___ King's Casino Solitaire Evaluator __________________________ Release 2.0 is a major update providing five new games and a multi- tude of new features. Here are some highlights: - New Games: Bristol, Eight Off, Penguin, Pyramid, and Tournament. King's Casino now has 22 games! - New Look: King's Casino now supports background pictures to add colour and pizazz to the otherwise plain playing surface of the program's main window. - New Look: When you win, the winner's dialog box will randomly display one of many different pictures, rather than the same one each time. - New Look: You can add your own background and winner pictures and select which background picture and card back to use or have the program change them for you randomly. - New Feature: Illustrated WinHelp system with screen shots of each game and play examples to get you started on new games quickly and easily. - New Feature: Pile Info: right-click on any card pile for a pop-up all-you-need-to-know report on how to play to and from that pile. Learn new games simply by exploring the screen. - New Feature: Auto Finish (on the Actions Menu) saves wear and tear on your mouse. When you get close enough to the end of a game that a win is certain, click on Auto Finish to automatically play the final cards to foundations. - New Feature: You can now assign double-click instead of single-click to King's Casino's default card moves feature. This prevents those unexpected card jumps when you move a card aside to see what's under it. King's Casino Solitaire requires VGA or higher resolution and a mouse or other pointing device to run: this release does not provide keyboard support. The current maintenance release, 2.06, provides an installation program, bug fixes, and a MS Write version of the game instructions suitable for printing. ___ Installation ____________________________________________ You also need the file VBRun300.dll in your Windows System directory in order to run this program and its Setup. VBRun300.dll is big and most everybody already has it, so I haven't added it to the archive. If you don't have it, you can download it from almost any BBS, and use it with hundreds of other nifty Windows shareware programs also on your favourite BBS. [NOTE!: if you are installing version 2.06 ON TOP OF (in the same dir- ectory as) any other version 2 of King's Casino Solitaire you will lose your scores and preferences unless you take the following steps: 1) Rename your current KCSol.ini file to KCSol.xxx. 2) Follow the regular installation steps, below. 3) Delete the new (empty) file KCSol.ini. 4) Rename your old KCSol.xxx back to KCSol.ini.] Experienced Windows users will need no help installing King's Casino via the provided Setup.exe program. If you are unsure, follow these steps: 1) Un-Zip KCSol2.zip into some temporary directory. You've already performed this step to be reading this file. You can simply run King's Casino from there but that's cheating! 2) Execute the program Setup.exe, either by double-clicking on it in File Manager or by entering its path and name in the File/Run menu option of Program or File Manager. For example: c:\temp\setup.exe. Setup will start by confirming that it knows the name of the temporary directory from step 1) above. Next, it will prompt you for the name of a directory to install the program to. (We'll presume for the rest of this discussion that you accept the default, c:\kcsol2.) 3) Next, Setup asks whether you want it to automatically create a Program Manager group for the King's Casino program and its documentation files. (If you choose not to, see step 5.) 4) Finally, Setup will determine whether you are currently running in VGA or an SVGA video mode and ask whether you want background images (see More on Background Pictures below) for your current video mode only or for both. 5) If you did not let Setup create a separate Program Manager group for King's Casino, then drag KCSol.exe from File Manager into the Windows group of your choice in Program Manager (or your other favourite Windows Shell). (Alternatively, you can run King's Casino by selecting File/Run from the menu in Program Manager or File Manager and typing in the path to KCSol.exe and its name.) 6) You may now delete the un-zipped KCSol2.zip files from the temporary directory referred to in step 1) above. 7) Optionally, you can create a sub-directory of KCSOL2 called something like GAMES. Unzip the archive KCSWins2.zip in KCSOL2 into this sub-directory. King's Casino Solitaire does not modify your Win.ini, your System.ini, your AutoExec.bat or your Config.sys. ___ Files Supplied __________________________________________ - Files installed in the directory you specified - - KCSol.exe the King's Casino program file - KCSol.hlp Windows help file - KCSol.ini configuration file updated by program - QCardX.dll playing cards library - KWCrown.bmp a bitmap image used when you win a game - KWDragn1.bmp ditto - KWDragn2.bmp ditto - KWDuocrn.bmp ditto - KWUnicrn.bmp ditto - KB6/8Fleur.bmp a bitmap image used as a background - KB6/8Grifn.bmp ditto - KB6/8Links.bmp ditto - KB6/8Lions.bmp ditto - KB6/8Ucorn.bmp ditto - KB1Celt.bmp background bitmap good for most video modes - KB1Celt2.bmp ditto - KCReadMe.txt this file (not necessary to run program) - KC_Order.txt order form (not necessary to run program) - KCSWins2.zip an archive of winnable games (see below) - KCSRules.wri a MS Write version of game rules - Files you may already have in your Windows System directory - - MSAFinx.dll (potentially used by other Windows programs) - CmDialog.vbx ditto - CommDlg.dll ditto - Ver.dll ditto ___ To Un-install ____________________________________________ To remove King's Casino Solitaire from your system simply delete the files listed in the first group, above. If you added an icon for King's Casino Solitaire to some other group, highlight the icon by clicking once on it (then again if necessary to get rid of its pop-up menu), then press Delete. (The files listed in the second group above (MSAFinx.dll, etc.) may also have been installed by King's Casino. More likely, however, they were already present in your Windows System directory. Either way they take little space and it's not wise to delete them.) ___ Getting Started ___________________________________________ King's Casino Solitaire uses standard Window's menu commands and should require no effort to use or understand for anyone familiar with other Windows programs. Each of the twenty and two different solitaire card games you can start from Games on the main menu has instructions you can access from the Help/Game Rules menu or by pressing F1 when the game is on-screen. All other features are documented from Help/Contents or by pressing F1 with a specific program feature selected. For example, if you are using the Visuals dialog box to change background images, pressing F1 will bring up the appropriate help topic. Alternatively, once you start a game you can right-click on the various card piles to learn what each pile is for and how to move cards to and from it. For those of you who find it easier to have a printed copy of the game rules at hand, the file KCSRules.wri has been provided in Windows Write format. Just load it into the MS Write applet and choose print from the file menu. Thanks to Carol Kaplan for suggesting this. ___ Accessibility ____________________________________________ This program is, unfortunately, inaccessible to anyone with visual impairment. You will find a speech-friendly solitaire suite and much more in the archive VIP611.zip available in the Disabilities forum on CompuServe, BlinkLink, PC-Ohio, CRS and many other fine BBSs. I have no experience in programming for motor disabilities. I believe everything in this program is accessible via single mouse clicks and very occasional mouse drags. Don't forget that you can - configure the program so that a single click on any card cause a default card move - use the space bar to deal cards - use the right mouse button to pop up the Games menu or Pile Info. If you can think of any changes to improve this program's accessi- bility, please let me know. Anyone with a disability and limited financial resources may acquire the fully functional version of King's Casino for the reduced price of $3.50 by including a photocopy of any legal document confirming the disability. -------------------------------------------------------------- Note: the following topics are purely optional. The information from here on is not needed to get up and running with this program. -------------------------------------------------------------- ___ More on Background Pictures ______________________________ During installation KCSetup intalled a set of picture files for your current video mode in your King's Casino directory. When you run the program you can choose Visuals from the Options menu or press F7 at any time to pop up a window for selecting which picture will be used as a backdrop for your game play. King's Casino provides pictures for both VGA and SVGA (800 by 600) video modes. If you use the 1024 by 768 video mode (or higher, the KB8 pictures will fill an 800-by-600-sized main window. If you want pictures to fill more of the 1024 by 768 screen, see the topic, Adding to the Artwork, in the King's Solitaire help system. Look there also for information on creating your own picture files and image sets. The two KB1 files, KB1Celt.bmp and KB1Celt2.bmp have the peculiar property of working with any video mode from 640 by 480 right up to 1024 by 768. When installing King's Casino you may have answered Yes in Step 4 to allow the setup program install background bitmaps for your un- used video mode. If so, these were placed in the sub-directory, KCSPIX under your King's Casino directory. If you subsequently change video modes from VGA to SVGA, you can use File Manager to copy the KB6xxxxx.bmp files from the King's Casino main directory into the KCSPIX sub-directory, and copy the KB8xxxxx.bmp files from KCSPIX to the main directory. If you change video modes from SVGA to VGA, simply reverse this procedure. Conversely, if you are short of disk space or find you prefer the simple solid colour background, you can use File Manager to delete any or all .bmp files. ___ What to do with KCSWins2.Zip ______________________________ Exchanging winning and/or unusual games with other players is one of the more important functions of Games/Save and Games/Load menu options. Inside the main download KCSol2.zip file is a second .zip, KCSWins2. This contains one saved game each of all the games in King's Casino. Each of these games is winnable. Step 7 under Installation, above, explains how to install these pre-saved games. In King's Casino, choose Load Game from the Games menu. Change the directory box to point to the sub-directory in which you unzipped KCSWins2. Double-click on any of the games shown in the files box. The game you've now loaded can be played to a win by a correct choice of moves at every turn. This does NOT mean you will win the game the first time you play it, since there are so many decision points in any solitaire game for which there is more than one equally logical move. Sometimes playing a known winning game can be even more frustrating than playing an unknown game. Note: Game files have a new format in release 2 which supports double deck card games. The program will attempt to read release 1.x saved game files. In a few cases with release 1.0 saved games (should you have been using that version) it may not succeed. ___ High Scores ______________________________________________ Sheila McNamee of Renton Washington broke the bank at King's Casino! When I started work on this program I anticipated that the greatest problem players would have would be staying out of the red. As the program developed, I made decisions which took it away from strict imitation of a real casino. With Undo, run bonuses, etc. the odds at King's Casino actually favour the skillful player in many games. Sheila proved this in her first week with the registered version by racking up over $23,000 in the black (she's now well over $100,000!). Unfortunately, I had not designed King's Casino to store numbers of this magnitude and it crashed. Rest assured that the program now handles winnings (and loses), even in the millions, without a hiccup. I'm sure Sheila broke the bank without resorting to such underhanded practices as saving a nearly-won game and restarting it multiple times. You may want to challenge yourself to meeting or exceeding Sheila's score. If so your choice of games to play will make a crucial difference. Certain games, like Baroness, Golf, and Idiot's Delight, with high odds against can be a bottomless pit for your funds (unless you win, of course). Other games, like Eight Off, King's Clover, and Penguin, favour the skilled player with modest but consistent wins. Let me know your own high scores, we'll presume they're honest, and I'll post the highest of the high in future versions. ___ Turning Up by Threes and Other Mysteries ____________________ Certain solitaires, like Klondike and Canfield, allow the player to go through the deck by turning up three cards at a time. Occasionally, I get feedback from a perceptive user who notices that my way of going through the deck by threes is not the same as other peoples' way. This goes back to my childhood. When I played Klondike back then I was told that some people played by turning over cards one at a time and stopping when they'd gone through the deck once. This was supposed to be the "official" rule. I was told that others turned the cards over by threes and allowed themselves to go through the deck an unlimited number of times. I preferred this because it soon became apparent that a win by the first rule was rarer than bug-free software. (A third alternative, going through the deck by ones an unlimited number of times, seemed to make the game more difficult to lose than to win and felt like cheating.) However, I also noticed that there were two ways of interpreting the three card rule. One could lay each threesome of cards down on the discard pile face down (as I was taught) or face up. When one turned over a face down discard pile to re-use, there was often no change in the available cards, signalling an endless loop, which meant game over unless a new play for one of the available cards could be found. On the other hand, if one created the discard pile by laying the cards down face up, re-using the discard pile presented different cards for use the next time through. This occasionally led to a game being won which would not have been won otherwise (perhaps one win in an after- noon's play rather than one in a week). Another rule I chose to bend to the disgust of my older cousin tutor had to do with moving cards from pile to pile (in the tableau). She claimed that no card or run could be moved to a new pile except to fill an empty spot with a King. I wanted to move any sequence of one or more face up cards from one tableau pile to another as long as the red-on-black and downward-by-rank rules were not violated. Playing my way, I've found the odds against winning are about 1 in 5 for Klondike. While I haven't yet made an option of which way turning by threes is handled in King's Casino, you can enforce the stricter rule regarding cross-pile moves for yourself if you prefer more challenging odds rather than more scope for tactical prowess. I did not allow the same cross-pile laxness in Canfield, since that game seems to me well-balanced in its traditional form. Happy computing and thanks again for taking time to evaluate this program! Dale Cotton CompuServe 73632,703 (Internet 73632.703@Compuserve.com)