HomeRun Version 1.00 18th December, 1993 - A Card Solitaire for the Psion Series 3a - Copyright 1993 Right Hand Software Ltd. 45, Kenilworth Gardens, London SE18 3JB, UK Phone/Fax : 081-319-8576 - Email - righthand@cix.compulink.co.uk chennings@cix.compulink.co.uk 100010,511@compuserve.com 1) Introduction HomeRun is a traditional card solitaire for the Psion Series 3a. The game can also be played in by 2 players in competition mode. Game play, rules and scoring are described below. HomeRun offers a full graphical display of the pack of cards, animation, digital sounds, highscore tables and player statistics. Have Fun! 2) Shareware HomeRun is shareware which means you are granted a limited license to evaluate the program. If after a fair and reasonable period of evaluation (no more than 14 days should be considered reasonable), you wish to continue to use the program you must register it. Registration is important. It means that you are actively supporting the development of low cost, high quality software for the Psion range of computers. In recognition of this, registered users receive an access code which will : a) Enable the facilities for saving game setup and options, highscores and player statistics to disk. b) Enable the "Undo Last Move" function. c) Remove the "reminder" dialogs. You can register your copy of HomeRun with a payment of a minimum of 10.00 ukp or $15.00 (US) or local equivalent. Payment should be by cheques drawn on UK Banks or Building Societies made payable to Right Hand Software Ltd, in cash or via the Compuserve shareware registration service (Go SWREG). Please contact us if you wish to discuss other forms of payment. Please read the full Terms & Conditions of use that are set out in the following section. 3) Terms & Conditions a) HomeRun comprises the files HOMERUN.APP, HR1.WVE, HR2.WVE, HR3.WVE, HR4.WVE, HR5.WVE, HR6.WVE, RHS.WVE and this file HOMERUN.TXT. HomeRun is copyright material of Right Hand Software Ltd. and all ownership rights are retained. b) You may use and distribute HomeRun only in accordance with the terms and conditions stated here. c) You may NOT modify HomeRun in any way. d) You may use HomeRun free of charge ONLY for a fair and reasonable period of time (14 days) in order to evaluate the program. For all and any subsequent use of the program, you must register your copy as described in section (2) above. You may use HomeRun only in a personal and private capacity. Use within commercial, corporate or government institutions requires a commercial users licence. e) You may distribute HomeRun only provided that : i) All the original files are included (in particular these terms and conditions). ii) NO charge is made other than to cover the fair and reasonable costs of distribution. Any distribution of HomeRun that renders any form of commercial advantage (financial or otherwise) to the distributor, requires a commercial distributors license. f) While appropriate care has been taken in the creation of HomeRun, Right Hand Software Ltd. does not warrant that the software is error free. Indeed, Right Hand Software Ltd. disclaims all and any warranties relating to the software. g) Under no circumstances shall Right Hand Software Ltd. be liable for consequential, incidental or indirect damages of any kind arising from the use of the HomeRun software. 4) Installation & Logistics a) Setup Copy the file HOMERUN.APP to any directory on any drive and use PSION-I to install HomeRun to the system screen. Alternatively, place HomeRun in an \IMG\ directory so that it can be launched from the RUNIMG filelist. HomeRun is a type 0 application and so has no filelist on the system screen. HomeRun uses various .WVE files to provide digital sound. These files should be copied to a \HOMERUN\ directory located below where the main .APP resides. Alternatively the .WVE files can be copied to a \WVE\ directory on any drive. If you don't want HomeRun use digital sound, simply rename or delete the .WVE files. HomeRun will then use simple tones to provide sound effects. Sound effects can be fully disabled using the Game Options dialog. b) Files HomeRun uses 2 types of file. Firstly, HomeRun is resource based (English language resources are embedded in the main .app) and HomeRun will look for foreign language resource files in a \HOMERUN\ (or whatever you rename HOMERUN.APP to) directory that must be located under the directory from which the app is launched. No foreign language resource files currently exist but if anyone is interested in doing the translation work, we will be happy to supply them. Secondly, for registered users, HomeRun will save various setting to the file HOMERUN.INI. If the drive from which HomeRun was launched can be written to and is not a FLASH SSD, the .INI file will be created in a \HOMERUN\ directory under the directory from which the program was launched. Alternatively, the .INI file will be created in LOC::M:\RHS\. c) General Operation. To launch HomeRun, make sure that the .APP has been installed as described above and that it is showing on the System screen. Select HomeRun and press enter. HomeRun has supports online help. Press the HELP key for details of how to use the various facilities available. A summary of the active keys is shown below : Cursors : The Left, Right, Home and End cursor keys are used to select a card to play. Space : The Space key plays a card. Enter : The Enter key is equivalent to pressing the Home key followed by the Space key and has the effect of playing a new card from the pack. Menu : Brings up the menu bar. Help : Brings up the help system. Psion-N : Starts a new game. Psion-S : This presents a dialog from which you can Setup the type of game to play - the number of players and who they are and for a 2 player game the number of hands over which the competition is to run. Psion-O : This presents a dialog from which you can control the game Options regarding animation and sound effects. Note: if card animation is turned on, the initial the pack dealing routine will always go at the maximum speed. Psion-H : Displays the highscore table. Psion-C : Deletes the current highscore table (to give others less skilled than yourself a chance to get their name in lights). Psion-P : Displays various statistics relating to the current players. Psion-R : Use this to register your copy of HomeRun. Psion-U : For registered users only, this will undo the last move except when that move resulted in an end game. Psion-A : Displays copyright and program version information. Psion-X : Exits the program. 5) HomeRun - The Game On startup, the program information screen is displayed and once cleared, the game begins. HomeRun is played with a standard pack of 52 playing cards PLUS up to 4 Jokers. At the start of a game you have all 4 Jokers. The game starts with 35 cards being dealt into 7 ranks of 5 cards. A single card is then dealt and placed in the bottom left hand corner. The remaining cards are placed face down in the top left hand corner. The basic game play involves taking cards from the front of any of the ranks and placing them on the layout card in the bottom left hand corner. However you can only do this if the face value of the card is 1 greater than or 1 less than that of the layout card - so you are looking to make runs of cards such as 3 4 5 or K Q J 10 or even 4 5 4 5 4 5. Aces are low. Jokers can have any value so any card can be placed on them and they can go on any card - so they are very useful! If it is not possible to move any of the cards from the 7 ranks you can play a new layout card from the pack in the top left hand corner. The objective of the game is simply to clear all the 35 cards in 7 ranks while gaining as many points and bonuses as possible. If you do clear all 35 cards, the pack is redealt and your turn continues. However, 1 Joker is removed, making it harder to clear the next set of cards. 6) Scoring and Bonus Points For each card you play from the 7 ranks, points are awarded according to its face value. The values are : King, Ace = 8 points Queen, Jack, 3, 2 = 6 points 10, 9, 5, 4 = 4 points 8, 7, 6 = 2 points Joker = 0 points Additionally, if you manage to make a pure run of 4 or more cards, you get 10 bonus points for each card in the run after the 3rd card. A pure run is an ascending or descending "straight" ie 3, 4, 5, 6 or Q, J, 10, 9. Sequences such as 4, 5, 4, 5 are not eligable for bonus points but are obviously important for clearing all 35 cards and completing the hand. In some situations you will need to make a judgement as to whether to go for bonus points or for a sequence that has a better chance of getting to the end of the hand. If you clear all 35 cards you are awarded various additional bonuses. You get 20 bonus points for completing the hand. You get 10 points for each card remaining unused in the pack and you get 50 points for any unused Jokers. You now enter the "Bonus Gamble" section. A single card is dealt and you are offer a chance to increase your bonus score by betting as to whether the next card is higher or lower. A dialog shows the points on offer and you can choose to collect you current bonus or go for the higher value by going high or low. If you bet and you're right you get the higher bonus and can bet again. If you're wrong that ALL your bonus points are lost. If the next card has the same value as the one showing, you collect your current (lower) bonus. Once you have more than 240 bonus points, winning the gamble gains you an extra Joker for the next hand (ie the number of Jokers is not reduced) - this is the best way to get really high scores as fewer Jokers makes it a lot harder to clear the ranks. 7) The End Game If you have cleared all the ranks and the bonus gamble routine has completed, your score plus bonuses are added to the players total shown in the information window. If the if the score for the game is good enough, its position in the highscore table is shown. If the score is not a highscore but is still a personal best, the player statistics dialog is displayed. The pack is then redealt and the players turn continues. If you cannot play a card, the game ends and any highscore or personal best is notified. If you are playing a single player game, you will now need to do a Psion-N to start a new game. If you are playing a 2 player game, the cards are redealt automatically and play passes to the next player. Once player 2 has completed the number of games in the competition (as defined in the Setup New Game dialog), the competition is over and you will now need to do a Psion-N to start a new competition. 8) The Information Window The Information window is located at the bottom of the screen and shows then number of unplayed cards in the pack, the number of unplayed Jokers, the current hand score and bonus for the current player and the running total over several hands in a game and games in a competition for the 2 players. Note the diamond marker indicates the current player. 9) That's all folks ... Have Fun! === End of HomeRun v1.00 Documentation =================================== VERSION HISTORY ... === HomeRun v1.00 Changes from v0.92b ==================================== * Added further / finalised sounds. * .WVE files REALLY correctly handled in a APP\HOMERUN\ directory * Opted for blank background to cleared ranks * Game Options settings correctly saved to disk (for reg'd users) * "Press Esc or Enter" prompt shortened to "Press Enter" === HomeRun v0.92b Changes from v0.91b =================================== * .SHD file amended to show HomeRun as the app name on the system screen rather than "Runner" - the original working title. * .WVE files correctly handled in a APP\HOMERUN\ directory * Improved control options for sound/animation fx on dealing * Increased cursor blink rate for better visibility * Home/End keys now sensitive to empty ranks * Build card routine uses G_TRMODE_SET rather than G_TRMODE_REPL to stop losing pixels in suit icons through overwriting on cards where suit icons are densely packed eg 9s and 10s * New display for empty ranks instead of simple grey fill * Enter key is used instead of Shift+Space to play a pack card * Game now correctly recognises end game situation and does not process cursor keys, Space or Enter - these were previously active and would panic or muck up subsequent play if pressed once a game completed. * UNDO last move feature added (only for registered users) - I'm actually very pleased with this 'cos I keep doing silly things. There's no penalty for using this so I guess it'll be up to you to declare it's use when you are boasting about highscores! === End of Version History ==============================================