[A86] Card game design

To: assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: [A86] Card game design
From: Appelkore@aol.com
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 21:20:56 EST
Reply-To: assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org

I'm coding my favorite card game, Asshole. I've looked at the source for 
Solytare, and some of it applies, but mostly not. Here are some issues:
 1. I need to be able to show up to 13 cards (looking at the player's hand) 
on the screen at the same time, in such a way that the player can select up 
to four of them to be played.
 2. I need to be able to show the hand size of the three, four or five AI 
players at once.
 3. I need to translate what I know about in-game decision-making into a 
reasonably good AI (without using C). This is an issue for later, though.
 4. I need to implement either a mouse system (like Solytare or FreeCell) or 
an arrow-keys selection method. This shouldn't be too hard.
 5. I would really like to make this game more like FreeCell than Solytare: 
the gameplay seems to suggest clicking on the card(s), then clicking where it 
should go, rather than dragging the card(s), as the latter method complicates 
the movement of multiple nonconsecutive cards.
 6. I need to know that I'm not operating under false assumptions or doing 
anything really stupid in terms of the code I have so far.

This is the card system I'm using:

%SS00NNNN      SS = suit, NNNN = number.
SS: 00=Hearts, 01=Diamonds, 10=Spades, 11=Clubs
NNNN: 0000=no card (end of hand or deck), 0001=Ace, 0010-1010=2-10, 
1011=Jack, 1100=Queen, 1101=King

So if a player was holding the Jack of diamonds, the Jack of clubs, the 8 of 
hearts, and the 2 of clubs, his hand would look like this:

p1_hand:
   .db %01001011,%11001011,%00001000,%11000010,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

All those trailing zeros have to be there to allow space for a 13-card hand. 
The code for showing a player's hand will stop if the next card it sees = 0, 
or if thirteen cards of the hand have already been read.

I would appreciate any help in this -- this is the most complicated asm 
project I've undertaken since the ill-fated Commander Keen 86, which I never 
released. Actually, come to think of it, I've never released anything. Um... 
anyway, I actually foresee this getting finished and released. Thanks.

-- Jonathan Marcus
Appelkore@aol.com