Our Own Version of Mahjong Solitaire

Copyright (c) 2001 Eric Mulvaney, Michelle Bondy


INTRODUCTION

This is an old game I wrote for my mother back in 2001, with Michelle
doing the artwork.  It's pretty basic, but comes with its own editor.

To build, you will need the Allegro game programming library and
tools.  The code is old, but seems to compile fine albeit with several
warnings about deprecated functions.


HOW TO PLAY

The rules are the same for this as for other Mahjong Solitaire games
I remember.  If you've played one of those, you should be fine.

Basically, you have to find (and click) matching tiles.  You can only
click on tiles that are not covered by other tiles, and are not
horizontally adjacent two other tiles (on its left and right).

When you click your first tile, it will be highlighted in green.  If
the next tile you click matches the first, both tiles will disappear.
Otherwise something interesting happens: the new tile is highlighted
in green, and the old tile's highlight changes to blue.

Blue-highlighted tiles are remembered selections.  You can click the
green-highlighted tile to deselect it and automatically re-select the
blue-highlighted one (making it green-highlighted).  This will also
happen if you find a match for the green-highlighted tile.

Once you've cleared the entire board, you've won.  If you can't match
anymore tiles, it will tell you, and you'll either have to start a new
game or undo a few moves to try again.  The "Help" button will also
tell you how many moves there are--which may not be all that helpful.


GAME EDITOR / PLAYING CUSTOM LAYOUTS

When the game starts, you have the option to edit an existing layout
file.  To create a new file, however, you have to start the game with
a magic incantation:

./mahjong --edit NAME.lyt --title TITLE

If NAME.lyt already exists, it will be loaded.  You can omit the
--title part when you load an existing layout, or if you don't intend
to rebuild the game with your new layout--titles are only shown for
built-in layouts.

Custom layouts don't appear on the "new game" list.  Instead you have
to click the "load from file" option to see the directory listing.