NINETEEN". You
may want to allow that; but if you don't, prefix the "TEN" with an 'X'.

The above doesn't take care of the cases where the shorter word is entirely
contained at the beginning of the longer word. Example: "ROOM" and "ROOM-
MATE". If you do not want these words to share the letters "ROOM", add a 'Q'
to the end of the shorter word. In the rare instance where a word naturally
ends in 'Q', add a second 'Q' and it will be discarded instead of the real
'Q'. Note that this artifice could be used in all of the above examples except
where the shorter word is at the end of the longer word as in "VIRGINIA" and
"WESTVIRGINIA".

It is possible to need the use of both of the above artifices. For example, if
you are making a puzzle that contains the words: ALSO, SO, SOME it is possible
that the puzzle might contain the character string: ALSOME. There is nothing
wrong with that since all the specified words are present. However, this may
be too confusing for some puzzle solvers and you may want to force the puzzle
to contain each word separately. If you enter: ALSO, XSOQ, XSOME then the
words will be entered separately and the X's and Q will be discarded. It is
possible to use both the X and Q on the same word.

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                                HINT-HUNT (TM)

Castle Oaks offers another puzzle generator with more features. It is a spe-
cial type of puzzle generator which has been designed for use by teachers. Its
purpose is to provide a tool for making homework assignments that students
will enjoy doing.

Although it can create ordinary word search puzzles, its main purpose is to
produce a puzzle where the word list contains a set of hints that correspond
(in a one-to-one fashion) to a set of words that are inserted into the puzzle.
This program was developed so that puzzles can be made where the puzzle words
are in one language and the corresponding hints in the word list are in a
different language. However, the program is not limited to just the above use.
Since you have the capability of putting one set of words in the puzzle and a
different set of words in the word list, the word list can have hints that
relate to the words in the puzzle. Therefore, the program can be used in many
disciplines other than language. (Any characters including spaces may be
placed in the list of hints.)

HINT-HUNT (TM) is a commercial program. (A shareware version has been released
for trial use. It may be used for up to 30 days.)  After the trial period, if
you wish to continue use of the program, you must purchase the commercial
version for $15.00. (Send your payment to the above address.) Upon receipt of
your payment, you will be sent the latest version of the program and you will
be notified of any upgrades and other products available from Castle Oaks.
Since this program was developed for educational use, a school or a school
system may buy a site license. Contact Castle Oaks for site license pricing.