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Easy MemoryUser manual |
Update on February 6, 2001 |
Find pairs, or groups of three or more identical cards. Play alone, with friends or even your youngest kids. Play with animal cards, large Disney cards or lots of other cards. Improve your memory by playing with your favourite friends and pictures. You can play from the age of 3 to 103.
This game is distributed as a freeware. This means you can use it and copy it for free. You can copy it as you like and distribute it for free to your friends.
The author of the game has created the set provided with the game and the first sets on the website. You can send him your own sets by email. After checking it the set will be added on the Easy Memory website. (Refer to How to add sets of pictures and The author, the authors and the distribution)
Note : At present (and for a short time I hope) the operations below in this version do not function :At first, so that you understand the game, you will play with the default number of cards. All you have to do is to choose New in the menu Game. (You can also use the key CTRL-N).
Click on the back of a card, turn it over, memorize the picture and try again with another card. If you are lucky, the two cards are identical and the picture will remain visible. Good, you have finished your first pair.
If the cards aren't identical, click on a third one. The first 2 cards are turned back over and hidden again. The third one is turned over. Memorize this picture and try to remember where the other card is to make the pair and then turn this one over.
If not, try again until you succeed in getting your first pair.
When you have your first pair, try to match more pairs of cards as you turn over each new card.
And so on, and so on, and so on... until you find all the pairs.
At this moment, your score will be displayed. (look at Score for more details)
You have just finished your first game, try again with different options for a more interesting game. Change the number of cards for example (menu Options / Size)
For the first game, begin in solo mode so that you understand the game. The next thing you can do is to play with more people : see menu Options / Players to change the number and the type of players. You can play against your friends or against the computer at different difficulty levels.
In a multi-player game the first player is chosen at random. He appears with a red color. Look carefully at the name of the first player. The next player will be the player on the right (on the screen of course) and so on.
Each player turns over two cards. If they are identical he plays again, if not the next player plays.
The winner is the player who finds the most pairs.
You can change the name of a player in the Options / Players dialog box. See below 3.3. Players
You can choose what sounds you want to hear by checking and unchecking items of the Sounds menu. For example if you wish hearing nothing when you make a mistake, unchecked the Bad try item in the Sounds menu.
You can play alone or with other players. For each player you have to choose if it is a human player (a friend of yours, your kids...) or if it is a computer player.
For a human player just select the Human item and type his name.
For a computer player you have to choose the level of the computer :
- Perfect: This player has a really perfect memory. However, it is not completely perfect. There is one small fault and so if you find this you can beat the computer and win the game. (with more than 10 cards of course)
- Advanced: This player has a good memory (but not perfect) and has a clever way of playing. It is difficult to beat, even for a good human player.
- Beginner: An alright memory and not a really clever way of playing.
- First game: A very bad memory ! Just play against it for your first games.
In the boxes where there is no player select None. A None selection can be made in any of the 4 player boxes and in any order. (eg Player 1 can be a None player. Player 2 an Advanced player. Player 3 a None player and Player 4 a Human player.)
In multi-player mode the winner is the player who finds the highest number of pairs.
Between each round look carefully at the player name in red and give him the mouse.
Playing in preview mode is easier and it helps you to succeed. In this mode all the cards are displayed before the beginning of the game for a few seconds. Then the cards are hidden and the game begins.
You can choose short or long preview in menu Options / Preview. Be careful, by choosing Preview Mode your score will be lower.
Tip: Don't choose preview mode with a Perfect or Advanced computer player !!!
Making pairs is really easy, everybody can do it. But finding a group of 3 or 4 identical cards is not so easy. And finding a group of 5 identical cards in 150 cards is very, very hard.
But your score will be better, if you complete the game of course !
With 2 cards, even with a random way of playing it's possible to finish a game. With a difficulty of 5 identical cards and a size of 150 cards, it's impossible to complete a game without good training and a lot of concentration. It is more difficult with a higher set specialization. It becomes very difficult when all the cards are very similar (eg military planes).
When starting, Easy Memory chooses a size of 6 or 8 cards. So you can understand quickly the rules of the game.
But if you want an interesting game, you have to quickly change the number of cards. Of course, your score will be better with a higher size.
It's not really pleasant to play all the time with the same pictures. So you can find new sets on the Easy Memory website. Every month you can find new sets on this site.
The more pictures that there are in a set, the less chance there will be to have the same picture in 2 consecutive games.
A set is a group of pictures with one special picture. This special picture is on the backs of the cards.
A set can also have a parameter file. (look at How to add sets of pictures)
To change the set you have to click on the name of this set in the menu Options / Sets.
Otherwise, choose thr name of a set at random by selecting Random in this menu. Then when you start a new game, Easy Memory will choose a set at random. The nearest possible size to the previous game will automatically be selected.
This option enables you to play games without having to manually change the set between each game. It's easier to play 2 games with 2 different sets to avoid confusion.
Your score is computed using a complex formula with these parameters : number of cards, difficulty, number of tries and the card size.
A set is a folder with pictures and a descriptive text file.
Nota : The compressed folder must be lower than 1 Mo. This is a restriction of my provider.
In order to create a set you have to collect a lot of pictures with the same or similar size. You can create a set of completely different pictures (a house, a plane, a boat...) or use a theme (coutry flags, celebrities, famous paintings...).
You should have enough pictures to allow players to play with a lot of cards on the screen even in high resolution (1024*768 or higher) and to play different games without find the same pictures too often.
Correct format for pictures is jpg or gif (with uses of transparency)
Tip: Choose a high size for cards (eg. 140*200 or 200*200). Then it's easy to resize them in one shot with a freeware. So probably, in future it will be possible to publish sets in different sizes.
not implemented yet
You can add specific sounds for your set. Players will hear your sounds and not the default sounds when they will play with your set. You can add the 3 sounds or only 1 or 2.
The 3 possible sounds are:
SonOK=OK.au
There should not be any space between these 3 parts. The name of this file is Planche.pla
You can use these tags :TitreFR=Felins (portraits) TitreUS=Cats (portrait) BulleFR=O BulleUS=N Specialisation=5 SonBad=Bad.au Auteur=Bruno Berenguer Version=v1.12 Aout 2000 Email=Bruno.Berenguer@Bigfoot.com Website=http://easymemory.forez.com
There should not be any space between these 5 parts. The name of this file is Images.lst
You can let some title blank, but you must list all the pictures if you create the Images.lst file. This is not a mandatory file. If this file doesn't exist, all the pictures of the folder will be used and french and english title for the pictures will be the filename.
This file allow you to choose short filename (multi OS) for the pictures and to have a long title which can be different in french and english.
Example of descriptive image file for Color set :Bleu.jpg/Bleu/Blue Gris.jpg/Gris/Grey Rouge.jpg/Rouge/Red Cyan.jpg/Cyan/Cyan Noir.jpg/Noir/Black Rose.jpg/Rose/Rose Jaune.jpg/Jaune/Yellow Vert.jpg/Vert/Green
Bruno Berenguer,
I like computers, games and I distribute Easy Memory as a Freeware. If you have any questions, you can send me an email : Bruno.Berenguer@Bigfoot.com
If you like the game, you can create some sets for your own pleasure, but also if you want, for the pleasure of all the players in the world. (look below to know the distribution mode)
These sets will remain your own intellectual property and will be distributed as a Freeware.
It is possible to indicate for each set the name, the email and the homepage of the author.
If you want the latest version, download it from the website.
You can also contact me if you have any suggestions to improve this game.