A DAY AT THE RACES: A betting horse racing game REQUIREMENTS: Windows 3.1 VGA mouse Windows-supported sound card preferred hard drive (0.85 Megabytes required) INSTALLATION: A Day At the Races is installed from DOS, but played only under Windows 3.1 (Before beginning the installation program, be sure that the Windows subdirectory is included in your system path. To check for its presence, type "path" and press at the DOS prompt. If it is not there, it should be at least temporarily added to install this program. This can be done by typing "path c:\windows" where "c" is the drive, and "windows" is the subdirectory where the Windows files are located.) To Install A Day At the Races: - insert disk in drive B: - type 'B:' and press - at the 'B:\>' prompt, type install, and press (NOTE: Depending on the size of the floppy disks used, your computer may use drive A: instead of B:) - The program will ask for the destination path. For the default pathname of C:\HORSE, just press . To install the program in a different subdirectory, or on a different drive, type the path name as in the following examples: C:\RACES or D:\HORSE - the installation program will then create the directory, and copy files from the floppy disk. If there is not enough room on your hard drive to copy and expand all of the files, the installation program will give you an ERROR mesage and exit. You need to erase enough files on your hard drive to make room, and then start the installation program again. NOTE: The installation program will exit with an ERROR message if any of the necessary files on the installation disk have been erased. - Once the files have been copied, the installation program will create the program group and program item. Following the instructions on the screen, click on OK, then double-click on the Program Manager icon at the bottom of the screen. Now you will see the Horse icon. Double-click on it to start the program. If the installation program reported a successful installation, but the Horse icon does not appear, your system's path may not contain the Windows subdirectory. In this case, you may create your own under File/New menu or temporarily add Windows to the systems path and reinstall the program. See your Windows documentation for more information on creating your own program group and program item. STARTING A NEW RACE: Races may be run without any of the four player betting, or with only some of the players betting. To run a race, select the Race/They're Off! menu option. To bet on a race, a player must first select a player number from the "Player" menu. That player number will be highlighted below the race track. If an account is empty no bet may be made by that player. (If all accounts are empty, you will be asked if you wish to play another game.) Then select an item from the "Wager", "Horse", and "Finish" menus, in any order. All three menus must be chosen before the race can be run. For the shareware version only the "Wager" and "Horse" menus must be chosen. The "Wager" menu will allow you to select an amount to be bet. Choose one of the preselected amounts, or use the "Other" option to select a different amount, up to $9999. If you choose an amount greater than that in your account, the wager will be reset to the account amount. If you started to place a bet, and then decided not to bet after all, Select the "Other" option under "Wager", and enter 0, or a negative number. Your bet will be cleared. The "Horse" menu will allow you to select one horse. The odds are shown next to the horses on the bottom of the screen, and influence the horse's performance. For the shareware version only horses #1 and #2 may be selected for a wager. From the "Finish" menu, select the position in which you think the horse will finish. The "Win" option is for a first place finish, "Place" for second and "Show" for third. A "Place" or "Show" ticket on the winning horse pays, but at a lower rate than a ticket to "Win". The same holds for a "Show" ticket on the horse finishing in second. Repeat the betting process as many times as you wish for the four players. Before a race begins, players may change their bets. Finally, to run the race, select the "They're Off!" option from the "Race" menu. This option will work at any time except when a wager has been started but is incomplete (You must select an item from each of the "Wager", "Horse" and "Finish" menus to complete a wager.) RESET RACE Before a player is selected, and betting begun, the "Reset Race" option in the "Race" menu allows you to change the horses and their odds up to three times per race. Selecting a player number, however, resets the race, if it hasn't been reset already, and now, the race may not be reset using the "Reset Race" option. INQUIRY: Every so often, an inquiry will be made. Sometimes in an inquiry, the winning horse is disqualified. MILLIONAIRES If one or more players become a "millionaire" they've won the game. You will be asked if you wish to play again. If you do, all accounts will be reset to $100. SOUND: Choose the menu options to turn the voices on and off. The dimmed option is the one that is currently activated, and hence, cannot be chosen. Turning voices on and off may be done at any time during the game. NOTE: If you have a microphone hooked up to your computer you can make the game even more fun by recording your own voice messages. Use the Sound Recorder (which is an Accessory under Windows 3.1 to record voices. See your Windows 3.1 documentation on how to do this.) The voices are in files with a .WAV extension. Open one of these files using the Sound Recorder. Play it, and then record your own message, saving it to that file. WARNING: The file names must remain the same. The program opens files with specific names to play during the game. Be sure to delete any blank space before or after the actaul voice message using the Edit commands. Otherwise the program will spend time playing back files containing blank spaces, which may be large. Eliminating blank spaces will also decrease the file size. SPEED The menu options for speed will cause the race to become slower or faster. Choose the time according to your preference. Initially, the speed is set to average. A "Fast" race usually takes about five seconds, an "Average" race about one minutes, and a "Slow" race about two minutes. The dimmed option is the one that is currently activated, and hence, cannot be chosen. Changing the speed may be done only before or after a race. QUIT The "Quit" menu allow you to exit the game at the end of any race. HELP The "Instructions" option of the Help menu shows a summary of this file on screen. PRINTING THIS FILE: This file may be printed by typing (in DOS): print readme.txt TO ORDER: For the complete version of this program, send a check for $9.95 to: DiNo Software Box 362 Lafayette Hill, PA 19444 Please indicate "A Day At the Races", or "Horse". Also indicate 5.25" or 3.5" disk.