This important information is not covered anywhere else. Reading it carefully will increase your enjoyment of your new CD-ROM. If you are experiencing a problem with Exploring the Lost Maya, first review this document—a solution or tip may already be available. If not, contact Sumeria's technical support department at:
Sumeria, Inc.
329 Bryant Street, Suite 3D
San Francisco, CA 94107
Telephone: 415.904.0800
Fax: 415.904.0888
Electronic mail: 73352.3030@compuserve.com
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Macintosh: 68040 processor, 8MB of application RAM, System 7.0, 13-inch monitor (256 colors), double-speed CD-ROM drive
IBM-compatible: 486/33-MHz processor, 8MB of application RAM, DOS 5.1, Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, VGA display (256 colors at 640-by-480 resolution), sound card, double-speed CD-ROM drive
Installation
To use Exploring the Lost Maya, you do not have to install anything on your hard disk (other than QuickTime™ 2.1 or QuickTime for Windows™ 2.01). For further information, see the "Troubleshooting" section below.
Recommended Monitor Settings
Exploring the Lost Maya looks and plays best when your monitor is set to 'Thousands of colors' (32,000-color or 16-bit) mode. If you have that setting available, you should set it before running the program. The CD-ROM will run at other color depths, but its performance with some movie clips can be sluggish in 'Millions of colors' (24-bit) mode, and image quality in the movies will be lower in 256-color (8-bit) mode. If you have more than one monitor connected to your system, the program will run on whichever one is the start-up monitor.
Getting Started
Double-click on the 'Exploring Lost Maya' icon to start the program. If you prefer to skip the opening movie, just click on the Contents button to go straight to the Contents page, which provides access to all major sections of the title: Maps, Site Index, Chronology, Ancient Culture, Material Culture, and Early Explorers.
We highly recommend that you first click on the Help button in the lower right corner of the Contents page. The Help section is an illustrated explanation of all the CD-ROM's features and functions.
Many functions in Exploring the Lost Maya are contained in the Control Bar and the Navigate Bar, which slide out when you click the tabs labeled 'Control' and 'Navigate'. These tabs are always available in the upper right corner of the screen. From the Control Bar you can exit the program, jump to another section, export files, control the audio level, and so on.
General Information
QuickTime VR Panoramas
QuickTime VR is a technology that allows you to view Exploring the Lost Maya's 360-degree panoramas of Maya sites. Once a Panoramas page is displayed for a given site on the CD-ROM, a QuickTime VR movie will take several seconds to load. Then you can simply follow the instructions on the screen to pan left and right or up and down. If additional movies are available for a site, you can click on the buttons at the bottom of the screen to change them.
This edition of Exploring the Lost Maya features QuickTime VR panoramas for the following sites:
Altun Ha
Becan
Bonampak
Calakmul
Copán
Iximche
Kohunlich
Lamanai
Mixco Viejo
Palenque
Quirigua
Tikal
Tonina
Tulum
Xunantunich
Yaxchilan
Zaculeu
Troubleshooting (Macintosh)
General Memory Management
The memory partition on Exploring the Lost Maya is set to 6 MB of required RAM. This should be enough to run the program and initialize QuickTime to its full size (approximately 1MB while playing a movie). If you are not experiencing sound or seeing movies, make sure you have adequate free memory before launching the program. Exploring the Lost Maya will work with 6 MB of free RAM, but having more memory available is recommended. Try disabling some fonts and extensions until you have about 6MB available, then launch Exploring the Lost Maya. If you are still experiencing problems, contact Sumeria's technical support.
Virtual Memory
Virtual memory should be disabled (turned off) while the CD-ROM is in use; you can do this via the Memory Control panel. Common problems created by running QuickTime and virtual memory together include movies that begin to play but then stop, movies that don't display at all, and garbled sound.
Movies
To play movies, Exploring the Lost Maya requires that QuickTime 2.1 be installed in your Extensions folder. If you have an older version of QuickTime, or if it is missing altogether, the CD's movies will not play properly. The CD-ROM contains a copy of QuickTime 2.1. Simply copy it into your Extensions folder (Power Macintosh users should also copy QuickTime Powerplug™), then restart your computer and proceed.
Troubleshooting (Windows)
QuickTime for Windows
Exploring the Lost Maya requires that QuickTime for Windows be installed on your PC before it can display video. After you have configured the Exploring the Lost Maya files, the program will prompt you to install QuickTime for Windows 2.01, which is located in a directory on the CD-ROM called 'DATA'. Inside you'll find another directory labeled 'QTW_201' that contains an installation file called 'SETUP.EXE'. Run SETUP.EXE, then click on 'Install Now' and proceed. (Previous products from Sumeria did not require installation of QuickTime for Windows.)
Display Driver Conflicts
Given the wide variety of display drivers and graphics cards available for PCs, the most common compatibility problems occur between QuickTime for Windows and display drivers. If you experience problems with this CD-ROM, try switching your display driver to the generic Windows VGA driver. If the CD works under the VGA driver (but looks horrible), consult the QuickTime for Windows README text file (located in the QuickTime for Windows group) for further compatibility information, or contact the manufacturer of your display card.
Picture Export
All the photos in Exploring the Lost Maya are in PICT file format (.PIC). This is a popular Macintosh file format but is not readily readable on Windows PCs. When you install QuickTime for Windows 2.01, a small application called Picture Viewer is also installed in the QuickTime for Windows group. Picture Viewer lets you open PICT photo files exported from the CD, which you can then copy and paste into an application such as Adobe Photoshop, or print directly from Picture Viewer.
Printing
You should set your printer to “Landscape Mode” before printing from Exploring the Lost Maya. This will allow you to print the entire screen. Please consult your Windows 3.x or Windows 95 documentation on how to properly configure your printer.