A number of questions have arisen regarding the rules of the game Sevens and the Semiformal Specification of the Interface between the Main Control Program and the Student Teams' Player Modules. Below are those questions and their answers.
Q1. What is the number of cards dealt? At most the entire deck of 52 cards. Not all cards will necessarily be dealt, see the restrictions on the dealer in the rules of the game.
Q2. What are the colours of the additional suits? The New Game Development Department has not decided yet.
Q3. How should the symbols be interpreted? You do not need to "interpret" any of these symbols, other than that they serve to identify a card (the suit is the other identifying aspect of a card). The symbols represent the "numbers" in the standard deck. Additional symbols being considered by the New Game Development Department are mentioned in the document Semiformal Specification of the Interface ... , see link above.
Q4. How are reward/punishment points determined? Read the rules of the game again carefully. The dealer determines and announces the number of reward or punishment points that a player earns under the three situations when a card is played onto the table: (1) the total score value of the cards on the table is divisible by 7, (2) the decimal representation of the total score value of the cards on the table contains the digit 7 (one or more times) and (3) both of these conditions apply.
Q5. How is the value of a card determined? The dealer determines and announces the two possible values of a card bearing each particular symbol. When a card is played onto the table, the player decides and announces which of these possible values for a card of that symbol will be counted for that card. The two possible values of a card bearing a particular symbol may be the same, in which case a player playing a card of that symbol has no choice of the value to count.
Q6. Is ranking of players done by total score, or by separate reward/punishment points? For example, would a player with 19 reward points and 19 punishment points do better than a player with 1 of each type of point, or are both scores 0? Only the total number of points is considered. In the example cited, both players have 0 points, so they tie.
Q7. Are card values based on symbol only, or also by suit? The value of a card depends only on its symbol, not its suit.
Q8. How many players are allowed since there is a difference between the two specs? There is only one specification, not two. Some differences are noted between the game as it will be played in the 2B03 tournament and future variations of the game under consideration by the New Game Development Department. All teams' player modules are to be designed so that they will function correctly (without modification) for the future variations mentioned. None of the variations will be played in the 2B03 tournament, i.e. in which performance points will be earned and counted toward the 2B03 teams' grades. I.e., when designing your player modules, do not depend on there being 13 symbols, 4 suits, etc. When designing your "optimum" strategy, you may and perhaps should depend on these characteristics of the card deck and the game. You will not be penalized if your player module plays any of the variations mentioned very poorly, but you can be penalized if your player module plays one of the variations mentioned illegally.
Q9. There are different numbers of cards symbols and cards suits in the two specs, and is there any restrictions about the interpretation of the symbols? There is only one specification. See the answers to questions Q3 and Q8 above.
Q10. How many cards may a player play onto the table at any one time? Each player plays one card onto the table in each turn.
Q11. The rules regarding the reward/punishment points are not clear; how about the case that the total score value of the cards on the table both contains a number 7 and is divisible by 7 at the same time? The rules have been revised to distinguish between each of these cases and the case in which both conditions are met. See the revised version of the rules of the game Sevens.
Q12. What do the suits "pentagons" and "triangles" mean? A "pentagon" is a five-sided polygon. A "triangle" is a three-sided polygon.
Q13. There is a symbol "A" and also a "1" in the list of symbols. What does that mean? The symbol "1" is one of the extensions to the card deck being considered by the New Game Development Department.
Q14. What is the complete set of the rules to rank a winner? What if there are two or more players with the same score when the game is over? Players with equal scores at the end of a game tie for the corresponding rank in that game. Rank is counted in the usual way. For example, if, at the end of some game,
Q15. How does the main control program (MCP) make a decision that a player fails to play a card? I.e., what if a player module has taken too much time to compute but would, in fact, play a card if given enough time? A reasonable time to compute a play will be allowed. In practice, this has never been an issue yet and it is not likely to be an issue this year. The speeds of the computers in question are so high that, in practice, each move in preceding 2B03 tournaments has always been made in quite a short time, e.g. a fraction of a second. You should avoid implementing a strategy that will require more than a few seconds per player's turn to calculate, but, again, this is not likely to pose a significant restraint.
Q16. I know how parameters are passed from the calling to the called routine, but how are they passed via formal parameters from the called routine back to the calling routine? Reread the section on procedures in the Oberon-2 Reference Manual. Values can be passed from the called routine back to the calling routine by a variable formal parameter. Reread also the corresponding passages in the Semiformal Specification of the Interface between the Main Control Program and the Student Teams' Player Modules.
Q17. What may and may not the designers of player modules assume regarding the initialization of the score values of the symbols and the colors of suits? May they assume that the dealer has announced the score values for all symbols and the colors for all suits before play begins, or should they assume that only the symbols and suits dealt will be already defined? You may assume that when your access routine PlayCard is called by the MCP, the dealer has already announced the score values for all symbols and the colors of all suits on the cards in the deck being used in that game. The same information will have been announced to all players in that game. You may also assume that every combination of those symbols and those suits occurs exactly once in the deck. If you assume any or all of these things, be sure to state so in the domain part of the access routine semantics for every routine concerned.
Q18. The rules of the game Sevens state: "If the decimal representation of the total score value of all the cards on the table contains a seven (e.g. 17, 37, 73, etc.), then the player playing that card earns a corresponding (but typically different) number of reward or punishment points." If the total score value contains several sevens (e.g. 777), may I claim the reward points several times? No. The phrase "contains a seven" is to be understood as meaning "contains one or more sevens".