Introduction – Overview
Four Winds is based on
traditional Chinese board game for four players (and has nothing to do
with the popular solitaire game that uses the name "Mah Jong" just because
it is played with traditional Mah Jong tiles). The origins of Mah Jong
can be traced back to set-forming card and domino games played for
centuries in China, but in its present form the game has been played only for
about a hundred years. Mah Jong was introduced to America and Europe in
the 1920’s and is now popular all over the world.
Mah Jong is usually played by four players. In Four Winds a human
player has three computer opponents. You can select your opponents from
four different types of players: Beginner, Defensive, Expert and
Limitmaker. Four Winds also supports multiplayer games over
the Internet, local area network, or using a direct cable. Up to four
human players and 10 spectators can participate in a game.
Since the game is played all over the world, there are several
variations of the rules and scoring. Four Winds version 2 includes over
20 pre-defined rule presets, which cover the basic variations. In addition, any pre-defined rule preset can be
fully customized and saved as a user-defined rule preset. This section
of the Four Winds web site introduces the main features of the software.
The other two main sections – Knowledge Base and
the Online Documentation– complement the
Software section and give more in-depth information of the game, the
former concentrating on the most common rule variations of Mah Jong
(without direct connection to the software) and the latter documenting in
detail all features of Four Winds Mah Jong version 2.
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