menu.rtf

MENU ITEMS

for Kyodai 2D-3D

If an item described below doesn't appear in the 3D version's menus, it's probably related to the 2D version. Or I forgot to remove it ;-)

Play

·          New : Start a new game. Please note that it is not recommended to use this submenu. Please use the Game Selector instead.

·          -- Last Played Game : Starts a new session of the last game you played... (Also works when you relaunch Kyodai)

·          -- Solitaire (Random) : Start a new classic Mahjongg Solitaire game.

·          -- Solitaire (Specific) : Allows you to play a new specific board number (you can change the board number randomly by clicking on "New random game seed"). Please note : selecting the Winnable Layouts feature will cause the board number to generate a different layout.

·          -- Solitaire (2-Player) : Start a new 2-Player Mahjongg Solitaire game (oh, you knew that ?)

·          -- Rivers : Start a new Mahjongg Rivers game, based on Four Rivers / Arcade Mahjongg / Winojong

·          -- Memory : Start a new Memory game, based on Concentration.

·          -- Clicks : Start a new Clicks game. A cool game, based on Samegame, rather different from the Tile-Matching game. Enjoy.

·          -- Slider : Start a new Slider game. Yup.

·          -- Hashira : Start a new Hashira game ;-)

·          -- Kumika : Start a new Kumika game. I love this one.

·          Vertical Variation : Switch to Vertical or Horizontal variation of Mahjongg Solitaire. The rules are the same for both versions, except that in the Vertical variation, you'll need the tiles to be free on their top or bottom sides, instead of left or right.

·          Random Layouts : This option allows you to start a different layout every time you start a new Tile-matching game. Very useful if you can't choose between all these layouts... ;-) This works only for the "New" button in the toolbar and the "Last Played Game" option in the menu.

·          Load Game : Load a previously saved game.

·          Save Game : Save current game. Can be used in Solitaire, Rivers and Slider.

·          Exit : Quit Kyodai (really ?) or the current game.

View

·          Simplified Menu : Enable this option to make a simplified version of the menu, where about half of the options are hidden. Recommended for newbies.

·          Cool Mouse : Shows either the default Windows mouse cursor or a hand cursor.

·          Cool Status : Enable or disable the Cool Status line. If activated, the status line's text will scroll when it appears. Please note that even if you disable the Cool Status, the "No more moves" mention will (intentionally) still scroll, in order to catch your attention very quickly.

·          Cool Tile Borders : Choose this option to give a beautiful gradient effect to the Tile borders.

·          Cool Window Shadow : Shows a shadow behind the menu panels and windows. Looks nice !

·          Interface Skin : Here you can choose the texture you want to use as the background for all toolbars, menus and windows.

·          Show Menu : Show or hides the main menu. When the menu is invisible, you can still access it by clicking the right mouse button. Then, click on "Menu" to show the menu again.

·          Show Manga Girls : Shows or hides the cute girls who visually comment your progression in Kyodai. Please note : you have to enable "Show Hall of Fame" in order to see them.

·          Old Style Hall of Fame : If you don't like the use of a texture as a background for the Hall of Fame panel, you can enable this option to see the good old background.

·          Play in a Window : For nostalgics. Allows you to run Kyodai in a sizeable window. Please note that you'll lose the nice-looking caption if you do this.

·          Total Immersion : Enables or disables in one click the options to show the Caption, Toolbar, Hall of Fame and Status bar.

·          Show Caption : Shows or hides the caption (or title) bar. This is the place where the application's name is written. You can double-click on this bar to maximize or restore the window.

·          Show Toolbar : Shows or hides the toolbar.

·          Show Hall of Fame : Shows or hides the Hall of Fame panel on the right side of the screen.

·          Show Status Bar : Shows or hides the Status Bar. (Really ?)

·          Show Elapsed Time : Shows or hides the "Elapsed time" counter. Added especially for a Kyodai user who wanted it :-)

·          Show Free Pairs : Shows or hides the "Free pairs" counter. This counter tells you how many pairs of tiles you can still remove from the board. The counter can increase if, for example, when you remove a pair of tiles, they both free other tiles that can be removed as well. It can be useful to track that counter if you want to see if your latest move was strategically interesting for the game. You can disable this function because you may feel it's a way to "cheat", or simply you don't like how close you are to the end...

·          Show Next Tiles : Shows or hides the "Next" indicator in the Slider and Hashira games. This indicator, of course, shows you what will be the next tiles to show up on the board...

·          Set Main Font : Allows you to change the main font used in Kyodai... The changes will be applied in most of the text areas (not all the windows, though), including the toolbar, the status bar and the menu. It's recommended to restart Kyodai for best results after you changed the font.

·          Set Volume : Provides a quick shortcut to the Windows control panel for volume control (MIDI, Wave, etc).

3D

·       Go 3D !! : Switch from 2D mode to 3D mode and vice-versa.

·       Enable all effects (Nice) : Enable, with one click, all of the options that actually improve the visual aspect of Kyodai in 3D. It doesn't enable the 3D options that are not directly related to the visual effects.

·       Disable all effects (Fast) : Disable all of these options with one click. It is targeted to users who don't have a 3D card and would like to play the 3D version anyway. Please be aware of the fact that, even with all of the options disabled, it will STILL be very slow and nearly unplayable. I'm really sorry for all of you who can't play Kyodai 3D at full speed.

·       Realistic Tiles : This submenu allows you to select the type of tile that you want to use in a Solitaire game. "Use simple cubes" is the default, and shows tiles as plain old cubes. The other options will transform your tiles into realistic shapes with rounded borders. The low-resolution model is probably the best compromise between quality and speed. Don't even think of using this feature if your video card doesn't have hardware transform & lighting capability. If you're lucky enough to have a good video card, then enable the transform & lighting option (from the same submenu), restart Kyodai and enjoy the show !

·       Fully Textured 3D Tiles : Enable or disable the textures on the tile borders and tile backs.

·       Anti-aliased Textures : Switch between Linear (Anti-aliased) and Nearest (Normal) textures. Anti-aliased textures are very smooth, but may be slower on your machine.

·       High-resolution Textures : Switch between 64x64 and 128x128 textures for the tilesets. It is recommended to use the 128x128 textures, they clearly look better. Also, this option allows you to choose between a 256x256 or 512x512 texture for the background, in case you're using the Background cube mode for example.

·       Enable Animations : Enable or disable animations in the 3D version. So far, it only concerns the tile-removal animation.

·       Enable Shadows : Enable or disable shadows in 3D mode. Shadows work perfectly on most video cards, but some of them might show some artifacts.

·       Show Platform : Shows a table behind the board, that uses the current window background.

·       Emphasize 3D effect : Use this option to bend the tiles, which should improve playability. Press the "5" key, enable this option, disable the Contemplation modes and you should get a visual effect very close to the 2D representation.

·       Colored Layers : Add color effects to the different layers. It might help you differentiate them, especially when you're watching the board from the top.

·       Special Effects : Want some funny effects ?

·       -- None : Normal mode

·       -- Environment Mapping : This effect adds a moving lightmap to the board. Not actual Environment Mapping. Use "Cube Mapping" for this.

·       -- Bump Mapping (EMBM) : This one gives an added effect of realism via a specific bump texture. Few video cards support it, though. And it's quite unplayable ;-)

·       -- Bump Mapping (Emboss) : Same thing, but different implementation (which should work on most video cards) and different effect : the bumps are directly applied to the tiles, creating a "carved tile" effect. Looks much better when you zoom the board and maximize the contemplation effect. Not supported with realistic tiles.

·       -- Specular Light : Adds a specular light to the screen. Looks fine depending on the board position.

·       Contemplation mode : You've bought a new 3D card that shows very good results in Kyodai's 3D mode ? Then you can show it to your friends by setting Kyodai in Contemplation mode.

·       -- Normal : Disable Contemplation mode.

·       -- Rotate (Y-Axis) : The camera will slowly rotate around the board to let you "contemplate" it. You can even keep playing in this mode ! ;-)

·       -- Follow Me (Slow) : The camera will move along with the mouse to "highlight" the region you're looking at. Looks great ! Works only when "Highlight in 3D mode" is enabled.

·       -- Follow Me (Normal) : Same thing, but a bit faster.

·       -- Follow Me (Fast) : Guess what.

·       -- Camera-based : This option emulates the Follow Me mode of Kyodai 10.21, where the camera moves around the border instead of the board moving around the space.

·       Video card Compatibility : These options are provided to improve compatibility with older video cards like Voodoo 2.

·       -- Texture as Background : Shows the background as a 256x256 texture. It then looks somehow blurry, but you should expect up to 50% better performance on a Voodoo 2 when using this option. However, on a more recent card you might get the opposite effect.

·       -- Texture as Mouse cursor : Uses a texture to emulate the mouse cursor. Voodoo users will appreciate this... ;-)

·       -- Double-sized Mouse cursor : Multiplies by 2 the size of the textured cursor. More like a gadget, of course, except if you're at very high resolutions.

·       -- GeForce performance trick : Forces a multitexturing mode on the Solitaire boards when no special effects are enabled (normally it should be in single-texturing mode). NVIDIA has been unable to explain me why it improves 16-bit mode performance from 110 fps to 130 fps on a GeForce2 MX (up to 20%), but I thought it would be nice to offer this to my users as well...

·       -- Disable high-quality scores : If you have any trouble with the scores not showing up in the Slider, Kumika and Hashira games, or if these games do not show up correctly, try to enable this option and restart Kyodai. This should fix your problem.

·       -- Force 16-bit textures : If you're in 32-bit color mode, enable this option to gain performance at the cost of some visual quality.

·       Background Type :

·       -- Normal : Well, back to normal...

·       -- Background Cube : Maps the current background on a sphere that surrounds the board. Looks really good with most pictures.

·       -- Background Sphere : Maps the current background on a sphere that surrounds the board. Looks best with a deep space picture :-)

·       Tile Borders : With these options, you can customize the borders around the tiles.

·       -- Default : Uses the default tile border specified in the current tileset file.

·       -- Marble : Uses a marble-like border type.

·       -- Ivory : Uses an ivory-like border type.

·       Vertical Synchronization : Enable or disable the VSync option which synchronizes the animation speed to the current monitor refresh rate. Useful if the animations are too fast.

·       Show benchmark : Enable this option to show the actual rendering speed on screen. A speed over 40 fps is very good. If you get a framerate below 20 fps, it won't be very playable, and below 3 fps, don't even think of playing the game.

Animations

·          Animate Pause and Start screens : Shows some cool animations in the Pause screen (two moving "Pause" logos) and Start screen (a "Kyodai" logo moving around the Game Selector).

·          Animate Board while building it : Shows the tiles as they are being added to the board when you start a new game.

·          Animate Tile Rivers in Rivers : Disable this feature if you're busy. It allows the tiles to "meet" themselves graphically in the Mahjongg Rivers game.

·          Animate Falling Tiles in Clicks...