Same Game 1.3 by Alan Pope http://www.popey.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks for downloading Same Game 1.3. How to install ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There is no install process, you just unzip and run same.exe from Windows explorer. How to play ~~~~~~~~~~~ On the screen you'll see lots of coloured blocks. Your aim is to make them disappear. To do this you need to find groups of blocks the same colour that are next to eachother. Click once with the mouse to select a group. When you click a block it (and those of the same colour next to it) is highlighted. Clicking a second time on the selected blocks removes them. Other blocks above and to the right move down and to the left. You cannot select or remove single blocks. Points are awarded for selecting many blocks at once. For example; you score more points for selecting one set of 10 blocks than you do by selecting two sets of 5 or five sets of 2 blocks. The game is over when there are no more blocks left or there are blocks left but only single ones, which cannot be removed. In summary; * Remove the blocks. * Get a high score. Note, this download contains two executables. One is the new version of samegame (1.3) compiled in BlitzPlus. The other is the 150 line competition. Source code is supplied for the 150 line version, but not for version 1.3. Game Strategy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I've heard a few strategies for playing SameGame. I'm not sure if these help but I will include them anyway. 1) Some people start by looking for large clumps of one colour. They then remove the other colours near by to produce larger blocks of the first colour. This gets high scores for the very large clumps of blocks made in this process. However it can result in very low scores at the outset as the player clears out some of the other colours. 2) Some players start on one side of the playing field (usually the right) and work their way across the screen, trying to eliminate as many blocks before moving leftwards. This can result in a higher chance that the player is left with no blocks at the end (a good thing), but can result in low scores, as the player is constantly removing small clumps of blocks. 3) Some players just randomly click all over the place! I am not sure about this strategy, although I've seen some fairly high scores using this method. Version History ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 16/3/2003 - version 1.3 * Fix mistake in the readme where it said I'd released this in 2002! Ahem! * Added text to blocks, letters A-E are displayed on the blocks now * Added menu to allow player to turn off the text on the blocks! * Increased size of blocks to make it easier to play * added borders to blocks * several internal changes to code 15/2/2003 - version 1.2 * BlitzPlus was recently released. This adds lots of extra features, including a nice set of functions to make Blitz applications look more like 'standard' Windows applications. Yesterdayoday bought BlitzPlus and switched development to this new version of Blitz. As a result some changes have been made. * Fix bug where under XP theme the blocks at the bottom of the window are cut off * The game menu allows the user to * Restart the game * Use square or round blocks * Choose a small or large game area 12/2/2003 - Version 1.0 * Started work on Same Game for the Blitz Coder mini-competition to write a 150-line game in Blitz Basic. To Do ~~~~~ * Add high score function * Upload high scores to the internet Thanks ~~~~~~ Thanks to Mark Silby for creating the fantastic Blitz Basic. You can get your own copy of Blitz Basic from . Very soon you could be writing your own games. Thanks also to all the inspiration from my friends in the #blitzcoder, #blitzbasic, #blitzradio IRC channels on irc.blitzed.org. In no particular order, thanks to Beeps, BloodLocust, Snarty, Andyboy_UK, Ion_Storm, Buttercup_Lady, the_cre8or.. and anyone else I forgot. Most of all though, thanks also to Clare (my wife) for not moaning at me for sitting in front of a PC all day and night. Copyright ~~~~~~~~~ This game is copyright Alan Pope. However you are free to copy the game. In fact it would make me happy if you did copy it! :) If you have any comments, bug reports or suggestions, please feel free to to contact me via email at samegame@popey.com 16/3/2003.