* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Quid Pro Quo Software * * 153 Moreuilwood Blvd * * Petawawa, ON * * CANADA * * K8H 1A7 * * * * Voice (613)687-8603 * * FAX (613)687-6802 * * CompuServe 75537,116 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (C) 1995, Quid Pro Quo Software, All Rights Reserved Table of Contents About Quid Pro Quo Software System Requirements Comments Support Files Disclaimer General Instructions for the Board Game Playing the Game Setup Options Categories Included Fact Page/Class Room Maps/Periodic Table Acknowledgements Sound Blaster Support -* About Quid Pro Quo Software *- Quid Pro Quo Software produces high quality educational and trivia programs. All of these programs have VGA graphics, optional mouse support, Sound Blaster card support and a very easy user interface. This file contains information about our programs that you may find useful. This file is a general file that contains information about all of our programs, therefore, there may be parts that do not pertain to the program you are using. For more information on our other products see the file called QPQ_CAT.TXT or contact us at the above address/numbers. Our programs contain up to three different parts, each of which are described below. The first part, which all programs have, is a board game that allows one to four players to take part in an exciting trivia game. Players attempt to answer true and false or multiple choice questions. The first player to successfully answer correctly in five different categories wins. The second part is the Fact Page or Class Room. Entering this area allows you to scroll through the information about that program's theme. For instance in Presidential Primer the Fact Page displays a card for each President listing a number of important facts about him. Both Stating the Facts and Only in Canada contain a page for each province or state that includes a map of the country highlighting the province or state as well as its flag. You may search for information using a different search keys. Some of the programs have a third part. For instance both Stating the Facts and Only in Canada include an electronic atlas that may be used to display facts or used to test your knowledge of the country. It's Elementary includes an electronic Periodic Table that is excellent for studying for school tests or just retrieving information about the elements. -* System Requirements *- This game is designed to be played on IBM PC or true compatible equipped with a VGA monitor. A mouse is not required; however, it is recommended. The Sound Blaster card is supported; if properly installed you will hear quality FM music throughout the game. (See Sound Blaster Support, below, for more details) -* Commercial Version *- This is a commercial version. That means that you have paid for this copy of the game (or you are illegally using the program). You are allowed to make a copy for backup purposes but you may not make copies for friends. If you require more copies please contact the vendor from which you purchased this copy. If the vendor is unable to provide you with additional copies please contact Quid Pro Quo Software for more copies. -* Comments *- We enjoy receiving comments, good or bad, about our programs. If you have any suggestions or ideas for improving these games please contact us. We will answer all letters received. Our programs are tested on a variety of computer systems. We spent an incredible amount of time making sure that the programs are well designed and enjoyable to play. If you discover any problems please write to us with a description of what happened. Please include a description of your computer as well as a copy of your config.sys and autoexec.bat and the version number of your operating system. -* Support *- Registered users are entitled to free lifetime support. If you encounter problems please contact Quid Pro Quo Software at the above address. All questions or problems will be responded to in writing. -* Disclaimer *- Quid Pro Quo Software's programs are sold 'as-is', without any warranty as to performance or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. Because of the many hardware and software environments into which this program may be used, no warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is offered. The user must assume the entire risk of using the program. Any liability of the seller will be limited exclusively to product replacement or the refund of the purchase price. -* General Instructions for Trivia Game *- To begin the trivia game click on the "Board Game" button. The game board will appear which is divided into two major areas - the main board and the inner board area. The main board consists of 22 squares, 20 of them are colored either red, blue, green, yellow or magenta and represent regular squares and two are special squares, there is a start square in the upper left corner and roll again square in the lower right corner. There will be one to four colored game pieces on the start square. The inner board has four parts to it - the upper left segment has a list of the current categories showing their color; the upper right segment has a colored score token for each player; the bottom right has a single die; and along the bottom are the control buttons: Roll, SetUp, Instr, New and Quit. Throughout the game you may use either the mouse button as described above or the keyboard. When using the keyboard you must press the key that corresponds to an underlined letter on the button. Throughout these instruction we will describe operations with mouse clicks, remember that you may also use the keyboard. -* Playing the Game *- Player 1 begins the game by clicking the Roll box which causes the die to roll. Player 1's token will move that number of spaces clockwise around the game board. A question corresponding to the color of the square which Player 1 landed on will appear. The name of the category will be typed on the top of the colored card. The card will contain a question followed by possible answers and corresponding boxes (questions may be either true/false or multiple choice - see SetUp for more information). Player 1 must try to select the correct answer. If Player 1 is correct a color piece will be inserted into their score token and they take another turn; an incorrect answer places play to Player 2 and so on. The current player is always shown in Yellow in the score area. The first player to collect all five colored pieces is the winner. You may change the options by selecting SetUp (See Setup Options below). New starts a new game, Instr provides on-line instructions and Quit ends the game. -* Setup Options *- By clicking on the SetUp button you may change the categories, choose the question type, toggle sound on or off, select the number of players, save the setting to disk or alter the players' names. The current sound setting and type are indicated by a small red arrow beside the appropriate button. To change the setting just click on the button. The current number of players is shown by the number of game tokens on the board. To change the number click on the button under Number of Players. There are a number of ways to change the question categories. If you wish to change individual categories click on the button beside that category. A new screen will appear listing the possible categories. Click on the letter button which corresponds to the category you wish to select. You may also use the Prev and Next button to page through other pages of categories. You may select All which will go through the above process for each of the five colors or select ? and the computer will randomly select five new categories. Clicking on the Players button will bring up a box that allows you to type in the names of each of the players. The names must be 12 letters or less. Clicking on Disk will save the number of players, their names, the sound setting and question type to disk. The settings will be used when the game is started in the future. These Setup options may also be invoked when starting the game by adding parameters to the game title. To start a game with specific features add the following words or letters after the GameName at the DOS prompt: to have sound Sound or S to have no sound Off or O to have true/false questions True or T to have multiple choice Multi or M for 1 player game 1 for 2 player game 2 for 3 player game 3 for 4 player game 4 For example, to start a game with no sound, using true/false questions for 2 players type: GameName S T 2 or GameName Sound True 2 GameName must be replaced by the name of .exe/.bat file that starts the program. Please note this is only available when starting from the DOS prompt and not from Neon Publishing's start-up menu. -* Categories Included *- When you select a category a maximum of 50 questions from that question file are loaded into that color and used for a game. When a game token lands on a colored square the computer randomly selects a question from that category. However, the computer will not repeat questions in a game until each question has been asked once. For categories that have more than 50 questions the computer randomly selects 50 questions to be loaded. -* Class Room/Fact Page *- The Class Room and Fact Page are very similar, although the instruction here are for the Class Room they also apply to the Fact Pages. To start the Class Room click on the "Class Room" button. The Class Room is a database of information. You may scroll through the information using the "<- Prev" and "Next ->" buttons or return to the main menu by clicking the "Quit" button. There are also three buttons that may be used to search for key facts. When using the search buttons be sure to spell correctly! -* Maps *- To start using the map click on the "Map" button. When the map appears you will be asked which mode you wish to be in. The three choices are State/Province Facts, Guess Capital or Guess Province/State. Once you choose a mode you may then click on a province/state with the mouse. If you are in Facts mode a card will appear with facts about the province/state. If you choose Guess Capital or Province/State a dialog box will appear and you must type in the province or capital name (spelled correctly of course). If you click on one of the gray dots you will find out information about the city (Only in Canada only). When you are done simply click the "Quit" button. At any time you may click on the buttons to change modes in Only in Canada or "Setup" in Stating the Facts. -* Acknowledgements *- This program uses an excellent utility called TPPCX developed by Mark D. Rafn. For more information contact: Mark D. Rafn Rt1 Box 138A Two Harbours, MN 55616 The artwork for these programs was developed using CorelDraw! 4 from Corel Corporation. As well some of the clipart contained in the programs is from CorelDraw! 4's fantastic clipart collection. For more information about this outstanding package contact Corel Corporation at (613)728-8200. Some of the music contained in this program has been discovered in the Public Domain bearing no copyright or ownership markings. To the best of our knowledge this is for free use, please contact Quid Pro Quo Software if you have information about its ownership. -* Sound Blaster Support *- If you have a Sound Blaster card properly installed on your computer these programs will play high quality music through external speakers or headphones. When the program begins it checks to see if a Sound Blaster card is detected. If one is detected you will be asked if you wish to use it. The music support is provided by using a driver called SBFMDRV.COM which is shipped as part of Sound Blaster card. This driver must be properly installed using the INST-DRV that came with your Sound Blaster card. If your do not have it properly installed one of two things may happen. First (and most likely) the program will not recognize the Sound Blaster card and will not play the music. Second if the driver (SBFMDRV) is found but it is not properly installed the program will attempt to play music and the program will crash. If you have a properly installed Sound Blaster card and you are not asked if you want to use it they are several things that you may try. Check your autoexec.bat file to see if you have set the environment for your Sound Blaster. You should see a line that looks like SET SOUND = C:\SBPRO, if it is not there add the line and replace C:\SBPRO with the directory name where the file SBFMDRV.COM is found. Refer to your DOS manual if you are not sure how to do this. The other thing you may do is manually start the driver by moving to the directory where SBFMDRV.COM is found and type SBFMDRV. If you choose to start the programs from the DOS prompt it is very important that you use the .bat files provided. If you start the programs directly (using .exe) the SBFMDRV will remain in your memory when the program ends. It only uses about 5K of conventional memory but may place itself in memory in such a manner that severely reduces the maximum size of other programs. Using the batch files (.bat) eliminates this concern.