README for Games::Bingo

$Id: README 1009 2003-10-04 07:49:07Z jonasbn $

INSTALLATION

Please read the INSTALL

REQUIREMENTS

 - Initially a printer
 
 - A computer capable of running Perl.
 
 - Some pens or small pieces of paper which can be used by the player to
   mark the number on their cards (avoid using permanent markers if you
   want to reuse the cards or run several games in a row).

SETUP

Use the programme bin/bingo_print.pl from the Games::Bingo::Print module
to generate the number of pages you require (one for each player). Each
page holds 3 cards. 

Setup the computer and start playing using either the program bin/bingo.pl
or one of the other bingo programs listed below.

PLAYING // The rules of bingo

The rules for playing bingo are fairly simple.

The caller randomly pulls numbers using the game application 
(see below for a list of choices), #1 through #90 and calls out the number. 

You are normally given a few seconds to locate the number on your 
bingo cards and mark them off.

The bingo cards have 3 rows and 8 columns with a random selection of 12
numbers. 

The first column contains numbers between #1 and #9. the second between #10
and #19, the last column contains numbers between #80 and #90, (the latter
holding the alias 'gamle ole' in .dk - it is allowed to shout 'GAMLE OLE' 
when this number is pulled);

The normal way to play is to play for the following goals:

1. 1 row
2. 2 rows
3. the full card

If you are the first to complete the numbers in a pattern
according to the rules of the particular game, you yell "Bingo!" and
win the prize for the game.

Your bingo cards are randomly generated for you by the computer, please see SETUP. 

Most bingo sites allow you to choose the number of cards you would like to play 
for each game of bingo. 

The game stops when a whole card is filled and somebody have yelled 'Bingo!'. 

ABOUT

This collection of modules and programs comes from when I got the idea
that I had never programmed a bingo game for my computer. I got inspired
by playing an actual physical bingo game and I thought to myself -
that's easy to implement and yes it was.

In the bin directory is located a simple console based bingo game
application called bingo.pl.

But since the project has grown, and the next natural step was to make
the progam able to print its own bingo cards. Matt Sergeant suggested
using PDFLib and provided me with a working example.

The printing of bingo cards has been moved in the Games::Bingo::Print module.

Well not even having the PDF part in place I got the crazy idea of
implementing an Aqua GUI for the program, which would give the code a
nice separation having both a console version and a GUI version.

This can be downloaded from my homepage:

http://usr.bin.dk/~jonasbn/osx/CamelBingo.tgz

It is a CamelBones based OSX application, for now it is just a GUI
version of the console game and it is still under development.

Anyway - have fun

BUGS

If you experience any bugs please report them using:

http://rt.cpan.org or bug-Games-Bingo@rt.cpan.org

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people:

Rikke Gornitzka, for inviting me to the real bingo game, which started
all this
Matt Sergeant (MSERGEANT), for suggesting PDFLib
Allan Juul, for helping with the print implementation
Lars Thegler (LTHEGLER), for RT tickets and patches
Casper Warming (WARMING), for helping with the OSX client

Thanks,

jonasbn <jonasbn@cpan.org>, Copenhagen 13th. May 2003
