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Smart Mahjong Version 1.0 Beta
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Thank you for evaluating this version of Smart Mahjong.

INTRODUCTION:
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Smart Mahjong is a set of programs implementing the traditional Chinese game of Mahjong, which is played all over the world and very popular in East Asian countries. Please do not mix this game with the solitaire kind of Mahjongg games, in which a player tries to take pair of tiles away from the board. Traditional Mahjong is played by 4 players, in which players draw and discard tiles until one player has an entire hand of winning combinations.

FEATURES:
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To save you the trouble of gathering 4 people around a table to play the Mahjong game, we designed an Artificial Intelligence player. A AI player is very smart. If you are a beginner of the game, you will probably feel that the AI players are fairly strong. An expert Mahjong player should still enjoy playing with the AI. 

This program has network functions that allow you to play through Internet with other people. Any combinations of real players and AI players are possible. There are 3 playing mode:

(1) Host a game: In this mode, the program can be run as a server, which allow people from elsewhere to log-on to your computer and play together. 

(2) Join a game: If you know other people running the server, you can use this mode to join their games. You need to know their Internet addresses to do so.  

(3) Play with AI: In this mode, you play with 3 AI players locally on your computer. 

There are many different scoring system for Mahjong games and there is yet a standard rule accepted all around the world. We currently support a scoring system which is popular in western countries. The introduction of this rule system can be found online at several Mahjong pages. Such as:
	Mark's Mahjong Page at:
		http://www.geocities.com/gracefiles/mahjong.html
	Mahjong Mahjong everywhere at:
		http://www.tiac.net/users/domino32/mahjong/index.htm
Please note that you do not need to know any rule to play. You can actually learn the rule from playing this game. Supporting to other scoring systems will be added gradually in future releases.

INSTALLATION:
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If you are reading this file, you have already downloaded and decompressed the package. You will see a file called Smart.jar in the same directory as this README.txt file.

Because this program is written in Java programming language, you need to have Java Runtime Environment installed in your System. This program is developed and tested under Java version of 1.3, but version 1.2x of Java Runtimes should be working too. 

Windows users can download the Java Runtime libraries from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/download-windows.html
It is a 5M download and very easy to install onto your system. If you are a Linux, Unix or other rare system user, I suppose you have enough computer knowledge to install the Java Runtime Environment on your system.  

After the library is set, simply type: "java -jar Smart.jar" from a command window to run the program. If you are using Windows, you can just double click the icon of the jar file to run the program.

HOW TO PLAY:
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If you just want to play with AI, it would be quite easy to start. The two network modes require you to set up network connections. This will require you some basic knowledge of network (such as: What is an IP address). Please read the HOW TO PLAY section on our web page at: 'http://www.smartmahjong.com' for more detail if you have any trouble. When the game begins, everything will be straightforward. Enjoy playing!!!

LEGAL STUFF:
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The final release of Smart Mahjong will be distributed as shareware. That means we provide you with the full functional software for you to try. But you should register your copy if you like to keep the software.

Because this is a beta version for test purpose, we do not require your registration. You can redistribute the software as long as you give the exact copies (including this notice) to others. You are prohibited from charging for any such copies, however.

The software is provided "AS IS" without any warranty. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this program.

You shall not Reverse-engineer, dissemble, or decompile the software.
