Swapper
By Peter J. Rowe
mig53@yahoo.com

The object of this game is to accumulate points by swapping pieces to form rows or columns of three or more identical pieces.

Use the arrow keys to highlight the initial piece of a move, then press second to select the piece. The cursor will flash to confrim that you have selected the initial piece of the move. To complete the move, press the arrow key for the direction in which you want the piece to move. If the move did not create a combination, you will see an "Invalid Move" indicator on the screen. If the piece did create a combination, the combination will disappear, any pieces above the combination will fall down, possibly creating more combinations, and the empty space will be filled with new random pieces.

You can get a hint by pressing the [APPS] key. This will cause one of the pieces on screen to have a flashing highlight for a second, indicating that it can be used to create a combination. However, getting a hint costs points or, in timed mode, uses up time.

You can press the [CLEAR] button at any time to save and exit the game. The next time that you run the game, it will be exactly as you left it (except for the cursor position).

There are two modes that you can play the game in, normal and timed.

In normal mode, you can take your time to plan out your moves. In this mode, the game ends when there are no more available moves. Each combination that you create in this mode adds to the bonus meter. When the bonus meter fills up, a quarter of the pieces are randomly removed and you go to the next level, where combinations are worth more.

In timed mode, the bonus meter continually counts down. When it gets to a very low level of time, the bonus level indicator will start flashing. When the meter reaches zero, the game is over. Each combination that you create adds to the bonus meter. When the meter fills up, a quarter of the pieces are randomly removed and you go to the next level, where combinations are worth more and the bonus meter decreases faster. If you run out of moves in timed mode, it will briefly note that fact on the screen and then give you a completely new set of pieces to work with.

Here is how the game is scored:

 - a base of 2 points for a combination of three pieces
 - add one to the multiplier for each additional piece in the combination or each additional combination in a chain reaction - i.e. a 3 piece combination is worth 2 points, a 4 piece is worth 4, a 5 piece is worth six, and so on
 - creating two combinations simultaneously when you do a move (not counting combinations formed by falling pieces) doubles the points for both of the combinations, three combinations simultaneously triples the points, etc.
 - for each bonus level, add a half to the multiplier - i.e. a 3 piece combination is worth 2 points on level 1, 3 points on level 2, 4 points on level 3, and so on
 - point values are doubled for timed mode
 - multiply the score by five to compare your high scores to Bejeweled

Warning: requires sperate downloads of ExtGraph and ExtRand to compile.

Version History
Ver. 1.3
Size optimization.

Ver. 1.2

 - Made the pieces fall down a little bit faster.
 - Fixed a bug in timed mode.

Ver. 1.1

 - Made the pieces fall down when a combination is removed, instead of teleporting into place.
 - Fixed a bug in the high score system.

Ver. 1.0
Initial public release. 