WORLD CUP CRICKET '96 Version 1.0 August 22, 1996 Copyright (c) 1996, Andrew Williams All rights reserved. CONTENTS OF THIS MANUAL: 1.0 Shareware concept and disclaimer 2.0 Requirements 3.0 Installation and getting started 4.0 The Game - How to play 4.1 The menu items 4.2 How to play 4.3 Features and Rules 5.0 Trouble-shooting 6.0 Credits & Feedback 7.0 Registering & Future versions 8.0 About the game of cricket 1.0 SHAREWARE CONCEPT AND DISCLAIMER This game is distributed as a Shareware program. The authors of Shareware retain all rights to the software under copyright laws, while allowing free distribution to the user for evaluation. You are encouraged to freely copy and distribute this product in an UNALTERED form to friends, bulletin boards, ftp sites, user groups etc. All original files must be included when distributing. You have an evaluation period of two (2) weeks. If you find this product useful, and are still using WORLD CUP '96 after two weeks, you are obligated to register it by sending a payment to the author (see section 7.0 in this manual, or the file REGISTER.TXT for registration details). The registration fee will license one copy of the product to one person. The Shareware system has real advantages to you, the user, by allowing you to trial it before "buying" it with your registration. Please support the concept by registering quality software which will encourage the author to improve their programs and develop new ones. Thank you. Users of WORLD CUP '96 must accept this disclaimer of warranty: "WORLD CUP '96 is provided "as is" with NO warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The author can in NO event be held responsible for damages of any kind, direct, incidential or consequential, which may result from the use of this product." WORLD CUP '96 is not associated or affiliated with any other cricket games concerning the World Cup theme, including products with similar "World Cup" or "World Cup Cricket" labels. WORLD CUP '96 is copyright (c) 1996, by Andrew Williams. 2.0 REQUIREMENTS *** System Requirements: *** A 386 or faster IBM compatible PC-AT (486 CPU or equivalent is recommended) Microsoft Windows 3.1 (or higher) with 4 megabytes of RAM About 1 megabyte of free hard disk space VGA 16 colours or better video display Mouse *** Files Required: *** You should have all the following files uncompressed into the same directory. Most of them must be present or World Cup '96 will not work properly... wldcup10.exe - the main game program bivbx11.dll - a runtime dynamic link library gauge.vbx - a definition file for gauge components subcont.bmp - a bitmap file of the sub-continent readme.txt - an overview of the game and initial info manual.txt - this file, all the program information and help license.txt - shareware, copyright and disclaimer agreements register.txt - details of registering and the registration form register.frm - same as register.txt vendor.txt - info for vendors wishing to distribute the game file_id.diz - a short title and description of the game for ID teams.txt - a list of the teams in the World Cup wcrecs.txt - holds the current data for all Cup records dfltrecs.txt - default data for Cup records, in case of reset winners.txt - holds the current data for Cup winners dfltwins.txt - default data for Cup winners, in case of reset *.txt - twelve .txt files containing data for each team 3.0 INSTALLATION AND GETTING STARTED (described using Windows 3.x steps. Win95 actual steps will be different, but the idea is the same.) NOTE: THIS GAME WILL NOT RUN OFF A FLOPPY DISK. IT MUST BE INSTALLED/TRANSFERRED TO THE HARD DISK AS DESCRIBED BELOW. *** For those who understand Windows installation: *** simply uncompress the zip package into it's own subdirectory (any name is fine) to run the game, simply run the file WLDCUP10.EXE through Windows. to install into a Program Group, do the standard File|New Program Item in Windows, putting into the command line the file WLDCUP10.EXE. There is no setup, the icon is ready to go. *** For those who don't understand Windows much: *** make a subdirectory (give it any name) on your hard disk and copy the zip package into it. uncompress the zip package into that subdirectory you got ready. go into Windows 3.x, and then to run the game once, click File in the main menu, then Run, then click Browse, and scroll through your directories to the new one with the game in it. click on the file WLDCUP10.EXE and then click on OK from then on till it runs. to install it in your Games group in Windows, go into Windows, open up the Games group you want to install into, then click File in the main menu, then click New, then New Program Item, then click the cursor into the box called Command Line, then click the Browse button, and scroll through your directories to the new one with the game in it. click on the file WLDCUP10.EXE and then click on all OK buttons from then on and it will have installed as a new icon in your Games group. double-click on this to start the game. 4.0 THE GAME - HOW TO PLAY If you like a Quick Start: click the icon, choose New World Cup or New One-Day Match, pick the team/s, pick the players, flip the coin, choose batters or bowlers, and start clicking the next over button. You are on your own! If you want to learn the game properly, read on... 4.1 THE MENU ITEMS Although the menu has the same items in it whether in the middle of a game or back at the main screen, not all menu items are available at different times. This section will describe what each menu item does. If it is greyed out in the game, that choice is not available right then. e.g. the Change Player Data item is no longer possible once a game has started. you don't want to be changing players' statistics in the middle of a game. On the other hand, the Forfeit Current Match item is only available once a game has started, of course. Read on... *** FILE *** CHANGE PLAYER DATA: This gives you the data for every player of every team. You can change some of the players' statistics as you like. When you are in the change data screen, the type of cursor tells you if certain data are modifiable. As you run the cursor over boxes of data, if the cursor looks like the standard Windows mouse arrow cursor, that data is fixed. But if the cursor changes to a vertical line, data in those boxes are changeable. Now when you make changes to the data, the program detects a change, and gives you the new option of saving or cancelling your change before you go on to the next team. If you try to change data to something unreasonable, whether on purpose, or by accident, the program will sometimes tell you that change is not possible e.g. strike rate of 622.3 instead of 62.3 etc. Changes are possible to data on players' batting and bowling averages, strike rates, economy rates, form and morale. Note that I have tried to make the data as accurate as possible, but you can change it if you get more up-to-date data or if you have your own stats you want to play by. For all major cricket teams, the players data is the official actual data correct to the date just before the World Cup '96 started. For teams like Kenya, Netherlands etc, which don't have complete stats anywhere I could find, I had to base the players' data on their performance during the World Cup itself. All form and morale data for all players I based on a rating scale on how well they went in the World Cup, since that is the best indication I could get of their form going into the World Cup. EXIT WORLD CUP CRICKET As this name implies, this menu choice will exit the game completely after confirming with you first. Games in progress will not be kept, BUT changes to player data and new records set during that session before you exited, WILL be kept. *** WORLD CUP *** NEW WORLD CUP This goes to the screen for starting a new world cup tournament. Here you will need to choose the team you will be playing with. The game will automatically start the World Cup, giving you the first results of other teams, or going straight to your game if you are first up. LOAD PREVIOUS CUP This will show a standard Windows dialog box listing the World Cup tournaments you have previously saved. By choosing a saved game to load, you will continue the tournament right where you left off. QUIT CURRENT WORLD CUP This will first confirm with the user, and then quit the current World Cup, WITHOUT saving. The game will go back to the main screen. VIEW LAST POINTS TABLE This will bring up a screen showing the current points for teams in the World Cup you are playing. It gives points, run rate differential, etc. (Note: RRD is calculated using (# of runs scored / # of overs used) - (# of runs scored against / # of overs used against.) The teams will be ordered with the teams going the best at the top. VIEW LAST FINALS TABLE This will bring up a screen showing the current state of the teams in the finals. i.e. quarter finals, semi's, and final. FIXTURES LIST This shows the scheedule for all games of the World Cup, their date, venue, etc. *** SINGLE MATCH *** NEW 1 DAY MATCH This starts a single international 1-day game. It is NOT involved with the World Cup, it is a one-off game. Hence you can choose both teams to play, yours and your opponent. Obviously the program will not allow you to play against your own team. FORFEIT CURRENT MATCH This option is enabled during a game in progress. If for any reason you wish to stop the game, you can use this menu item. Note you do not need to forfeit a game before exiting the program, you can exit straight-away. This option is included in case you just wish to quit a game, but also in case you are playing the World Cup, and wish to forfeit a game e.g. playing in Sri Lanka. VIEW LAST SCOREBOARD This will show the state of the last match scoreboard. It gives both teams scores fully. At the end of a single game, when you go back to the main screen, you can click on this to get the scoreboard from the most recent game played. This option is only enabled at the end of a game back at the main screen. *** DETAILS *** SQUAD DETAILS This gives access to data/details of players on all teams. It contains some data different to that in CHANGE PLAYER DATA. This data is not changeable in any way, and is for informational purposes only. PITCH REPORT This gives you a set of bar graphs indicating the state of the pitch. This data is different for every game, and may be used to influence the players you pick, or who to bowl etc. Pitch condition is chosen mostly at random, although there is some internal rules it goes by in deciding the related features of the pitch. The program AI does factor in these pitch details in its calculations every ball, so they can affect the percentages of wickets and scoring. VENUE DETAILS This shows a map of the Indian sub-continent, with all the countries and venues for the World Cup games marked. Click on a number in the map (the key at the right matches numbers to names) to display the details of each venue. The data is real, and complete except for a few venues I couldn't find the ground capacity for. Thanks to CricInfo Web site for all venue statistics. *** GAME COMMANDS *** FIELDING OPTIONS This brings up a screen containing all the options you have when your team is fielding. You can change bowlers at any time (limit of 10 overs per bowler), you can change each bowler's attacking or defensive bowling rating and you can change the aggressiveness rating of the field setting. The program does factor all these details in its calculations, as well as of course how good the bowler is himself. Note: if you would like to see other options on this screen, let me know. BATTING OPTIONS These are available when your side is batting, and are otherwise similar to the bowling options described above. COMPARATIVE GRAPH This shows the traditional "worm" graph used here in Australia all the time to show 2 teams scoring and wicket-loss rates. If you've seen it before it's self-explanatory. VIEW SCOREBOARD This displays the current state of the full match scoreboard, giving all details of both teams. *** RECORDS *** ALL MATCH RECORDS This gives the official one-day international records as current to just before the World Cup started. It gives best team records, best batting, best bowling etc. You can get onto this record sheet! If you play really well, your team or one of your players can make the record, and your name goes up too. The reset button on this screen will reset the records back to the original official records if you want to wipe yours for some reason. Don't fiddle with the data files in the subdirectory containing the records, it's possible the program will crash if it detects something wrong there. It's not easy to get on this record card, so good luck! WORLD CUP WINNERS This keeps track of people who manage to win the World Cup, and their team and date. There is a reset button which resets this card back to the original state. VENUE RECORDS This is the same function as VENUE DETAILS under the DETAILS menu. It gives the details of some official one-day records at each of the venues used for the World Cup. These details are fixed, you can NOT get your name onto this India map records. *** HELP *** CONTENTS In the future, an on-line help will go here, but for now, a short message just appears saying that until then, use the VIEW MANUAL menu item below. VIEW MANUAL Since on-line help is not yet available (planned for future versions), this menu item uses Windows Notepad editor to display this MANUAL.TXT file. REGISTRATION This will use Notepad to display the file REGISTER.TXT containing registration information and details. ABOUT This displays information about the game, the author, credits, email, etc. 4.2 HOW TO PLAY I can't give instructions on how to play the whole game of cricket here, so I hope you already know what you are doing. Help on each menu item is given in the above section. As for playing, it *should* be obvious as you go along. When you are playing the game, click the Next Over button to proceed an over at a time. Stats and info on the game's progress are at the bottom left of the screen. The row of icons across the top of the screen are shortcuts to menu items. e.g. you can see the worm graph by clicking Game Commands|Comparative Graph, or you can simply click on the worm graph icon at the top of the screen. All menu's have keyboard equivalents, if for some reason you want to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, you can use the Alt key together with the first letter in the menu (the one underlined). You can also use the keyboard for all underlined letters in the menus themselves. Note that the game is designed so that you will need to make some informed changes if you want to win. e.g. if you just leave the aggressiveness at the default levels you may not get enough runs. Or if you don't pick a balanced team, you may get crushed. Or you may do well, that's cricket! But it's likely you will need to get involved with the options, particularly if the teams are evenly rated. 4.3 FEATURES AND RULES This section just outlines the rules the game goes by, and the capabilities of some features. The program plays under correct cricket rules for batting and bowling, i.e. can't bat twice, limit 10 overs per bowler. There is no limit on how many bowlers you can use. There is no capacity for injured batsmen, no runners, retired hurt etc. If you bat really aggressively, you will score faster, but good chance of getting out. And vice versa for batting defensively. Bowlers being aggressive are more likely to take a wicket, but also give away more runs. Plus there are lots of other factors - pitch, skill, form, etc - affecting the percentages. An attacking field also improves wicket-taking percentages but gives away more runs. Extras are a part of the game. They are counted on the scoreboard. Extras appear on the screen when an over is bowled in a line below where the regular 6 balls (icons) appear. Extras are added to a bowler's stats, but not to batsmen's. When a match takes place in the World Cup in which you the user is not involved, the program will work out a result based on ratings and chance. The program compares the ratings of each team, and usually the better team will win, but there can well be upsets. Anyway, the RRD can vary, and make a difference to the points table. 5.0 TROUBLE-SHOOTING Since this is the first release, version 1.0, I don't know of any bugs yet! Any I've found I've fixed. But I welcome any comments you have concerning problems/bugs you do find, and I'll address those in future versions. So as for trouble-shooting in this version, I can only suggest you contact me about it for now. Here are a few problems which used to arise, but which I reckon I've fixed, but just in case you do come across them... 1) It says a file is not found, e.g a .dll file or a .dat file Answer: make sure you have unzipped all the files properly and into the same subdirectory. make sure you haven't tampered with any data files. 2) If a batsman gets out, but the scoreboard still says "not out" and there are now 3 batsmen saying "not out" and only one of them is getting all the runs: LET ME KNOW! I thought I'd fixed that bugger, but in that case obviously not quite :) 3) Since it's a first release, it's quite possible that the formulas the program uses to calculate batsmen getting out, rate of scoring, etc are going to need adjusting. The more people who write and tell me how to make it more realistic, the better I can make it. Of course, remember this is a computer game, so it's never going to be perfect in that regard! 6.0 CREDITS AND FEEDBACK Thanks to my sister for drawing all the little cricket icons. Thanks to CricInfo site on the World Wide Web for all the cricket data: * World Cup '96 information, schedules, venues, teams etc * all players' data * all One Day International records and statistics They are a great site, with masses of cricket info, live scores, etc etc. Check them out at: http://www-aus.cricket.org/ As for feedback, I would welcome any you have concerning bugs, improvements, comments etc about the game. Especially since this is the first version release, I have had very little input other than my own ideas so far. If you write via email, I will try to answer you about it via email. You can reach me easiest by email at: anwillia@cit.gu.edu.au or snail mail at: Andrew Williams 3/15 Duke St Kingston, Qld 4114 AUSTRALIA 7.0 REGISTERING & FUTURE VERSIONS *** See the file REGISTER.TXT for the ordering form and *** *** price details. *** Like it says in section 1.0, this game is shareware, and so you are legally (and morally!) required to register it by payment if you keep it for longer than two weeks of evaluation. I'm not going to threaten curses and hellfire about it like some games :) Personally I think this game is fun to keep and play, and I'm not asking much for the registration really. Since the game is already fully playable, I won't need to send you anything, but you will then be legally able to keep the game. You will also get the right for keeping future versions of World Cup '96 as they appear. Some people like to know where their money is going, so I'll tell you a bit about me: I'm a university student in Brisbane, Australia, studying computer science and mathematics. I'm a cricket fan (obviously) and since I've spent time looking all over for a good non-commercial cricket game on bulletin boards and the internet, and didn't find much at all, I thought I'd make one up. As for the registration, after thinking long and hard, I decided to make this version non-crippled in any way, so this game is fully playable. What about future versions? As I get time, if I get feedback and people registering, I will make updates and improvements as required. I plan to use the same name for the zip package, but with the 2 numbers at the end showing the version number. e.g. this version is WLDCUP10.ZIP for version 1.0, the next would be WLDCUP11.zip for version 1.1, and WLDCUP12.ZIP and so on. I'm sure you get the picture, just look for the highest numbered file in the place where you got your previous version. I can't say yet what place on the internet to look for the absolute latest version, other than check out my home page (it's in Help|About in the game menu) on the Web, and it will either have the latest version, or say where to find it. If you have payed to register a version of World Cup '96, you can then download future versions without having to worry about the legal or moral issues. You can then play the latest version of World Cup '96 conscience-clear. If you give me your email address when you register, and if you ask me to, I'll also notify you by email whenever a new version comes out, and tell you where to get it. My homepage URL is at: http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~project20/andrew/ 8.0 ABOUT THE GAME OF CRICKET I won't go into the details of what cricket is, how it began, and all its rules. If you know how to play, you won't want to read it anyway. If you don't know how cricket works, or what its history is, all I can say is, it should be easy to look up. It's a major sport in some countries of the world, and has a rich history and atmosphere. I may get around to giving an overview of cricket in this section in later versions. Enjoy!