There isn't much to know in order to begin playing Mike's Cards. You basically choose a game, and move cards til you win or lose. The real help is in the individual rules for each game. They appear in the Rules window, which automatically open when you launch Mike's Cards, and can be opened or closed from the "File" menu.
This document will explain some of the features to expect, answer a few possible questions, and guide you on some of the more advanced capabilities.
Here are a list of common terms used in solitaire games. and basic defintions:
ΓÇó Tableau - the main playing area where cards are built into piles
ΓÇó Foundations - the ultimate destination for all cards to win the game - usually four piles, sometimes eight piles in two-pack games - usually built from ace to king
ΓÇó Stock - the remaining cards after the intial deal - cards are usually flipped face up from here for play when there are no other plays available
ΓÇó Waste - the discard pile - this is usually where cards turned up from the stock are played, and where they remain if they can't be played elsewhere
ΓÇó Reserve - extra cards or placeholders for temporary placement of cards - utilized for added dimension to the game and the strategy
ΓÇó Rank - the number or value of a card - ace through king
ΓÇó Suit - the family that the rank belongs to - heart, spade, diamond, and club
ΓÇó Base Rank - the rank of the first foundation card, usually the ace
ΓÇó Anti-Base Rank - the rank of the last foundation card, usually the king
ΓÇó Pile - a stack or spread of overlapping cards - one unit of an entire section of cards (eg: the tableau might consist of seven piles)
ΓÇó Play - the process of moving a card from one location to another - eg: play a card from the tableau to the foundations
ΓÇó Build - the process of adding cards to a pile - usually with set conditions, such as one lower in rank and an opposite suit color
ΓÇó Wrap - most builds move up or down and end at a king or an ace - if the build "wraps", then you can build past the king back to ace and/or past the ace back to king
ΓÇó Sequence - a pile or portion of a pile of cards that are built in the proper building order
ΓÇó Redeal - the process of returning unplayed cards back to the stock to be played again
ΓÇó Reshuffle - the same as redeal, except that the cards are shuffled into a random order
ΓÇó Hold the shift key to highlight cards that can be played.
ΓÇó Utilize the shift key a lot when learning to play new games.
ΓÇó Methods to move cards:
- click and drag to the destination
- click and "throw" towards the destination
- click and release to auto-play to a logical destination
ΓÇó Even though a card can not be played, click on it and drag it away if you wish to get a better look at what is underneath that card. The card(s) will return to where they were once you release the mouse button.
ΓÇó You can click in the lower/right corner of the play window to resize it. There is no window resize control drawn there because it would overlap the card game.
You can easily add your own graphics and sounds for use within Mike's Cards. The process merely requires moving image and sound files into folders found in within the Mike's Cards folder. You can add as many as you wish. They will all be selectable from the Mike's Cards menus.
Acceptable image file formats:
JPEG
PICT
TIFF
Photoshop
QuickTime Movie *
* QuickTime movies will actually play as card backs, but will only use the poster frame as a still image for everything else. With a QuickTime movie playing in all of the card backs, you may wish to turn off the trails, and maybe even the shadows to get a liitle more speed. Too many cool things all at once may slow down some computers a bit.
Acceptable sound file formats:
System 7 (also known as 'sfil' and sound resource)
Here is the structure of the graphic and sound folders.
The "ƒ" symbol denotes a folder.
ƒ Images
ƒ Backgrounds
<place background image files here>
ƒ Card Backs
<place card back image files here>
ƒ Card Faces
ƒ <folder containing one full set of card face images>
<place a full set of card face image files here>
ƒ Suits
ƒ <folder containing one full set of suit images>
<place a full set of suit image files here>
ƒ Sounds
ƒ Card Flip
<place card flip sound files here>
ƒ Card Move
<place card move sound files here>
ƒ Game Lose
<place game lose sound files here>
ƒ Game Win
<place game win sound files here>
ƒ Shuffle
<place shuffle sound files here>
From the Finder, you can insert any additional folders within the hierarchy that you wish. They will also appear in the menus within Mike's Cards. Here's an example to add a folder named "Funny Farm" within the sounds for losing a game:
Each folder name within the "Card Faces" folder represents the name of a full set of card faces. Those folder names can be anything you choose. For example, you could add a folder named "Animals", and fill it with pictures of animals.
The images within a "Card Faces" folder do not need to follow a naming convention. Images will be chosen at random for each card face. You should have at least 52 image files to avoid different cards from recieving the same image. You may have more than 52 image files, and 52 will be chosen at random, different each time the cards are created.
Don't worry about different sizes of images. Mike's cards will automatically scale and crop each image to suitably fill each card face.
Don't worry about displaying the card rank and suit on the images. Mike's Cards will automatically add those. It will also fade the corners to make the rank and suit more visible, and add a thin black frame around the card.
Yes, it's really that simple. Just create a folder of image files, and that's it! Mike's Cards takes care of the rest!
If you wish for each card face to recieve a specific image file, a file naming convention can be used. Each file name must be the card number, followed by the first letter of the suit name. Here are some examples:
6D - six of diamonds
AH - ace of hearts
10C - ten of clubs
KS - king of spades
QC - queen of clubs
Of course if you create a nice collection of specific card face images, odds are that these images already contain the graphics for the rank and suit in the corners. There are conventions to inform Mike's Cards of features already addressed within a set of card face images. You simply need to add additional files to the folder of images with specific file names. It does not matter what kind of file, as it is the file name that matters. An empty text file works fine.
Here are the file names you can use, and what each indicates:
_Numbers - do not add the rank (number) to the corners
_Suits - do not add the suit images to the corners
_Corners - do not fade the corners
_Border - do not add the black frames
_Size - do not scale or crop the images
A set of cards faces may also include its own custom card back image. If you have a card back you wish used with a set of card faces, name the card back image file "_cardback", and place it within the same folder as the card faces folder that it is to be used with.
You can also include an image named "_about" that will be displayed when the cards are selected. This is where you can display the credits for the cards. You can create successive images by naming them "_about2", "_about3", etc.
Each folder within the "Suits" folder must contain four uniquely named image files. The names of these four image files are "Heart", "Spade", "Diamond", "Club", and each is an image of what the file name represents.
All white areas around the outside of these images will be transparent. Enclosed areas of white inside of the outer edge of the image will remain white, and not become transparent. For example, if you used an image of a doughnut on a white background, the outside of the doughnut will be transparent, but the hole in the middle will be solid white.
For a more advanced mask (a mask defines the transparent area), you can include a file with the name of "_Antialias" within the folder of suit images. It does not matter what kind of file, as it is the file name that matters. An empty text file works fine.
With this file name present, each pixel within each image is not only a color, but a representation of its own opacity. What this basically does is it uses the shade of each pixel as an opacity value, then draw the pixel without its shade, but instead transluscent, using the shade as an opacity value.
For example, you could create a red "Heart" image against a white background. The edges of the heart are antialiased (softened, or feathered). This means that there are light red pixels around the edges. Rather than drawing light red pixels, transluscent red pixels will be drawn. The lighter the shade of red, the more transluscent the pixel becomes.
This allows the suit image to be placed more naturally over top of other images, such as the card face images.
With well over 100 games, Mike's Cards will continue to bring you new entertainment for quite a long time. If you're brave, you may try to make your own game, using "Edit Game" in the "File" menu. You may just play around, and make some really silly changes to existing games, but what matters is that you have fun! If you do make a good original new game, you can save it and even give it to friends (They do have Mike's Cards also, don't they?!).
The user interface to make your own games might be a little overwhelming at first, but with some experience in the typical terms and play options, and some practice just playing around with it, it should become a fairly easy experience.
The interface is intelligently divided into the six main categories of game elements, with each of those divided into the four main factors affecting game play. There are two sets of folder tabs along the top of the interface to select the main set and subset that you wish to edit. These tabs make it easy to quickly get to the controls for any specific gameplay element.
While in edit game mode, the cards will display in the gameplay window as usual, except in a kind of wireframe mode. The key purpose of the display here is not graphics, but card placement. You can actually click and drag card piles here to place them wherever you wish. If you hold the options key when you click to move a card pile, all card piles that follow the one you clicked will move also. For example, if you are editting a tableau consisting of seven piles, and you option-click the third pile, you will also move piles four through to seven. This little tip can make layout creation a fair bit quicker.
When positioning a pile, you may wish to specify an offset from the bottom and/or right edge of the game window, rather than an offset from the top and/or left. A pile position with a negative value will accomplish this. If you set a pile position by clicking and dragging it in the play window, then you can drag the pile off of the top and/or left edge to make the pile wrap to the opposite edge, where it will convert to a negative value.
Each pile also has it own little mini control panel, with a few tools to quickly increase/decrease the number of cards in the pile, and the number that are dealt face up, as well as the spread direction of the pile. The little option key trick mentioned above also works for these tools.
Once you're done making changes, or even as you're still working on them, you can instantly try playing the game by simply closing the Edit Game interface window. You can return to the "Edit Game" interface at any time to continue making and tweeking changes. Once you're happy with everything, simple click the "Save As" button in the general controls to save your game to disk, to become a permanent part of the game collection. Use the "Save" button rather than "Save As" only if you wish to over-write the existing game (eg: you made a change to a game you already created). Now here's a real bonus: once you save the game, the rules that display in the Rules window will automatically be created for you! Now is that cool or what!
Also, rather than making brand new games, you may wish to just make a slight variation of another game. For example, you can edit Klondike, and change the "Tableau/Building" so that you build onto the tableau by matching suits rather than by alternating suit color. One small quick change, then save it as "Bob's Klondike", or whatever you wish. Maybe you'll move the tableau piles down and have them spread up instead of down, just to be different. Maybe you'll allow cards to be be played (picked up) from the foundations, just to make the game easier to win. There's a whole ton of fun possible!
Each game is its own file. While some are complete and independent game files, most were created from the built-in interface for creating your own games. All of these files use the "Generic" game file during execution. The "Generic" game file is the actual game code for all of these games, and the game files that use it merely hold the data that was defined in the interface for making your own games.
The "Generic" game does not come with any rules, as it is a base for other games, and not an official game in itself, so this means that the "Rules" window will be blank if you select this game.
If you wish, you can select and play the "Generic" game. It is a simple and basic game, based somewhat on the rules for "Klondike". It is not typically used as a playable game. It is a good base to begin creating your own game. Simply select the "Generic" game and select "Edit Game" from the "File" menu. You can also edit any game that was created in this manner.
Though you may never create your own games, the "Generic" game file must remain present in order for most of the other game files to work. Do not remove the "Generic" game file, or you will render over 100 other games useless!!!
As explained above, most of the games were created with the built-in interface to create your own games. However, a small number of games are complete and independent, such as "Montana". These games were beyond the abilities of the built-in interface, so they were created independently, and can't be editted.
