SANTAZIA AN ADVENT CALENDAR ON CD-ROM SantaZia is Santa's castle where you can go through many rooms by means of 3D computer-graphics technology, the so-called QuickTime Virtual Reality. Every room comes with its own sound and background music. After the 1st December you can click on a lot of objects and get plenty of amusing surprises. On the castle there are 24 different bewitched objects, triggering off 24 astounding and funny computer animations which can be started again and again. Each day during the month of December until Christmas Eve, you get a new animation and a new game. The scenes and objects of Santazia are controlled by the clock installed in your computer. In fact it is exactly like opening the windows of an 'old-fashioned' ordinary advent calendar. The 24 games are all variations of 7 different funny games, for instance jigzaw puzzles, memory games etc. Together, these 24 games comprise many hours of fabulous entertainment and educating puzzles for small and big brains! SantaZia looks different before December, and changes throughout the month of December. After Christmas, there will be a full screen with 24 animations and games. The programme will store a file on your hard disk remembering these games (they will stay there until the middle of year!). If you get your copy of SantaZia some time during December, you will have your screen updated with animations and games on that day. Under Windows, SantaZia can be started by activating the file SANTAZIA.EXE. Choose the desired language version. Several members of the family can be registered when starting SantaZia, enabling several persons to find the task of the day. When you have typed in your name, click the flashing start arrow Now you will be presented with a letter from Santa Claus (before 1st December), and you will see the opening animation of SantaZia. You will arrive in your own room at the tower on the SantaZia castle, and you can walk around the castle, but nothing is happening so far. However, you can enter Santa's bedroom where he is stil sleeping. By giving him a click, you will receive a jigsaw puzzle. Close by clicking on the little gate on the left corner below. A little "helping mouse" will appear and ask you, if you want to quit. Another click on the mouse will close the screen. You can continue by clicking elsewhere on the screen. From December 1st, you will see the "disaster" animation in the beginning. Then you will end up in front of Santa Claus. By clicking on him, he will tell you about the item to be found on that particular day, and which game will come up. After having seen Santa talking, you can start exploring the castle, go through the rooms and search for the item to be found. INTERESTING CHRISTMAS MEALS FROM MANY COUNTRIES SantaZia also contains an interactive cookbook with Christmas recipes from 13 countries. You can find everything from the traditional "old-fashioned" Christmas meals to the more refined French Cuisine. The cookbook contains hand-drawn illustrations of the various dishes. You can also make a printout to be used in your kitchen. WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS MUSIC ON THE SAME DISC In an ordinary CD-player you can also listen to the music from Santazia, including new recordings of "Jingle Bells", "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", and the John Lennon classic "Merry Christmas". (But don't play Track 1 - it contains the data for your computer!). *** TROUBLE SHOOTING: SOUND If the sound on the SantaZia CD-ROM is jerky or sounds weird, this can often be due to a wrong setup in the QuickTime Control Panel on your computer. Try to do this: Open the QuickTime Control Panel, and choose "MORE". In the top of the window you choose "AUDIO". Be sure, that the setting is the right one for your soundcard. In the "Sample Rate" box the configuration should be like this: Requested hz: DEFAULT Automatic Rate Adjustment: has to be unchecked! If you on some of the animations notice a wrong stereo perspective, please switch around your speakers! VIDEO Under Windows 95, be sure to have installed the 16 bit version of QuickTime. If not, it can be found on the CD-ROM under: D:\QT_16\QT16INST.EXE. Don't use QuickTime 32 bit, as this version is not supported by QuickTime VR. If you are experiencing any trouble with running QuickTime, also be sure that QuickTime is proberly configured for running on your videocard. If you get a black screen in the animaton window, or if your computer might have crashed, try to do the following: Open the QuickTime Control Panel, and choose "MORE". In the top of the window you choose "VIDEO" and change from "DRAW METHOD" to "VIDEO DRIVER": For more information, go to: http://www.metronome.dk/santazia/ - or email to: santazia@metronome.dk ABOUT NAVIGATION IN THE 3-D UNIVERSE OF SANTAZIA: SantaZia is navigated by the so-called QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR). All rooms are built up in three-dimensional computer graphic. By means of the mouse you can freely move around, look up and down, zoom in and out. When moving around, two possibilities are shown by the changing symbols of the cursor: An arrow means that you can move on to another point in the room. The hand symbol means that you can click on the object in question and trigger an animation - or click on a door to go through it. When an animation has started, or you are in the middle of a game, an icon with four little arrows will turn up - by clicking on it, you can get back to the rooms. In the rooms, you can also zoom in and out by pressing the CTRL (control) and ALT key, respectively. When you have found the game of the day, by discovering the object of the day, a game icon will appear below in the middle of the screen. This can be used to start the game connected to the object. Furthermore this object will turn up in the user interface, where a new object will be added each day. This can be used to start the animation connected with the object. On the 10th December for instance, there will be 10 objects in different places on the application surface. By clicking on one of them, an animation of the object is released, and an icon will turn up on the lower part in the middle that can be applied to start the game. At the end of 24 days, 24 games will be available. - * -