FiveOAK Version 1.20 30th October, 1994 - A Dice Game for the Psion Series 3a - Copyright 1994 Right Hand Software Ltd. 45, Kenilworth Gardens, London SE18 3JB, UK Phone/Fax : 081-319-8576 - Email - righthand@cix.compulink.co.uk chennings@cix.compulink.co.uk 100010,511@compuserve.com 1) Description FiveOAK is a version of the traditional game played with 5 dice. The game requires both luck and strategy to score as many points as possible from 13 "hands". To build a hand, the dice may be rolled up to 3 times. For the 1st roll in a hand, all 5 dice must be rolled. For the optional 2nd and 3rd rolls, the player may select which dice are to be rolled. Points are awarded for various combinations of dice such as 3-of-a-kind, full-house, straights etc. The most valuable hand is a 5-of-a-kind which is known here as a FiveOAK! A full description of the rules and game play are provided below. FiveOAK can be played as a solitaire in which you aim to get into the highscore table or to improve your personal best and average scores. FiveOAK also has a 2 player mode in which you might chose to play "first to an agreed total score" or "highest total in an agreed number of games". 2) Shareware FiveOAK is shareware which means you are granted a limited license to evaluate the program. If after a fair and reasonable period of evaluation (no more than 14 days should be considered reasonable), you wish to continue to use the program you must register it. Registration is important. It means that you are actively supporting the development of low cost, high quality software for the Psion range of computers. Registered users receive an access code which will remove the "reminder" dialogs. In recognition of the past support received for our HomeRun and YNOT products (many thanks!) - registered users of these products are granted free registration of FiveOAK and may use their existing registration codes to this effect. You can register your copy of HomeRun with a payment of a minimum of 10.00 ukp or $15.00 (US) or local equivalent. Payment should be by cheques drawn on UK Banks or Building Societies made payable to Right Hand Software Ltd, in cash or via the Compuserve shareware registration service (Go SWREG). Please contact us if you wish to discuss other forms of payment. Please read the full Terms & Conditions of use that are set out in the following section. 3) Terms & Conditions a) FiveOAK comprises the files FIVEOAK.APP, RHSNDSV.IMG, POP.WVE, UHO.WVE, WIZ.WVE, DICE.WVE and this file FIVEOAK.TXT. FiveOAK is copyright material of Right Hand Software Ltd. and all ownership rights are retained. b) You may use and distribute FiveOAK only in accordance with the terms and conditions stated here. c) You may NOT modify FiveOAK in any way. d) You may use FiveOAK free of charge ONLY for a fair and reasonable period of time (14 days) in order to evaluate the program. For all and any subsequent use of the program, you must register your copy as described in section (2) above. You may use FiveOAK only in a personal and private capacity. Use within commercial, corporate or government institutions requires a commercial users licence. e) You may distribute FiveOAK only provided that : i) All the original files are included (in particular these terms and conditions). ii) NO charge is made other than to cover the fair and reasonable costs of distribution. Any distribution of FiveOAK that renders any form of commercial advantage (financial or otherwise) to the distributor, requires a commercial distributors license. f) While appropriate care has been taken in the creation of FiveOAK, Right Hand Software Ltd. does not warrant that the software is error free. Indeed, Right Hand Software Ltd. disclaims all and any warranties relating to the software. g) Under no circumstances shall Right Hand Software Ltd. be liable for consequential, incidental or indirect damages of any kind arising from the use of the FiveOAK software. 4) Installation & Logistics a) Setup Copy both the files FiveOAK.APP and RHSNDSV.IMG to any directory on any drive and use PSION-I to install FiveOAK to the system screen. FiveOAK is a type 0 application and so has no filelist on the system screen. Alternatively, place the files in an \IMG\ directory so that it can be launched from the RUNIMG filelist. Optionally, copy the supplied .WVE files to any \WVE\ directory or to a directory called \FIVEOAK\ located below the directory where the .APP is located. b) Free Memory FiveOAK needs about 40k to 60k free memory to load and run. c) Support Files FiveOAK uses various types of support file. These are : * RHSNDSV.IMG - This is a utility which provides sound support for FiveOAK and other Right Hand Software applications. It must be located in the same drive/directory and the main FiveOAK application. * FiveOAK.Lnn - FiveOAK is resource based (English language resources are embedded in the main .app). FiveOAK will look for foreign language resource files in a "support directory". The support directory takes the name of the .app file (eg \FiveOAK\) and must be located under the directory from which the app is launched. No foreign language resource files currently exist but if anyone is interested in doing the translation work, we will be happy to supply them. * Sound files (*.WVE) - FiveOAK can be configured to play either a number of predefined tunes or .WVE files as various events occur within the game. The tunes are provided within RHSNDSV.IMG and .WVE files are located by searching for a specified filename in the following sequence of directories: - The "support directory" described above - The Internal (M:) drive - The A: drive - The B: drive If a .WVE file is not found, the tune (if any) will be played. * FiveOAK.INI - FiveOAK saves various items of information to a this file such as your game settings, highscores etc. As this file is small and frequently updated it is located in the LOC::M:\GPK\ directory. d) General Operation. FiveOAK has extensive online help. Press the HELP key for details of how to use the various facilities available. 5) FiveOAK - The Game A game of FiveOAK comprises 13 hands. Each hand comprises up to 3 rolls of the dice. For the 1st roll of each hand all 5 dice must be rolled. For the optional 2nd and 3rd rolls you may select any or all of the dice to be rolled. You may choose to score the hand after the 1st or 2nd rolls and the hand must be scored after the 3rd roll. There are 13 different ways in which points can be awarded to score a hand. Each of these ways must be used once and only once during a game. The objective of the game is to score as many points as possible. 5) FiveOAK - Scoring The ways in which a hand can be scored are organised into 2 sections. The 1st section has 6 ways to score a hand. These are :- 1s - Score the total of all dice showing 1 (ie 1 5 1 1 2 = 3) 2s - Score the total of all dice showing 2 3s - Score the total of all dice showing 3 4s - Score the total of all dice showing 4 5s - Score the total of all dice showing 5 6s - Score the total of all dice showing 6 Additionally, if the total of all points in the 1st section is 63 or more you get a bonus of 35 points. This means that you should aim to have at least 3 of a kind when you score a hand in the 1st section to stay on target for the bonus. If you are forced to score an "under par" hand in the 1st section try to go for a low way. For example to recover from scoring only one 2 in the 2s, you need only to score four 4s. Conversely you would need five 3s to recover from two 6s. The 2nd section has 7 ways to score a hand. These are :- 3 of a kind - Score the total of ALL dice (ie 4 4 4 6 5 = 23) 4 of a kind - Score the total of ALL dice Full House - Score 25 points Low Straight - Score 30 points High Straight - Score 40 points FiveOAK! - Score 50 points Chance - Score the total of ALL dice Where :- A Full House = 3 of a kind PLUS 2 of a kind Low Straight = A sequence of 4 dice High Straight = A sequence of 5 dice FiveOAK! = 5 of a kind Chance = Any combination of dice As well as the section 1 bonus described above, there are these other types of bonus : FiveOAK! Bonus - Any subsequent FiveOAK! gives a bonus of 100 points provided that a previous FiveOAK! has been scored as such. Roll! Bonus - If you score 3 or more of a kind in section 1 OR score anywhere in section 2 except "Chance" and do so in less than 3 rolls, you get a "Roll Bonus" worth 10 points if you take just 1 roll and 5 points if you take 2 rolls. As well as the luck of the dice you will need strategy as to how to score a particular hand at a particular point in the game and indeed to decide which dice to hold or roll. This is because you often have a choice as to where to score the hand. Remember also that scores are "downwardly compatible" so a High Straight can be scored as a Low Straight, a 4-of-a-kind as a 3-of-a-kind and a FiveOAK! can score as a 3 or 4-of-a-kind or a Full House. For example : * Should you score four 6s and a 5 in section 1 and be comfortably on the way to the section 1 bonus but only get 24 points or should you score a 4-of-a-kind for 29 points? * You might decide to "throw away" two 2s, two 1s and a 3 in the FiveOAK! slot (betting that you wouldn't get a FiveOAK! anyway). You then get 2 FiveOAK!s - that "throw away" just cost you 150 points! The Series 3a implementation of FiveOAK has various features to help you get the hang of scoring. Firstly, you can at any time switch to the score board and examine what scores are available before committing to a particular score. Secondly, until such time as the section 1 bonus has been won or lost, a running total of how much you are under or over performing on the 1st section is shown. Lastly, when you switch to the score board, FiveOAK always jumps to the highest score for the current dice (unless this means under performing in section 1). However, note that the HIGHEST score for a given throw is NOT always the BEST score given the overall state of the game - but that's where you come in! 6) FiveOAK - On the Psion Series 3a On the Series 3a screen, FiveOAK presents 6 display areas against a shaded background. Looking from left to right / top to bottom :- * The first 3 areas are the score card. * The next area shows a push button which indicates the current state of the game ie the action which will be performed by the ENTER key. Following this are the 5 dice. * The last 2 areas show the player names and running totals for the current sequence of games. The 3 score card areas each have 6 rows and 2 or 3 columns. The 1st column contains text describing the score item. The remaining columns show for 1 or 2 players, their scores in the current game or alternatively blanks if the slot has not been used. The 1st score card area is Section 1 with the slots for scoring 1s through to 6s. The 2nd score card area plus the 1st row of the 3rd score card area is Section 2 with slots for the various scores (3-of-a-kind through to Chance) as described above. The remainder of the 3rd score card area shows as follows :- * The total of Section 1. * The section 1 bonus. If the value here is prefixed by a + or - sign, this indicates that the bonus has not been won or lost yet and the value represents by how much you are under/over par for achieving the bonus. Otherwise the value of the bonus is shown. * The total of Section 2. * The section 2 bonus ie the value of FiveOAK! and Roll! bonuses. * The total score for the current game. 7) FiveOAK - How to Play At the start of a game, the current player's name is highlighted and the button shows "Start". Press ENTER to begin the game. The dice will roll. When they stop, the button shows that the next roll will be roll #2. At this point we consider the dice and decide whether to score them as they stand or to roll some or all of them again. If you want to roll dice, use the cursor keys to move the box which surrounds one of the dice indicating this to be the current dice. Then use the space bar to highlight the dice (indicating that this dice is to be rolled). You can change your mind - just press the space bar again to turn the highlight off. For the 2nd and 3rd rolls you can also use Shift-SPACE to rehighlight the previous set of dice. Once all the dice you want to roll are marked in this way, press ENTER to roll them. Alternatively, you may want to score the dice as they stand. The TAB key switches you between the dice and the score card. Press TAB and a cursor will appear in the highest scoring free slot in the score card (remember this is just tactics - you need to add the strategy) and the results of selecting this score are shown. The button also changes to indicate that the ENTER key is now used to pick a score. Use the cursor keys to move between the available score slots. If you decide to score the dice, press the ENTER key. If you decide not to score and want to continue rolling dice, just press TAB again to switch back to the dice. After a player scores a hand and there are 2 players, its the turn of the next player. In any case, the 1st roll of the next hand is done automatically. Points to note : * For the 1st roll of a hand, all dice will be rolled - you don't need to mark them using the space bar. Also you cannot switch to the score card until you made the 1st roll. * After the 3rd roll, you are automatically switched to the score card and cannot switch back to the dice until you've made a score. After a player completes their 13th hand, any high scores or other statistics are notified, the running total for the current series of games is updated. 8) FiveOAK - Highscores and Statistics FiveOAK maintains a high score table which shows the player names and scores for the top 6 scores ever made. FiveOAK also maintains the names and various statistics for up to 6 people. These stats include the players all time best score, the number of games played and the overall average score. The same stats are also calculated for the current sequence of games. When a player completes their hand one of the following events is notified :- * The player gained the highscore table. * The player gained an all time personal best score. * The player's all time average rose or fell. At any time, menus or the following hotkeys can be used :- Psion-H : Displays and optionally clears the high score table. Psion-P : Displays player statistics for the current players. The player statistics shown are the number of games played, the best score achieved and the average score. These are shown for the "all-time" results and for the current series of games. 9) FiveOAK - Game Setup, Options and Other facilities. At any time, menus or the following hotkeys can be used :- Psion-N : Starts a new series of games. This has the effect of resetting to 0 the statistics relating to the current series of games for all current players. Psion-S : This has the same effect as Psion-N above but in addition you are presented with the Game Setup dialog which contains choice lists from which you can specify the number of current players and who they are. Pressing the MENU key within the Game Setup dialog presents the Player Setup dialog for the currently selected player. Here you can amend the player's name and optionally reset their all-time statistics. Psion-Q : This presents the Game Options dialog from which you can control the dice animation and turn the sound effects on or off. Pressing the MENU key within the Game Options dialog presents the Setup Sounds dialog. This comprises a main choice list of various "events" which occur within the game. The remaining choice lists specify the internal tunes and/or .WVE files that should be associated with the event. Note that in action if a .WVE file cannot be found, the tune (if any) will be played. See also section 3c above for a discussion of how .WVE files are located. Pressing the MENU key within the Setup Sounds dialog, tests the current setting. Psion-R : This presents a dialog from which you can register FiveOAK. Psion-A : This displays program information and copyright details. Psion-X : Exits the game. === End of FiveOAK v1.20 Documentation ==============================