.KEYWORD scrabble
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Award-winning Handmark Scrabble brings classic game to Palm OS
.OTHER
.SUMMARY On December 10, Palm recognized four of the most innovative Palm OS developers with the first-ever Powered Up Awards. In this article, Contributing Editor Steve Niles reviews Handmark Scrabble, winner of the Best Leisure and Entertainment Solution award.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
One of the things that makes the Palm OS so great is the ease with which third-party developers can create new applications, extending the use of Palm OS handhelds in amazing directions. Currently, Palm estimates there are some 175,000 developers worldwide creating new Palm OS applications. On December 10, Palm recognized four of the most innovative developers with the first-ever Powered Up Awards.
According to Steve Sakoman, chief technology officer for the Palm OS platform, "The Powered Up Awards recognize originality in the vast Palm OS developer community and honor developers of the best applications." Winner of the Best Overall award was a solution called ActiveECG from Active Corporation at http://www.activecenter.com/products.html, which I profiled in this month’s issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200201/activeecg001.html.
Here in PalmPower, meanwhile, I decided to take a closer look at the winner of the Best Leisure and Entertainment Solution: Handmark Scrabble from Handmark, Inc. at http://www.handmark.com/products/scrabble/index.html. It’s pictured in Figure A.
.FIG A Play the Palm OS version of the classic Scrabble boardgame.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Scrabble, so I was excited to get to play it on my Palm V. The game utilizes a drag-and-drop tile placement interface, has a built-in Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary, automatically scores every game, and saves partially completed games to be continued at any time. You can choose to play in either Friendly or Tournament mode. The rules in Friendly mode are a little looser. Handmark describes it as being like "a casual family game where you can choose to accept or reject words not outside the standard rules." Obviously, they’ve never played with my family.
In Tournament mode you play by the classic Scrabble rules, which includes challenges that automatically check the built-in Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary.
Up to four players can play at a time, or you can play on your own against an automated computer opponent. You can choose the skill level of your opponent: Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, or Expert. You can also play against opponents using multiple Palm handhelds via IR beaming. The game even supports Bluetooth, so you can challenge your friends in real time on your individual handhelds.
.H1 How to play
To begin a new game, tap the menu icon and then tap New Game. The New Game dialog box appears, as pictured in Figure B.
.FIG B Choose your name and your opponents.
Here you enter each player’s name and choose whether the player is human or controlled by the Palm handheld. If you’re playing the computer, you can select the level of play using a drop-down list. The Game Mode drop-down list lets you select between Friendly and Tournament. There are also two check boxes that allow you to choose whether you want to allow suggestions and if you’d like to play by beaming. Tap OK, and the computer will choose who goes first by randomly selecting tiles. The letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first.
Once the game begins, you place your tiles by first tapping the letter you want to use and then tapping the space you’d like it to go on the board. Alternatively, you can simply drag-and-drop the letter. When you’re satisfied with your move, tap Done to move on to the next player.
Several other options exist as well, however. You can tap Show to display your tiles and Hide to hide them from your opponent’s view. You can tap Undo to remove your tiles from the board and start your turn again, and you can tap Trade to trade all or some of your tiles. Tap Score to view the current scores, and tap Last to see what the last word placed was.
.H1 Playing the game
In using the game, I can report that the folks at Handmark have done an excellent job at transforming the Scrabble board game into a Palm OS computer game. The layout is excellent, and game-play is intuitive. My only qualm with the game is that I keep losing. I set it on the novice level (only one step up from beginner), and my computer opponent solidly whomps me with questionable words like "emulous," "teasel," and "ye." Not to mention its use of abbreviations, such as "PA," "Re," and "OS," which I thought were illegal. But I only kid my electronic foe. It was a good game, though I was a little suspicious of the random letter selection when the computer just happened to have the right letters to spell "whiner." Damn smart-alec computers.
My personal shortcomings in Scrabble aside, I highly recommend this game. As games go, it’s far more intellectually challenging than most, so you don’t have to feel as guilty spending a few hours on it. After all, it’s a great vocabulary builder. Now I know that a teasel is a plant of the genus Dipsacus, of which one species bears a large flower head covered with stiff, prickly, hooked bracts that, when dried, can be used for raising a nap on woolen cloth.
Well, it’s time to go another round against the computer. I’m feeling particularly emulous.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Handmark Scrabble from Handmark, Inc., visit http://www.handmark.com/products/scrabble/index.html.
For more information on ActiveECG from Active Corporation, visit http://www.activecenter.com/products.html.
For the article, "Makers of ActiveECG cardiac monitor have heart," by Steve Niles in the January 2002 issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition, visit http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200201/activeecg001.html.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Easy, flexible article reprints
ZATZ now offers a quick, easy, flexible and inexpensive way to use article reprints in your marketing and promotion efforts. You can now get article reprints for a one-time fee of only $200. For details, visit http://mediakit.zatz.com/reprints.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6fbf0
