The objective of the game is to get a high score by eliminating as many balls as possible in a single stroke. If you eliminate only two balls, you will score zero points. If you eliminate three balls, you will score one point.
The more balls you eliminate in a single mouse click the higher your score will be.
To faciliate the task of spotting the ball clusters, MacStones will animate the cluster of balls when the mouse is over them (this also indicates that if you click on the cluster, it will eliminate the balls).
The total count for each ball color and the count (if any) for the currently selected cluster are indicated in the status line at the bottom of the game window.
Eliminating all of the balls on the board will grant you an extra one thousand points.
Creating New Scenarios
Making new animation themes for MacStones is very simple. Each tile should measure forty by forty pixels. You need to provide a PICT image that contains at least 3 rows of 40 pixels each (for the three different tile colors).
Each of the three color rows can contain a variable number of frames to do your animation (this animation will be shown when the mouse cursor is over a cluster of tiles of the same color).
The color of the pixel in the top left of the image (the 0,0 pixel) will be used as the background erase color when balls are eliminated.
If your scenario filename ends in "...sync", all 3 color tiles will begin a game with the first frame in the row. Otherwise the game will start with each tile at a random frame.
To use your new scenario, drop it into the "Scenarios" folder (or create one if it doesn't exist). If your file is a PICT file, it will appear as an option in the preferences menu.
Examine some of the existing scenarios to get an idea of how to do one yourself. Have fun!
History
MacStones was ported from a Linux/Gnome games called "Same Gnome", which was ported from a Linux KDE desktop game called "Same Game" which was apparently based on a Macintosh game which I have not been able to find the name of. The Linux/Gnome version was developed by Miguel de Icaza, Frederico Mena, and Horacio Pena.
I added a few enhancements to the Linux version:
1. Counts of the three colored balls on the status
line
2. A count of the numer of currently selected balls.
3. A user preference to control the animation speed.
4. An undo command to reverse the last move
Scoring is identical to the Linux version. The algorithm
is based on the square of the number of
balls eliminated at one time - 2. Hence, eliminating
2 balls gets zero, three balls gets 1, and 10 balls
would get 64. My high score to date is 7580. I'm
sure you can beat it :-)
Craig Landrum
craigl@blueridge.com
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