The Draftsman

Version 2.0

for

Mah Jongg -V-G-A- Version 2.0




The Draftsman, Mah Jongg -V-G-A-, and all documentation
Copyright 1989 Ron Balewski







WHAT IS THE DRAFTSMAN?

The Draftsman is a drawing program specially designed to draw
and modify tiles for Mah Jongg -V-G-A-.


WHAT DO I NEED?

The Draftsman requires a VGA graphics card and monitor and a
Logitech compatible mouse. You can also use a two-button mouse
such as the Microsoft mouse, however certain operations which
depend on the center mouse button will be unavailable to you.

Any PC-XT or compatible with 512k of memory will run The
Draftsman just fine. You can probably get by with less memory, but
I don't know the exact lower limit.

Of course, you need Mah Jongg -V-G-A-. But that should be no
problem, because you got this program with MJVGA!



USING THE DRAFTSMAN

==> Drawing

First, be sure that all of the .ICN files, PAL.CFG, and
DRAFTSMN.EXE are on the same diskette (or in the same hard drive
subdirectory). Then, log onto that drive or subdirectory and type
DRAFTSMN to start the program.

All drawing must take place in the magnified view on the right
side of the screen. Below the magnified image, you'll see three
dots labeled Left, Center, and Right. To draw with any of these
colors, just hold down the corresponding button and move the mouse!
The small normal-size tile in the upper center of the screen will
be changed along with the magnified view.

The colored squares on the bottom right of the screen are your
color selections. To load any of the colors into the left button,
just click on it with the left button. To load a color into the
center or right buttons, hold down either button while clicking on
the desired color with the left button.



==> Mixing Paint

Any of the 16 colors can be customized at Ye Olde Painte
Shoppe. To select a color to re-mix, just click on it. You can
then add or subtract any of the three primary colors (red, green,
and blue) by clicking on the up or down buttons above the color
name. Each click will raise or lower the color by one "notch."
You can raise / lower the color by ten notches by holding the right
mouse button in while clicking on the up/down button.


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You can save a color assortment by clicking on Save Palette.
Clicking on Load Palette will un-do your latest changes by reading
back the current palette file. Note that once you write the
palette file with the Save palette button, you CAN NOT un-do the
changes (unless you go back and re-mix the colors, of course).

One very important point to remember when you mix paint is
that ALL the tiles must use the SAME color palette. So, if you
change, say, a red into a green, then ALL the tiles that use that
red will be changed to green! You MUST be VERY careful at Ye Olde
Painte Shoppe! Planneth ye strategy most carefully, or ye could
endith up with more problems than ye bargained for!


==> Selecting a Tile

To select a tile for editing, first click on the Load Tile
button. The Current Tile box will change to a Select box and a
small menu will appear. Click on Previous or Next until the name
of the desired tile appears. Then click on Load.

Loading a new tile will NOT automatically save the current
tile. You MUST click on Save Tile before loading another one if
you wish to save your changes!!!


==> Color Re-Mapping

The Draftsman provides an easy way to change every occurrence
of of some color to another. The easiest way to explain this is
with an example. So, here goes:

Let's assume that a tile has a number of red pixels that you'd
like to change to green. You could, of course, change the red into
green at Ye Painte Shoppe. If you didn't ever use that red
anywhere else, you'd be able to get away with it. But let's assume
otherwise. Besides, the perfect green is already mixed! To change
all those reds to that green, just: 1) Load the red into the left
mouse button (see Drawing section for details on loading colors
into buttons). 2) Load the green into the center (or right) mouse
button. 3) Click on the center (or right) circle. That's it! All
the red pixels will be changed to green!

The general rule is to load the current color into the left
button & the new color into the center or right. Then click on
whichever circle has the new color.


==> Exiting The Draftsman

To exit The Draftsman and return to DOS, just click on the
small "real-size" tile in the upper center of the screen. Sorry,
but I couldn't find anywhere to put an exit button! So, this'll
have to do!


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GENERAL COLOR INFORMATION

The colors are numbered from 0 to 15 from left to right, top
row first. So, the upper left box is color 0 and the bottom right
box is color 15.

The screen background is color 0. You cannot change this,
although you can change the background color by modifying color 0.

All of the tile edges use color 7. Again this cannot be
changed. But, all the edges can be changed by re-mixing color 7.

All of the tile backgrounds use color 1. You can change this,
but it's easier just to re-mix color 1.

All of the numbers use color 11. This is another one that can
be changed, but should be changed at Ye Painte Shoppe for
convenience.

All of the menus use color 15. To re-color the menus, this
color must be changed at Ye Painte Shoppe.



BLANK TILES

I'm enclosing a file called BLANKS.ZIP, which contains a complete
set of blank tile icons. To un-zip this file, you'll need a copy of
PKWARE's PKUNZIP. Since PKWARE's ZIP utilities are shareware, you
should be able to find them on a local bulletin board system.

I'm sorry about making you look for PKUNZIP, but the files
wouldn't fit on the disk wnless they were compressed. PKZIP has a
method of turning ZIP files into auto-extracting EXE files, but I
couldn't get this feature to work right. The resulting EXE files
always damaged a couple of the icon files. Enclosing the ZIP file is
the only reliable way to get these blanks to you.


USING ALTERNATE TILE SETS

Currently, MJVGA isn't designed to take full advantage of
alternate tile sets (since there aren't any yet). To use a new
tile set, you must copy the new V00.ICN thru V41.ICN files over the
old ones. There is no way to have this release of MJVGA look to a
different subdirectory for tile sets. If there is enough interest
in multiple tile sets, I'll add this ability to a future release.









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FUTURE VERSIONS

I'll admit that this version of The Draftsman is neither as
feature-filled nor as user-friendly as it can be. But, this is
just a marketing-test version. I don't know if anyone's willing to
take the time to re-draw complete tile sets. If you use and enjoy
The Draftsman, please let me know! I'd also appreciate hearing
your suggestions for improvement. What features would you most
like to see added?

Future releases (or the lack thereof) will depend on you. If
nobody uses The Draftsman, I won't waste my time upgrading it. On
the other hand, if it's used and enjoyed, I won't mind taking the
time to add goodies to it. It's up to you! Your letters and
comments will tell me whether or not The Draftsman is useful.



SHAREWARE

Please remember that Mah Jongg -V-G-A- is NOT public domain
software! It has been released as shaeware! If you use and enjoy
Mah Jongg -V-G-A- and The Draftsman, you are urged to send a
contribution of $15.oo to become a gegistered user. Complete
registration details can be found in the Mah Jongg -V-G-A- manual
(MJVGA20.DOC). The Draftsman is included with the Mah Jongg
-V-G-A- package. No separate registration fee is requested.





























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