Yawn 1.12

Copyright (c) 1995-2003 by Alessandro Scotti

http://www.walkofmind.com

Yawn is a game of dice I wrote as a demo for my TDice component (see source files). I also tried a little experiment with it, creating a very tight coupling between the program state and its user interface. (This is of course a bad thing in programming, but that alone is not a good enough reason for never trying!)

Rules of the game

A game of Yawn is divided into 13 rounds.

During each round you are allowed to roll the dice up to three times [click on the Roll button], and after each roll you may choose to hold the value of some dice [click on selected dice to toggle "Hold" sign]: the dice that are hold will not be influenced by subsequent rolls.

When you are satisfied with the dice values or you have used all roll attempts, you have to choose a score cell and put a score into it. To help you, the program will show the score for each valid cell after each roll. Each score cell has a different rule to compute the score that can be written to it:

• Aces: the sum of all "1" that appear in the roll sequence. For example if your sequence is 1-3-6-1-4 the score that goes into the "Aces" cell is 1+1 = 2.
• Two: the sum of all "2" that appear in the roll sequence.
• Three : the sum of all "3" that appear in the roll sequence.
• Four: the sum of all "4" that appear in the roll sequence.
• Five: the sum of all "5" that appear in the roll sequence.
• Six: the sum of all "6" that appear in the roll sequence.
• Tris (Three of a kind): the sum of all dice if at least three of them have the same value, otherwise zero. For example if your sequence is 3-3-6-5-3 the score of the "Tris" cell is 3+3+6+5+3 = 20, but if the sequence is 6-6-4-5-5 the value is zero because no three dice are the same.
• Poker (Four of a kind): the sum of all dice if at least four of them have the same value, otherwise zero. For example if your sequence is 4-4-4-2-4 the score of the "Tris" cell is 4+4+4+2+4 = 18, but if the sequence is 6-6-6-4-4 the value is zero because no four dice are the same.
• Full (Full house): the score is always 25 if you have a full house, that is your sequence must be made of a three of a kind and a pair. Otherwise the value is zero. For example if your sequence is 2-2-4-2-4 the score is 25 because you have a three of a kind (2-2-2) and a pair (4-4), but if the sequence is 3-3-4-3-6 the value is zero because in this case the pair is missing.
• Four in a row (Small straight): the score is 30 if you have at least four consecutive values in your sequence, otherwise zero. For example if your sequence is 3-4-1-6-2 the score is 30 because the values 1-2-3-4 are consecutive (the fifth value, in this case 6, is ignored).
• Straight (Full straight): the score is 40 if the sequence is 1-2-3-4-5 or 2-3-4-5-6 (regardless of the exact order), otherwise it is zero. For example the sequence 4-6-5-2-3 gets 40 because it is the same as 2-3-4-5-6.
• Yawn: the score is 50 but all five dice must be the same. This is a difficult cell to get.
• Chance: the value is simply the sum of all dice. There are no conditions to put a score in this cell.

There is a special bonus for the first six score cells (those from "Aces" to "Six"). If the sum of all these cell is at least 63, then a 35 points bonus is added to the final score. (This value comes from putting at least three valid dices into each of these cells, so 63=6*3+5*3+4*3+3*3+2*3+1*3=18+15+12+9+6+3.

Notes

Yawn is a game where sheer luck is important but a good strategy can help getting a better score too.

The "Boss" button will instantly minimize the game window and change its icon into that of calculator. In the original version (for Win3.1) it was added to the program as a test for some less known API. Since I like the effect, during the years I have tried to keep the function updated. Note that this is for fun only, and isn't mean as a tool to hide the program from your real boss!

License and disclaimer

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA