PILE v2.1 Copyright (c) 1994 Reginald Skelton. All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------------------- What's New? ----------- Pile now a has a traditional green background. I can't believe I released a card game with a white background, but there you go. We all make mistakes. Someone (Sam Hozman) wanted a way to turn off the clock and moves counter on the title bar; it was interfering (strobing) with their own title bar clock thing. Well, they asked, and they got. You can turn off the timer and/or moves counter (Options\Display...) Display settings are saved in Pile.ini. The moral is, if you have an idea that will improve Pile, let me know, and I'll (maybe) do it. You get a free registration as well, if I use your idea. Some people seem to have trouble running pile. Like it just won't run up at all kind of thing. Well, if this happens to you, PLEASE tell me about it. So far I've not been able to track down the problem, but as I do commercial software as well, I REALLY would like to know. Several minor bugs corrected (memory leaks and stuff). Nothing major. What is it? ----------- PILE is a simple (yet infuriating) variation of solitaire. You need Windows 3.1, and a mouse. Sorry about the mouse bit, but I figured anyone who wants to play a card game on Windows would have one. Installation ------------ 1: Make a directory of your choosing. (Like C:\Games\Pile) 2: Copy 'pile.zip' to that directory. 3: Unzip 'pile.zip'. (needs pkzip 2.04g) 4: Add icon to progman manager (I think you can do this by dragging pile.exe from the file manager to the destination group). 5: Double click on new icon. Deinstallation -------------- 1: Delete all files in your 'pile' directory. 2: Remove the 'pile' directory. 3: Delete program manager icon. 4: Er, thats it. Rules ----- Arrange all the cards into 13 piles of 4, so that each pile only has cards of the same value. You can move a card to an empty pile. You can move a card to a pile with less than 4 cards on it, if the top card of the destination pile has the same value as the card you want to move. Features -------- Automatic moves. Hints. 'Stuck' alert. Smart high scoring. 'Unlimited' undo. Specific game selection. Shortcuts --------- You can move more than 1 card at a time, if there is a pile which can accept them. Drag the lowest card you want to move. Dragging cards like this counts as only one move. Automatically move cards by double-clicking them. They go to the first pile that can accept them. Piles are searched top to bottom, left to right, so the cards may move to a pile other than the one you expected. Still, that's life. Hints ----- PILE will tell you if there are no valid moves remaining. Help\Hint (Ctrl-H) will flash a card that be moved. High scores ----------- PILE maintains a list of all games played. Purging this list from time to time will make the top score viewing more responsive. Purging deletes any entries not in the top 25 for least time, or least moves. PILE will sort the high scores either by game, time taken, or number of moves. Other stuff ----------- What's a good score? Well, less than 40 moves is usually pretty hard to do. I did 36 once. Less than 2 minutes is fast; my record (so far) is 45 seconds, but that was playing a specific game over and over. PILE was developed in my spare time, using Borland Brief, Watcom C, and MS Visual C. If you want to show your appreciation, and stop the only mildly irritating final screen, by all means send me some money (say about a fiver). If you do I'll give you the codes and intructions for 'branding' your copy. Even if you don't, I'll still answer questions! Oh yeah, so long as you distribute the whole package (pile.exe, brand.exe and this file), without any modification whatsoever, you can give it to whoever you like, providing you make no charge for so doing, and so long as you don't distribute branded versions. Reg Skelton 15 Lambyn Croft Horley Surrey RH6 9XU CIS: 70630, 1062