Ultimate Yahtzee

Ultimate Yahtzee
Developers: Third-i Productions, PCA Graphics Publisher: Hasbro Interactive Platform: Windows Released internationally: December 1996 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has unused sounds.

Ultimate Yahtzee comes with five flavors of rolling dice: Classic (standard Yahtzee), Triple (has three columns - 1×, 2×, and 3× - to score in), Painted (adds colors to the scoring mix), Battle (your rolls can be changed by your opponent's rolls), and Pyramid (four-sided dice).

Unused Sound

An early version of the jingle that plays after getting a Yahtzee.

Early (OLDYAHT.WAV)	Final (YAHTZEE.WAV)

Developer Notes

Present in the root directory is FUNSTUFF.TXT, which contains various musings from the development team, including the process of making the game and a few tips on modifying the game.

==========================
Ramblings from the Programmers:
==========================
Welcome to Yahtzee!  The game Yahtzee has been around for many years, 
and yes, has been "available" in one way or another in computer form,
but never authorized, and never like this.  Below find a few random
comments from the developers of the game.  (in English only, I'm sorry
to say, since none of us is sufficiently competent in German or French)

First, I would like to mention that this is entirely a Hasbro product,
and that any ramblings you see below are the product of an independent
team of programmers who happen to have the CD-R burner that created
this CD.  Oh yes, and we also wrote the program on the CD.   But the 
game and product, Yahtzee, is owned by Milton Bradley and Hasbro.  
And this statement is ours.  Opinions expressed in this file, therefore, 
are our own.  

Especially note that when I say "we created" this or that, I'm only 
referring to the programming;  many talented individuals contributed
to this product, as you can see from the credits at the end.  And 
programming really is only one small part of the creation involved;
before we even start, the designers get together and lay out a plan.  The
artists then get together and create visual representations of what's 
going to happen, right down to where each button is going to go on 
each main screen.  And even after we're done with the code and the 
debugging, Hasbro still needs to create boxes, print manuals, and
handle the distribution and technical support of the product.  The 
only reason we have a personal note here is that we are possibly the
most outspoken of the various groups involved.  Or, as I mentioned
above, we're the ones who assemble the final CD.

==========================
Commonly asked questions:
==========================
"What did we use to create Yahtzee?"  Well, this part was moved to the
more official README.TXT (and translated to French and German) that 
DOES contain the opinions of Hasbro (just kidding Chris!), so look toward 
the end of that file.  Also look for some basic descriptions of AI strategy, 
if you're wondering why it is that Mr. Yahtzee is so terrible but often 
gets the highest scores.

"How do _I_ become a video game programmer?"  I ask myself this 
question in the past tense from time to time.  :)  Well, do a lot of 
programming.  Lock yourself in a closet with a compiler manual for 
several months, and enjoy reading it.  Don't try to get other people to 
"help" you with this or that, because you're more likely to figure out 
the answer yourself, and you'll understand the answer better when you
do solve the problem.  Above all else, start writing things--games, tools, 
gadgets, anything at all, the cooler the better.  If you find you're
really good at all of the above, then you might have the right stuff--
drop us a resume.   :)


==========================
Cool things to do with Yahtzee
==========================
Note:  If  you want to do anything in this section, no one at technical
support will help you if you mess something up!  If you do mess something
up, just delete the Yahtzee directory and reinstall off of the CD.  (Be 
careful when deleting lots of files, by the way!)  We may from time to time 
make available some replacement graphics and/or sounds on our Web site, if 
you don't have the tools to mess with waves and bitmaps on your own.

If the sound effects are getting you down, or you want to hear the computer
scream "Yahtzee!" every time one comes up, look in the yahtzee\waves 
directory.  Here are a few files below:
	YAHTZEE.WAV	  : "Yahtzee!" sound
	BATLLOOP.WAV  : Battle Yahtzee music
	PNTLOOP.WAV   : Painted Yahtzee music
	PYRLOOP.WAV	  : Pyramid Yahtzee music
	CLASLOOP.WAV  : Classic Yahtzee music
	TRIPLOOP.WAV  : Triple Yahtzee music
	
	OLDYAHT.WAV   : An older version of the "Yahtzee!" sound
				    (Tim on piano--copy to YAHTZEE.WAV)

The graphics are a bit trickier.  If you want to change the dice faces, you
can change the files in yahtzee\textures that look like trp_d1.bmp for the
"1" die face in Triple Yahtzee.  But be warned!  If you use colors that 
aren't available in the 256-color palette for each game, you might not
get the effect you want.  Also, don't change the resolution of these files 
at all or they'll take forever to load.  Play with whatever BMP files you 
feel like, but don't come crying to us if you mess something up.

==========================
Favorite Quotes
==========================
"Programmer needs food badly.  Programmer is about to die."--Tim 
"We can't order pizza.  We have spinach dip!" -- Tom  
"It's a moral imperative!" -- Real Genius
"I want my two dollars!" -- Better off Dead

==========================
Technical ramblings:
==========================
Immediately prior to this project we at Third-i experienced a major religious 
conversion:  We saw the Truth, and it was C++ and Object Oriented Code.
Even though every project we'd worked on professionally had been in C or
assembly language, we suddenly understood the beauty of object inheritance.

Yahtzee is the first product we created with these "new" tools.  And it was 
an amazingly trouble-free development cycle, due in part to the fact that we
only needed to create one game, and then add special rules for each of the
variations.  

About the bouncing dice:  The dice follow realistic physics rules, as long as 
your concept of reality includes objects that can occasionally increase their 
energy after colliding with a wall.  We also cheated in a few other ways to 
make the code faster--we leave it up to the end user to catch us if he or she 
can.  We like to call this "fun physics"--physics that have been "adjusted" to
make the game more fun rather than hyper-realistic.

==========================
Acknowledgements
==========================
Special thanks to Dan Filner and Chris Perry for usually constructive 
criticism during the development process.  Thanks to the many play testers
who worked overtime and weekends to find Yahtzee bugs.  Special thanks 
to Mountain Dew for keeping Steve awake late at night.  Special thanks to 
Gene and Phil at PCA who put this whole thing together and trusted us to get 
it done in time, and David who helped us make it happen.  Thanks to 
Steve Kirk (the other Steve) of Asylum (the company formerly known as
Halestorm) for the "Yahtzee!" sound effect.  And special thanks to Chris 
Down and the whole gang at Hasbro for being supportive and understanding as 
we explained what features wouldn't be done in time.  
==========================
Roll a Yahtzee for us!

Tim Mensch
Steven Pearson
Tom Mensch
Third-i Productions
http://www.thirdi.com

Readme

The "What did we use to create Yahtzee?" section of Readme.txt, referenced in the developer notes above.

==========================
WHAT WAS USED TO CREATE ULTIMATE YAHTZEE?

The programming language:  MS Visual C++ 4.1 with MFC
The sound driver:  The venerable Miles Design system
The title/credits animation driver:  Smacker! for Windows
The pizza: Garlex or Lamorinda, depending on who you ask
The graphics software:  Paint Shop Pro, Picture Publisher
The music software:  Cool Edit by David Johnston

What did the artists use to create Yahtzee?
Softimage, Parallax's Matador and Advance, Amazon 2&3D paint
And many SGI computers.

Each of the above product names, food and otherwise, is a trademark 
held by its respective owner.

==========================