(Word Wrap This Document) _______ __ __ _____ _____ ______ |#######| |##| |##| |#####\ |#####\ /######\ |#######| |##| |##| |#|_|##| |#|_|##| |########| |###| |##| |##| |#####/ |#####/ |##/ \##| |###| |##| |##| |#| \#\ |#| |#\ |##\__/##| |###| |##\___/##| |#| |#| |#|_|##| |########| |###| \#######/ |#| |#| |#####/ \######/ _______ _____ _____ _______ __ __ _____ _______ |#######| |#####\ |#####| |#######| |##| /##| |#####| |#######| |##| |#|_|##| |#| |##| |##|/##/ |#|___ |#######| |##| |#####/ |#| |##| |#####/ |#####| |###| |##| |#| \#\ |#| |##| |#####\ |#| |###| |##|____ |#| |#| _|#|_ |##|____ |##|\##\ |#|___ |###| |#######| |#| |#| |#####| |#######| |##| \##| |#####| |###| by Powerboost Software, 1997-2000. Original Program and Concept: Scott Latham. Code and Concept Implementation: Graham McNally. Official Play Tester: Simon Moore. Mathematical Model Design: Graham McNally, Scott Latham and Simon Moore. Welcome to Turbo Cricket! The sound of willow on leather, lazy days in summer, the excitement of a closely fought match. All elements of the wonderful game of cricket. Unfortunately, other unavoidable elements of cricket are the need for good weather, proper equipment, players, umpires and plenty of time. These are not always available, and without them, cricket simply cannot happen. Whereas other forms of sport can be simulated on Computers, cricket has proven too intricate to transfer successfully to the arcade arena. Therefore, in Turbo Cricket, we have not even tried to convert cricket into an all-action arcade game. Instead, Turbo Cricket is a game which models a cricket game by using mathematical formulae, giving statistics and a simple commentary. Within this there is a lot of variation and scope. Just like in real life, good players can have a bad innings batting or bowling, but are much less likely to do so than the completely incompetent. Enter your own team and play them against the two teams which come as default with the game. Once they prove too easy, perhaps it's time to create a second team or even get your friends to create their own teams. It is very easy to become quite possessive about your team and the players on it, and beating your friends is never quite as easy as beating the computer. Each and every team is different, and you have complete control over names, abilities and team orders. Turbo Cricket includes the following programs: The Results Creator. This runs under DOS and is the engine of the entire game. This is the simulator which runs the match between the sides. The Editor. This runs under Windows and allows you to create/alter Players, Teams and Squads in a rich and convenient environment. The Statistics Viewer. This runs under Windows and offers a plethora of information about games previously run by the Results Creator. The Tournament Invoker. This runs under DOS and allows you to spawn tournaments involving anything from 2 to 10 teams, (1 Match up to 90[!]), using pre-defined tournaments or custom-defined ones. The pfile Manager. This runs under Windows and is used for splicing and patching the pfile, which is the main store for Turbo Cricket player information. This program comes with a Warning: You can easily lose information about your players through misuse of this this program. All of these are accessible from the Turbo Cricket Menu which runs under Windows. It is called simply "tc.exe". Alternatively, you can just run the Results Creator or Tournament Invoker from DOS, and the Statistics Viewer, Editor and pfile Manager direct from Windows. If you don't have Windows, then it is still possible to create your own teams, it is just more complicated. Read the final section in this documentation, 'Under the hood', to fully understand how the game stores and retrieves information. Once understood, you can create teams and players in any text editor - be warned that no checks can be made this way, and the Editor program is the most recommended route. There is no Statistics Viewer for DOS. The Results Creator: Q: What is the Results Creator? A: The Results Creator reads the two specified teams into it, and plays the match out according to your selections and the relevant formulae. See "Formulae.doc" for more information about the mathematical mechanics of the game. The game can also take command line arguments to alter the rules the match is played in. The conditions the match is played in are however completely random. The outfield might be fast, slow or normal, and the wicket verges from normal to lifeless to completely inconsistent. The RRC creates a log file called "tc.log". Should any errors be encountered by the program, these will be explained here. The command line arguments are as follows: -team1 -> The code of the first team. -team2 -> The code of the second team. -t1_path -> The path to find the first team. -t2_path -> The path to find the second team. -comments -> Comments are 'ON', or Comments are 'OFF'. -inns -> Specify how many innings per team, per match. -overs -> Specify how many overs are to be played per innings (0=Unlimited) -file -> Name of an auto-run file. -record -> Record Results and Stats? 'YES' or 'NO'. -timed -> Time Matches? 'YES4' (4 day), 'YES5' (5 day) or 'NO'. -pause -> Amount of pause (in whole seconds) between each ball. -tourn -> Name of a previously created Tournament File Format file. -followon -> Sets the amount needed to enforce the Follow On (100 - 200). All these options apart from the '-file' argument can be changed within the RRC Menu. Q: What is an auto-run file? A: An auto-run file is a pre-created file which allows you to dive straight into the match with hardly any delay. This allows pre-defined competitions and fixtures to be run without having to enter all the relevant information into the menu. An example file called "auto1.tc" is included as an example of the format these should take. Q: What is a Tournament File Format File? A: A Tournament File Format File (TFF) is similar to the auto-run file in that it contains information about how to play the game, but it is more than this. Tournament Matches are recorded as such (i.e. the Tournament name is marked onto the recorded statistics) if you are recording results, and so can be brought up separately from generic non-tournament performances when viewing statistics. You can add as many Tournament File Formats as you like. Another benefit of using Tournament File Formats is that it can rapidly set up the game to your favoured match settings. Q: What do all the options on the Main Menu do? A: Okay; In sequence... '1' - Change Team 1 Pressing this causes Turbo Cricket to prompt you for the team code to be used as the first team in the match. If you enter a code that is not recognised, then Turbo Cricket will ask you whether or not you are referring to a team located in a different directory. If so, you can enter the directory where the team is to be found. In this way, you can play teams against each other from completely different installations of Turbo Cricket. '2' - Change Team 2 This is the same as for Team 1. 'C' - Comments On/Off Toggle in-game comments state. Turbo Cricket can provide you with a potted description of each ball. Whilst this gives more information about the game, it can slow the RRC down, and some people find it annoying. The choice is yours. 'I' - Toggle Number of Innings You can select to have either 1 or 2 innings matches. This option is automatically set to 1 if you select a limited number of overs. 'O' - Change Number of Overs You can select the number of overs to be bowled during the match. For an unlimited overs match, enter 0 (zero). 'F' - Tournament File Format Takes you to the TFF Menu, where you may select or create a Tournament File Format for use with the RRC. 'T' - Timed Matches Allows you to specify a time limit on the match (either 4 or 5 days). Selecting a Timed Match automatically converts the Overs option to unlimited overs. This is not available if a Limited Overs Match is selected. 'R' - Record Statistics Toggles the recording of all the stats. Turbo Cricket keeps records of batting and bowling figures as well as team scores and overall partnerships. If you are just experimenting with your team or a tournament format, then it's better not to record strange stats. In serious competition however, keeping a record adds to the excitement. 'L' - Follow On Amount Changes (in steps of 25) the lead required to enforce the follow-on in unlimited overs matches, from 100 - 200. This is not available if only 1 Innings is selected. 'P' - Pause Changes the amount of pause in seconds between each ball. If you find Turbo Cricket is running too quickly or erratically, this is your chance to slow it down. Recommendation: Turbo Cricket was originally written on a Pentium 75 powered PC, and has shown itself to be erratic on faster, more modern machines. Entering a Pause between 0.01 and 0.02 restores the game to the natural delay that existed during creation, and should ensure proper, competitive matches. I am unsure why the increase in speed causes a degradation in performance (i.e. the matches and scores swing wildly), but I believe it is something to do with the way in which random numbers are generated over time (which there is less off in new machines). The game defaults to a pause of 0.01. 'X' - Exit game from Menu 'S' - Start the Match! Q: What can I do when the match is running? A: Sit back, open a beer (or Pimms strictly) and watch your team do battle. In an unlimited overs match, you also have the opportunity to declare at any time through pressing the 'd' key to avoid drawing with a slow team. You may also pause the game at any time by pressing the 'p' key, and any other key to unpause the Results Creator. Q: I like/dislike the prizes given out for Man of the Match. What can I do about it? A: The Man Of The Match prizes aren't actually required for the game. The prizes are taken from a file called 'mmfile.tc'. It is fully customizable, so if you want you can create your own set of prizes, or simply add to those already present, you are most welcome. There are some very simple rules for changing the Man Of The Match Information File. The first line must always contain the number of current prizes in the file. Too few, and the later prizes will not be seen, too many and the game is likely to crash. Each prize must have an underscore character ('_') in the place of each blank/white space (' '), and each dollar sign ('$') is read as a newline character. Follow these simple rules, and your players will soon be getting your prizes. Remember, the wackier the prizes, the better. If however you disapprove of these strange prizes, then you can simply delete the file :-( and your players will always receive a Magnum of Champagne. The Editor: Q: What is the Editor? A: The Editor is the place where you can change or create new players and teams for Turbo Cricket. This is the creative nexus where your next star-batsman/bowler/all-rounder is created. It is also where you go to correct a no-hoper. It is helpful to understand a bit about how Turbo Cricket stores information. This is cover more fully later on in this documentation. All players and their information are stored in the central 'pfile.tc' file. All teams are stored in a sub-directory labeled by their eight character or less team-code. Within this, the team statistic information is kept, along with details of your squad and any relative team files. Q: How do I Create/Edit A Player? A: To edit a player, you must first Import him into the editor. If the player is password protected then you must first enter this. To create a new player, import the '' item at the start of the list. To place a player into the pfile, simply click on the Export button. This places the player into the pfile at the position selected. Exporting into the '' item, adds the player to the end of the pfile. When creating a new player it is important to remember that each must have a minimum value of five for each attribute, and there is a total value of 83 allowed for all attributes. There are eight attributes overall: Strength, Speed, Reflexes, Co-ordination, Courage, Accuracy, Cricketing Mind, Endurance. Strength represents the raw, brute strength of a player. This affects how far/hard he can hit the ball, or how hard he can deliver the ball. Speed represents the simple running speed of a player. This affects how quickly he can move between the wickets, in the field or bowling. Reflexes represents how quick the player's hands are. This affects whether or not he plays a shot at a delivery, and the chance of a catch. Co-ordination represents how well the player can control his actions. This affects whether a player edges the ball, and whether a player drops a catch. Courage represents how brave (or Foolhardy?) a player is. This affects whether a player will try for big hits, half-chance catches or close runs. Accuracy represents how well a player can place the ball. This affects the chances of a player getting a run out in the field, or avoiding embarrassing wides when bowling. Cricketing Mind represents how good a player is at reading the game instinctively. This affects many options, with the general trend being that the higher the Cricketing Mind, the more likely a random chance might by favourable. Endurance represents how much stamina and staying-power a player has. This affects all the other attributes, as these are whittled away as the Endurance level drops due to fatigue. Q: How do I Edit/Create Teams? A: Here you are presented with a sub-menu. You can edit your squad, or your team(s). Squad: Your Squad contains the 15 players available to for selection in your team(s). To add players to your Squad, click on the Import button to transfer to an 'EMPTY' slot. To create an 'EMPTY' slot, click on the Delete button. Team: Your team(s) contains the information more directly related to the match. It contains a batting order, bowling order and field placings. To edit your batting order, simply click on the < and > buttons for each position. This is also the case for your bowling order and field placings. You may also choose a Captain and Wicket Keeper. The Wicket Keeper can be any player above Batting Order Position 7. Only players in Batting Order Position 7 or lower are allowed to bowl. The first two field placing slots are reserved, 1 for the wicket keeper and the other for the current bowler. Create: You can also create a blank squad and team file(s). You can create a specialist one-day team, and a specialist four/five-day team, or simply have a general team which plays all forms of matches. Specialist teams are always used by the Results Creator over the General team. For each team however, you are restricted to the same 15 man squad. Turbo Cricket looks for teams in the following order. Unlimted Overs: four/five day team (team4.tc) -> general team (team.tc) -> Error Limited Overs: one day team (team1.tc) -> general team (team.tc) -> Error The Statistics Viewer: Q: What is the Statistics Viewer? A: The Statistics Viewer is designed to provide as much information as possible, obtained from the stats directory where the Results Creator saves its information. Here you can view a player's history, or his overall information. With that Information, you can also compare one player to another. You can also view histories or information within a particular tournament, for a particular team or against a particular foe. Q: How do I use it? A: There are a couple of global options: Limited Overs or Unlimited Overs. There are also a couple of sub-options: Batting Figures or Bowling Figures. You may also select for the player function to view information for or against a particular team, and/or in a particular tournament. The View Player History shows a list of relevant performances. The View Player Information shows the player's relevant information - the real numbers. This display also allows you to compare one player directly to another. The Tables of Information show the best performances or averages so far in the game, related to the selection made. The Teams Information screen shows information about the all the Teams found installed. The Partnerships screen reveals the record partnerships. The McNally Ratings can help solve the age-old argument about who's the number one player. Of course, they change after every match so it is worth checking back regularly. They are calculated using a slight varation of the formulae used to compute the Man of the Match in-game, although sometimes some surprises can crop up - just like real life ;-). If the Statistics Viewer has difficulty finding the pfile, then click on the three dotted button beneath the logo. Selecting the directory where the 'stats' folder should allow it to locate all the necessary information. The Tournament Invoker: Q: What is the Tournament Invoker? A: When you get more than a couple of teams gathered together, then there is a great opportunity to play them off against one-another, to see which fares best. However, doing all this by hand can be slow and annoying. The Tournament Invoker lets you invoke Tournaments using pre-defined Tournament File Formats, or you can customise your Tournament from the Menu. Q: What do all the options do? A: Once more from the top... 'N' Number of Teams. Lets you set how many teams (from 2 to 10) can take place in your Tournament. 'C' Comments Sets Comments ON or OFF during the matches. 'I' Innings Sets the number of Innings at 1 or 2. 'O' Overs Sets the number of Overs to be played (0 = Unlimited) 'F' Tournament File Format in use Allows you to load/create new Tournament File Formats for your Tournament. 'H' Home and Away? Sets the Home And Away Toggle. When ON, teams play each other twice, or OFF to only allow each team to play each other once. 'T' Time Matches Allows you to select whether or not the match is Timed as a 4-day or 5-day event. This option is not available if a Limited Overs Match is selected. 'R' Record Statistics Toggles ON/OFF for Recording the Statistics. 'L' Follow On Target Sets the Follow On Target between 100-200 in steps of 25. This option is not available if only 1 Innings is selected. 'P' - Pause Changes the amount of pause in seconds between each ball. If you find Turbo Cricket is running too quickly or erratically, this is your chance to slow it down. Recommendation: Turbo Cricket was originally written on a Pentium 75 powered PC, and has shown itself to be erratic on faster, more modern machines. Entering a Pause between 0.01 and 0.02 restores the game to the natural delay that existed during creation, and should ensure proper, competitive matches. I am unsure why the increase in speed causes a degradation in performance (i.e. the matches and scores swing wildly), but I believe it is something to do with the way in which random numbers are generated over time (which there is less on in new machines). The game defaults to a pause of 0.01. 'X' Exits the Invoker 'S' Starts Tournament Upon starting the Tournament, you will be prompted for the Name (used only as a visual reference) and the code of any teams taking part. If you are not using a Tournament File Format, you will be prompted for a name for your custom Tournament. Q: Wow, and it really plays many matches automatically and in sequence? A: Yeup - enjoy. The Windows Based Menu System: Q: What is the Menu system? Why is it there? A: The Results Creator was initially designed to be run in a DOS Environment, and the Tournament Invoker also runs best at a DOS level. Obviously though, it is easier to have everything ready to run from one simple screen. This is the job of the Menu System, and the DOS based elements will run perfectly well under Windows in the 'famous' DOS Box. However, one disadvantage of running under Windows seems to be that the command-line parameters are bypassed. Despite being only in the RRC, these can be a great aid and time-saver, and seem to be skipped when running under Windows. The good news is that this does not always have to be the case. Windows provides 'PIF' or Program Information files, and it is this file that the Menu runs up for the Results Creator (so please don't delete them, or it might complain). These files can be edited by clicking on the Properties Menu Option in Explorer whilst selecting the file under Windows 95. In this, you can enter any command-line arguments you could wish. If you want to have multiple instances of different command-line arguments the Menu system cannot help. To achieve this, it is recommended that you create a batch file for each command-line instance which calls the RRC with the needed arguments. If you don't know how to create a batch file, there are always good examples in the Computer Press, whether it be Magazines or Beginners Books. Turbo Cricket pfile Manager: *Warning!* This is an advanced utility for use only by those who understand the methods which Turbo Cricket uses to store files. Careless use may well result in unrecoverable loss of Turbo Cricket players, teams, squads and stats. The TC_PFM is intended for people who want to integrate players, teams and stats from another installation of Turbo Cricket into one. You may Copy or Add a player from one pfile to another. You may also Copy or Add a players stats. You can also integrate (well okay, graft) an entire team from one pfile to another. This simply acts creates 15 new players, tacks them onto the pfile and clones the team (albeit with a modified squad layout to represent the new pfile references). Only use this program if you need to. It is not designed to be very user-friendly and generally assumes you know what you are doing. It was primarily designed for grafting new teams and players I received into my pfile, which is not the ideal way of doing things, but is infinitely simpler and more secure than creating a new pfile straight. I have included it for completeness but you can easily get away without ever looking at it. The TC_PFM is another Windows based program. If you do not have Windows, then you can still do tricks with pfiles, but only manually through a text editor. Under the Hood: This section contains technical information about the running of Turbo Cricket. This section is not needed at all to enjoy the game. Turbo Cricket runs with a very basic storage system. All of Turbo Cricket's information files can be edited using any text editor. The players are stored in a central pfile - called 'pfile.tc'. This allows for discrete and clean statistics generation and sensible team storage. In early versions, the players were stored directly in the team files, with no separate squad files, but this caused problems when saving and reading statistics, mainly due to duplicate names in some places (curse you annoying playtesters - you know who you are... ;-) ). It also meant that backups had to be kept of all players not currently involved in the squad. A pfile is better. A very basic pfile with one player might look like [... 1 My_Player NULL 1010101010101010 ...] The pfile must start with the number of players contained within. Each player has three lines of information. Name (with white spaces ' ', replaced with underscores '_'), Password (NULL is none) Attributes (8 x 2 digits) Teams are created in directories labelled as the team code. When interpreting the team code, Turbo Cricket changes directory to it and then reads the squad/team. Contained within is a Squad file - 'squad.tc'. This contains 15 pfile references to players. An example might look like [... #BEGIN# My_Team_Name 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 #END# ...] Note that the team name has white spaces ' ' replaced with underscores '_'. This is the same as for the pfile, and can be attributed to the simple file read system I used. when writing it, "fscanf("%s",blah)" system. I can write better now, but sadly the code is embedded pretty deep and it is wiser not to touch it now. Also contained within the team directory is up to three team files. team.tc - the general team file. Used if a specialist team file can't be found. team1.tc - the 1-day team file. team4.tc - the 4/5-day team file. The format of all team files is the same. The first line is the team password (NULL if none) They contain a batting order in squad reference numbers, with a * signalling the captain, and a + representing the wicket keeper. They also contain the field placings, of 3 areas of 8 slots - the players represented by their batting order number. The final part is the bowling order, a minimum of 1 line, a maximum of 10, also seeing the players represented by their batting order number, and for how many overs. Here for an example is an old version of my own 4/5-day team file: [... *******[hidden] 5 9 12 3* 2 14+ 10 7 13 8 11 #1 14 0 1 2 3 0 0 0 #2 4 7 8 0 0 0 0 0 #3 9 10 11 5 0 0 0 0 #BOWLING_ORDER 8/10=10 11/9=10 7/10=10 7/9=10 8/11=10 @ ...] Also contained within the team directory can be the team stats. These take the form of two files 'ul.tcs' for unlimited overs and 'lo.tcs' for limited overs. Each line represents one innings, and contains the amount of runs scored, the number of balls taken ( a * overs represents that the innings was curtailed early), the number of ducks, the number of wickets down, the number of overs specified in the match if in 'lo.tcs'. A '£' sign signifies a win, a '$' signifies a loss. And yes, in case you're wondering, I'm British, not American ;-). An example line might look like: [... 278r553b0d10w£ ...] The statistics for players are recorded in the 'stats' directory in the default working directory, or in the related path to the team path given. These are stored by pfile number (e.g. Player 1 is stored as '1.tcs'). The team played for and against are stored, as is the tournament name (NONTF if none). Also stored is the type of performance (UBAT for Unlimited Overs Batting, LBAT for Limited Overs, UBOWL for Unlimited Overs Bowling and LBOWL for Limited Overs Bowling). For batting, the score, balls faced, number of fours and sixes are recorded. A * is added if the player is not out. For bowling, the number of runs conceded, wickets, balls bowled, maidens and wides and no-balls are recorded. An example stats file looks like this: [... My_Team Their_Team NONTF UBOWL 73r3+115b3m2n0w My_Team Their_Team NONTF UBAT 12*r0f0s23b ...] The Tournament File Format is recorded simply. It contains then tournament name, the number of innings, the number of overs, whether the match is timed and for how long 4,5 or 0), whether or not the stats are to be recorded (1 or 0), Comments on or off (1 or 0) and the followon. [... TC_TF_FILE My_Cup 2 0 1 4 1 0 150 ...] The auto-run file is explained within the example 'auto1.tc' Summary: Turbo Cricket Results Creator (v1.4 - I3) was written in Borland C++ 4.52, 1997-2000 Turbo Cricket Editor (v1.4) was written in Visual Basic 4 1998-2000. Turbo Cricket Statistics Viewer (v1.4) was written in MS Visual Basic 4, 1998-2000. Turbo Cricket Menu System (v1.4) was written in Visual Basic 4, 1998-2000. Turbo Cricket PFile Manager (v1.4) was written in Visual Basic 4, 1998-2000. Turbo Cricket Tournament Invoker (v1.4) was written in Borland C++ 4.52, 2000. Disclaimer: Turbo Cricket is provided "as is" with no warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise for you or your computer. We cannot be responsible for any loss of data or damage of data or damage of hardware caused through running Turbo Cricket. Use at your own risk. Copyright: Turbo Cricket is a Freeware program. This means that whilst the creators retain the copyright, you are allowed to distribute it for no cost at all, either to you or the recipient. You are however not allowed to alter the Turbo Cricket 'package', and must not remove or add files to those originally distributed. The original files distributed are as follows: Feedback? Other Games? Turbo Cricket WebSite: http://members.tripod.com/GrahamMcN/pb/tc/ For more great games, check out the main Powerboost Software WebSite http://go.to/powerboostsoftware or http://members.tripod.com/GrahamMcN/pb Feel free to E-Mail me: grahammcnally@hotmail.com Special Request: If you ever see a Handled Ball in real life play, please tell me, as neither myself or my loyal band of playtesters (ex-housemates) have seen this rare event. If you can get a capture of the screen that would be even better! What do I do next? Enjoy the game...