BJ's BlackJack version 3.01 README.TXT ************************************************* Author: Bradley Tinder (bradley.tinder@ti.com) * Web: http://home.earthlink.net/~bjzers/palm.htm * ************************************************* Released:03/28/2000 Intro ***** Hi, and thanks for downloading BJ's BlackJack version 3.01! Wow, the last couple of months have been insane! I'm sorry this release took so long to develop, but there are a lot of requested features, with a few added ones! I hope this version does much better than the last 2. :) Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the older versions of this game, and making it one of the more popular PalmOS apps out there! Check out what's new below: What's new? *********** 3.01 03/28/2000 Bugs fixed: -- Fixed secret cheat bug that allowed a player to play with a bet of $0. Thanks to Valentin Rodriguez for the bug report. -- Fixed Dealer Suicide Soft 17 bug. :) Thanks to all the players who reported this one quickly! 3.00 03/21/2000 Bugs fixed: -- Fixed system crash if exiting program while Insurance dialog is displayed. -- Fixed Fatal error when dealing more than 6 cards for dealer and player. -- Improved the way the Dealer's name was being handled. Poor programming by me caused garbage to appear for the Dealer's name, this has been (hopefully) fixed. -- Doh! Game was re-shuffling the deck when you came back into the application! Core Routines: -- New support for calculating score. Next version will improve on the double down feature. For now you may double down on anything. See below for reason why. -- Minimal code support added for multiple splits and double down on splits. Next release might have something going in this direction. I will have to do some major re-coding of many internal routines to handle this. If anyone has some good sample BlackJack code that I can look at for reference, it would definately help!! Improvements: -- Added preferences screen. ** Multiple Decks, Dealer hits on Soft 17, Animation speed, Deck Penetration, Score Display On/Off. -- Added Sound Off/On Toggle in the Menu bar. ** Icon is displayed to indicate sound status in bottom left corner. -- Added extra score if you have an Ace (or Aces!) (min/max score). -- Last player name is entered by default when starting a new game. -- Added a graffiti shift indicator for the New Game screen. (doesn't work right!) -- Removed several dialog boxes, now displays most results on screen. ** Some dialog boxes had to stay for certain events. -- By popular request, player can now double down on ANYTHING, except when your hand is split. I like this rule, you as a player should know when to double down and when not to. Again, several casinos probably don't allow this, but I like to leave that decision to the player. Plus it can improve your money payout. Next version will allow the player to decide which rules to follow, and have improved double down support. 2.01 12/16/1999 -- Fixed an obscure double down bug that Laura found at the laundromat last night. DOH! She's good at finding them. -- Put an additional check for money before dealing and changing bet amounts. If player has less than $5, and tried to change their bet, they would get stuck in the change bet screen. Big thanks to IWolf for the bug report. 2.00 12/15/1999 Graphical changes: ****************** Cards now have a real backing! Yeah, yeah, the drawing sucks, but its better than that generic pattern! Probably for the next version, I might actually try and create real card faces too. Animation for deals! This was a real pain to work out in the code, and probably is buggy somewhat. See the Known Bugs section below for some weird drawing issues that there might be. Version 3.0 will allow user to define dealing speed, its kind of fast right now. Dealer's name should be redrawn correctly now. Thanks to all who sent email regarding this annoying graphical bug. Another graphical bug fixed, there was a report of the dealer's face down card not being redrawn correctly when he/she flipped it over for the user to see. This has been fixed. Moved the New Game button up into the menu bar. I did this to implement a status line in the next version. Redid the Action menu, adding the Split button and changing the layout. Core routines: ************** Double down core routine has been improved. Player can now only double down on a 9,10,or 11 off of your first 2 cards dealt. Insurance!!! Player now can set insurance if the dealer is showing an Ace on his/her up card off the initial deal. If they have BlackJack, you win 2:1 on your Insurance bet, which is half of your original bet. Example: I bet $25. Dealer has an Ace up, and offers insurance. I take it, so my Insurance bet is $12. Dealer ends up winning with BlackJack, so I get $24, but lose my original bet of $25 because the dealer had BlackJack, so I end up losing a total of $1. The program can't handle cents yet, so $1 is not a huge loss for this. It works out fine when you bet increments that can easily be divided by 2. :) Splitting is now allowed. I set some certain limits on the splitting, basically just to add support for it, I'll enhance more in future versions. Multiple splits are not allowed at this time. The code to handle splitting might be buggy, so please send me any bug reports if the splitting doesn't work right. I tested it with every possible variant of the split, and it worked perfectly. Many minor core routines have been optimized for failsafe operation. Program has been compiled with the -O2 flag in GCC for a more optimized .PRC file. 1.1 11/24/1999 More bugs fixed! Thanks to everyone for helping me out finding these! Even the Gremlins didn't find them. Keep those bug reports coming in if you find any! NOTE: Delete your old version before installing this one!!!!! Bugs fixed in this release: -- Fixed dealer's hidden card being displayed when returning to the game after leaving. Thanks to George Gibb for finding this "easter egg". :) -- When starting a new game, the previous player's name wasn't being cleared. This has been fixed. -- Fixed major cash bug when cash got over $32K, it would reset to -$32K! Should be ok now. -- Player now cannot Deal a new hand when their bet is higher than their cash, this could lead to negative money! Thanks to Tom Carter for finding this bug. -- Player's cash and bet are reset to $0 when starting a new game. 1.05 11/23/1999 - Bug fix release. This release fixes issues with drawing white space characters on PalmOS 3.3 release devices. It appears 3Com replaced the numeric space character with the Euro symbol in the font set for 3.3! Not good. I redid the clear field code to fix this issue. Also cleaned up some minor graphical bugs. Thanks to all who reported this issue. I don't have the update for 3.3 yet, mostly because of all the warnings that 3Com placed on the upgrade, but I guess I should do it so I can catch issues like this. ;) 1.00 11/19/1999 - First release. Known (or possible) Bugs ************************ -- The graffiti shift indicator on the New Game setup page, doesn't work correctly. Need to see some sample code on how to do this properly. Not a major bug, but kind of annoying. -- I've done extensive testing on the multiple deck features, and everything seems to be working out, the new deck gauge might be hokey though. It seemed to work fine for the 2 hours I spent testing the game. -- I've also tested the Dealer name bug issue. I did a Hard Reset on my Palm, and reloaded the game from backup and the Dealer name stayed perfect! I hope this works for everyone else too, but if not, send me email. How to play *********** BlackJack is a simple game actually, its otherwise known as 21, and the basic concept of the game is to beat the dealer's hand without going over the total score for the hand of 21. Aces are worth either 1 or 11 points depending on wether the 1 or 11 helps you get close to 21. Thus the only way to achieve a "BlackJack" is to have a Face card or 10 and an Ace on the draw. Face cards are worth 10, all other cards are worth their face value. You may also "Double-Down" on any deal, thus, you double your bet. This situation works well when you have a total score of 11, and you double down and get a 10, thus you are a sure win to get double your money! Insurance is defined within the program, if the dealer has an Ace showing, tap the Information icon in the upper right hand corner of the dialog box that pops up for help with insurance. 90% of the time, insurance is a bad bet, however. You may split pairs on the initial deal 1 time only. For example, if I have a Jack and a Queen, I could split them into 2 seperate hands. Then the dealer will deal a card for the 1st hand, and I'll play it until I stand or bust, then the dealer will deal a card for the 2nd hand, and I play it until I stand or bust. After I'm done with my plays, the game plays out the dealer's hand, then checks both splits vs. the dealer's score. You can easily double your money using splits, but use them wisely. Splitting Aces is usually the best bet, splitting a 20 is not a good bet. Installation ************ 1. Unzip the .prc file into the C:\Palm\add-on directory. Change the drive letter if applicable to your setup. 2. Load the Palm Install tool and Add the file to your sync queue. 3. Sync your Pilot and the program will install into the Unfiled category. If you are updating your previous version of the game, please make sure to Delete your old version before syncing the new version, as unpredictable results could happen! If you don't delete your previous version and HotSync the new version, *please* don't send me email complaining about bugs. You've been warned! Instructions for play ********************* When you first start the program after installing on your Palm, you will be shown the About box. You will continue on to the Player Name entry dialog. Enter your name and click on what your initial cash will be. You will then be taken to the Betting screen. Go ahead and select your bet. After all that, you will be taken to the main screen, the "Table". You might want to set your preferences for game play. Tap on the Menu button or equivalent, then tap the Preferences menu item. You can get help with all of the preferences by tapping the I icon in the upper right hand corner. After setting your preferences, click OK to be taken back to the main table. Click on Change to change your bet, or Deal to deal a new hand. After dealing your initial 2 cards, a popup menu will appear with 4 options, Hit, Stand, Double (double down) or Split. Choose the appropiate selection based on your hand and play away. If you run out of cash, Tap on the Menu, and the New Game menu item to start over. You may not double down if you don't have the cash to cover the bet, and only on the initial deal. Dealer swaps out after 5 shuffles. Future Features (for version 3.xx or 4.00): ******************************************* -- More graphical improvements. Real card faces rather than Palm generated faces, maybe the ability for the user to upload his/her own card face decks. -- Surrender option. -- Multi-Player via Infared (Palm III and higher devices only). I might ditch this because I want to be able to support as many Palm devices as I can, write me if you'd like to see it, and if you have some sample source code of IR stuff. -- High Roller Scoreboard. -- Multple splits, multiple double downs on splits. -- Improve the Double Down routine. Thanks ****** Thanks mostly to 3COM, for developing and releasing such a neat product. Thanks to Laura, for beta-testing my game and giving me ideas to make the game more fun. Thanks to the FSF and GNU team for converting GCC for the Pilot, without it, I wouldn't be developing Palm software! BIG thanks to all the folks who have sent me mail with ideas, suggestions, bug reports, or just general kudos for this game. Your support and encouragement have made me improve on this game and make it better! Much kudos to the folks at ZDNet, palmgear.com, handango.com, and all Software archives that have help distribute this game. Oh, and thanks to ABC News for featuring BJ's BlackJack in one of their articles! Special thanks to my cat, B.J., of whom the name for this game originates. You too, Freckles! Donations? ********** I've tried several shareware BlackJack games for the Palm, and some were really cool, but some really sucked. I didn't think the authors could justify charging shareware fees for a program that didn't live up to its price. I created BJ's BlackJack with the sole intention of making a free BlackJack game for all PalmOS owners, where the focus was on the game, not worrying about how many days you've had the program without registering. So, my policy is this: If you think this game is actually worth anything, drop me a line, and I'll give you an address to send a donation to. The most I will ask for is, say, $10. Another great donation would be some web space, and the ability to have my own domain (I'll register with InterNIC if someone provides a machine). I'll also give you beta or release candidate future versions of the game for feedback. Any money received will be put towards upgrading my existing compiler and tools to improve the gameplay and also start work on Color applications! The most important thing for you the user in playing this game is to have fun! I've had fun creating it, so I hope it brings you the same joy! -- Bradley Tinder, 03/28/2000