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Text File | 1991-09-28 | 26KB | 590 lines

/**** GOOGOL MATH GAMES VERSION 3.3 DOCUMENTATION ****/ Copyright (C) 1991 by: Paul T. Dawson P.O. Box 682 Chincoteague, Virginia 23336 U.S.A. /**** INTRODUCTION ****/ Thank you for trying my program, Googol Math Games. I wrote these games to help kids (and parents) have some fun while learning math. Parents, teachers, and children from all around the world have become registered users of Googol Math Games! As of September 1991, I have received letters and registrations from 48 states in the U.S.A., and Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Guam (USA), Guatemala, Ireland, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, and Thailand. Several of those countries have just one or two registered users! /**** SPECIAL THANKS TO... ****/ Thanks and a tip of the hat to: Microsoft : QuickBASIC Compiler Genus Microprogramming : PCX Programmers Toolkit : PCX Text : PCX Effects Fabrice Bellard : LZEXE /**** SHAREWARE ****/ Shareware lets you try software, and then pay the author after you decide to use the program. When you register Googol Math Games, you will receive the following bonuses: <> The latest version of Googol Math Games. <> The Googol Bonus Disk (with six new games). <> Information about other programs from the author. <> A sincere thank you! If your kids try the program once or twice, like it, and continue to play the games, then you really should register! If you have doubts about sending a check to a mysterious Post Office Box on an island (really!), please just send a postcard first. Ask for more information, and I'll send you an up to date listing of all my programs! Thanks. /**** REGISTRATION & ORDER FORM ****/ There should be a separate text file on the disk, called "GOOGOL.FRM". You can print this out, or if it's missing, just print the form from within the game itself. If you have any questions or suggestions about the program, please include them with your registration form! All information on the order form, including your name and address, is strictly confidential, and not for sale to anyone for any reason. I'm in the educational software business, not the mailing list business! /**** ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT ****/ This document is stored as plain ASCII text. To print this document, just copy it to your printer, or load it into your favorite word processor. There should be a file named READDOC.EXE on the disk - run this to read everything on your monitor. /**** SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ****/ To run the Googol Math Games V3.3, you need: <> An IBM or compatible computer. <> CGA graphics (or higher). <> At least 512K memory. The games will NOT run on a Hercules monochrome system with a "CGA simulator" program. If you see the error message "Out of String Space", this means that not enough RAM is available. Remove all memory-resident programs, and try again! /**** GETTING STARTED - FLOPPY DISKS ****/ Never run this or any program from the original disk. Make backups and run from them! Use DISKCOPY on your DOS disk to copy the disk. If you are not familiar with DOS commands, please find someone who is, and have them explain it all to you! Now that you have backups made, put the original disk away in a safe place. If all goes well, you will never need it again! Do not put a write protect tab on the disk! All of the games need to read and write high score files to the disk. Put the disk in your active drive - usually drive A, but any drive will work. The games are all in one giant EXE file. Just type GOOGOL at the DOS prompt to get started. It takes a while to load, but after that there are no delays between games. Don't take the disk out of the drive until you are all finished and back to DOS! The games write high scores to the disk, so the disk has to be there! /**** GETTING STARTED - HARD DISKS ****/ Just follow these directions to put the Googol Math Games onto your hard disk. If you are not completely familiar with the following commands, please find someone who is, to help you! 1. Your hard disk must have at least 300K free. 2. Use MKDIR or MD to make a new subdirectory. (MD GOOGOL). 3. Use CHDIR or CD to get to the subdirectory. (CD GOOGOL). 4. Put the Googol Math Games disk in drive A. 5. COPY A:*.* will copy all the files into the subdirectory. 6. To play the Googol Games, just type: CD\GOOGOL GOOGOL 7. Good Luck! On a hard disk, always use the DOS command "CD" to change to the proper subdirectory. Don't use the PATH command, since PATH usually only finds COM, EXE, and BAT files. /**** GOOGOL CLIMBER ****/ At the Googol Climber menu, use the up and down arrow keys to choose the type of problems that you want to work with, and the left and right arrows to choose the speed. FAST will be too fast on 286 or 386 machines, and SLOW will be too slow on older machines. Experiment to see which works best! Press RETURN to begin the game! An incomplete equation will flash at the bottom of the screen, then eight numbers will appear. Only one of these numbers is the correct answer! Your goal is to guide the little climber to this answer, and make him jump up and hit it! As soon as the eight numbers are on the screen, the action begins, and the little climber starts hopping across the screen. You control the climber with the left and right arrow keys, and make him jump with the up arrow key. Remember to just TAP the keys, if you hold them down you're likely to run into serious trouble! If the correct answer is on a higher floor, you will need to carefully jump through the tiny hole in the floor. If you miss the hole and bump your head, you will lose 1 climber, and have to start over! If you need to go to a lower floor, you will need to wiggle back and forth with the left and right arrow keys until you fall through the hole in the floor. You must avoid the 4 balls at all times. You can hop over them, or run away, and go through the "back door" to get away from them. Be careful when changing floors! If you hit a ball, you will lose 1 climber, and have to start over! When you are under the correct answer, press the up arrow to jump up and hit it. Since the higher floors are harder to reach, the answers are worth more there. Also, as you advance to higher levels, the point values go up! If you need help with any problem, just press X for a complete explanation. There is no score penalty for watching this explanation, however there is a time penalty - you will have to watch the entire explanation. There is no way to stop it once it has started. After you solve 20 problems, you will advance to level 2, and the 4 balls will move faster. You will continue to advance one level after every 20 problems, until level five. This is the fastest speed. You begin the game with 3 climbers, and when they are all gone, the game is over. You will have one chance to play "Match Score" to win one extra free life! There's a 10% chance you'll match the spinning number! /**** GOOGOLPEDE ****/ At the Googolpede menu, use all four arrow keys to choose the type of problems that you want to work with, and the speed, then press RETURN to begin the game! Speed 1 is very slow, 4 or 5 is medium, and 9 is incredibly fast! On fast machines, speed 9 is too fast to be playable, but speed 8 should be just barely manageable! An equation will appear at the bottom of the screen. It will be either TRUE or FALSE. In the center of the screen a T and F will appear, and the Googolpede will start moving across the screen. Your goal is to guide the Googolpede into the T, if the equation is true, or the F, if the equation is false. Every once in a while, a "Bonus Block" will appear. If you hit this block, the Googolpede will get longer, so your final score will be higher! Remember to just TAP the keys, if you hold them down you're likely to run into serious trouble! While playing the game, if you are moving in any direction, you can not instantly go the other direction. For example, if you are moving to the right, only the up and down arrow keys will work. If you want to reverse, you must turn twice! There are three ways to lose. You can hit the wall, or hit the wrong answer, or hit yourself. When you lose, the game is immediately over! There's no second chance in Googolpede! Every time you hit a correct answer, your Googolpede will get longer. This will raise your score, but it will also increase the difficulty, since there will be more of "yourself" to run into! If you need help with any problem, just press X for a complete explanation. There is no score penalty for watching this explanation, however there is a time penalty - you will have to watch the entire explanation. There is no way to stop it once it has started. When you lose, your final score will be calculated. The length of the GOOGOLPEDE will be multiplied by the speed, and by the skill level (addition = 1, subtraction = 2, etc., up to all four = 7). Therefore, if you are playing at speed 1, level 1, you will only get 1 point for each segment of your GOOGOLPEDE, and if you play at speed 9, skill 7, you will get 63 points for each segment! /**** GOOGOLVADERS ****/ At the Googolvaders menu, use all four arrow keys to choose the type of problems that you want to work with, and the speed, then press RETURN to begin the game! Speed 1 is the usual beginning speed, with one new problem every 5 seconds. Speed 2 delivers two problems every 5 seconds, and Speed 3 presents three every 5 seconds. After the introduction, the game screen will appear. Your shooter is at the bottom of the playfield, and incomplete equations will begin to descend from the top. Use the left and right arrow keys to move back and forth, and press the number keys (at the top of the keyboard, above QWERTYUIOP) to fire the missing numbers up to the equations. To shoot a number from 1 to 9, just press the matching key. To shoot a 1O, press the 0 (zero) key. To shoot an 11, press the - (minus) key, and to shoot a 12, press the = (equals sign) key. These are all in a row at the top of the keyboard. When you shoot a correct answer, the key buffer is untouched, so you can "type ahead". If you make any mistakes, then the key buffer is cleared! Your goal is to defend your base as long as possible from the descending invaders. Eventually you will lose! You will see why when you get to Speed 5, where there are 5 new problems every 5 seconds. That's just a little too much to keep up with! Every time that you shoot a correct number, your score will be increased by the following formula: 10 x speed (1 to 5) x skill (1 to 7) Every time you make a mistake, which is shooting a wrong answer, or shooting at a blank column, your score will be decreased by half of that amount. After you solve 20 problems, you will advance to level 2. You will continue to advance one level after every 20 problems, until level five. This is the fastest speed in Googolvaders! If you need help with any problem, just press X for a complete explanation of the bottom problem in the column that you are under. There is no score penalty for watching this explanation, however there is a time penalty - you will have to watch the entire explanation. There is no way to stop it! /**** "BOSS" BOGUS SPREADSHEET ****/ This is a synthetic spreadsheet screen which is almost always available during the Googol games, by pressing the B key. The spreadsheet doesn't do anything, but you can move the cursor around! Press the spacebar to return to the game. You can NOT get into the BOSS subroutine if you are in any other subroutine, such as Change Colors, Display High Scores, Help, etc. Hopefully, you won't need to have 2+2=4 explained to you at work! /**** COLOR MENU ****/ Press "C" for the all new color menu, with 52 combinations. If this isn't the ultimate CGA color menu, let me know! Use the up and down arrow keys to change the background colors, and the left or right arrow keys to switch the palette. Your color selections are saved in the GOOGOL.SCO file, so the same colors will be used the next time you run Googol. /**** COMBINING THE COMMAND LINE OPTIONS ****/ There are several different command line options. They can be combined, with one important rule. If you use the subdirectory option, anything else must come first: This will work: GOOGOL D N R T =\GOOGOL\LEGAL This WON'T work: GOOGOL =\GOOGOL\SAMPLE D R N T I hope this isn't too confusing. If you are familiar with DOS and batch files, you can write a one line BAT file for each user. /**** DATABASE OPTION ****/ Type GOOGOL D at the command line for "Database". This will save all the information from every game to the file GOOGOL.DAT. If this file becomes too large, just delete it from the DOS command line, and the program will start a new GOOGOL.DAT file. /**** DISPLAY HIGH SCORES ****/ This subroutine is available almost anytime in the games. Just press D to display the scores, and the spacebar to return to whatever you were doing. /**** ERASING THE HIGH SCORE FILE ****/ The high scores are all contained in a standard DOS file. If you delete the score file, the games will automatically create a new, empty file. Just type: DEL GOOGOL.SCO Note - If you try to TYPE the score file, you will see the message "Googol Math Games Version 3.3 High Score File", then a beep, then nothing! The scores are after a "fake" end of file marker, so you can't see them. If you use a file viewing program such as "LIST.COM", you will see the data, but it's encrypted! Unlike some games, you can't simply type your name and "1,000,000" into the high score file. In fact, if the Googol program finds anything funny in the high score file, it will create a new, empty file! So, no cheating! /**** EXPLANATIONS ****/ If you press the X key while playing any of the Googol games, you will see an explanation of the current problem. There is no score penalty for watching the explanations, but you will have to watch everything - there is no way to stop it once it has started! /**** GOOGOL, DEFINITION ****/ A Googol is a number consisting of 1 followed by 100 zeros. Exactly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000. Press "G" almost anytime to see this on the screen! /**** HOW TO PRINT GRAPHICS SCREENS - PART ONE ****/ Before running Googol, or any other graphics program, you have to run a program called GRAPHICS.COM. This program should be on your original DOS disk, or in your DOS subdirectory. When you run GRAPHICS.COM, it doesn't print any messages! It just skips a line and gives you the DOS prompt again. There are a few things that can go wrong, however... If you have a laser printer, it probably requires a special driver program. This is something that may have come with the printer, or you may have to ask the dealer or manufacturer for help. If you are using DOS 4.01, then a file called GRAPHICS.PRO is also required. This is on one of your original DOS disks, but the installation process doesn't copy this file! You'll have to find those original disks, and copy GRAPHICS.PRO to your working disk. If you have DOS 5.0, then you'll have to look at the manuals! After GRAPHICS is loaded, you should be able to print the certificate, or any screen, just by pressing Shift-PrtSc. If all else fails, you may want to try booting from an absolutely plain boot disk, with no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Then load GRAPHICS, and then run the games. This would avoid any possible conflicts with other programs. To make a plain boot disk, just FORMAT /S a new disk, and copy COMMAND.COM to it. On a hard disk system, you can use a batch file like this: CD\DOS GRAPHICS CD\GOOGOL GOOGOL CD\ There is a simpler way to write that batch file, but this is the straightforward, easy to understand version! It assumes that the GRAPHICS.COM program is in the DOS subdirectory, and that GOOGOL is in the GOOGOL subdirectory. If you can't get anything to print, then I would suggest that you ask your dealer or printer manufacturer for assistance. They should have a definite answer! /**** HOW TO PRINT GRAPHICS SCREENS - PART TWO ****/ Press "!" almost anytime in the program, and you will see a little "Yes / No" box. If you choose Yes, then the screen will be saved to a standard PCX file. That is, the screen >under< the little box! The file is always named TEMP.PCX. Then you can load this file into your favorite paint program, and print it from there! Every time that you save the TEMP.PCX file, it will overwrite any previous TEMP.PCX file. This should help to avoid "hard disk clutter", since there won't be dozens of different PCX files (unless you rename them from DOS). /**** HELP SCREENS ****/ These screens display quick instructions for the three Googol Math Games. They are automatically displayed at the beginning of every Googol game, and may be seen again almost anytime by pressing the H key, or the F1 key. /**** LEVEL MENU ****/ Press "L" for the new Level Menu, to choose the highest number used by the games. You still have to choose the type of problems from the usual game menus, but the Level Menu controls the highest number. /**** PAUSE KEY ****/ Press "P" for new "transparent" pause during games. Then press the spacebar to continue with the game. The "Pause Sprite" loops through every type of special effect in the Genus FX library. In order, the effects are: Wipe, Split, Crush, Slide, Sand, Drip, Explode, Diagonal, Spiral, and Random. /**** PRODUCTION HARDWARE ****/ The Googol Math Games were produced on a Tandy 1200 system. The original 8088-4.77 has been replaced with a SOTA 80286-12 card. It's not the fastest machine on the planet, but it just keeps on running! One floppy disk drive wore out, after copying several thousand disks, but everything else is still perfect! /**** PRODUCTION SOFTWARE ****/ The Googol Math Games were produced with the Microsoft QuickBASIC compiler, Z-Soft's PC-Paintbrush, the Genus PCX Programmer's toolkit, and dozens of utilities too numerous to mention! There are about 200,000 bytes of source code, and almost 100,000 bytes of graphics files. The READDOC.EXE program was written in Borland's Turbo C. /**** QUIT KEY ****/ Press the Q key or the ESC key almost anytime to quit from any of the games. You will be asked "Are You Sure?". Press Y to quit, or N to go back to what you were doing. Please note that if you quit while playing a game, your score will not be saved! /**** RENAME YOURSELF ****/ This option lets you change the name of the current player. Press the R key almost anytime if you didn't spell your name correctly, or if someone else wants to play, or if you want to call yourself QWERTY instead of ZXCVBNM! If you press RETURN without entering a new name, your old name will still be in effect. /**** ROBOTS ****/ There are now two different "Robots", and if they become tiresome, you may type GOOGOL R at the command line to turn them completely off. When playing Googolvaders, the robots will never appear during Speed 4 or 5. You have to concentrate on math at those levels! /**** SAVING SCORES IN A DIFFERENT SUBDIRECTORY ****/ You can now save your scores in any subdirectory. This is a command line option. There is hardly any error checking, so the input has to be perfect. If you wanted to use C:\GOOGOL\SAMPLE, just type: GOOGOL =C:\GOOGOL\SAMPLE Everything after the equal sign will be used as the location for the score and database files. Don't put any spaces after the equal sign! You can use the subdirectory option to let your children each have their own scoreboard. Just create a sub- subdirectory, such as C:\GOOGOL\YOYO, and then make a little batch file to start Googol. For example, YOYO.BAT would be: GOOGOL =C:\GOOGOL\YOYO /**** SPECIAL KEYS ****/ When you are at any game menu, playing the game, or at the game over screen, the following keys are almost always active: B Boss Bogus Spreadsheet C Change Colors D Display High Scores H Help Screen P Pause ( during game only ) Q Quit R Rename Yourself ( to change name of current player ) S Sound On/Off X Explanation ( during game only ) ESC Quit Please note that you can NOT get into any subroutine if you are in any other subroutine. For example, if you are in Explanation, you will not be able to go to Change Colors or Rename Yourself. /**** TAKE TURNS OPTION ****/ Type GOOGOL T at the command line to "Take Turns". This will simply pop up the Rename screen after each game. /**** CONCLUSION ****/ The Googol Math Games have been floating around the Shareware world for almost three years without documentation. I have tried to answer all of the most common questions in this document. If there is anything else that you would like to know, please write! Thanks again to all the kids, families, and schools who have registered their copies of Googol Math Games! Paul T. Dawson 9-28-91 Chincoteague Island, Virginia /**** THAT'S ALL, FOLKS! ****/