Copyright: Atoms Copyright 1992, MP Software


Contents
ATOMS

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Atoms is a challenging game of strategy and luck.  It also has the most important characteristic of a good game, ITS FUN!

What Is Atoms?

Overview

Playing the Game

Playing Atoms

Rules of the Game

Scoring

Strategy and Hints

Commands

Game Menu Commands

Configuring Atoms

Registration

Registering Atoms


Atoms:

A Great Little Game...


Overview

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Atoms is a challenging game of strategy and luck.  You are presented with a grid, and your objective is to locate all the atoms as quickly as possible.  To accomplish this task, you have two tools: Winon emitters and your mind.

In order to locate the atoms using these limited tools, use the following approach:

1	Fire a Winon into the game board.

2	Examine Exit point of Winon.

3	If Winon was deflected in some way, determine where atom(s) are that caused the deflection.

4	Place tag over atom's location to mark it.

Continue to fire Winons into the grid and mark atoms until you have tagged all of the atoms.  When you have correctly placed tags over all of the atoms, the game ends.

You can use the counters at the top of the playing area to keep track of your progress.

The counter in the upper-left corner of the playing area initially indicates the number of atoms hidden in the grid.  Every time you place a tag over a suspected atom, this number decreases by one, showing how many atoms still must be tagged.

The counter in the upper-right corner of the playing area is a timer, which displays your playing time in seconds.  The faster you find all the atoms, the better your score.

Related Topics

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♦	Playing Atoms

♦	Rules of the Game

♦	Scoring

♦	Strategy and Hints


Winon
Winon:

A small sub-electronic particle found only in the Windows environment.

Used to determine location of imaginary atoms by monitoring their movement

through a game board space.


Tagging a Grid Square

Use a tag symbol, [image], to mark the suspected location of an atom on the gaming grid.

→	Point to the grid square and click the left mouse button.  A tag symbol will be displayed.

Note:  To remove a tag, point the the grid square and click the left mouse button again.


Playing Atoms

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The object of Atoms is to find all atoms hidden in the gaming grid as quickly as possible. The following section explains how to play the game.

To choose a skill level

→	From the Game menu, choose Easy, Intermediate, Hard, or Impossible. The higher the skill level, the more mine there are and at the two higher levels, the game grid is larger.

To start a new game

→	From the Game menu, choose New, or press F2. Or you can click the yellow "smily face" at the top of the game board.

To fire a Winon particle

→	Click on a button around the game board.  Two methods are used aid in locating input and exit points of the Winon particles, The input point button and the exit point button, if there is an exit button, are marked with the same letter or number.  The letters are permanently displayed for the entire game.  Red dots are also displayed to make it easy to spot the input and output points of the current firing.  The current dots are erases when the next button is clicked.

Note:  You can always come back and click on buttons previously clicked.  The red dots will be redisplayed for that button.

To tag a grid square

→	Point to a grid square and click the left mouse button.

Note:  To remove a tag, point to the tag and click the left mouse button again.

Atoms minus tags count

→	The number in the upper left displays the number of atoms minus the number of tags.  As tags are placed, this count is decremented.  If, when the count reaches zero, all tags are correctly placed, the game will end.  The count will go negative if too many atoms are placed.

Related Topics

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♦	Overview

♦	Rules of the Game

♦	Scoring

♦	Strategy and Hints


Rules of the Game

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Atoms Rules:

•	The playing area is the game board, displayed as a grid of squares.  When the game begins, a number of atoms are hidden on the game board.  The number displayed in the upper left is the number of atoms hidden on the grid.

	The game grid.
•	Fire a Winon into the game grid by clicking on one of the buttons around the edges of the game board.  The Winon enters the game board perpendicular to the edge of the board, i.e., it goes straight in.  After passing through the game grid, the Winon exits the game board.  By examining the entry and exit points of the Winons, you can tell where atoms are.

Note:  The entry and exit points may be at the same location.

•	If the Winon encounters an atom as it is moving through the game grid, it will be deflected in some way depending on how it encounters the atom.  By examining how the Winons are deflected, you can determine where the atoms are hidden.  The path of a winon can be very complex.  See the Strategy and Hints section for examples of complex paths.

	When a winon encounters an atom head-on, it reverses course.
	Winon deflects 90 degrees when encounters an atom one grid away.
	Atoms at the edge of game grid can deflection winons through the buttons.
Note:  Tags are shown to denote atoms.

•	Tag the grid locations where atoms are hidden by clicking on the grid location with the left mouse button.  A tag will them be displayed.  You can also remove a tag by clicking on it with the left mouse button.

	An Atom Tag.
•	As atoms are tagged, the count in the upper left corner decrements.

•	When all atoms are correctly tagged, the game ends.

•	If you have a lowest time for the level, you can enter your name for the Best Times list.  This list can be displayed at any time by using the Best Times menu item in the Games pull-down menu.

Related Topics

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♦	Overview

♦	Playing Atoms

♦	Scoring

♦	Strategy and Hints


Scoring

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Atoms scoring is simple.  The counter in the upper-right corner of the playing area indicates your playing time.  The faster you find all the atoms, the better your score.

→	From the Game menu, choose High Scores to see the best times for each skill level.


Strategy and Hints

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To give up and display atoms in grid

→	Click the right mouse button anywhere in the atoms window.  Grids with atoms in them will be identified by small black dots in the lower left hand corner of the grid box.  Click on the right mouse button again to remove the dots.

Note:  Scoring will be disabled for any game where atoms have been displayed this way.

Unsolvable games

→	Sometimes, you just won't be able find all of the atoms because some atoms may be shielded from Winons by other atoms.  You have three choices: guess, restart, or display the atoms.  If you do want to guess where missing atoms are, you can usually narrow down the possiblities to a few grid squares.

Complex Winon paths

→	The following grid shows how complex a winon path can get.  Be aware of these complex interactions when trying to find and tag atoms.

Related Topics

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♦	Playing Atoms

♦	Rules of the Game


Game Menu Commands

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This section describes the menu commands available in Atoms.

New

Starts a new game at the current level.  If game is in progress, it is discarded.

Easy

Sets the difficulty level to easy.  10 by 10 grid with 6 atoms.

Intermediate

Sets the difficulty level to intermediate.  10 by 10 grid with 8 atoms.

Hard

Sets the difficulty level to hard.  16 by 16 grid with 10 atoms.

Impossible

Sets the difficulty level to imossible.  16 by 16 grid with 14 atoms.

Best Times

Displays the best times for all four levels.

Exit

Quits atoms.  Not the best menu item...

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Registering Atoms

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Please give Atoms a try.  If you do find Atoms fun and a good way to spend some time, please consider sending a minor contribution to the author.  Not any great amount, just about $5.00 would be fine and keep me interested in upgrading it and also writing some some new things.

The authors address (should you desire to send $ or make suggestions):

Mike McNamee

MP Software

18511 SE 207th Street

Renton, WA  98058

Disclaimer

This program is distributed as-is. The author accepts no responsibilty for any time/work/data lost while playing this game. Enjoy!!

Revision Log

   version 1.0	Initial Release

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Configuring Atoms

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The only user configuration avialable for atoms is the size of the playing grid, which affects the size of the entire game window.  If the Atoms game window is too large or small for your tastes or display, the grid size can be modified.  This may be necessary if you are running Windows at a lower screen resolution such as 640x480.  Before attempting to configure Atoms, you should run Atoms to see how the two game board sizes fit on your screen and then exit Atoms so that the ATOMS.INI file is created with the default settings.  Easy & Intermediate use the small board size and Hard & Impossible use the large board size.

Open the ATOMS.INI file using a text editor such as Notepad.  You should see the following line listed in the file:

Grid=20

Atoms defaults to a grid size of 20.  Making this number smaller will reduce the size of the Atoms game board.  16 should be a good size for 640X480.  For best results, the number chosen should be a multiple of 4, and be at least 16.

You should not change any of the other settings.  The Game=X line is used to keep track of the difficulty level when exiting so that Atoms will restart at that same level.  The lines in the SCORES section are to keep track of the best times and names of those who got them.

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