KiwiCroquet (v2.0) KiwiCroquet (KC) is a computer simulation of the game of croquet for "IBM" PCs running Windows 95 or 98. It is available for free from the internet site http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/rrobinso The present version (2.0) differs from the previous one mainly in having the option of computer opponents. KC is an on going "spare time" project and I expect there are bugs in the current version (in fact I know of some), but because I am not selling it I accept no obligation to fix them. And the programme comes without any guarantee of any sort. Use at your own risk! That said, I hope there are few, if any, bugs that will crash the system; hopefully the programme will politely inform you of a problem and exit gracefully! While KC is free, it is copyrighted; please don't alter or de-compile the programme or associated disk files. You can distribute copies of KC via the KCSetUp.exe file. If you download KC, please send me an email message (r.robinson@gns.cri.nz) so I can judge how much interest there is and let you know of any new versions. The required computer resources are: Operating System: Windows 95 or later; KC will not run under DOS. I have not tried KC on a Windows NT system but it should work Ok as long as you have the relevant installation permissions. CPU: Pentium (or equivalent), 120 MHz or faster (probably some slower machines are OK). Disk Space: About 4 MBytes; some Visual Basic components may already be present. Mouse. Screen Resolution: 800 x 600 or larger. Display Colours: 256 colours or better. Sound Card: any recognized by Windows. CDRom Drive: only required if you want background music from a CD. Note that it is recommended that no other programmes be running, or the ball movement may be jerky. Installation: When you download KiwiCroquet you get one big "KCSetup.exe" file. This is a self extracting, compressed and concatenated collection of many separate files. When you download it, place it in some temporary directory. Then "run" it. I recommend that you accept the default installation directory (C:\Program Files\KiwiCroquet), but you can change it if necessary. After installation you can delete "KCSetup.exe". IMPORTANT: Do not delete files like kc1.wav or kc.dat from the game directory! To play the game, just run KiwiCroquet.exe. You may want to create a desktop short-cut for it. If so, there is an appropriate icon in the installation directory ("KiwiCroquet.ico"). The file "KiwiCroquet.txt" explains how to play. This file can be displayed from within the game using the "Help" menu. If the Windows Taskbar (along the bottom of the screen) is present, you may want to disable its "Always on top" feature using the Windows Start, Settings, and Taskbar menus. It will then not be visible when KiwiCroquet is running. Possible Problems: If ball movement is too slow, even at the fastest setting, there is nothing you can do except: 1) be sure no other programmes are running; 2) turn off the music; 3) buy a faster machine. The slowest machine on which I have tested KiwiCroquet had a CPU speed of 120 MHz, and that was OK: probably somewhat slower machines would be OK too, since the ball speed setting was far from maximum. On start-up KiwiCroquet tests your machine for four things: 1) A screen resolution of at least 800x600. Smaller screens will display only part of the lawn, making the game unplayable and KC will refuse to continue. Solution: change to 800 x 600 (Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings and adjust the "screen area"). 2) A display colours setting of 256 or more. You can continue to play but some things will look odd. Solution: change to 256 colour mode (Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display/ Settings and select the 256 colour mode). 3) The presence of the required font. This is the very common MS Serif font, a part of any normal Windows installation. Still, some people may have deleted it. You can continue and Windows will use the nearest equivalent but text may look odd. Solution: install MS Serif from your Windows CD. 4) "Normal Fonts". If your display is set to the "Large Fonts" option, the lawn will look very funny because Windows will try to enlarge components containing text. Solution: change to Normal Fonts (Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings/Advanced and select "normal". Known Problems: 1) In this version (2.0) the aiming line is allowed to pass over obstacles. 2) Detection of wired balls is a bit rough. 3) See comments below. One person has pointed out that in one playing situation KC does not follow the rules. See if you can find it! It should be fixed in the next version. Some Comments: A word on the scale of the lawn. You will note that the yard lines are quite a bit wider, in proportion to the lawn size, than in real life. The balls are bigger too. The balls are bigger because they would be almost invisible if properly scaled. The yard lines reflect the ball size. Because of the ball size and the method of "aiming" it is possible to make hoops from distances that in real life would be nearly impossible. The computer opponents in KC v2.0 are not very smart. This is only the first go at this aspect of KC and it should improve in future versions. Of the three opponents only Peter Percent actually tries to set up breaks; this is hard for a computer and he often fails. Remember that Col. Blastum has supreme confidence in his ability, even with a high handicap, so some of his shots may not make sense to you. Because of Aunt Emma's style of play she has been given extra skill in some shots. At a handicap of -3 (the lowest) it is interesting to watch Col. Blastum do two ball breaks! About Music: Background music, if turned on, can be from either of two sources: Midi music files (files with a ".mid" extension) or standard music CDs. You select this from a menu. At start-up the programme looks for Midi music files in the installation directory and begins to play them in random order. If there are none, there is no music. So you should put your favourite Midi files into the installation directory. The name of the midi file being played appears in the Music/Midi menu. Some Midi music files are distributed with KiwiCroquet but you will probably want to replace these with your own favourites. Many Midi files are available over the internet. Of course, to play music from a CD you need a CDROM reader, and a music CD in it. If you select this source of music, a standard button bar appears in the lower-right area of the screen. Use this to start/stop, change tracks, eject, etc. If the TaskBar is visible, it may partially obscure this control. See above for how to get rid of it. Cheers, and happy playing, Russell Robinson email: r.robinson@gns.cri.nz KiwiCroquet web page: http://homepages.paradise.net/rrobinso Postal address: 15 Grenfell Dr Karori Wellington New Zealand