As a general rule in Solitile 3, any pop-up menu may be escaped from
by pressing the ESC key or by clicking the RIGHT BUTTON.
VI. GAME MENU ITEMS
Menu options available (and keystroke to activate them if you don’t
have a mouse) while playing the game are:
(M) MENU This activates the MAIN MENU. See Section VII.
(P) PAIRS This searches for any possible matching pairs and tells
you how many are available. Similar to clicking the
RIGHT BUTTON with no tiles selected, except that it
only tells you the number of matches available WITHOUT
showing you the matches.
(U) UNDO This, uh…, un-does your previous moves (it replaces
removed pairs in reverse order) letting you back up.
(R) RETRY This re-starts the current game (same layout, same
board number) from the beginning. Use this when you
get stuck but want to give it another shot.
(D) DOS This will attempt to “spawn” a copy of COMMAND.COM,
without exiting the game. This allows you to get to
the DOS COMMAND prompt without terminating your game.
Possible reasons that it might not work is if you have
insufficient memory to load the COMMAND interpreter on
top of SOLITILE, or if the file COMMAND.COM can’t be
found by SOLITILE on your path. Once you’ve gone to
the DOS prompt this way, you must issue the EXIT
command to return to your SOLITILE game.
(B) BOARD This allows you to select a new board number. Options
provided are:
(N) NEXT increments the board number
(R) RANDOM selects a random board number
(S) Specify allows you to specify the board
(L) LAYOUT Brings up the FILE SELECTION MENU (see Section VIII)
and allows you to select a new LAYOUT file. The
selected layout will become the new default layout for
the current player. All LAYOUT files have a file
extension of .LYT.
(T) TILESET Brings up the FILE SELECTION MENU (see Section VIII)
and allows you to select a new TILESET file. The
selected layout will become the new default tileset for
the current player. All TILESET files have a file
extension of .STL (Solitile style tilesets) or .TIL
(Mahjongg style tilesets). The Tileset File Selection
Menu does not automatically terminate, but rather it
displays the selected tile set for your inspection, and
allows you to select another or EXIT, accepting the
displayed one. This allows you to “browse” through the
various tilesets that you may have available to you.
( ) player name In the top center of the main game display is a box
containing the current player’s name. This box may be
clicked upon with the mouse for a quick access to the
Player Setup Menu (see section IX). There is no key-
stroke for quick access to this menu. From the key-
board, you must first bring up the Main Menu (with the
M key), then select the Player Setup Menu.
VII. THE MAIN MENU
In the top portion of the MAIN Menu, there are these options:
(G) GAME This returns you to Main Game Display, where you may
continue playing your game.
(H) HELP Displays the Help screens, which explain the basic
game playing information.
(S) SAVE GAME Saves the current game into a file with the current
player’s name and an extension of .SAV.
(R) RESTORE GAME Restores the current player’s previously SAVEd game.
(P) PLAYER SETUP Brings up the Player Setup Menu (see Section IX).
(E) EDITORS Brings up the Editors Menu (see Section X).
(Q) QUIT TO DOS Exits the program.
In the bottom portion of the MAIN Menu is information regarding the
current player’s performance with the current Layout. It shows the
player’s name, the current Layout name, and a window containing the
list of Board numbers that the player has solved on the current Layout.
Not all solved board numbers may fit in the window so scroll buttons
are provided for use with a mouse, and the cursor keys and PgUp/PgDn
keys may be used from the keyboard to scroll the list up/down.
VIII. THE FILE SELECTION MENU
The FILE SELECTION Menu is used at a number of different places in the
game, to select the player, layout, tileset, music, and GIF files. In
all situations, the FILE SELECTION Menu works the same. It provides a
list of all SUB-DIRECTORIES, followed by a list of all available files
with the appropriate file extension. These file extensions are:
.PLY player files
.LYT layout files
.STL Solitile tile set files
.TIL Nels Anderson’s Mahjongg tile set files
.MUS music files for Theme and Win music
.GIF picture files for background picture
From the keyboard, files or sub-directories may be chosen by using the
cursor and PgUp/PgDn keys to highlight the desired item, then pressing
the Enter (Return) key. In this way, you can navigate up and down the
sub-directory tree, as well as load the desired file. The current
PATH is always displayed immediately above the “files” window. With
a mouse, the sub-directory or file may be selected by pointing at it
with the mouse cursor and double-clicking the LEFT BUTTON. (If your
double click is not quite quick enough, all that will happen is that
the item you pointed to will become highlighted.) With the mouse you
can also scroll the window and highlighted item up/down by clicking
with the LEFT BUTTON upon the:
DOUBLE UP ARROWS — page up
SINGLE UP ARROW — move highlight bar up/scroll up
SINGLE DOWN ARROW — move highlight bar down/scroll down
DOUBLE DOWN ARROW — page down
Other items that are available on the FILE SELECTION Menu are:
(L) LOAD —– Loads the currently highlighted item.
(E) EXIT Exits the FILE SELECTION Menu
(R) RENAME Lets you Rename the currently highlight item.
(C) Copy Copies the currently highlighted item to another file.
(D) DELETE Lets you Delete the currently highlighted file.
IX. THE PLAYER SETUP MENU
Each player may configure the game to his or her own preferred setup.
This setup is then stored in the player’s .PLY file, along with all of
the solved board numbers for each layout that the player has tried.
The current player’s name is stored in the file SOLITILE.CFG. That
name is then used to access the .PLY file for that player. The current
player may be selected/changed from the PLAYER SETUP Menu:
(P) PLAYER allows you to select or add a player.
(E) EXIT exits the Player Setup Menu
(G) GIF FILE lets you specify the .GIF file to be used as a back-
ground for the current player.
(T) THEME toggles the Theme music on and off. If done from the
keyboard with the T key, also allows selection of the
THEME music file.
(R) REMOVE TILES toggles on and off the sound for removing tiles
(U) UNDO toggles on and off the sound for undo-ing.
(N) NO MOVES toggles on and off the sound for NO-MORE-MOVES
(W) WIN toggles the Win music on/off. From the keyboard with
the W key, also allows selection of the WIN music file.
(B) BLINK toggles on/off “blinking tiles”. When on, then during
game play, selected tiles will “blink”, alternately
showing the tile beneath them and themselves as a neg-
ative image. This may be considered cheating by some,
so when BLINK is enabled, you’ll be unable to select a
tile unless it has a removable matching tile available.
(V) VERIFY toggles on and off “verify tiles”. When on, Solitile 3
will play much as previous versions of Solitile, where
you first clicked on one tile to select it, then click-
ed on a second tile to select it, then clicked a third
time to remove those two selected tiles. With VERIFY
off, the selected tiles will be removed automatically
as soon as the second one is selected. However, when
first selecting one tile, then using the RIGHT BUTTON
to locate/highlight the second, a verifying click of
the LEFT BUTTON is still required, as the computer’s
selected match may not be the one that you had in mind.
(H) Hide GIF toggles on and off displaying of .GIF file.
When using a mouse, you may also click upon the items listed at the
bottom of the PLAYER SETUP Menu:
Player The current player’s name
GIF The current player’s background picture file name.
Theme The file name for the current player’s Theme music,
which gets played when the game first starts up (if the
THEME sound is enabled).
Win The file name for the current player’s Win music,
which gets played when a board is solved (if the WIN
sound is enabled).
Besides the “solved board numbers” and the above items, the additional
things that are kept in the player’s .PLY file are:
the player’s current LAYOUT (selected from main game display)
the player’s current TILESET (selected from main game display)
the player’s FRAME PATTERNS (created in the Frame Editor)
the player’s BACKGROUND PATTERN (created in Background Editor)
X. THE EDITORS MENU
The EDITORS Menu gives you access to the several “editors” available
with Solitile 3:
(L) LAYOUT Modify existing layouts or create new ones of your
own. (See Section XI.)
(T) TILES Modify existing tilesets or create new ones of your
own. (See Section XII.)
(F) FRAME PATTERNS allows the player to change the eight patterns used
to draw the frame (or border) around the edge of the
main game display. Any changes made to these patterns
are reflected in the player’s .PLY setup file.
(B) BACKGROUND PATTERN allows the player to change the background
pattern which is drawn on the display before the GIF
image is drawn. Any changes made to this pattern is
reflected in the player’s .PLY setup file.
(E) EXIT EDITORS returns you to the MAIN Menu.
The TILES, FRAME, and BACKGROUND editors use a common bitmap editor,
with some differences and embellishments. The rest of this section
describes those portions of the bitmap editor that are common to all
three editors.
The bitmap editor four primary areas:
The color palette
The menu
The zoom/pixel edit area
The item selection area
The item selection area is different for each area and is discussed
in the appropriate section. The “cursor” may be moved from one area
to another from the keyboard by using these keys:
(F1) moves the cursor to the COLOR palette area
(F2) moves the cursor to the ZOOM area
(F3) moves the cursor to the item selection area
In the top-left corner is the color palette of 16 colors. The current
pen-color is outlined with a white-square. The current color may be
selected by clicking the LEFT mouse button on the desired color square,
or by first moving the “cursor” to the color palette area with the F1
key, and then using the cursor keys to select the desired color.
In the center of the display is the ZOOM area. This displays an
enlarged image of the item currently being edited. Many operations are
possible upon this area, as discussed below.
Down the left side of the display is the MENU area, the individual
items of which are discussed in detail below. However, each MENU item
may be activated by either pressing the key corresponding to the first
letter of the item, or by clicking the LEFT mouse button once upon the
item.
Between the MENU and the ZOOM is the:
Work Image — the life-sized image of the item currently being
edited in the ZOOM area.
Shifter — This allows you to shift the entire Work Image, or
that portion of it that’s been marked, left, right, up,
or down. See below for how to mark an area.
ScratBuf — This is a temporary buffer to which you may copy
all or the marked portion of the Work Image, either as
a means of saving a copy while you experiment, or so
that you can “paste” it back into the Work Image at
another place. See below for how to mark an area.
There are 4 basic types of “drawing” that may be done upon the ZOOM
area: POINT, LINE, RECTANGLE, and OVAL. One of these is always
selected, as is indicated by the blue highlight on the menu. The
currently highlighted drawing method will determine exactly what will
happen when you press the LEFT or RIGHT BUTTONs while on the ZOOM area.
POINT: If the LEFT mouse button is pressed and released while holding
the mouse still, a single pixel will be set to the currently
selected color. If the LEFT mouse button is pressed and
held down while the mouse is moved, all pixels over which the
mouse cursor passes will be set to the current color. From
the keyboard, you press and release the HOME key once to
simulate the pressing of LEFT mouse button. This causes the
program to enter “drawing” mode. You must then press and
release the HOME key a second time in order to exit “drawing”
mode, or to simulate the releasing of the LEFT mouse button.
While in drawing mode, the cursor keys will move the drawing
cursor (a pencil) about on the zoom area.
LINE: Line drawing is VERY similar to Point