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Text File | 1993-05-26 | 15KB | 308 lines

PUZZLE.EXE Version 1.00-S Copyright 1993, Jeff Napier & Another Company What Puzzle Does This program works with almost all standard .PCX or .GIF files. It will display your picture, then randomly mix it up into 32 puzzle pieces. With mouse or arrow keys, you can rearrange the pieces to restore the picture. What Puzzle Is For Use it to make games for your kids, interesting disk-based advertising materials, geography tests, fun correspondence to friends, or plain, old fun! Run it from the DOS prompt, within batch files or programs. How To Run Puzzle At the DOS prompt, type PUZZLE, then the name of a .GIF or .PCX file like any of these examples: PUZZLE GIRAFFE.GIF PUZZLE A:HORSE.PCX PUZZLE C:\PICTURES\KITTY.GIF A screen of brief instructions will appear. Press any key when done reading the instructions. Then the picture will appear, and wait for you to study it. Press any key when done studying the picture. It will become randomly scrambled into 32 pieces. A rectangle will appear in the upper left corner. Using the arrow keys or the mouse, you can move the rectangle to any of the puzzle pieces. When you have selected a piece, press [Enter] or the left mouse button. The sides of the rectangle will dotted lines. This is exchange mode. While the rectangle is dotted, you can use the mouse or arrow keys to move the rectangle to any position on the screen. Whatever puzzle piece is where you move the rectangle, will change places with the original piece you selected. When satisfied with the new position, press [Enter] or the left mouse button again. Continue the above steps until the picture is complete. When done, the computer will emit a "twinkle" sound and wait for you to enjoy your completed picture. Press any key when done. If you want to quit the puzzle before it is completed, just press the [Esc] key or the right mouse button. You will be asked, "Quit? (y/n)" You can press [y], the left mouse button or [Enter] to quit, or [n], [Esc] or the right mouse button to continue. Problem Files Not all .PCX and .GIF files will work: * PUZZLE.EXE cannot display .GIFs created in CGA or HERCULES resolutions, although it will work ok with .PCXs in these modes. * PUZZLE.EXE cannot work miracles with older monitors. For instance, if you have a VGA picture, and try to run PUZZLE.EXE with it on a CGA monitor, nothing will happen. * Some .GIF and .PCX files change the standard colors they use. You see in some monochrome, 16, and 256-color modes, they can select the 2, 16 or 256 colors from any of 64 or even 242,000 color choices. What the computer originally thought was white, for instance, may be changed to blue. The rectangles and "Quit? (y/n)" notice in PUZZLE.EXE depend on black (color #0), white (color #15) and blue (color #1) being unchanged or at least something complimentary from each other. Normally, this is not a problem, but with some pictures which do change the color palette, the dotted rectangle may disappear, or the "Quit? (y/n)" notice may be unreadable. * If you have a picture with a large area of solid color, such as a large area of blue sky or a small picture surrounded by black background, it will be impossible for the users to determine which piece goes where, since many incorrect combinations will look ok. The program will not "twinkle" until all pieces are in their original positions. For the same reason, it is not advisable to use less than full-screen size pictures. * .PCX is a loose standard, not always interpreted correctly by all paint programs which can create ".PCX" files. There have been some rare ones which create unreadable .PCX files. * EGA 640 x 350 Hi-Resolution 16-color, VGA 640 x 480 Hi-Resolution 16-color, and most Super-VGA pictures take a bit more video processing time than other video modes. This means that the movement of puzzle pieces is just a bit blinky in these modes. This relates to video card chips, and is not much different on '486s or XTs. The fastest, cleanest, best-looking mode which is compatible with a wide variety of computers is VGA 320 x 200 x 256-colors. This runs well on most laptops, and often looks quite nice even in gray scaling. * Some rare .GIF files contain "extensions," which usually mean more than one picture in a single file, or very large pictures. When these are encountered by PUZZLE.EXE, only the first picture is shown, and if very large, only the upper-left corner will be displayed. When You Are Done When done, a screen of text appears advertising that PUZZLE.EXE is a shareware product. This means that you may copy and distribute the shareware version to your friends, customers and associates, but if you use this program, you must "register." Registration is only $29.95, and gets you another copy of the program, a registered version, which does not bother you with this advertising screen. Furthermore, as a registered user, you may make products with PUZZLE.EXE, and distribute them without limit. An ideal example of this would be a small family-run company which sells springs. You might make a .GIF file which is an interesting picture of some of the springs you sell, and copy it onto a disk with PUZZLE.EXE. Send some copies of this disk to shareware distributors, and perhaps upload it to some electronic bulletin boards, and eventually thousands, possibly even millions of people would have fun with your spring picture. And, of course, you'd put a small line of text in the corner of the picture mentioning than people can call or write for your complete spring catalog. You'd sell springs! Your company might not stay small and family-run for long! There is an option which is also quite nice if you have something to say: You can order a custom version of PUZZLE.EXE which displays a screen of your text instead of our shareware notice. You can have up to 24 lines of text with up to 78 characters in each line. This registered version costs $99.95. End Of Instructions, Now Here's Something Amazing... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Would You Like To Know About Media Magic, The $29.95 Multimedia Creation Program? CREATE YOUR OWN: * COMPUTER-BASED TRAINING * TECHNICAL PRESENTATIONS * EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS * DISK-BASED BOOKS & SHOWS * GRAPHIC DATABASES * CATALOGS * RETAIL SOFTWARE & SHAREWARE ******* $29.95! ******* Incorporate Pictures, Text, Speech, Sound Effects, Music, Animation, and User Interaction in simple or complex presentations which run on any standard IBM compatible computer. Built-in features include: complete drawing program, simple word processor to create text in any font and any color, sound effects library, music composition and optional synthesized speech through the ordinary PC speaker, Sound Blaster and other sound card support, resolutions from 2-Color CGA through 256-color VGA, .PCX file display and creation, store up to 100 pictures on a single 360k floppy, special effects such as curtains, granular fades, and swipes, grid and coordinate display for precice drawing creation, super-imposing, layering, combining files, hook executable programs and batch files into multimedia presentations, display text files of unlimited size within graphics windows or full screen, more, more, more! And, with an option, you can create full multimedia multiple-choice tests. Media Magic comes with a royalty-free, multi-faceted run-time program called MSHOW.EXE, with which end users can view your presentation screen by screen, forward, backward or randomly, and even search for any word or phrase within your presentation, or via hyperlinks, in which users can point to anything on screen with mouse-driven or arrow-key driven pointer and be taken to any location within your presentation. How can we do it all for $29.95? Here are the answers: Media Magic is advertised via shareware, so our advertising cost is low and therefore the price to you is low. Media Magic is an efficient, fully self-contained package, with a complete disk-based owner's manual. Finally, we ship everything immediately via first class mail, so no cost is wasted in excess warehousing/order processing. Just like Henry Ford did with his model Ts, when the product is selling like crazy, we lower the price and sell even more! Because it is easy-to-use, you can start making professional products with Media Magic the first day you own it. To get your copy, send $29.95 in US funds to: Another Company P.O. Box 3429 Ashland, OR 97520 USA or phone 503-482-3611 (Credit Cards Accepted) CompuServe: 71022,175 America On-Line: ANOTHER CO or order via CompuServe (GO SWREG) Postage is free, anywhere in the world! Please specify if you need 3.5" disk size. Media Magic - Technical Specifications: (subject to change) Media Magic requires CGA, Hercules, EGA or VGA graphics, and 512k RAM. Supported but NOT required are mouse, hard disk, sound card and color monitor. Media Magic works fine on laptop computers. Main Creation program: MM.EXE, size: 286136 bytes Runtime program: MSHOW.EXE, size: 44131 bytes Video modes: 320 x 480 x 256 XGA, 640 x 480 x 16 VGA, 320 x 200 x 256 VGA, 640 x 350 x 16 EGA, 720 x 348 x 2 Herc, 640 x 200 x 16 EGA 640 x 200 x 2 CGA, 320 x 200 x 4 CGA Fonts provided: 10 (total with option: 40) PC speaker support: 2 digitized speech systems, melody composition, custom sounds, sound effects library. Sound Card Support: All brands File Encryption: (yes - option) Incorporate external EXE, BAT & COM programs: yes Multiple-choice & true/false test creation (yes - option (incl encrypted results file on disk!) Special features: Hyper-Link - which presents an on-screen arrow, movable with mouse or arrow/number keys, that the user can move to anything in picture (icon, text, etc) and be taken to any place in your presentation; Live Text - Any standard ASCII text file can be displayed within any picture in any font or color, and it will scroll with mouse or arrow keys, including search, print and auto-scroll functions; ASCII-Vector-Graphics - You can edit exact locations of objects within your pictures, or the pitch and duration of sounds, or modify animations, etc; Presentation Mode - which gives the end user a menu bar from which to advance to next screen, or back up, or GOTO, or search for specific word or phrase, or AUTOMODE, for unattended, self-running presentations. Help And Documentation: On-line help with [F1] key, 227k of text files on disk callable from within main program. Complete "Electronic Owner's manual." Images: Import or create .PCX in all graphics modes, .GIF in 16 and 256-color modes, ASCII-Vector-Graphics in all modes. OPTIONS (each available at $29.95): 30 additional fonts 4 megabytes of speech/sound effects ASCII-Vector-Graphics line editor File Encryption Multiple-choice and True/False test creation (full multimedia) with on-disk encrypted scores file for each student, allows honest, unattended study. Thanks, Jeff Napier d.b.a. Another Company May 26, 1993 NOTE: Media Magic is fully compatible with PUZZLE.EXE - you can run PUZZLE.EXE from within multimedia presentations, or you can create pictures for use with PUZZLE.EXE with Media Magic! _____________________________________________________________ end of file.