You're going to get a lot more than $3.00 worth of fun out of Hedges. Go ahead! Send in the registration fee. Making shareware is what I do instead of flipping burgers ar Macdonalds. Believe me, I'm a heck of a lot better at programming! (I'll probably regret that last line if any bugs are found.)
By the way, I have several other games and puzzles. Everything is on GEnie, and will soon be on CompuServe. If you want to save downloading costs, though, send me three more dollars. I'll mail you a diskful of my stuff.
The object of Hedges is to get the ball from the lower, lefthand corner of the window to the upper, righthand corner. The problem is that there are a lot of things in the way. To finish, you have to maneuver your way around brick walls and hedges.
The ball always travels in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, ricocheting off the obstacles. Left to its own devices, it will eventually be going in little circles. The only way you have to get it where you want it is to reverse its direction of travel. To do this, either press Command-R or click anywhere in the Hedges window. Your score is simply the number of reverses you had to make to get to the finish. Obviously, you're looking for a low score. The lower, the better.
Hedges stores the names and scores of the best scorers in the three speed categories. You can see them by choosing "Records…" from the menu. I think the rest of the menu will explain itself. (I'm trying to keep this short to save on downloading time. If you need more help, either write, or leave me a message on GEnie [M.SPEIR] or CompuServe [70431,2231].)
Desk accessory arcade games are uncommon. Arcade games require a lot of processing time. DAs are at the calling application's mercy for their processing time. Even so, Hedges seems to work well. Just keep a few things in mind:
1. It will run faster under less greedy applications. Speed affects score. Hedges is abominably slow under the Finder.
2. Some INITs also hog a lot of processing time. You might want to shut those off while playing Hedges.
3. There may be more flicker with some applications than others, If any of you programmers out there are smarter than me (One at a time, please!), tell me how I can fix that.
Hedges was written in TML Pascal II. I'm sure you'll like it. (I did mention the registration fee, didn't I? You won't forget, will you?) By all means, pass Hedges along to other honest people (like yourself) who might enjoy it! Just don't change anything! Please, please, please tell me if you have any trouble with it!
If there's enough interest (I do mean $$$!), I'm thinking about making a stand-alone version. Multiple balls would be interesting.
My address is
Michael D. Speir
P.O. Box 6835
Tampa, FL 33608-6835
(The P.O. box isn't a cop-out. My regular address is a military box. I can't use it for "business.")
