___ King's Casino Solitaire FULL-FEATURED __________________________ Thanks so much for purchasing King's Casino! No more crippled game frustrations! << NEW >> 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. If you are upgrading on top of previous versions, your old KCSol.ini file, containing your stats and preferences will be overwritten (due to changes in the file format). Also, you can delete any KCS*.bmp files from the older releases. They are replaced by KB*.bmp and KW*.bmp files. 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 ____________________________________________ From Program Manager or File Manager choose Run from the File menu. Enter A:setup or B:setup, depending on which drive the diskette is in. Setup will ask you for a path to install King's Casino Solitaire into. You can specify the directory in which you kept the evaluator copy or a new one, as you like. The setup program will then decompress the needed files and optionally create a group and icon for the program in Program Manager. Note the archive of winnable games, KCSWins.zip is not installed by setup but simply copied to the specified dir- ectory. 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 uncrippled program - 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 - KCSRules.wri printable game rules (see Getting Started) - KCS_Read.txt this file (not necessary to run program) - KCSWins2.zip an archive of winnable games (see below) - Files installed if not present to your Windows System directory - - MSAFinx.dll (potentially used by other Windows programs) - CmDialog.vbx ditto - CommDlg.dll ditto - Ver.dll ditto During installation the setup program will detect whether you are currently running Windows in VGA or a higher, SVGA, video mode, such as 800 by 600 or 1024 by 768. It will then ask whether you want the background pictures for only that resolution installed or for both VGA and SVGA. If you specify both, it will install the pictures for the current video mode in the directory with the other King's Casino files, then it will put the pictures for the other resolution in a sub-directory off that directory named KCSPIX. This adds about a megabyte to the installation. See More on Background Pictures below for further information. ___ Registration Code ________________________________________ Your letter of registration that comes with your installation diskette contains your customer number (KCS000XXX) and your registration code. You do need to enter this code in order to activate the registered version of King's Casino Solitaire you received on your installation diskette. The registration code is intended to allow you to download future new versions in their crippled, evaluator form and automaticaly unlock the crippled games. To enter your registration code: - Start King's Casino - Press the letter R on the keyboard - In the window which pops up enter your name exactly as shown on the letter of registration in the box labelled Name: - Enter your registration code in the box labelled Code: - Click on the button labelled Process. The program compares the code number to the letters in your name to check for an obscure, mystical relationship which only computers really understand for sure. Thus, if your name is Richard J. Smith on the registration letter and you enter Rick Smith in the Name box, your registration stamping attempt will be rejected. ___ 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 the pop-up menu) then press Delete. [Advanced users: be wary of deleting any files in the second group from your Windows System directory, since they are files which other programs may also be using.] ___ 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 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. ___ Setup Won't Start! _______________________________________ (You only need to read this if installation fails) No one has reported any problems installing King's Casino from the installation diskette. However it's a vast jungle of hardware out there. If you should receive the following error: File Manager (or Program Manager) cannot find the specified file or one of its components or any other error that prevents setup.exe from completing installation, you may have to scrub for surgery and perform the operation yourself. You are probably familiar with PKWare's PKZip compression program. The files on the installation diskette are compressed but with a different program. That program is called compress.exe and is located on the installation diskette in the in_case sub-directory. Unlike with PKZip, compress only puts one compressed file in each archive (compression file). Compression files created with compress end with the same extension except the last letter is changed to an underscore. For example, the main program KCSol.exe is compressed to KCSol.ex_. To UNcompress such files you must use the companion program, expand.exe. The following command from File Manager's or Program Manager's File/Run menu choice would do the job: a:\in_case\expand a:\kcsol.ex_ c:\kcsol2\kcsol.exe If your installation diskette is in drive b, then change both a:\ above to b:\. You must perform this operation on each file with an underscore as the last character in its name on the installation diskette that setup failed to copy. As you can see from the file list above some files are destined for your Windows system directory. If you previously installed the evalu- ation copy of King's Casino, these files are already on your hard disk. -------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ______________________________ As mentioned under Installation above, the King's Casino setup program attempts to install a set of picture files for your favoured video mode in the directory with the program and other support files. 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(s) will be used as a backdrop for your game play. If you subsequently change video modes from any VGA to SVGA, you can run setup again and select the new video mode. Alternatively, 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. If you use the 1024 by 768 video mode, the KB8 pictures will fill an 800-by-600-sized main window for King's Solitaire. 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 KB files, KBCelt1.bmp and KBCelt2.bmp, with no numeral as the third file name character (such as KB6 or KB8), have the peculiar property of working with any video mode from 640 by 480 right up to 1024 by 768. Conversely, if you are short of disk space or find you prefer the simple solid colour background, you can 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 .zip file is a second .zip, KCSWins2. This contains one game each of the games in King's Casino. Each of these games is winnable. If you are interested, create a sub-directory within the directory in which you are keeping King's Casino, called Wins or Games or some such. Unzip KCSWins2.zip into this directory. Now start King's Casino, then 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. 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 certain games. Sheila proved this in her first week with the registered version by racking up over $23000 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. 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 roc's eggs. (A third alter- native, 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 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 your support, Dale Cotton CompuServe 73632,703 (Internet 73632.703@Compuserve.com)