THE GAME OF EUCHRE FOR SLURPS: The game of euchre for slurps is an adaptation of the card game euchre. It is modeled after the way my friends and I used to play. And when you come to my house to play you had better learn the house rules. We have extracted the essence of the word euchre and applied it to the game it portrays. The dictionary defines the word EUCHRE meaning to cheat or to deceive, and thats exactly how this game is played. Not to worry for the computer has no advantage in this cheating arena. I have added a few twists to the program in an effort to make it more interesting. The first area is in chosing a partner and your opponets (as in life) they play at different skill levels. A player with an experience rating less than 4 is easily deceived and will play poor euchre. In the range of 5 to 7 the play improves and are not so easily duped. Above this the play is difficult. I designed the program and know the 5 W's and the computer is still able to deceive me. So type in euchre and see what mean. THE START OF THE GAME: At the start of the game you will be asked to select you partner and opponets. The player are stored in a file called euchre.ply. You can enter your friends name in this fileup to 20 players. This file must be in the current directory for the program to run. You will then be asked to enter the required information about. This is to let the other players know who they are about to clobber. THE HOUSE RULES OF THE GAME: Dealing - for the first hand the dealer is chosen at random. It then proceeds clockwise therefrom at the end of each hand. The dealer is designated by the location of the cards during the deal. At the end of the deal a card is placed upward and this is where the bidding starts. In the actual card game the cards are placed in any combination of 1 to 4 cards on 2 sucessive deals. This was not practical for this version Bidding - The bidding starts with the person to the left of the dealer. The first rotation of the bid is for the suit of the up card only. So if the queen of spades is the up card then everyone is bidding on spades to be trump. Trump is called by by ordering the dealer to pick up the card in their hand and then discarding a card at their option. If everyone elects to pass during the first round the second round commences. In this round you have the option of calling trump in any other suit (in this example hearts,diamonds,or clubs) You are not allowed to bid on the suit which was the up card. Take into account the lead always starts to the left of the dealer. During the bid any player has the option of calling a loner. When you do this your partner will not play along with you. Play- The person to the left of the dealer start play by placing any card in the pile. Thereafter, each player must play a card in the suit which was lead. if they do not have the suit then they have the option of placing a trump card or any other card in their hand. The winner of the trick then assumes the lead and play progresses in this manner until all cards are played. The person across from you is your partner and all cards are considered to be played by one team. Object of the Game : The object of the game is to call trump and take a mimimum of 3 tricks or to prevent your opponet from taking 3 tricks. Scoring: Scoring is as follows: Call trump and take 3 or 4 tricks : 1 pt. your team Call trump and take 5 tricks : 2 pts. your team Call a loner and take 3 or 4 tricks : 1 pt. your team Call a loner and take 5 tricks : 4 pts. your team Call trump and fail to take 3 tricks : 2 pts. their team Call a loner and fail to take 3 tricks : 4 pts. their team The team who first acquires a minimum of 10 pts. WINS!!!. If you get caught reneging (fail to follow suit) the other team is awarded the maximum allowable points for the call and your team receives nothing. Penalties - Penalties are as follows: if your team gets 2 pts : 1 slurp for them if you call a sucessfull loner : 1 slurp for them if they get euchred on a loner : 4 slurps for them if they get caught reneging : 1 slurp for them if they lose the game : 1 slurp add'l for them if the score is 9 to 9 : double all slurps CHEATING : Reneging : to renege is when you do not follow suit. you do this by selecting a card and confirming the question in the information box. Higher experience players with catch you more often than less experienced players. You catch your opponet reneging at the end of the hand when the checks is lit in the information box. You may also at this time request to see all the cards played during the hand and then claiming a renege. If you do not elect catch or just plain MISS!!! it your partner will take an attempt at it. If all miss the play will be considered a good play and no penalty is given out. Stealing the deal : Each player may attempt only one steal of the deal during each game. You attempt to steal the deal at the end of the hand during the check section. You can catch someone stealing the deal by pressing any key during the deal and entering the correct players deal. If you do not catch the stealer then your partner may catch him. So watch out. Stealing the score : Each player may attempt only one steal of the score during each game. You do this at the end of the hand during the checks section. Just enter the score you want it to be. You can catch someone stealing the score by pressing any key when prompted and entering the correct score. If you fail to enter the correct score then the score which was mentioned is used. If you do not catch a score steal your partner will attempt to catch it. SLURPING : Each computer player will do a slurp as required by the rules. Each slurp has a detrimental effect on the player. Their ability to play good euchre and deception is reduced with each slurp. The ultimate goal is to get your opponets to the state where they are no longer able to play euchre at all. You can end the game by entering Q at the end of an entire hand or by pressing control-break simultaneously. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS : The program requires a minimum of 256k memory, Appropiate graphics drivers called CGA.BGI or EGA/VGA.BGI on the current drive and cga,ega,or vga. If you have an ATT, IBM8514 or PC3270 graphic cards you will need an appropiate graphics driver which is not supplied with this package. These drivers are located in my compuserve file and are available to you. CUSTOMIZING EUCHRE FOR SLURPS : The first line of the file euchre.ply contains playing information. The first entry contains a check to see if an unsupported mode of your cga adapter will display red. If you have a cga adapter which does not use this mode then change this value to false and magenta will be displayed instead of red. This field is only 5 characters long. The second item is to see if you want to include slurping to the game. If you select true then slurping will be added. This field is also 5 characters long. The third item in the field is the amount of time that elapses between the computer playing a card (in 1/1000 of a second). The fourth item in the field is the amount of time the bids are displayed. the fifth item in the field is the amount of time which elapses between then dealing of the cards. Change any of these values to your particular desires. IMPORTANT NOTE : IF YOU ELECT TO CHANGE THE RED AND SLURPING CHARACTERS THEN MAKE SURE YOU USE lowercase LETTERS AND DO NOT EXCEED THE STRING LENGTH. I.E. CORRECT true true 3000 4000 200 falsefalse 3000 5000 400 true false 4000 4000 200 falsetrue 3000 6000 100 INCORRECT {will result in a runtime error} false false 3000 6000 100 the last letter e in the second false exceeds the 10th position INCORRECT {will not work} True false 3000 4000 200 the letter t in the true is not lowercase truefalse 3000 4000 2000 the first string is read as truef and the second is read as alse falsetrue3000 300 400 the second string is read true3 and playtime is read as 000 the only requirements on the numbers is a space separates them