Joy Of Hex:Flow Of Control:Local Human

Play Against Local Human

Once you have the Joy Of Hex application up and running, the first step to starting a new game, where you are playing against a local human opponent, requires that you move the cursor into the application menubar, and select the New... menu item from the File menu. Of course you could have simply used the quick-key combination of Cmd-N to do exactly the same thing.

Having told the Joy Of Hex application that you want to play a new game, you must first select the scenario that you want to play. This requires the use of the standard open file dialog to locate and then open the file with the scenario that you want to play. Notice that at this stage the only files that you can open are files that have been created by the Joy Of Hex Editor.

After selecting the file containing the scenario that you wish to play, you must then set a variety of options. Since we're trying to play against the computer we check that the radio button for the Opponent is set to Local Human. We can also set the game's Difficulty level and the Side that we wish to play on.

Notice that when we have two players that the side that we select (side 1 or side 2) shall be the side that starts the scenario, and that the difficulty setting shall be applied to the person who has the first planning stage. So if the game starts with the side set to side 2, and the difficulty is set to very hard, then the person who gets the first planning stage shall be side 2 and have to play at a difficulty setting of very hard - on the other hand, the second player will plan for side 1 and play at a difficulty setting of very easy.

After the computer reads through the scenario data and does a whole bunch of calculations that it needs to initialise a game, it will eventually display a game window. Since the game has just started, the game window shall be black (hiding the hex map and other details) and the following dialog will appear asking if the first player is ready to do his planning:

At this point the second player should be somewhere where he can't see the computer screen. Clicking the OK button will place the game in a planning state for the first player, and the map with all its relevant details shall appear in the game window.

From this stage on you can now save the game that you're playing and have no more need of the original scenario file. The present saved game file contains all the information that it needs in order to recreate the presently saved stage of the game in all of its entirety. Whenever you want to restart a game that you've saved to file previously, you simply go to the application menu and select the Open... menu item from the File menu, and locate the file with the standard file opening dialog. Notice that when you restart a play against local human opponent that you will first see a blackened map window and a dialog asking a particular player is ready or not to do what he needs for the present stage.

Once the first player is happy with his plans, he can move the cursor to the application menubar and select the Execution menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, he could have used the quick-key combination of Cmd-E.

Once the first player has selected the Execution menu item, the window shall black out (thereby hiding the hex map and its details), and show the following dialog asking if the second player is ready:

At this point the first player should be somewhere where he can't see the computer screen. Clicking the OK button will place the game in a planning state for the second player, and the map with all its relevant details shall appear in the game window.

Once second player is happy with his plans, he can move the cursor to the application menubar and select the Execution menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, he could have used the quick-key combination of Cmd-E.

Once second player has selected the Execution menu item, the window will black out again and a dialog will appear asking if both players are present so that they can both watch the battle animations together:

At this stage both players should be present in front of the computer screen. If there were some battles that occured during the execution phase then this is when both players can watch them as the battle animation run through the various battle events.

If there were no reports of battles occuring, then the window will black out and a dialog will appear asking if the first player is ready to do his planning stage. If there were reports of battle, then the window will black out and the following dialog will appear, asking if the first player is ready to look over the battle reports:

At this point the second player should be somewhere where he can't see the computer screen. A hex where there is a record of a battle occuring is displayed in the After Action phase by the existance of a red border about the hex. If you then click on that hex, the red border will change to a green border to show that you have selected that hex and a series of messages shall appear in the toolbar that give a brief description of the battles and what were involved.

If you found yourself in the After Action phase and now want to move onto the Planning stage for the next turn, then all that you need to do is go to select the Planning menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, you could use the quick-key combination of Cmd-P.

When the first player selects the Planning menu item, the following familar dialog will reappear, asking if he is ready to plan out his next turn:

Once the first player is happy with his plans, he can move the cursor to the application menubar and select the Execution menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, he could have used the quick-key combination of Cmd-E.

Once the first player has selected the Execution menu item, the window shall black out (thereby hiding the hex map and its details, and show the following dialog asking if the second player is ready to look over the results of the last series of battles:

At this point the first player should be somewhere where he can't see the computer screen. At this stage the second player can look over the results of the last battle and ponder the consequences of his actions.

If you found yourself in the After Action phase and now want to move onto the Planning stage for the next turn, then all that you need to do is go to select the Planning menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, you could use the quick-key combination of Cmd-P.

When second player selects the Planning menu item, the following familar dialog will reappear, asking if he is ready to plan out his next turn:

At this point it should be clear that the flow of control is now in a loop. All that needs to be done is that the players follow the dialogs that appear at various points and everything should be alright.

All going well, after the scenario's alloted number of turns have passed you should see a dialog box that tells you that the scenario has completed, which side has won, and some details that went into calculating that score.

Notice that even once the alloted number of turns are over, that the scenario can be continued and played until those involved tire of that particular battle.


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