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 , Copenhagen 13th. May 2003