MahJongg Master - Release Notes MahJongg Solitaire Game for Windows 95 Also works under Windows 3.1 with Win32s Best viewed in 800x600 and 65,536 colors RULES OF MAHJONGG SOLITAIRE You may already know them... Just remove all the tiles from the board, by pairs. The only condition to remove them is that they must both be free (no tile ON them, and at least one side free -- no tile on their left or no tile on their right). The tiles must be identical, except if they belong to a Flower or a Season family (in this case, they just have to be from the same family). TWO-PLAYER VARIATION The purpose of this variation is to get the highest score. Two players play at the same time on the board. They control a hand-cursor (P1 and P2) with the keyboard (see what keys to use below). Be quick and don't let your opponent take all the tiles before you ! Each removed pair gives you 100 more points. The winner is the player who removed the highest number of pairs at the end of the game. Each time there aren't any moves left, the board is automatically shuffled. You can't access the hint option here (for obvious reasons). Please note that your hand must be completely inside a tile before you can select it. It's just a matter of time before you can master the keys perfectly, you'll see ! Keyboard layout for player 1 (Qwerty keyboard) : S : select or unselect a tile W or E : top Z or X : bottom A : left D : right Keyboard layout for player 1 (Azerty keyboard) : S : select or unselect a tile Z or E : top W or X : bottom Q : left D : right Keyboard layout for player 2 : 5 : select or unselect a tile 8 : top 2 : bottom 4 : left 6 : right RULES OF MAHJONGG RIVERS The layout is replaced by a large wall full of tiles. This time, you can select any tile you want. The goal is the same : remove all the tiles from the board, by matching them by pairs. There is only one rule to connect two identical tiles : if you try to draw an horizontal and vertical line through the free space between them, there must not be more than two corners in the line, i.e. if you have to turn more than twice to arrive in front of the other tile, you can't select it. Of course, if two tiles are side to side, you can remove them immediately. If you don't understand the rules, try the game for some minutes. MENU OPTIONS File * New Solitaire Game : Start a new classic Mahjongg Solitaire game. * New 2-Player Game : Start a new Mahjongg "Not So Solitaire" game... * New Rivers Game : Start a new Mahjongg Rivers game, based on Four Rivers / Arcade Mahjongg / Winojong * Exit : Quit Play * Undo : Cancels the last move. Very useful if you feel like you ruined the whole game by doing a wrong move. Please note that you can undo as much moves as you want, everything is kept in a history list. * Hint : Shows you a possible move by highlighting a pair of tiles. If you are not satisfied with the hint, you can call this function again and it will show you another possibility, until there's no other possible move. Using this function will add 40 seconds to your total time, so don't waste your time on it !! Important : this feature works neither on Mahjongg Rivers, nor on the 2-Player game (this one is for evident reasons). * Shuffle : Shuffle current game tiles. It means that MahJongg Master will exchange the tiles between them, without touching their positions or their number. It's particularly useful when there are no more possible moves. Indeed, you can find new combinations this way. But please remember that every possible move left will then cost you 10 seconds. For example, if you have 5 moves left to do, press Shuffle, and you'll have, let's say, 8 moves left now. Your current time will be increased by (8x10)=80 seconds. So, use this function only when you really have no more moves left ! * Restart : Restart current game from the beginning. * Stop : Stop current game and empty screen. * Pause : Pause current game. You can Options * Configuration : Various options that you can switch on/off. * - [Enable time tracking for the Hall of Fame] : If this option is not checked, your final time will not be recorded in the Hall of Fame. Check this option only if you don't fear to defy the Hall of Fame. * - [Start new game when changing layout] : Says it all... * - [Switch to 800x600 at startup] : When you're running the game in 640x480, you won't have the toolbar on. If you don't want to switch to 800x600 definitely but still want the toolbar, click on this menu item. Then, each time you'll launch the game, it will try to switch to 800x600 automatically. And when you'll leave MahJongg Master, it will switch back to 640x480. * - [Begin new game at startup] : You can choose if MahJongg Master will automatically start a new game when you launch it, or if you'll have to press on the New Game button to start. * - [Play sound effects] : Easy to understand, no ? This option is not available on the non-Direct-X version, because you won't have the sound effects. * - [Play music] : Why should you want to stop this haunting music ? Oh, because your husband is trying to sleep ? Okay... * Highlight : Defines how the current tile will be highlighted. The current tile is not a selected tile, it's simply the tile on which the mouse cursor is on. [None] means you don't want MahJongg Master to show you which tile you are on. [Rectangle] quickly draws a small red rectangle around the tile. [Color] shows the tile exactly as if it had been highlighted by a Hint call. The main difference between the [Rectangle] and the [Color] features is that [Rectangle] is faster on most PCs, but the rectangle isn't cut by the tiles surrounding it. * Keyboard type : You can choose two keyboard layouts for now : Azerty (French keyboard) or Qwerty (most keyboards). We're planning to improve this function later by letting you define you own keys. The keyboard layout is only used during the 2-player game, and it defines the keys to use for Player 1. * Cool Mouse : Shows either the default Windows mouse cursor or a "futuristic" cursor. * Player name : Click to change your name as it will appear in the hall of fame. * Show Time Left : Shows or hides the "Elapsed time" counter. Added especially for a MahJongg Master user who wanted it :-) * Show Moves Left : Shows or hides the "moves left" counter. This counter tells you how many pairs of tiles you can still remove from the board. The counter can increase if, for example, when you remove a pair of tiles, they both free other tiles that can be removed as well. It can be useful to track that counter if you want to see if your latest move was strategically interesting for the game. You can disable this function because you may feel it's a way to "cheat", or simply you don't like how close you are to the end... Please Note : the "moves left" feature does NOT work with the Mahjongg Rivers game. * Show Hall of Fame : Show or hides the Hall of Fame panel on the right side of the screen. Not available in 640x480 mode. * Show toolbar : Shows or hides the toolbar. If you are using a 640x480 resolution, you won't see that toolbar at startup, because there isn't enough space on the screen, but you can show it by clicking on this menu item. Background * Load from disk : Load a new background picture. If you quit the game while this menu item is checked, it will load the same background the next time MahJongg Master will be launched. Please note : click once on this item and MahJongg Master will show you the last background you had loaded. Click again and it will ask you to choose a new background. * None : Shows a solid background behind the tiles. Useful if you don't like being distracted by the pictures. * Kanji (classic) : Shows a background full of chinese characters :-) * Dragons : Shows a very nice traditional dragon picture as a background. Tileset * Load from disk : Load a new tileset. If you quit the game while this menu item is checked, it will load the same tileset the next time MahJongg Master will be launched. Please note : click once on this item and MahJongg Master will show you the last tileset you had loaded. Click again and it will ask you to choose a new tileset. * Mahjongg (clear) : the classic Mah Jongg tileset, as seen in MahJongg Master 2.x * Mahjongg (darker) : the same tileset, but with dark borders, much like in MahJongg Master 1.x Layout * External layout : Load a new layout (*.lay file). If you quit the game while this menu item is checked, it will load the same layout the next time MahJongg Master will be launched. Please note that the Hall of fame is not enabled for this kind of layout. It might be interesting for those of you who don't like the idea of being in a hall of fame : first, select a layout, then click on Edit layout, save it as a new layout, and load this new layout to desactive the hall of fame. Please note : click once on this item and MahJongg Master will show you the last layout you had loaded. Click again and it will ask you to choose a new layout. * Edit layout : Call the layout editor. * Other menu items : Chooses a new layout included in the program. Theme * New Theme : Load a new theme from your disk. See below for more about the themes. * Use Theme : Enable or disable the current theme. Music Select any of the items to select a new music. If there's no music playing yet, it will start automatically. Help * Contents : Shows a dialog box with full details on MahJongg Master. The tab control [English] gives you some quick information on MahJongg Master, [Francais] is approximately the same in French, [Tiles] shows you a complete tile map with the tile names, and [Notes] displays this very help file. * Register : Click here to register. First, you must have got a user name and a password from the author. Enter your user name and your password as they were given to you (they are case-sensitive), and press Register. Thanks again for supporting MahJongg Master ! * Hall of fame : Shows the hall of fame for the current layout. You can select another hall of fame by clicking on the combo box in the bottom of the dialog box and choosing another layout. * About : Shows information about the author and the version number. MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION * MahJongg Master works under Windows 3.1. You just have to install the latest version of Win32s (a 2,5mb download from Microsoft) and run the file MJM.EXE (MJM-DX.EXE won't work). * If you want to have the small sound effects, you will have to install Direct-X first. It's a good package, you can give it a try. You may find it at Microsoft's Web site : http://www.microsoft.com/directx/ (Check out the End User section). Presently, Direct-X 5.0 (5,5mb) is the latest version available. * If you are in a 640x480 resolution, when running the program, the window will open in full screen. If you want to see the taskbar, double-click on the window's title bar. To hide it again, do the same thing. If the window's bottom doesn't reappear, try again, it should work. In this resolution, you can see neither the toolbar nor the Hall of Fame panel. Just switch to a higher resolution if you want it. * If you are in a 800x600 resolution : the window covers the full screen except the task bar. There should be no reason to change anything. This is the recommended resolution, and the one we use to develop MahJongg Master. * If you are in a 1024x768 resolution, the window takes only a part of the screen. Everything should run correctly. * If you are experimenting palette problems in 256-color mode, just click on the menu item "Theme | New Theme" and choose ORIENTAL.BMP... It should fix the problem ! * If you want to get rid of any MahJongg Master has given you, click on the right mouse button. This will remove any highlight from the board. * To run the music, just press the green arrow button on the toolbar. You can pause it then play it again by using the yellow "pause" button on its right, or stop it by pressing the red square. You must have a soundcard installed, of course... * Some people asked me what was the "Moves Left" indicator. It's simply the number of pairs of tiles you can potentially remove from the board. * When the Hall of Fame panel is activated, your latest highscore is written in italic -- this way you can find it faster. USING THE LAYOUT EDITOR First, select a layout you like and you want to base your work on. Then, click on [Edit layout]. A new toolbar will appear. The five digits represent the number of levels shown. Clicking somewhere on the screen will add a new tile to the layout, but only on the highest level shown. If you want to add a new tile to the lowest level, click on "1". If you want to add a tile to the top of the board, click on "5". To complete a layout, you have to place exactly 144 tiles on the board. When you first enter the editor, there are already 144 tiles, so you'll have to remove some of them first. Simple : you just have to click on the tiles you don't want anymore with the RIGHT button. Then, the "Left tiles" counter will be increased. It's very easy to remove tiles, since it's just like if you were playing normally. You can remove as many tiles as you want. Second part of the work : adding new tiles. Just select the level you want to work on, and click with the left button at the position where you want a new slot. If it is shown at the wrong place, just click on the tile with the right button, and try again until you find the right position. Don't worry if you find this quite hard to do, when you're used to the editor it becomes very easy. Before you can quit the editor and try the new layout, you'll have to fill the board with all the 144 tiles. You can leave the editor with one of the three menu options : [Save] will save the layout under the current layout file name. Be careful not to erase another layout ! [Save as] will let you save the layout under a new name. [Don't save] lets you play with the layout without having to save it. It's useful if you want to test the difficulty of a layout. You can then come back to the layout editor by clicking again on [Edit layout]. The default extension for the layout files is ".lay". You can even choose a name for the layout by typing it in the upper right edit box. This way, you can distribute your layouts by precising your name, the creation date, the name of your work, etc... Nice, isn't it ? Send us your creations, we'll include them on our site. HOW TO CHANGE THE TILESET This example uses Paint Shop Pro 4.1 to create the tileset. You can use any other paint program, but it will have to be able to deal with image masks. Use CLASSIC.BMP as a template for your new tileset. You can name it as you want. First, change the background color (#0) to something clearer (blue, for example). Now you'll notice that the tiles are surrounded by black lines -- they serve as a guideline, you must draw inside these lines, don't touch them. This is the harder part : everything relies on your own talent... After you've finished creating your tiles, you'll have to create a mask for them. Select the square [0,0,370,256], Copy it to the clipboard, and Paste as a new image. Then, go to the Masks menu, click on New From Image. Select these options : This Window, Any non-zero value, and Invert mask data. Click OK. Back to the Masks menu, click on Edit. Now, click on the menu item Copy (in the Edit menu), and go back to your tileset window. Click on Paste As New Selection, and put the mask image exactly where the previous mask image was (coordinates 0,312,370,568). That's all ! The three tiles in the lower part of the picture are used as containers for the tile graphics. The left one is the "normal tile background", the middle one is used for selected tiles, and the right one is used for the hints. You can modify the backgrounds as you wish, but don't touch the white triangles at the right of the last tile : they're used as a mask for the tile containers. Before saving the file, don't forget to switch back the background color (#0) to black, otherwise the tiles won't appear correctly on the screen ! CREATING AND USING THEMES Themes are simply image files that contain a tileset, a background picture and a "hall of fame" panel. They have two interests : you can load a tileset and a background with only one mouse click, and, more important, you can solve most of the palettes problems under a 256-color mode, because you can be sure the tileset and the background use the same palettes and there won't be any conflict. The default Theme is "oriental", it simply contains the Dragon background and the Mahjongg (clear) tileset, both using the same palette. You can switch to another theme by clicking on the menu item "New Theme". Select a new theme file (there's none but Oriental for now in the MahJongg Master package), and it will replace automatically your tileset, your background and your Hall of Fame panel. You can disable it whenever you want by clicking on "Use Theme". To create a new theme, first make a copy of ORIENTAL.BMP (the only theme provided with MahJongg Master). It's a picture file that contains : - the tileset picture (like in CLASSIC.BMP), coordinates (0,0,370,568) - the Hall of Fame panel (like in HOF.BMP), coordinates (612,100,704,568) - the background picture (like in KANJI.BMP), coordinates (0,568,704,1036) QUICK TROUBLESHOOTING - I can't launch MahJongg Master ! It says something like "MMSYSTEM275 File not found"... - Check out your MahJongg Master directory to see if you have all four MIDI files there (especially Ferral.mid). If you can't find Ferral.mid, copy a new MIDI file into this directory and rename it to "Ferral.mid". - I can't launch MahJongg Master ! This time it says something like "DDRAW.DLL not found" ! Where can I find this file ? - It's part of Direct-X, the multimedia extensions for Windows designed by Microsoft. We're using this pack to play the sound effects simultaneously in 32 bits, but we're also planning to use Direct-X soon to enable this game to be played via the Internet. You have three solutions : download Direct-X from http://www.microsoft.com/directx (it's quite a large file compared to MahJongg Master), or find it on a recent game magazine's CD-Rom (you can find it almost everywhere now). Or simply, if you think you don't need the sound effects, run the normal version of MahJongg Master (mjm.exe) instead of the Direct-X enhanced version (mjm-dx.exe). - The tiles don't appear don't appear when I launch MahJongg Master. - Are you sure you checked the option Begin new game at startup ? If yes, try to change the tileset (click on Ivory, for example). - My colors are all messed up ! - Are you in 256-color mode ? If yes, just click on "Use Theme" (or choose a New Theme), it will solve the problem. Sometimes, when you're using a Theme, you may still have your colors messed up. Try to minimize then maximize again your window. It should work again. If the colors are messed up only when you move your mouse on a tile, try to select "None" in the Highlight section of the Options menu. - Where's the toolbar ? I used to have a toolbar before !! Give it back !! - You probably switched to 640x480. The toolbar is automatically disabled in 640x480, in order to let you see all of the tiles. You can use the menus where you'll find all of the toolbar's features, or you can switch to 800x600 easily : check the menu option "Switch to 800x600 at startup", then leave MahJongg Master and launch it again. The game will try to switch automatically to 800x600. When you'll leave MahJongg Master, it will switch back automatically to 640x480.