The following is set up with Commodore 10 font and NLQ spacing. If, however, you choose to print it using high resolution mode, you will get to enjoy the graphics.

DiBieF (Q-Link & Genie)

73515,1631 (CIS)

Game Playing Instructions For

GeoWORDS

INTRODUCTION:

This is GeoWORDS, a word search game for Geos. This game is very similar to "Boggle", by Parker Brothers. I originally wrote this for my Vic-20, converted it to C64 and have now converted it to Geos.

This is a game for 1 to 5 players. The computer also plays every game. Each player should have a pencil and paper.

Your objective is to make words of three or more letters from the tiles in a 4 x 4 grid. The letters must connect in proper order and you may not use a letter more than once. The longer the word, the more you score.

More about the play of the game later.

START:

Load GeoWORDS either by double-clicking on the "GeoWORDS" icon or on a "Word File" icon. See "NOTES" for more information about this.

Once you have seen the title screen, click the mouse and the game "board" will appear

On the right of the screen is the letter grid. It is blank now, but will have letters during the play of the game.

At the top of the screen is the "GeoWORDS" icon. It has two functions. Most of the time, clicking it displays the credits screen. During printouts, however, it is used to stop printing.

The left side of the screen is where the Select Box and dialogue boxes will appear.

The first dialogue box asks how many players and their names. (You can add or delete players during the game, also.)

Once you have entered your players the Select Box will appear.

THE SELECT BOX:

A) Load Word List--can load a "Word File" from up to three drives (including REU). You can play the game without loading a word list. In fact, you will probably want to at first.

***HALF THE FUN OF THE GAME IS TEACHING THE COMPUTER NEW WORDS AND WATCHING IT SLOWLY START TO BEAT YOU!!!***

B) Who's Playing?--allows you to change the number of players during the game. You cannot, however, eliminate player #2 and keep player #3 unless you don't care about their scores getting wiped out.

C) Random Game 1, Random Game 2, and Do Your Own--click on any one of these to start playing. The two random games just use two different methods to select sixteen letters for the grid. See NOTES for more on this.

Do Your Own allows you to enter 16 letters of your own. You will not be allowed to enter non-letters or less than 16. Also, if you wish to enter "QU" just enter "Q". "QU" is treated as a single tile in this game.

D) Edit--allows you to edit words in a "Word File". This is a pretty primitive routine. You enter the word you wish to edit and the program finds and displays it. You then put in a new word of the SAME number of letters, no more or less. (Hit return if you wish to leave the word the same.) You can not edit out words with "q" in them. This has to do with the way the words are stored. See NOTES.

BY THE WAY...all word entries you make in this and all other word entry sections of the game should be in lower case.

E) Add--no limitations here. This is what I use to add a lot of words to the list.

F) Save--allows you to save "Word Files" to any disk. All of the files are the same size (15k) no matter how many words they contain.

G) New--CAUTION!! THIS WIPES OUT THE WORDS IN MEMORY!!

A dialogue box will alert you to this and allow you to "bail out". This command clears the memory and resets the necessary pointers to start a new file.

H) Print List--this prints out the entire list of words. If you wish to cancel printing, click on the "GeoWORDS" icon.

I) Quit Playing--you will be asked if you are sure. If you click on "Yes", you will be given an opportunity to save the current "Word File". Hit return or click "Save" if you wish to do so. Click "Cancel" if you don't. In either case, the game will end.

PLAY THE GAME:

Once you have selected one of the game modes (Random Game 1, Random Game 2, or Do Your Own) the game will start.

The letters will be revealed and the timer will start. You have three minutes. (I know you'll feel better knowing the computer can go through the 1600 words it knows as of this writing in less than two seconds.)

Each player should be finding words and writing them down. Remember that the words should be at least three letters long, the letters must connect in the proper order, and you can not use a letter more than once in any word.

Once the time is up, the computer will ring an obnoxious bell and display its first word, asking if anyone has it.

Click "YES" if one or more players has the same word. Human players should cross it off their lists.

Click "NO" if no one has it.

Click "ILLEGAL WORD" if the computer found a word that doesn't exist. (The only way this could happen is if you typed a wrong word in playing a previous game or in adding or editing words.) Clicking "ILLEGAL WORD" does NOT take the word out of the list. Use the edit mode for correcting this.

After you've seen all the computer's words, each player should read his remaining words, crossing off any words which appear on other players' lists.

When this is done, each player should enter his remaining words into the computer. The computer will then score for everyone.

THE SCORECARD:

The Scorecard is displayed at the end of each game. The points are cumulative of all games played.

At the bottom of the Scorecard you are asked if you wish to print out the game. Click "NO" if you don't. You will be returned to the main game.

If you click "YES", the following happens:

First, the GeoWORDS icon appears above the grid. This is your click-box to stop printing.

Next, the screen is dumped to your printer, showing the scorecard and the grid. This is NOT a color dump.

Next, the words the computer found will be printed. This includes all the words, even if they were found by someone else or illegal.

Finally, it prints all of the words the humans found.

When the printing is done you are returned to the Select Box to play again, edit & save files, or quit.

SORTING:

During the course of sorting words (which may take a long time) the computer might find duplicate words, usually because us humans entered a word it already knew. When it does come across a twin it will ask you for a new word. Entry rules are the same as they are for editing words, but whatever you do don't accidentally put two identical "q" words in the list!

LEARNING:

The computer learns every word you teach it, every game you play. The more you play the smarter it gets.

At first glance the 2600 word limit appears to be stingy. I promise it's not. At 1600 words I can very seldom beat the computer in one game, and in a round of ten games my score is always less than the computer's.

At 2600 words I don't think too many people can beat the computer.

The computer is supposed to find every word it knows. It will not find words that can not be made up according to the rules. Recently, however, it did miss some words that it knew and should have found. It has done this only once, and hasn't done it since, but....

WORD LIMIT:

Once you reach the computer's word limit it will not allow you to add words in the ADD routine. Also, during game play your new words will still get you points, but the computer won't learn them once it reaches its limit.

THE SUPPLIED LIST:

Words are words. The supplied list was developed as I played the game. It does contain a very few words that are considered by some to be rude, crude or obscene. But, words are words.

NOTES:

A) If you start the game by double-clicking a "Word File" icon the data will not load right away, so don't worry if the word count shows "0" at first.

B) Random Game 1 simulates the shaking of sixteen six-sided cubes in the same manner that the "Boggle" game does. It finds a "set" of six letters that hasn't been used and then selects one of the six letters. It uses each set once only.

Random Game 2 just chooses the 16 letters from the whole list of 96 letters available. In this case it never uses the same letter twice (i.e.--it can't use the letter in position 45 more than once).

C) Handling "q"--this was tricky. As far as you're concerned, anytime you enter a word with "qu" in it just do it normally. DO NOT ENTER A "Q" WITHOUT A "U" FOLLOWING IT!!! (Except in "Do Your Own") As noted, you can not edit "q" words. The game interprets all occurrences of "q" as being "qu", and hunts its words accordingly. Therefore, it stores all "qu" words as "q". For example, "quiet" would look like "qiet" to the computer, even though it will find the word correctly.

When it prints the word lists, the words with "qu" in them will print out with the "u" missing. That's life.

Just to be safe, don't enter three letter "q" words such as "quo". (However, the word quo is in the supplied list; don't try to delete it.)

Finally, the computer does score "qu" as two letters even though it is only one tile.

D) Printing the game starts with a hi-res screen dump.

The word lists are printed in ascii.

E) The colored square near the upper right corner was put in originally for me to see how fast the computer went through its word list. Blue means start. Red means stop. Yellow is displayed at all other times. I left it in for people to see how fast the computer does its thinking.

"Boggle" is a registered Trademark of Parker Brothers for their hidden word game equipment.

Much of the drive access source code was derived from routines written by Joe Buckley and William Coleman.

The cursive font used in the credits is a "FoxFont".

Most of the "Select Box" icons were adapted from a GeoPaint file by James P100.