The Epic Collection 3

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Kids Only Volume 1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Programming: Mark Meany Graphics: Danny Norman Sounds: Mike Legg Contents ~~~~~~~~ Introduction Floppy Disk Use Hard Disk Installation Common To All Activities The Activities Available Colouring Pad Dot 2 Dot Pairs Picture Slide Music Maker Word Search I Spy Program Preferences Support Programs About Directory Structure And Icons Deluxe Paint Files For Colouring Pad Files For Dot 2 Dot Files For Pairs Files For Picture Slide Files For Word Search Files For I Spy Dot 2 Dot Editor I Spy Editor Contact Address PUBLIC DOMAIN DISTRIBUTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THIS IS A DEMONSTRATION VERSION ONLY AND HAS SOME RESTRICTIONS: > ONLY THE 1ST FILE CAN BE SELECTED FROM THE FILE REQUESTER > THE SAVE OPTIONS HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM I-SPY EDITOR AND DOT-2-DOT EDITOR > THE TEMPLATE FILES HAVE BEEN REMOVED > ONLY ONE EXAMPLE IS SUPPLIED FOR EACH ACTIVITY YOU CAN ORDER THE COMPLETE VERSION FROM SEASOFT COMPUTING, THIS COMES ON THREE DISKS AND CONTAINS CONSIDERABLY MORE ARTWORK --- VARIETY: Seasoft Computing, Unit 3, Martello Enterprise Center, Courtwick Lane, Littlehampton, West Sussex, BN17 7PA. Phone orders and enquires: (01903) 850378 Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thank you for trying KidsOnly. This program consists of a collection of seven activities for children aged 5 and older. The user interface used throughout has been kept as uniform as possible, all buttons have explanatory text under pictorial representation of what action 'clicking' the button will produce. Throughout this document the expression 'clicking' will refer to a single click of the left mouse button. Floppy Disk Use ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have a floppy disk based Amiga, the first thing to do is make a copy of the three KidsOnly disks and use the copies from now on. Keep your original disks safe in case your copies become corrupt at some later date. The simplest method of running the program from floppy disk is to boot your Amiga using Disk 1. The program will auto run and you will be presented with the main selection screen. When you select an activity, a disk change may be required. If your Amiga has more than one floppy disk drive attached to it then insert the the required disk(s) into them. The program can access all drives connected to the system. If the disk required by the program is not found, a requester will appear asking you to insert the appropriate disk. The program will not continue until the disk has been inserted. Hard Disk Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If your Amiga is fitted with a hard disk drive with approximately 2.5 Mb free space, then we suggest you install KidsOnly onto it. The game runs considerably faster from HD and the need to swap floppy disks is removed. A script file has been supplied that will install KidsOnly onto the Hard Disk Partition of your choice. To launch the script: - boot your system from your usual boot partition. - Insert KidsOnly Disk 1 and double-click on its icon. - Select the HDInstall Icon by clicking on it ONCE. - Holding down one of the SHIFT keys, double-click on the icon for the hard disk you want the program installed onto. The script assumes that you have a properly installed Workbench and will rely on the following commands being available in either the c: directory or, in the case of WB2+, in ROM. If for some reason the script fails, try the second script, NastyHD. This script simply copies all the files without checking first, this is not good practise but then neither is having a partially installed Workbench:) The worst that can happen by using NastyHD is that your may loose small.font if present in your fonts: directory. Common To All Activities ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All activities, when first entered, will display an information requester that explains the purpose of the activity. This feature can be disabled by setting the appropriate TOOLTYPE in the programs icon, more on that later. The requester is closed by 'clicking' on the 'Ok' button. Some activities have levels of difficulty. When entering one of these a requester will appear asking the user to select the level required. In all cases there will be a brief explanation of the differences between levels. The level of difficulty can be changed at any time play is not in progress by 'clicking' on the 'New Level' button. Some of the activities are timed, the users final time being used to maintain high score tables. A high score table is maintained for each level of each activity. When the user achieves a score better than one in the High Score table they are requested to enter their name and this is recorded in the table (( NOTE: THE HIGH SCORES ARE WRITTEN TO DISK >>> ONLY EVER USE BACKUPS OF YOUR ORIGINALS!!! )). Once a new high score is achieved the High Score table, is displayed. To return to the game 'click' on the 'Ok' button. If the user wishes to abort a timed activity then the 'Esc' key should be hit on the Amiga keyboard. The activity in progress will be solved for the user, but the time taken will be ignored, ie. you cannot cheat and get high scores by aborting. Most activities requires access to disk files. To make the operation of selecting a file easy on younger children we have implemented our own file requester that uses small pictures, Icons, to represent files available. When the requester is scanning the disk for available files, the user is informed and once all file icons have been displayed a requester is displayed asking the user to select a file. This requester must be closed before a file can be selected! A file is selected by 'clicking' on its Icon. When the user chooses to quit an activity a requester will appear asking them to confirm this action. If 'Ok' is selected the activity ends and the user is returned to the main selection screen. If 'Cancel' is selected then the user is returned to the activity. The Activities Available ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. Colouring Pad ================ The simplest activity available. This gives children the chance to load pictures and then colour them in. At any time a new picture can be selected or the current picture printed. All pictures are drawn black on a white background, just as if pencil and paper had been used. To prevent the young user making silly mistakes, the colour black cannot be painted. This means that the picture outline is always visible. Obviously black has been removed from the palette as has the transparent colour used to produce the rainbow background. The currently selected colour is displayed in a small rectangle to the right of the palette located in the control window. The user can colour in any area of the picture displayed by moving the mouse pointer into the area an 'clicking'. This activity does not have a level structure. The following buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. Print Will print the current picture. Note that a requester will open allowing the print to be aborted at any time. Load Allows the user to load a new picture. Undo Allows the last colouring action to be reversed. Up Arrow Moves the control window to the top of the screen, allowing the user to colour the bottom of the picture. Down Arrow Moves the control window to the bottom of the screen, allowing the user to colour the top of the screen. Palette There are fourteen colours available in the palette, click the desired colour and start colouring with it! 2. Dot 2 Dot ============ This activity was suggested to me by my five year old daughter! The user selects a picture which, when loaded, has a number of lines missing. The user has to fill in these missing lines. The user must complete a picture by dragging a banding line from point to point and pressing the left mouse button at each point. The banding line always starts at the point numbered 1, the user must drag the line to the point numbered 2 and then 'click'. The banding line will now be draw solid between points 1 and 2 and will start banding at point 2. The user must now drag the line to point 3 and 'click'. This procedure must be followed until the line has been connected to all the points available at which time the numbers and banding line will be removed from the picture, a tune will play and the user can then proceed to colour the picture as with the Colouring Pad activity. If at any time the user 'clicks' when the banding line is not in the immediate vicinity of the next point, a negative sound will be produced. This activity has three levels of increasing difficulty, the higher the level the more points required to complete a picture. The user can only colour a picture in once it has been complete. IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS ACTIVITY USES A SMALL 5 POINT FONT FOR DISPLAYING THE NUMBER OF EACH POINT. IF YOU ARE USING A TELEVISION SET AND NOT A MONITOR THESE NUMBERS MAY BE DIFFICULT TO READ, ESPECIALLY AS THE DEFAULT COLOUR IS RED. THE SIZE OF THE FONT USED AND ITS COLOUR CAN BE CHANGED, SEE THE NOTES AT THE END OF THIS DOCUMENT REGARDING TOOL TYPES. There is an editor available that will assist you in creating your own dot 2 dots for this activity. Details of this editor are given below under the 'Support Programs' section. The following buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. Print Will print the current picture. Note that a requester will open allowing the print to be aborted at any time. Load Allows the user to load a new picture. Undo Allows the last colouring action to be reversed. Palette There are fourteen colours available in the palette, click the desired colour and start colouring with it! 3. Pairs ======== This is a version of that age old game of finding pairs of cards from a pack turned face down on the floor. In this activity the user selects cards, by 'clicking' on them, two at a time. The cards are revealed as they are selected and if the two cards are the same then they are removed from the play area to a stack at the right. If the cards do not match then a negative sound is played and after a short delay the cards are turned face down again. Note that unmatched cards are shown for a predetermined time for two reasons, first to give the user a chance to see them but also to introduce a time penalty to the user for selecting unmatched cards. The time elapsed during each game is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Once all the cards have been removed to the stack a tune is played and the high score checked. If the user has beaten a high score then they are allowed to enter their name in the high score table. The user can change the stack of cards used by 'clicking' on the 'New Deck' button. The file requester will appear and the deck of the users choice can be selected. Details on how to create your own decks is given in the 'Support Programs' section below. This activity has three levels of difficulty, the higher the level the more pairs of cards to match. The following Buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. Load Deck Allows the user to load a new deck of cards. High Score Allows the user to view the high score table. New Level Allows the user to select a new difficulty level. New Game Starts a new game at the current level. 4. Picture Slide ================ Remember those little plastic games that consist of a picture divided up into 9 little tiles that can be slid around inside a square. You had to keep manipulating the tiles until the picture was complete! This is a computerised version of that puzzle game! The user selects a picture which is subsequently loaded and divided into tiles. These are then displayed in a square area on the left of the screen along with a smaller rendition to the right of the picture you are trying to produce. A tile can only be slid if there is an opening for it to slide into. By moving the mouse over the puzzle the pointer will change as you move from tile to tile, it will show the direction that the tile it is over can slide in. 'Clicking' on a tile will cause it to slide in the direction indicated by the pointer. The game is complete when the picture on the right matches that on the left, a tune will play and the top left tile will be filled in on the puzzle. The user can select a new picture for the puzzle at any time by clicking on the 'New Tile' button. The file requester allows selection of a new picture. Details of creating your own tiles for this activity are given below in the 'Support Programs' section. This activity has three levels of difficulty, the higher the level the more tiles the picture is split into. The following Buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. Load Tile Allows the user to load a new tile picture. High Score Allows the user to view the high score table. New Level Allows the user to select a new difficulty level. New Game Starts a new game at the current level. 5. Music Maker ============== This is a fun activity as opposed to a competing one. The user is given the opportunity to play with a digital synthesizer to listen to, create and learn tunes. The main screen shows a keyboard that is divided into four areas as shown in the diagram below: ___________________________________________________ | | | | Rhythms | Instruments | |_______________|___________________________________| | | | Program Controls | |___________________________________________________| | | | | | Piano Keys | |___________________________________________________| Rhythms: There are eight rhythms available that will play continuously once selected. To stop a rhythm playing 'click' on the stop button in this area. The tempo of the rhythm can be adjusted using the + and - buttons. Instruments: The synth can play in one of six possible instruments, this is where the current instrument is selected. The following instruments are available: Piano, Organ, Guitar, Flute, Vox and Xylophone. Program Control: This section contains the usual Quit, Load, Play etc buttons and will be covered in more detail below. Piano Keys: Click on these piano keys to play a tune. Note that the synth records all notes from the minute the program starts, so you can play back tunes you have just played, or even save them to disk. The synth will play the notes you hit using the voice of the currently selected instrument. The program is continually recording all notes played and the sequence of notes can be saved or played at any time by 'clicking' on the appropriate buttons in the Program Control area. To clear the recorded tune and start a fresh recording you must 'click' the 'New Tune' button. The following Program Control Buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. New Tune Resets the current tune and allows a new tune to be started. Load Tune Allows the user to load a tune saved at an earlier time. The filerequester is used to allow selection of a tune. Save Tune Allows the user to save the current tune to disk. A requester will appear in which the user has to enter the name of the tune. All tunes saved this way are given a standard default icon. Play Tune Plays the current tune. To stop a tune playing, press any key on the keyboard. Show Me Will step the user through the current tune one key at a time. An arrow will point to the next piano key to click and the tune will not progress until the user has clicked this key. This activity comes with a selection of popular nursery rhymes and other tunes. Hints: A tune can be played in any instrument, try changing the instrument between successive plays. Try matching one of the rhythms to a tune you have created, you may need to adjust the tempo of the rhythm. 6. Word Search ============== A favorite puzzle book game recreated on your Amiga. A grid is filled in with letters of the alphabet and then a list of words hidden in the grid is displayed. The user must search the grid for the hidden words and when located, 'click' on the first letter of the word in the grid. The word will be highlighted and a picture will appear, representing the word, to the right of the grid. When all the words have been located a tune is played and the users score checked against the high score table. The grid of letters is generated randomly every time the game is played, so the probability of getting the same grid with the same words in the same place is very small indeed. The words hidden in the grid are selected randomly from the list of words known to the program, this list can be extended by the user as explained in the 'Support Programs' section below. This activity has three levels of difficulty. With each successive level of difficulty the size of the grid increases, the number of words to find increases and the number of possible orientations of the hidden words changes as shown below: Level 1: small grid, 4 hidden words. Hidden words appear only horizontally or vertically. Level 2: medium grid, 8 hidden words. Hidden words still only horizontal or vertical, but may be backwards in either direction. Level 3: large grid, 12 hidden words. Hidden words can now appear diagonally as well. The following Buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. High Score Allows the user to view the high score table. New Level Allows the user to select a new difficulty level. New Game Starts a new game at the current level. 7. I Spy ======== This program originally used the Amigas speech facility to talk to the user, however this feature is not supported by Commodore and a license is required from some third party company. The speech was taken out! This is a version of that kids classic, one player has to guess the object being thought of by the other given only the letter that the objects name begins with. In this case the Amiga thinks of objects selected from a scene that the user can see. Scenes are selected using the file requester and the Amiga decides what objects it recognises in the scenes and then starts playing I Spy. The user must locate the object by 'clicking' on it in the scene, wrong guesses will result in a negative sound while correct guesses in a positive sound. If the user takes too long locating the object then the Amiga shows him/her where the object is and adds a time penalty to their score. The activity comes with a number of scenes, though it is possible to add your own scenes. This is covered in the 'Support Programs' section below. This activity has three levels of difficulty, successive levels requiring more objects to be located in the scene. The following Buttons are available: Quit Quits this activity. Load Pic Allows the user to load a new scene. High Score Allows the user to view the high score table. New Level Allows the user to select a new difficulty level. New Game Starts a new game at the current level. Program Preferences ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some of the modules have preferences that can be altered to suit your child or computer set up. All preferences are stored as Tool Types in the programs icon. If you are unsure on how to edit an icons Tool Types then refer to the manual supplied with your Amiga, below is a basic outline of the steps required: Workbench 1.2 & 1.3 Common Workbench 2 and higher 1. Boot your machine to Workbench. 2. Select the icon for Kids Only by clicking on it ONCE. 3. Select Info from the Select Information from the Icon menu. Icon menu. 4. Click on the Tool Type you wish to edit. 5. Select Save once all alterations have been made. Below is a list of the Tool Types and their effect: -------------------------------------------------- SMALLFONT ON - Dot2Dot will use a small 5 pixel font to display numbers. OFF - Dot2Dot will use the standard 8 pixel Topaz font. SMALLFONT was added as users running the program on a domestic television may have problems reading the small font used by the Dot2Dot module. PEN n - What pen colour to use for the numbers in the Dot2Dot module. This effects the colour that numbers are written in. Legal values are 0 to 15. PEN is another addition for the benefit of domestic television users who may not be able to read the numbers when displayed using the default red pen. TIMEOUT n - How many seconds to allow your child to locate an object in the I Spy module. Legal values are 5 to 59. Defaults to 15 seconds. HARDDRIVE - If specified, informs program it is running from a hard disk drive and not floppy disks. This is set in the icon created for KidsOnly when you install it to hard disk. If you remove it, you will be asked to insert the original floppies when the program runs. NOABOUT - If specified this stops the program information requesters appearing. Useful to set this once you are familiar with all the activities. NOLEVEL - Stops the activities from prompting you for a level and always defaults to level 1. The level can still be changed from within an activity. NOOKS - Stops the program from displaying Ok requesters. This does speed things up a little, but was really put in only to aid debugging the program! Support Programs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All of the activities, except Music Maker, can be extended by the owner of the program. For most activities all that is required is an IFF picture or two as created by Deluxe Paint or some similar paint program. Because the program uses a very rigid colour scheme and screen resolution you must be sure of getting this correct in your paint program, for this reason there is a Templates drawer containing a template picture for each activity. All the templates are write protected so that you do not accidentally delete or write over them. When you start designing an extension of your own, start by loading the appropriate template! About Directory Structure And Icons =================================== Each activity looks in a specific drawer for its data files. If you do not put the data files in the correct drawer and with the correct file extension, the activity will not recognise them! Example: The file 'fish.iff' is a picture of a fish that will be available to the Colouring Pad activity. So that this file is accessible to the Colouring Pad, a second file called 'fish.icon' is required. This will be a small picture of a fish, 45x35 pixels, that will be displayed in the file requester. When the user clicks on the small fish in the file requester, Colouring Pad will load the file 'fish.iff'. In the above example the data file had the extension '.iff' and the icon file '.icon'. Each of the activities uses its own extension to recognise data files, some activities require more than one data file per game so there may be the same name with upto three different extensions. Below is a list of the directories where data files should be located and an explanation of the file extensions used by each activity: Colouring Pad: ColourPadFiles All data files in here name.iff drawing to be coloured name.icon 45x35 drawing for file requester Dot 2 Dot: Dot2DotFiles0 Your data files in here Dot2DotFiles1 Level 1 data files in here Dot2DotFiles2 Level 2 data files in here Dot2DotFiles3 Level 3 data files in here name.iff drawing to be constructed name.data points data file name.icon 45x35 drawing for file requester NOTE: The Dot2Dot editor will produce the 'name.data' file and copy all files from the 'Dot2DotFiles0' drawer into the appropriate level drawer. See the editor explanation below. Pairs: PairsFiles All data files in here name.deck picture of a deck of cards name.icon 45x35 drawing for file requester Picture Slide: SlideFiles All data files in here name.tile picture of a tile name.icon 45x35 drawing for file requester Word Search: WordSearchFiles All data files in here name.card picture of 'name', 50x40 pixels I Spy: ISpyFilesEd Your data files in here ISpyFiles All data files in here name.iff picture of scene name.data objects in scene name.icon 45x35 drawing for file requester NOTE: The ISpy editor will produce the 'name.data' file and copy all files from the 'ISpyFilesEd' drawer into the 'ISpyFiles' drawer. See the editor explanation below. Deluxe Paint ============ You can load any of the activity templates from the Templates drawer of KidsOnly into Deluxe Paint. This will ensure the correct screen resolution and palette is being used. You can then proceed to design the graphics for that activity and finally save the graphics into the required drawer. Not all the activities use full screen pictures and where possible notes have been left in the templates file. However below is an explanation of what graphics is required by each activity. If you are unsure what is required then load in files supplied with the program, these are only IFF pictures after all. Files For Colouring Pad ----------------------- A 640x256, 16 colour outline picture, black on white. Save with the file extension '.iff' A 45x35, 16 colour brush saved with '.icon' extension. Files For Dot 2 Dot ------------------- Pictures for Dot 2 Dot must be designed on a white background and should use only the top 200 lines of the screen. The outline must be drawn in TWO colours, BLACK and ORANGE. The BLACK lines are permanent and will not be effected by the Dot 2 Dot Editor whereas ORANGE lines should be used to draw the lines that will be missing in the final program. The Dot2Dot Editor will get you to trace the ORANGE lines and will record points and remove all ORANGE from the picture before saving the data files. Files For Pairs --------------- Use the template file to see how to arrange a deck of cards. All the cards in a single deck are stored in one IFF picture, the picture is cut up once loaded by the pairs program. Files For Picture Slide ----------------------- Again use the template as a starting point for picture slide files nd remember that when saving the final tile, it must be as a brush not the entire picture! Files For Word Search --------------------- Word Search remembers the name of all files in the WordSearchFiles drawer. This list of file names forms the activities vocabulary. When choosing words the associated file is loaded and it should be a picture 50x40 pixels ( The same size as a card in the Pairs deck, hint, hint ). Files For I Spy --------------- As with Dot 2 Dot, I Spy has its own editor. This simply creates a '.data' file to accompany each picture file. If you use the template file for this activity you cannot go far wrong. Try not to create scenes with too many objects in that start with the same letter. Dot 2 Dot Editor ================ This editor will allow you to load a picture created as explained above. You can then locate the start of the Dot 2 Dot and click. A banding line is shown that you should use to trace the orange lines of the picture. Clicking the mouse button will cause a new point to be added to the picture. There is a rectangle to the right of the Undo button that shows the colour currently under the pointer. You can use this to line the banding line up correctly. If you make a mistake then the Undo gadget will back-step you one point each time it is clicked. Once you have reached the last point and all the orange has been traced, click the Save button. The dot 2 dot will be copied into the correct directory, all orange will be removed from the picture and a data file created. I Spy Editor ============ The I Spy editor allows you to load scenes, define/undefine objects within a scene and save I Spy data files. Scenes are loaded from the ISpyFilesEd drawer. If there is a data file associated with the scene then it is read and the objects defined are highlighted in the scene by drawing a box around them. You can edit an existing object by clicking anywhere in the box surrounding it in the scene. This will produce a requester in which the name of the object can be changed. This requester contains a Delete button and this will undefine the object and remove the box from the scene. Giving an object an empty name will also delete it! To define a new object, simply draw a box around it. Move the mouse pointer to the left and slightly above the object to define, hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse. A banding box will be dragged from the starting point to the mouse pointer. Move the mouse pointer to the right and slightly below the object. When you release the mouse button a requester will appear, the same requester used to edit an object. When you save a scene the picture and data file are saved in the editors drawer and in the ISpyFiles drawer. If the scene contains less than 10 objects then an error message is reported warning you of this, all scenes must have between 10 and 20 objects defined to be used by ISpy itself. Contact Address ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have any comments about this program, would like details about future developments or suggestions for other programs then please write to: M. Meany, 216 Bluebell Road, Swaythling, Southampton, SO2 3LJ. Please note that this is not my home address, but one which I do call at reguarly.