> Thanks for your purchase, and welcome to ATS Sudoku. ATS Sudoku is pro level desktop version from popular Sudoku game.

> Game features memo system for planning the correct numbers to the cells. Game is based on very complicated board creator. It was written in two periods Fall 2006 + Fall 2008. When it was time to develop this new version from the game ( January 2016 ) didn't have a glue how it works anymore. Seemed to work well. The creator has various logical loops with 2-3 nestled levels.

> For Sudoku there is only one possible board size and game layout. Sudoku works only with nine 3x3 blocks. When the game engine was developed, game was supposed to have variable board sizes, but attempts to create the game to other board and block sizes failed.

> In the game your mission is to place the numbers from 1 to 9 into 3x3 blocks. The numbers within 3x3 block are not allowed to be on same row and column. Then the numbers are not allowed to be on the same board wide columns and rows. In the beginning of the game you are given few numbers from the pre-calculated board layout. From the numbers you get for ATS Sudoku, there are usually only one or two possible solutions for the predefined board. When you create or change the games, there can be many correct solutions. ( When you have many correct solutions, you use "Free layout" as game end setting ).

> Difficulty

> Due to the way game is, it is very easy to resolve boards with either lots of visible numbers or with only few numbers. When you reduce given numbers, the possible solutions for the board grows into enormous numbers. An empty board can be filled with consequent 1-9 series, with 1 number shift for each row. And when you increase the given numbers, the solution becomes more and more obvious. ATS Sudoku game engine / board creator features an internal function, which calculates an estimation from the difficulty of the board. When you select a board, the board is created in fractions of the second, but the program is suspended for playing the sound effect. The length of the effect is 8 seconds. It is the same in all ATS Desktop games. Times which are needed for preparations and calculations are around 1 second.

> In ATS Sudoku the difference in difficulty comes also from the general settings. Since most default boards have only one or two possible solutions, some boards shows the correct marks after you place the number to the board. Some others show correctly filled blocks, rows, columns before the board is finished. Some boards show you the numbers, you can use in each cell, row or column.

> Although some boards have automated memos, the usage of the automated row-column memos takes some additional time. The fastest games are usually played without taking advantage from them. The automated cell memos are the only ones, which does not take your attention from the board. And does not lengthen the resolve times.

> Besides numbers and results there is also Extra-Cell button. Extra-Cells gives you more numbers from the predefined board. Number of extra cells can be adjusted from board settings, also to the current game. All default boards gives you few extra cells. Then there is a Deadlock button. Deadlock function is for resolving deadlocks on tv boards and boards which ends only to predefined layout. Before you can use the button you must have a deadlock situation marked in your cell memos. Fix button features a limited utility. Fix searches and removes faulty marks from the board. In default boards you have 0-1 chances to get faulty marks removed.

> Sudoku is rather challenging game for converting it into computer. First you have to build a creator for boards. Then the nature of the game brings you two new challenges. You have to struggle for getting a line for boards' difficulty settings. Another problem is that computer can play the game from the beginning to the very end with less than five mouse clicks ... you have think how much you automate the game and how much you leave for the player ... Sudoku is not only with this dilemma, most summing and pairing solitaires can be played with one mouse click only ... okay, in the right menu bar there are counters for each number. Counters makes game easier to play, but on the other hand, the counters improves the game experience. You do not have to search and count the numbers by yourself ... possibly use one memo field for storing the numbers.

> From the predefined boards Blue Sky which begins in Mixture game series is an introduction to Sudoku and the way the game can be played. You can play all Blue Sky boards with all available utilities. And finish boards with on-screen buttons. If you do not know what do in Blue Sky, click Singles or Extra Cells buttons at the bottom. In Blue Sky you can review all moves with Undo-Redo functions.

> You can modify default boards, or create new boards for the game. If you modify default boards, there is button-function with what you can restore the original settings.

> With the game and some experience you play most default boards in 5 to 20 minutes.
> An experienced Sudoku player usually resolves the most difficult boards in around 30 minutes.
> Statistics which come with the game have played results, during the development and testing.

> From the default boards could mention Creative Works. It is different from others, it gives you only few numbers. After that you compose a layout which fits to the given numbers. There is a predefined board for the given numbers, but it is almost impossible to find it. In this game, the board creator ensures that there aren't any conflicts in between the given numbers. An experienced player resolves Creative Boards in around 30 minutes. The biggest difference to common difficult boards is in the way creative boards are played.

> One of the best ways to play Creative Works is to fill the board systematically ( for example row-by-row ), as long as you can. Usually possibility to add cells quickly ends, after there are around five unknown / empty cells. After that you start to swap the numbers until they fit. Creative Works has Undo-Redo enabled. If the board goes messy ( like it usually does ), you can roll the board back into state, where it was almost finished. When you swap the numbers, and there aren't any conflicts with given number, the game clears older additions so that the most recent addition fits to board.

> How do I begin

> You can play ATS Sudoku with two styles. You can play the game per-board basis. Then are collections from the boards, on screen they are called games. Games are chained boards. After you finish the game, the game is recorded as whole to statistics. If you forfeit the game before it ends, the boards you have already finished are left into stats.

> When you select a game from Game combo, the board combo is disabled. It is not possible to play single boards in game mode. When you select * All games, * Easy games, * Medium stakes, * Hard boards, you select the boards from Board combo.

> At board level
> - "New" creates completely new board.
> - "Reset" keeps predefined board and also the revealed cells.
> - "Retry" keeps predefined board, but it creates new reveals for the new game.

> When you use these functions in game mode, the last attempt for each level goes into game stats.

> Board creation parameters

> Board creator has 4 adjustable parameters. When you set the parameters, at the most the board creator makes 10 000 attempts to create a board which matches the settings. After that creator gives up and creates playable board from the last attempt. The creator fails if the sums for number settings do fit into the number of revealed cells. Setting minimum difficulty too high, will also end into an abnormal termination.

> Most important is the number of revealed cells. The practical minimum for the most difficult boards is little over 30. When you go below 30 you start to fall from "play" mode to "design" mode. Maximum is 80.

> Then you have 3 additional parameters.

> Min-Max for Equal numbers sets range for the equal numbers on the initial board. This is board wide setting. The board creator tries limit the counts of individual visible numbers in the initial board. When you set range to 5-7. The creator tries to reveal 5-7 number one calls, 5-7 number two cells to the board. When range is 5-7 the number of revealed cell should be in between 5x9 = 45 and 7 x 9 = 63. Min-Max for equal numbers goes so that the most difficult boards have almost equal amounts of each number. Bigger variances makes some numbers easy to resolve. You get almost fully reveled numbers very quickly to board, and after that there are only few free cells left ... for the more difficult numbers.

> Min-Max for the Numbers in block sets range for the reveled numbers per 3x3 block. When you set range to 4-6, the board creator tries to open 4-6 cells to each 3x3 blocks. When range is 4-6 the number of revealed cells should be in between 9x4 = 36 and 9x6 = 54. This setting is mostly visual setting for the looks of the board. Effect to the difficulty is small.

> Min-Max for the Difficulty is not a visible range. Setting the range higher makes boards more difficult to resolve. With the difficulty range you can prevent the creations of these unwanted blocks. After you finish the game, the difficulty is added to stats. From the stats you see that it usually takes more time to resolve the same board with higher difficulty. Not always, but quite often. Maximum nominal value ( a value you can set from the screen ) is 127. In practice secondary setting works well when max for the difficulty is 1 - 20. The most important difficulty setting is the number of revealed cells.

> When the board creator was developed into it's final form in the year 2008, it turned out that the earlier settings were not yet enough. Sometimes the randomizer created simple blocks from the numbers, which are too easy and looks dull on screen ... the lack of the human touch was very visible. More research and work was needed.

> Board styles

> New board begins with a literal briefing about the board. When board is said to have free layout, the game ends to all available solutions. When layout is fixed, the game ends only to the predefined board. Some other electric Sudoku games ( played in tv with cellular phones ) have this demand for the predefined board. In ATS Sudoku the demand for finding the predefined solution is used to simulate these tv-games.

> Magazine boards simulate Sudoku on paper. Real-life magazine and newspaper boards are more difficult, correctly filled cells are not shown, before the board is finished. It is much the same with the default boards. The game never allows you to set obvious false numbers to the cells. If setting a number to cell causes a visible conflict with either given or locked number ( verified to be correct ), your attempt to set number to the board is ignored. If there are conflicts with "free cells" all older conflicting cells are cleared from the board.

> On boards Extra cell opens a randomly selected ( certain to be correct cell ). Extra key can be available on all boards. In the board settings there is a parameter with the what the usage is usually limited few times.

> Single key-function fills all cells with only one possible number. In default boards, single key-function is available only on Blue Sky level ( Introduction to the game ). With game settings, it can be made available for boards, where cell-memos are filled automatically.

> With Undo-Redo function you can go back wards and forwards in the current game. In default boards, Undo-Redo is available in Blue Sky and Creative Works boards. With game settings, it can be made available for all boards.

> Memo fields

> In the background research it turned out, that when you fill newspaper Sudokus, quite a many makes notes to the sides of the Sudoku boards. Check what numbers fits into each block column and row. The game gives you a possibility to make the same notes to the bottom and right side of the board. The most useful and convenient memo field is in free cells. You can add random numbers into free cells on the board.

> On some boards these memos are filled automatically with the numbers, which suits to cell. In game settings there is a block for memos.

> When you use fully automated memos, by default the numbers are calculated so that they match to predefined board. If you have managed to add numbers which doesn't match to predefined board, it looks like that there is a bug in the program. These memo numbers are named as hints, they try to advise and help you with the board. Quite often when you manage to add faulty number into board, later it turns out that this faulty addition prevents additions in somewhere else. Most default boards have only one and sometimes two possible solutions.

> The game never tries to fool you to play boards, which cannot be resolved. If you think that you are facing such, you can reset the board and go to game settings, enable cell memos, add enough clicks to extra cell and single cell utilities and check the whole board with these functions.

> When on-screen calculation is checked from the right sidebar, the memo calculation is made by the visible board.

> - You can set the memo numbers with right mouse click.
> - When you click existing memo number with new number, it is replaced
> - When you click existing memo number with the same number it is removed.

> - In plan mode you set the memo with 1st left mouse click. 2nd click with same number opens the cell.

> Grabbing numbers for use

> There are two mouse modes for playing the game, the default mode is faster to use, the plan mode was made for the difficult boards and players, who likes to design and think first.

> There are various way you select current number to the mouse pointer.
> - You can select number from the vertical bar on the left.
> - You can scroll current number with mouse wheel.

> - Left or right click to given or verified cell changes the number.
> - Right click to opened, but not verified cell changes the number ( left click is used replace the number in cell )
> - With shift and mouse click it is possible to select numbers from cells and memos.

> - From memo fields you can grab all visible numbers. Move mouse over the wanted number. Press shift and left click mouse. In plan mode, you right click the mouse with shift key down.

> Default mouse behavior was made for playing the game by making the plans to the cell memo fields. The are not usually written automatically.
> First you make plans to the cell memos with right mouse button. After you find the correct cell, you can clear the memos simply by right clicking them.

> Made for wheels

> ATS Sudoku was made for the wheels. Mouse with the wheel is recommended input device for playing. In game play you can set the numbers you place to the board with wheel. You place numbers to cells with left mouse click, planning is made with right mouse click. Mouse cursor shows you the current number. You remove plan marks with 'X' ( shown in cursor and side bar ). X means "No Number". You change the numbers and make plans until the block is locked. Blocks are locked only after they are filled correctly. The moment of locking depends on board settings.

> Game shows locking and correctly filled cells with background colors, colors can vary and you can modify them. B default shades of by board. Default colors are
> - Empty cell,s you are supposed to find the right numbers have gray backgrounds. You can add memos to all empty gray shaded cells.
> - Shades of Red are user made additions to board, these numbers can be changed. You simply place new number ( including X - no number ) to cell and the old is replaced.
> - Shades of Green are correctly made user addition. Greens cells cannot be changed. When you have green cells enabled on screen, red means incorrect numbers.
> - Shades of Blue is correctly filled 3x3 block, 9x3 Row or 3x9 Column.

> The background colors of the given numbers varies. Defaults are
> - Gold is default for tv games, it cannot be changed. ( In tv games, you see results after click, must find the predefined layout )
> - Orange is default for magazine games. ( In magazine games results are not shown, game ends to all possible layoyts )

> ATS Sudoku has a file based Undo-Redo system. The system is cut from the game ends and beginnings. From the statistical reasons.
> ATS Sudoku boards are collected into games. Game has levels. Levels are boards with different settings. You can create more games with game editor.
> ATS Sudoku has stats for completed games and all boards, regardless of the game. ATS Sudoku has ATS Mines like cheat free statistic system. From the AIDS, the number of usage is included to stats.

> Statistics

> ATS Games features a brand new dataBase system. TextBase 3rd which is created and developed by R&D ( 1st is CIA, 2nd is programmed web-base ). Textbase introduces a new philosophy, where you store the data in display format. You convert data to numbers for calculations, and it is stored as readable text. TextBase files are easy to read without a dataBase program. TextBase supports left and right aligned fields.

> Then it has three new data types. They are all scientific. First is time interval, second fractional number and third power of something. First is for gaming and clocking. Second and third were added because of the rounding errors. When have a billion dollar bill and you calculate interests for the bill, the results from the interest calculations varies in millions. It depends on computer and program you use for the calculation. The problem is yours, when your revenues & numbers are big or you do scientific calculations.
> - Fractional numbers are stored with asteroid and divisor : 1 * 1/4 = 5/4 = 1.25.
> - Powers with carets 10^2 = 100.
> - Time interval is stored in days, hours, minutes, seconds and fractions 7.22,1992 7 minutes, 22 seconds and 1992 microseconds. In text base files acute accent ( ` ) is used as general separator ... separating integers from fractions. Day is the longest standard time unit, you cannot store months and years into time interval fields.

> ? In science and mathematics double quote is used from seconds, and single quote for minutes.

> Textbase supports embedded variable length memo-fields, it supports also multiple record formats in the same file. Textbase has unique field definition system. You can store simple field definitions to the beginning of the file. Advanced definitions, with datatypes, decimals, input masks, descriptions, hints, etc. are stored to textBase ini file.

> Textbase was originally developed for creating a new version from old Dos Dir command. When Dir command is directed to text file, it creates a columnar text file with multiple record types and variable length fields. Then there aren't any standard format for the file lists. They are always much like Dos-Dir, but not exactly.

> Windows Operating system

> ATS Sudoku interferes a little with your Windows Operating System. ATS Sudoku uses non-standard Alibi font for displaying text data on screen. If you do not have Alibi font installed to your computer the game installs the font into your system for the time Sudoku is active. When the game ends normally, the finalization routine removes Alibi from font selection boxes. If game crashes, the temporal font is detected Sudoku.Ini file. Then "TemporalFont=1" line will remove the temporal Alibi installation from your computer. This entry is maintained automatically, if you delete Sudoku.Ini file after crash, the "TemporalFont" entry in ini file must be manually changed to "1", for getting rid of that temporal font. Without this manual setting the temporal font utility assumes, that you have Alibi installed in your system. The Sudoku.Ini file is encoded with ANSI characters, be careful not to change the encoding into Unicode. Some text editing tools converts ANSI files into Unicode ( some by default / some others automatically ).

> Temporal font installer-remover is an old R&D utility for professional graphic makers. Graphic and video makers need all kinds of fonts, usually only once or twice. If you install all used fonts permanently, the enormous amount of fonts makes your computer slow and font selection boxes difficult to browse. With a program built over the utility, you can keep the required fonts in your system as long as the project ( where you need the fonts ) is active. Then you can take them back to use from your font libraries. You need the utility also for making real-time previews from the fonts in your libraries.

> All ATS games have 4 base directory entries. By default 3 from 4 are in the installation directory. Besides the primary installation directory, subdirectory "Data" is always in installation root. This directory has data files ( pictures, sounds, etc ) which come with the game and not altered. "Saves" subdirectory is usually in the installation root. "Saves" has data files which are modified during game play. Game needs read / write access to the files in "Saves". If you run the game from CD or from some other Read Only Memory device, the saves directory is automatically transferred into the local settings directory.

> 4th directory Dos / Windows directory for temporal files. When Undo/Redo is available, all ATS games keep files for undo-redo system in temp directory. General rule about Temp directory is that you can delete all files from temp directory without affecting the program's functionality. All programs should be closed when you delete all files from temp. Difference to Recycled files is that files in temp directory are being used. And usually deleted after you close the program. Most files in temp are leftovers from cashes or results from poor programming. ATS games do not delete Undo files from temp directory. In ATS Mines undo- redo for the last played game is available after you close and re-open the program. ( Unless you have cleared Temp directory in between )

> ATS Color Mixer Codes

> ATS games features two character color coding system. In the system levels of color can be set from black to white. First character varies from 1-8 then it continues from numbers to letters A-H. The numbers sets color's RGB value from 0 to 255 ( = full red, green, blue ). Letters A-H adds second colors or color with RGB value 0-255.

> When you set 1st color to character value it goes like this :
> Red = B ---> R = 255, G = G + 64, B = B + 64. If addition creates G or B values which goes over 255, in final RGB code they are set to 255. 255 is maximum for each RGB color component.

> There would be few non-standard 32-bit Bitmap and color formats. 3D cards use 4th byte for alpha / transparency, Window NT, 2K, Xp ,.. would have 32 bit color format, but it is a poor bit-aligned format. Windows format is only a bitmap format, you cannot store the 32-bit pictures into any other popular format, like JPEG or TIF, which are used in cameras, web, etc. Then in bitmaps, flat bed scanners have used better internal 48 bit ( byte aligned ) BMP format for ages.

> The first character is stepper for color, each character increases RGB value with 8. Traditional 16 color dark gray, red, yellow, green is always presented with letter "4". Silver or light gray is "6", bright red, green and blue are "8". With optional 2nd character you can "insert" more accurate colors to your blend or color mix. The stepping range is 32 and there are only 28 letter in alphabet. So these second codes got "easy-to-remember" shortcuts to key color values. Key colors in 2nd character are marked with numbers 0-7. Key colors add 4 * number to the RGB value which was presented with the 1st character ... 0,4,8,12,16,20,24,28,32.

> If code is "62" then the color value is 6*32 + 2 * 4 = 192 + 8 = 200.

> All values in 2nd character are like this : 0-abc-1-def-2-ghi-3-jkl-4-mno-5-pqr-6-stu-7-vxy-8. In the set z is not used, w equal to v. "0" is not needed, "8" throws the color into next stepping range. When you work with graphics you usually work with stepped colors, but in the picture blends, transparency, edging and others creates colors to all possible values. On screen and text files these codes need 6 characters, instead of 9 ( RGB in numbers ). Unlike in Hex coding, you usually play with easy series, and you can set the whole range ( 0 - 512 ) with only one character. In ATS games you get along with the 1st character and 32 stepping.

> ATS Textbase numbers

> All ATS games uses R&D text base for storing statistic data. R&D Text bases are a vintage text file databases. Brand new vintage base operates with SQL commands. ATS Text Base is a special edition from the base, made for games and rather small files. Files, which can be cached to and operated directly from memory, without stored indexes. ATS Music players and slide shows operate with a another special edition from the base.

> ATS text bases needs sometimes meaningless numbers ... like game numbers ( internal counters for grouping stats ), record numbers, keys, irrogrates, etc. These numbers are packed into characters, which are in numbers 0-99.
> Commercial at @ is 0, Multiply sign × is 50, Division ÷ can be used as 100, as a replacement for two character number which would be A@ ( 1 * 100 + 0 ). Without division and 100, common range 0 -100 would need two chars, and another -100 to 100, would need 3 chars. Actual numbers in coding are used for shifting with power of 10.
> A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc, all numbers in range 1 - 49 are in Ansi capitals.
> a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, etc, all numbers in range 51 - 99 are small in Ansi letters.

> In both sets letters after Z are from ISO Latin-1 Character Set. It is the default ANSI set in text viewers and editors. European or Latin-1 special letters are in almost all ANSI sets.

> All numbers have a printable ANSI character, they are visible in files. With Two characters it is possible to present unsigned integers .. positive .. numbers from 0 to 10000, or signed integers from -100 to 100. Sign takes the another character. Packing is fully compatible with common 10 base system, there aren't any rounding errors in calculations, 4,00 is always 4 ... not for example 4,000000274659

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