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Hoster Instructions

The Game

     Discover Atlantis is based on Microsoft's popular Minesweeper game, and my previous Street Sweeper hoster. Hidden in the grid are dangers and prizes. The only difference is that numbers are NOT used in this version on the game.

Scoring Points

     As you search the grid, you receive 10 points for any artifact or prize you uncover.  If you uncover Atlantean Pottery, that prize is yours to keep.  If you uncover something dangerous, you loose 2 points from your score.
 

Setting Up A Game

     To set up a game, you must first create a game map.  Three are already included with the hoster.

     Each grid location consists of two text boxes. The first text box is where you store an asterisk (*) to indicate a "dangerous" item.  The second box indicates whether or not there is a prize or artifact hidden in the box as well.   To assign a prize to a barrel, double-click the 2nd textbox in the barrel location, enter the prize name, and click OK.  The box will light up green with the letter P to indicate there is a prize hidden in that barrel location.   You can place a prize in any barrel location, even if that location includes a bomb. Usually you wouldn't, but you can.

     Once you are done working on the map, click OK. The map is only saved in the hoster's memory at this point. You MUST save the map file to disk in order to save your changes!

 Starting A Game

     When you first run the game hoster program, the window will begin to draw and then freeze for a few seconds.  This is normal. The hoster is trying to automatically detect who you are to configure the host setting. You MUST NOT BE GHOSTED when starting or using the hoster. After a few seconds, the hoster window will appear. It should inform you in the status window that it has identified you as the host. If it wasn't able to identify you, then you can manually enter your name under Setup --> Host.

     1. Select  File --> Load Map.  Select a map file.

     2. Select Game --> Start Game

     3. Select Game --> Activate Game.

     Registrations will now be enabled.  You can either leave them on throughout the entire game, or you can close them by clicking on the REG button.

     You are now ready to play!  Click the Sweep button to start playing. The first player will be called down both on screen, and via ESP. At that time, you should click the Show Board button to send the game board to the screen. They must ESP the game host the barrel row and location they wish to choose. Depending on how you configured the hoster, it will either call the results out to the screen, to the co-host, or to no one at all. To choose the next player, click the Sweep button.

     If desired, during the game you can raffle off prizes as well.  Under the Game menu is a name caller, in addition to a box chooser. There is no need for players to re-register for the raffle. The name caller uses the player list from players who have already registered to play the game. When running the raffle, the game is automatically paused.  To unpause the game, select Game --> Unpause.  While the game is paused, any commands sent to the hoster will not be processed.

     When you are ready to end the game, click the End Game button.  You will be asked to confirm if you really want to end the game. Select Yes.  The first place player is announced, along with any prizes (if any) that they've found.  You must click the End Game button each time you want the hoster to announce the next player's standings.  This is done so you can announce one player at a time, find the prizes in your pockets, and deliver them to the player.  Of course, you can also give the prizes to the players as they win them during the game as well.  When every player has been listed, you will see "Thank you for playing!". That's it, the game is over!

Things To Keep In Mind

     If you have ever used a game hoster before, you have probably seen that you usually have to click a button each time you want the text on the screen processed.  The reason why that is done is because trying to process the incoming text too often (GetAllText) can cause the game hoster to freeze, especially if the hoster is printing text to the screen at the same time. This is actually a limitation of the VZones client, and not the game hoster program.   Being that I like my hoster programs to be automatic, I have tried my best to program the hoster in a way that will make it automatically capture text without intervention from the game host, without crashing the game. If for some reason the hoster does hang or crash during a game, don't worry!  There is an autosave file which is saved every time a person's score is changed.  To recover a previous game you must:

     1. Re-load the game hoster

     2. Load the game map

     3. Load the saved game file

     4. Continue from where you left off.

Note: Don't start a new game, if you do, the autosave file will be over-written and you will loose the game data!  Also, there are logs saved to the hard drive which include a text log, status log, and score log. If you have any problems with the hoster, contact me in-world  at Heronymous, or email me at keith@keithelkin.com.

Some features that I'll eventually be implementing:

     Make Random Gameboards

     Timeout setting to skip a player's turn if they don't respond in time

     The ability to remove, and really remove, a player from the game

Player Instructions

To make it easier to play the game, you should resize your window to make the TEXT area larger.  Do not "maximize" the window, as you will only increase the graphics area while keeping the text area small.  Instead, you must "restore down" the window, then stretch the window so the text area grows larger. Be careful not to stretch it too much, otherwise the you will wind up with the same results as if you maximized the window.

The window should have a LARGE text area and a SMALL graphics area, and look like this:

and NOT this

Except where indicated, all contents included on this site is copyrighted (C) 2003 by  Keith Elkin.com and may not be reproduced in part or in whole without permission. Q-Link, PC-Link, AOL, Habitat, and Club Caribe are registered service marks of America Online, Inc. We are in no way affiliated with America Online, Inc.  Comments, questions, suggestions?  Send email to keith@keithelkin.com.