The items under the Preferences menu let you customize some of the game’s behaviors. Your preferences will be remembered from game to game. They are kept, along with the top scores, in a file named “Poing! Preferences” in your Preferences folder (under System 7 and later) or in your System Folder (under System 6 and earlier.)
Sound, Music, and Volume
The “Sound” menu item turns sound effects on and off. It has a checkmark when sound effects are turned on, and no checkmark when they are turned off.
The “Music” menu item turns music on and off. It has a checkmark when music is turned on, and no checkmark when music is turned off.
The “Volume” sub-menu lets you select the sound volume. Your selection applies only to “Poing!” and will not affect the volume level for any other applications. If you wish to have your selected volume level remembered and set automatically whenever you play, select “Save Volume Level” from the Volume sub-menu.
(Note: on some systems, the “Quietest” volume setting may produce silence.)
Keys...
Select “Keys...” to choose a different set of keys to place and erase bumpers. The default settings — the slash and backslash keys and space bar — are easy to remember, but are inconvenient to use on most keyboards. The space bar especially is difficult because it takes longer to press than a regular key, which may throw off your timing and make it difficult to erase bumpers.
Slow Ball
This menu item makes the ball move at half-speed. The ball will return to normal speed when you select the menu item again. Slow Ball is mostly useful for practicing, and might seem like it belongs under the Practice menu. But because the regular ball speed is controlled by the refresh rate of your monitor, users with fast monitors may find that the regular speed is too quick; so you’re allowed to play for score while using a slow ball.
The ball should take about one second to cross the field. You can check your monitor’s speed by timing the ball as it goes across the field ten times (that’s five round trips): it should take about ten seconds. If it takes much less than eight seconds, you may want to use “Slow Ball.”
Although the game imposes no penalty for using the slow ball, on most monitors a slow ball will probably reduce your score. While it’s easier to make a slow ball go where you want, it takes a lot longer for the ball to get there.
Background Friendly
Normally, when you complete a level, the ball will keep moving. This is solely because it’s fun to watch. But when the ball is moving, Poing! does not allow other applications time to run, because the ball’s motion would become too jerky. If you want Poing! to allow your other applications to run between levels, select this option to make the ball stop whenever you’re not actually playing.
Top Scores... and Erase Top Scores...
These do what you’d expect: they display and erase the record of high scores. “Erase Top Scores...” will ask for confirmation before it actually erases anything.
