Will I lose the high scores if I upgrade to the new version of HMaki?

It depends on the version you have installed. If you have installed version 1.5 or less, you definitely will. Upgrading from 1.6 or later should not be a problem. Please check your version before installing the new version.

Is there a PC version of this game?

Yes! This version is called Cafe Game but basically the same thing. You might be able to download the .class-file.

There are two different styles for scoring:

1. Playing for "groups". This means that you get higher scores for removing large groups of tiles. (If you remove n tiles at once, you get (n-2)^2 score points.)
2. Playing for "clean up". In this mode the size of the groups you remove doesn't matter. The only task is to remove as many tiles as possible. This mode should be played with less patterns in order to get a chance to succeed. :-)

In the Options menu you can select the width and height of the board, the number of different patterns and the aim you want to play for. If you select other options and press "Ok", a new board will be drawn. Legal values for board sizes range from 3x3 to 22x20 and you can use from 2 up to 9 patterns.

If you happen to tap on the wrong group, you can undo your last selection. There is no further undo. If you switch to another application, the state of the game will be saved, but the undo information won't.

You can play games with other settings by changing the values in the Options menu, but you will not be able to enter high scores then. Same happens if you are playing a seeded game.

You can either set the values back to the default values, (either by pressing the "Default" button or by editing the values back to the default state. Nnote that the aim you are playing for is also relevant).

If you change the default settings by pressing "Set Default", you will be warned that you are about to kill the Hall of Fame. The table has to be flushed to allow entering scores for the new default game.

Normally, the tiles are randomly coloured and you never get the same board again. To create reproducable games for training or tournaments you can select "Seeded Game" from the menu and enter a seed number.

After pressing the "Ok" button you will get a board computed out of this number. If you enter the same number again, you will get the same board (at least if you are still playing with the same parameters).

"Cancel" will continue with the current game.

But once you have started a seeded game, you will not be able to enter the high score table, even if your score was good enough.

If requested, I'll adjust the random generator to produce more just tile patterns, meaning that you get the same number of tiles from each pattern. Right now it is conceivable though unlikely that you get all tiles of the same pattern.

	  Holger Klawitter
	  Einsteinstr. 62
	  48149 Muenster
	  Germany
	    

If you are a shareware programmer...

This is not the first implementation of Maki on Pilot. When I saw the first implementation at http://www.inferior.com/ I was fascinated by the game, but the constantly-in-your-face character of this shareware game motivated to come up with an own, extended interpretation of the game.

This Game is available on almost every available platform as there is a Java version called Cafe Game.

1.11 (November 30 97)

Seeded games. Some minor cosmetic adjustments.

1.10 (October 27 97)

I should reenable undo after fixing bugs. :-)

1.9 (October 12 97)

Minor bugfix in handling of Undo.

1.8 (September 7 97)

Minor change: Handling of command strokes has been improved.

1.7 (July 16 97)

Command Strokes are now optional but no longer neccessary. Some minor cosmetic adjustments.

1.6 (June 25 97)

Board will be remembered after switching to another application. Changed default settings again.

1.5 (June 19 97)

Fixing display of scores greater than 32767. Yes, this might happen! :-)

1.4 (May 21 97)

Minor bugfix in highscore table.

1.3 (May 20 97)

Fixed cursor focusing problem in Hall of Fame.

1.2 (May 18 97)

Added Hall of Fame. Fixing some potential marking bugs.

1.1 (May 9 97)

Fixing some minor flaws in the user interface. Improvement of the documentation. "New game" confirmation box. Different default settings.

1.0 (May 4 97)

Initial public release. Yes, there was no beta release :-)

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