Contents

Super Wheel for Windows
Version 2.0
Copyright 1995 John Burky.  All rights reserved.
13624 Bandy Road, Alliance, OH 44601

Super Wheel is a shareware word puzzle game.  The object is to solve the puzzle by guessing letters in the hidden phrase.

To get help, position the mouse arrow on one of the underlined topics below and press the left button on the mouse.

How To Play

Overview

Spinning The Wheel

Buying A Vowel

Solving The Puzzle

Strategy & Hints

Playing Without A Mouse

Commands

Game Menu Commands

Options Menu Commands

Other Stuff

Registration Form

What Is Shareware?

Distribution Restrictions

How To De-Install Super Wheel


How To Play

Overview

Spinning The Wheel

Buying A Vowel

Solving The Puzzle

Strategy & Hints

Playing Without A Mouse

See Also:

Commands


Commands

Game Menu Commands

Options Menu Commands

See Also:

How To Play


Overview

Super Wheel is a word puzzle game.  The object of the game is much like life.  You try to accumulate as much money as possible before dying.  You win money by guessing letters in a hidden phrase, and you get to keep the money if you solve the hidden phrase.  Super Wheel displays a hint at the bottom of the screen giving the general flavor of the phrase, such as quotation or occupation.

Super Wheel is for one, two or three players.  You can play head-to-head or against computer-controlled players.

There is a one-player game called Hangman Solitaire.  Every time you lose a turn, a piece is added to the Hangman Guy.  If the Hangman Guy is completed, you lose the round and you lose any money you had won in the round.  If you solve the puzzle, you keep your money plus you get a bonus for the Hangman Guy's unused lives.

Click on one of these topics for more on how to play:

Spinning The Wheel

Buying A Vowel

Solving The Puzzle


Spinning The Wheel

When your turn starts, you can choose to spin the wheel, buy a vowel or solve the puzzle.  If you spin, the wheel will rotate, much like the Earth does, and will eventually stop.  If it stops on a money value, you get to guess a consonant.  If you guess correctly, each occurence of the letter you guessed is revealed and you win the dollar amount on the wheel times the number of letters that were revealed.  If you guess incorrectly, your turn is over.

Some other good and bad things can happen to you when you spin.  If you hit Bankrupt, you lose all your money and you lose your turn.  If you hit Lose A Turn, you lose your turn but get to keep your money.  If you hit Free Spin, you get a little dot displayed by your name that you can save for a rainy day.  Later, when you lose a turn by guessing a wrong letter or hitting Bankrupt or Lose A Turn, you can exchange your little dot for another turn.  Then you are dotless.

See also:

Buying A Vowel

Solving The Puzzle

Commands


Buying A Vowel

Instead of spinning, you can buy a vowel.  A vowel costs $250.  If you guess a vowel that's in the puzzle, your turn continues.  Otherwise, you lose your turn.  $250 is subtracted from your score regardless of the number of times the vowel occurs in the puzzle.  If you want, you can change the cost of a vowel to make the game easier or more challenging.

See also:

Spinning The Wheel

Solving The Puzzle

Commands


Solving The Puzzle

When you think you know the hidden phrase, you can click on the Solve Puzzle button and fill in the missing letters.  If you put a check in the Auto-Type box, the letters already revealed in the puzzle will type out automatically.

If you correctly solve the puzzle, the round is over and you keep your money.  Your opponents are hosed; they lose any money they had won in the round.  A game consists of three to five rounds.  You can change the number of rounds in a game.  The player with most money wins.

See also:

Spinning The Wheel

Buying A Vowel

Commands


Game Menu Commands

New Game

Starts a new game.  Three dialog boxes are displayed.  The first dialog box asks you which puzzle file you want to use.  The second dialog box asks you how many human and computer-controlled players are playing.  The third dialog box asks you to type the names of the players and select a cartoon icon for each player.  You can press the Random button to have the computer choose random names and icons.

Pause

Pauses the game and stops the countdown timer.

Score

Shows the score for all rounds played so far.

Available Letters

Available letters are displayed in black and letters guessed already are displayed in gray.

Statistics

Statistics about the current game.  All sorts of stuff.  Anything you can think of.

Top Ten

Top ten scores of all time.

Exit

Exits Super Wheel and returns to the Windows Program Manager.

See Also:

Options Menu Commands

How To Play


Options Menu Commands

Sound

Customize sound for Super Wheel with your own wave files.  Click here for more details.

Animation

Choose whether the wheel spins fast or slow.

Timed Game

Controls the countdown timer.  If time expires before you make your move, you lose your turn.  You can the countdown period and whether the timer counts down by seconds or tenths of seconds.  There is a check box at the top of the dialog box to turn the timer on and off.  Leaving the box unchecked turns the timer off, so you can have as much time as you want to make your move.

Hangman

Options for the Hangman Solitaire game.  You can pick how many lives the Hangman Guy gets.  The Hangman Guy loses a life each time you guess a letter that is not in the puzzle, or go Bankrupt or Lose A Turn.  When you run out of lives, the round is over and the answer to the puzzle is revealed.  These settings do not affect a two- or three-player game, or a one-player game against a computer opponent.

Vowels

Set the cost of vowel.  The default cost is $250.  But buying vowels makes the game too easy.  For a challenging game, try cranking up the cost to $1000.

Computer Skill

Set the skill level of the computer-controlled players.  Set to High for the most challenging opponents.

Rounds Per Game

Set the number of rounds per game.  You can have 3 to 5 rounds in each game.  There is a new hidden puzzle for each round.

See Also:

Game Menu Commands

How To Play


Sound

The Sound dialog box lets you customize the sounds in Super Wheel.  Super Wheel uses Windows wave files for the various events in a game, such as correctly guessing a letter or solving the puzzle.

Put a check mark in the check box at the top of the screen if you want sounds.  Leave the box unchecked to turn off all sound.

To change a sound, click the left mouse button on an event in the Events box.  Then click on a wave file in the Wave Files box.  Double-clicking on a wave file or event, or clicking the Test button, will generate a test sound.

The default wave files are located in the Super Wheel installation directory, usually C:\SWW.  However, you can customize Super Wheel to use wave files anywhere on your hard disk.  To do this, scroll down in the Wave Files box until the [..] line is displayed.  This means to move up one directory.  Double-click on the [..], then double-click on the directory names until you reach the directory with your wave files.

The Defaults button resets all events to the default wave files.

Sounds for individual events can be turned off by clicking on the <none> option in the Wave Files box.

You need a sound card and a Windows-based sound driver, or a Windows PC speaker driver, to get sound effects.

See Also:

Game Menu Commands

Options Menu Commands

How To Play


Strategy & Hints

Strategy & Hints...

The basic strategy is pretty simple:  guess common letters and try to spot common words such as the and and.  The big question is what to do when you know the answer to a puzzle.  Do you keep spinning and run up the score?  Or do you play it safe and solve the puzzle.  Sure, going bankrupt is a bummer, but I say go for it.  The wheel is weighted so that Bankrupt and Lose A Turn have a lower probability than the other items.

For A More Challenging Game

To make the game more difficult, try setting the cost of a vowel to $1000.  Buying vowels for $250 makes the game too easy.  For a high-speed game, try changing the countdown timer to 5 seconds to guess a letter and 10 seconds to solve the puzzle.

To make Hangman Solitaire more challenging, try setting the number of lives of the Hangman Guy to 4.

To make games against computer-controlled opponents more challenging, try setting the Computer Skill to High.

Timed Game, Hangman, Vowels and Computer Skill are all items on the Options menu.

See Also:

Commands

How To Play


Playing Without A Mouse

You can play Super Wheel without a mouse.  To push a button on the screen, press the key corresponding to the underlined letter on the button.  So you can press S for Spin, V for Buy A Vowel, and P for Solve Puzzle.  To choose a vowel or a consonant, press the corresponding key on the keyboard.

To move around a dialog box, use the Tab, Shift+Tab and arrow keys.

To access the menu bar at the top of the screen, press and release the Alt key, then use the arrow keys.

A nice way to play a two-player game is to let one player use the mouse and the other use the keyboard.

See Also:

Commands

How To Play


Registration Form

You can print this form by selecting File and then Print Topic on the menu bar at the top of this screen.  If you have a problem, there is a registration form in the file called REGISTER.TXT in the Super Wheel installation directory, which is usually C:\SWW.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Super Wheel for Windows - Version 2.0
                              Registration Form

Name: ___________________________________________________________________

Address: ________________________________________________________________

City: ___________________________________  State: ________  Zip: ________

Country: ________________________________

Where did you get your copy of Super Wheel? _____________________________

Registration includes software license for one computer plus the
following Puzzle Paks:

    Mega Womper Puzzle Pak        Sports Puzzle Pak
    Tub-O-Puzzles Puzzle Pak      Computer Phrases Puzzle Pak
    Happy Cool Dude Puzzle Pak    Shareware Puzzle Pak
    Geography Puzzle Pak          Shareware Geography Puzzle Pak

Super Wheel registration  $11        $___________

Shipping  $2 U.S. and Canada         $___________
          $6 elsewhere

                 Total (U.S. Funds)  $___________

Disk size (check one):  ___ 5.25 DS/DD (360 K)
                        ___ 5.25 DS/HD (1.2 MB)
                        ___ 3.5  DS/DD (720 K)
                        ___ 3.5  DS/HD (1.4 MB)

Please make check payable to John Burky.  Thank you!

Send to:  John Burky
          13624 Bandy Road
          Alliance, Ohio 44601


What Is Shareware?

Shareware is try-before-you-buy software.  You can use the software for a trial period to see if you like it.  If you decide you want to continue using the software, you can register it for a small fee.

Your registration fee gets you the latest version of the software on diskette, plus a whole bunch of puzzles.  (The shareware version has 50 puzzles.)

The registered version of the software has six cool puzzle packs:

Tub-O-Puzzles Puzzle Pak.  250 general interest puzzles.  People, places, things, phrases, fictional characters, occupations, you name it.

Mega Womper Puzzle Pak. 257 more general interest puzzles.

Happy Cool Dude Puzzle Pak.  The more the merrier.  Another set of 250 general interest puzzles.

Sports Puzzle Pak.  People, phrases, teams, stadiums and stuff from the playbook for all sports.  250 puzzles.

Geography Puzzle Pak.  Places around the world.  When you solve a puzzle, Super Wheel displays a map showing where it is.  100 puzzles.

Computer Phrases Puzzle Pak.  Computer stuff.  Easy ones and hard ones.  125 puzzles.

Registration is only $11 + $2 for shipping.  Your choice 3.5 or 5.25 diskette.  All you have to do is fill out a short registration form and send it in.

Shipping is fast.  As soon as I receive your registration form, your order is in the mail.  Orders are mailed first class in anti-static diskette mailers.


Distribution Restrictions

You are free to distribute the shareware version of Super Wheel to others, provided that you distribute all the files and that the files are unmodified.  A complete distribution of Super Wheel consists of the following files:

SWW.EXE	WORD9.DAT

SWW.HLP	ABOUTIME.WAV

SHAREWAR.PUZ	APPLAUSE.WAV

SHAREGEO.PUZ	BEENROB.WAV

README.TXT	BOINK.WAV

REGISTER.TXT	BOMB.WAV

VENDOR.TXT	DRUM.WAV

COMPUTR1.DAT	FANFARE.WAV

COMPUTR2.DAT	GIGGLE.WAV

NAMES.DAT	MOO.WAV

WORD5.DAT	OW.WAV

WORD6.DAT	REVEILLE.WAV

WORD7.DAT	WEST.WAV

WORD8.DAT

The following files are part of the registered version of Super Wheel and may not be distributed:

TUBOPUZZ.PUZ	SPORTS.PUZ

MEGAWOMP.PUZ	GEOGRPHY.PUZ

COOLDUDE.PUZ	COMPUTER.PUZ

The SWW.INI initialization file also may not be distributed.


How To De-Install Super Wheel

To completely de-install Super Wheel from your hard disk, the following files should be deleted:

C:\SWW\*.*

C:\WINDOWS\SWW.INI