Brief Description of Hearts Hearts 2.0 for Windows is a four player card game in which the goal is to get as few points as possible. Cards of the heart suit are worth 1 point and the queen of spades is worth 13 points. You want to avoid these 14 cards. The highest card of the lead suit takes the four cards in the trick and the player that does this gets to lead for the next trick. You must play the lead suit if you have it, or else you can play any card. After 13 tricks are played, the points are added up and cards are dealt again. The game is over when a player gets 100 points (he is the loser). Running Hearts for Windows v2.0 Hearts requires Windows 3.0 or later and runs in any Windows mode and in as little as ~45K. However, it runs much faster if you have 300K or more of free memory. You must have a mouse to select and play the cards. If you cannot afford a mouse, then you probably won't have enough money to give me any for all the trouble I went through to make this program, so I don't feel so bad about not having keyboard support for the cards in Ver 2.0. Sorry. Hearts also works on monochrome monitors, but due to the low resolution of many monochrome monitors, you may not be able to see the entire play space at one time. If this is the case, simply use the arrow keys to scroll around the play space if you want or need to see a different part of the play space. The 'HOME' key can bring you back to the center. To install Hearts on your system, simply use the Windows 'Program Manager' 'New... Item' menu function to install the program 'hearts.exe' as part of the games directory. You may use the 'browse' button to find the 'hearts.exe' program if you cannot find it. It is best (very desirable for Hearts and all windows programs) if you copy Hearts.exe to you hard drive if it is not already there; Any Windows program will run very slowly if you run it from the floppy drive. Note that only 'hearts.exe' is truly needed to play the game; this file and the possibly included file 'cards.ad' are not needed and you may not want them if you are low on space. The 'cards.ad' file is an 'After Dark' screen saver module that you may copy to your After Dark directory if you have that program. Other screen savers are now able to run After Dark '.ad' files themselves. 'Cards.ad' will be changed periodically by me to do different things, and may someday play card games themselves. Different versions will have different names. If you don't find 'cards.ad' with your Hearts, a version will be supplied if your register the game. Game Options and Menu Items. Upon starting Hearts, you will be given a choice of who to play against. You can choose the default players (ok players but not the best), or you can choose from the other players at the bottom of the dialog box. Note that the large button is for selecting a 'human' type player. The 'external player' box is for if you started an 'external player'. The external player is a seperate program that is a Hearts player; one should have been included with Hearts. You can make you own Hearts player- see the enclosed protocol: 'EXTERNAL.TXT', 'EXTERNAL.DOC', 'EXTERNAL.SAM'. You can keep selecting players in circles until you hit the 'OK' button. In addition, you can use the mouse to click on one of the player boxes to jump right to it. Please note that if you want to play against the computer, you must make sure at least one of the players is 'Human'. Also note that any or all of players may be human, computer or external players, so if you want, you can have the computer play itself, or you can somehow tape cardboard to the screen or something and have two or more people play against the computer players at once. On-line help is available with the usual Help menu item. The 'F1' key will also bring up the help box. Of course, the help file, Hearts.hlp must be present in the same directory as Hearts. Card backings for Hearts are selected with the 'Preferences' menu and may also be selected with the 'F2'-'F5' (F2-F9 in the registered version) keys. 'Custom' card designs can be added by simply putting a 71x96 bitmap in the same directory as Hearts. Try putting a 256 color bitmap in there while in 256 color mode or better under windows. Custom bitmaps can be had from the author by just asking for them upon registration. Game speed may be changed by selected that item form the 'Preferences' menu or may also be changed by striking the keys '1'-'7'. 7 is fastest (no delay). Players will say things that appear in cartoon-like quote boxes. These may be turned off with the 'Preferences' item. Other menu items in the 'Preferences' menu will be more or less obvious. Other options exist in the registered version. Some of these are hidden in the 'non-registered' version through elaborate tricky key sequences that are revealed upon registration! The 'scorecard' is a window that may be moved which shows two things for every player: his score for this round and his total score for the game. You may get more information on a given player by clicking with the mouse on him in the scorecard. A performance rating window is available and it tracks game play over time and between Windows sessions. A game history window can be invoked to see the cards played, etc, over the course of present or recent games. You can add your own custom comments; see the 'Actions' menu item. You may select for a new game with the 'Game' menu item, switch players at runtime or you may quit with 'quit' option. Also, at the end of a game, you are prompted for whether to play again. There are a number of improvements in Ver. 2.0 over Ver 1.2. Some of these pertain to bug fixes, others are new additions. There are many additions and they are listed in the 'whatsnew.txt' file that should accompany Hearts. Game Play At the start of the game, the players must select three cards to pass. The cards are selected with the left mouse button and passed/played with the right mouse button. When all have passed, the passes are completed with the 3 cards passed to you in the 'up' position. You can strike a key or mouse button to put them in your hand, or you can wait a few seconds for this to be done for you. The player with the Two of Clubs must then play it. If you have it, you can play it (or any other card when it's your turn) by selecting it with the left button and then playing it with the right button, or by directly playing it with the right button. The winner of the trick is shown by the cards sliding towards him after all cards are played. It's now the winner's turn to play the first card of the next trick. Scores are continually updated on the scorecard so you can see who's winning. If you play a card illegally, you get a beep and a player tells you what the problem was. The Author of Hearts Paul Pedriana PO Box 271551 Concord, CA 94527 Compuserve ID: 70541,3223 I am presently a poor biologist living in Northern California in Pleasant Hill, a city 20 miles east of Oakland I do this computer work on the side as a hobby and race bicycles in the Spring and Summer I have a B.A.degree from U.C. Berkeley in Biochemistry (1989).I program in C/C++ and assembly when needed (also have done FORTRAN), and would like someday to move into the computer world full-time. Let me tell you about how poor I am. I'm so poor that I can't even afford a Windows-capable computer. To write programs, I actually write the code on a 1982 DOS XT; it takes 40 minutes for the computer to make just a single change in the code. To test the program, I must mail a copy of it to someone that has a Windows computer. I send a pencil and paper with the letter and tell that person to tell me what happened when the program was run. If I'm lucky, I get the notes back in the mail a couple weeks later. Then I make more changes to the code and mail out the result again. Yeah, and I have to walk five miles in the snow to get to the nearest mail box. (Ok, maybe this story is stretching it just a little). The version of Hearts I am distributing has no eliminated parts or other 'demo' traits. This is the complete 'unprotected' version. Why is this? Because I don't like those incomplete programs; If I really like a program, I pay the author for it even if I have an already final version of it. I've even payed a couple authors 5$ for their programs that I never really used, simply because I wanted to support them and encourage them to write more. But I can't expect everyone to be like this. Nevertheless, Hearts took considerable time to develop to its present state. Hearts is written in straight C++, in case anyone is interested. Owner Registration The registered version of Hearts has a number of improvements over the unregistered version. It has twice as many card backings, more quotes, and better opponents. Also, it will not fool with your player 'quote' like the unregestired version. Also, the players in general won't nag you as much, though some people have said they like it. Also with registration you get a custom card design library (with all kinds of cards in it), 101 blonde and lawyer jokes, and sound files when ready! You can't go wrong. You also get the BOSS button: when the boss comes into your office while you are busy playing you simply strike the special key and your game instantly becomes a spreadsheet with important company sales figures and the like - enough to make your boss proud! If you send me, Paul Pedriana, 15$, I will register you as a permanent owner of Hearts and will entitle you the future registered versions of Hearts (see below) free and as well as future Windows programs I do as well (I'm working on it!). I've done other programs for DOS and Windows, but they probably will not be of interest to you. 5$ more registration gives you complete pre-written 'C' code for an external player. Just fill in the blanks! Of course, the complete player format is documented here, so the 5$ only saves you tons of coding and debugging time. Also please give suggestions for new Windows programs (games or not). I will do the ones that are most feasible and likely to generate interest. Any suggestions and found bugs are always welcome from anyone. All correspondence will be answered by me, though sometimes it takes a couple weeks to return my answer (an other times only a couple hours). I am continuously working on new projects, with time as my only obstacle. It's very hard to write high quality programs for Windows all by yourself. Future Direction Hearts version 2.0 doesn't do everything anyone could ever want, so there will someday be a version 3.0. Suggestions for new Windows and Windows NT programs are welcome whether they pertain to Hearts or any other ideas.