Ultimate Yahtzee
Ultimate Yahtzee |
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Developers: Third-i Productions,
PCA Graphics This game has a hidden developer message. |
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) |
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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. ==========================
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