Kids Companion

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****** ASI WARNING ******************************************** | | | Eugene I. Kim's DIGITYPE (tm) is SHAREWARE, and | | you are REQUIRED to register after a reasonable period of | | trial time (approximately 1 week; no more than 3 weeks). | | | | USING THIS SOFTWARE AFTER THE GIVEN TRIAL PERIOD IS | | STRICTLY PROHIBITED BY LAW. | *************************************************************** Eugene I. Kim's DIGITYPE (tm) version 1.1-S1 The Typing Game (C)Copyright 1994,1995 by Eugene I. Kim (C)Copyright 1994,1995 by Awesome Softworx, Inc. All rights reserved. WARNING: This document, including all of the files that are part of the DIGITYPE (tm) program is copyrighted and is subject to any modifi- cations. CREDITS: Design by Eugene I. Kim Programming by Eugene I. Kim Graphics and Animation by Eugene I. Kim Sound Effects by Eugene I. Kim Story by Eugene I. Kim Animation Interface Programming by Eugene I. Kim and Hong Y. Kim 3D-Logo rendered by Hong Y. Kim Musics were composed using Soundtrek's the JAMMER for Windows. Eugene I. Kim's DIGITYPE(tm) was compiled using Borland Turbo C++. Documentation viewer was compiled using Borland Pascal w/ Objects. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGITYPE IS SHAREWARE! THIS IS A TRIAL COPY!! Eugene I. Kim's DIGITYPE (tm) is SHAREWARE, and you are required to register after a reasonable period of trial time (approximately 1 week; no more than 2 weeks). You must register to receive the full-featured program. For instructions on REGISTERING or ORDERING, refer to ORDER.FRM or press [F6] now if you are using the DIGITYPE Documentation Viewer. SHARE VENDORS: If you are a distributor of shareware or a sysop, you may maintain the program and distribute them freely. The program itself MUST NOT BE modified and should only be distributed with ALL of its original files. Please contact us for details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS ______________________________________________________________________ 1 - INTRODUCTION 2 - HOW TO PLAY EUGENE I. KIM'S DIGITYPE (tm) 0 Scratch Pad 1 Disk Army 2 Frog Land 3 DigiNet 4 Head 2 Head 3 - System Requirements 4 - Skipping The Title Screen & Disabling Sound 5 - Clearing Scores 6 - CUSTOMER/TECH SUPPORT - CONTACT INFO. _______________________________________________________________________ Introduction ______________________________________________________________________ Aaak!!! I've actually taken an year off from Cal/Berkely to write this and another program. I've been programming since Jr. Hi, and my life has never been the same after Quatris, the program that got this company started. Many people thought I was crazy for "dropping-out," but I just had to do it. I had to prove to the world that I can actually write a fully animated VGA graphics game program that's much much better than the EGA Quatris (the best tetris-type game). It's August 26, 11:34 pm right now, and I have just completed the best typing tutor/game program in the world. I will never never forget this moment and will celebrate this day for the rest of my life. I have to take a moment here and thank both of my parents for supporting me (and also for giving up their master bedroom for my equipments) while everyone else didn't understand. DIGITYPE is composed of four games that focuses on four major skill areas that are required for good typing. These are, 1. Basic finger coordination. 2. Word pattern recognition. 3. Eye coordination and reflexes. 4. Finger dexterity and strength. There is also a practice session for complete beginners which is only trivial to the entire program. DIGITYPE is the only typing tutor program to offer training for all four of these major skill areas. DIGITYPE is also the only typing tutor program to offer all these training sessions in 256-color VGA game format. This is NOT one of those cheap text-screen typing games or that gross Mavis Beacon's "save the car from bird droppings" typing game (I'm not kidding--go check it out). DIGITYPE is the ONLY typing tutor program with FUN games. DIGITYPE is the only typing tutor program to offer training for special word pattern recognitions. For example, if you are a C++ programmer and a UNIX user, you can easily increase your productivity by training to type the commands that you use in C++ and UNIX. DIGITYPE trains you to memorize frequently typed words and word patterns (such as prefixes, roots, etc.) to help you read in "chunks" of words or phrases and dramatically improve your typing speed. No matter how you look at it, Eugene I. Kim's DIGITYPE is the BEST typing game/tutor program that brings ingenious teaching techniques into a single extremely enjoyable game package. DIGITYPE is the best TYPING GAME and the most practical TYPING TUTOR program available in the market today!!! _______________________________________________________________________ HOW TO PLAY/USE EUGENE I. KIM'S DIGITYPE _______________________________________________________________________ Please note that English is my second language, and I don't care if I make any spelling or grammar mistakes because I hate English. This is just a simple technical documentation, so if you see any errors, you can kindly keep it to yourself. |P DIGITYPE is so well written that anyone with fingers should be able to use the program with ease. DIGITYPE features a very simple user interface that resembles nintendo-style-game interface. One helpful information is to always remeber the <ESC> key (located at the top left corner of your keyboard) when you want to exit or quit. When you make a wrong choice in the menu, simply press the <ESC> key to abort. When you want to abort the game and return to the menu, press <ESC> again. This is true of almost any well-written DOS program. Mouse is not supported in the DIGITYPE interface, except in the documentation viewer. Why??? Because this is a typing tutor program, not a mouse tutor program. The goal of this program is to help you make better use of your keyboard. Here's one general rule for playing all four DIGITYPE games: If you see a letter, just type it. If you still don't get it, just keep reading and I will elaborate. Scratch Pad: The scratch pad is designed for complete beginners. You may use this to explore your keyboard and learn which fingers to use for specific keys. You can type and practice whatever you want in this session or follow the computer for basic tutorial lessons. Game 1: Disk Army Focus - Basic Finger Coordination From the menu, you can choose which hand or fingers to train. You might be wondering why there isn't a selection for training your left pinky while there is a selection for your right pinky. The reason is simple. While your left pinky covers only about 5 keys, your right hand pinky must cover the most number of keys than any other fingers. Your right hand pinky must cover over 12 keys! The game screen is divided into two. The top half displays Digiboy-1 and the bad robots. The bottom half displays a keyboard. The bad robots will keeping charging toward Digiboy, and you must stop the robots by throwing letters at them. It takes 2 letters to destroy one disk robot. It takes only 1 letter to destroy a disk robot in certain situations. To throw a letter, you have to type the key that flashes on your keyboard. At first, the computer will provide helping hands to show you which finger to use for different keys in the keyboard. After a little while, depending on the difficulty level, the helping hands will disappear. Since each key is color-coded for fingers, you shouldn't be in any trouble when the hands disappear. Beginners should note that their hands should always return to the "home" postion after typing each letter. Just remember to place you two index fingers back to "F" and "J" keys. This is called the "home" position, and you should practice coming back to this position w/o looking at your hands. Game 2: Frog Land Focus - Word Pattern Recognition This is probably the most violent game in the DIGITYPE program. Dr. Billy's robot toad appears to be violently eating the innocent little frogs. The robot toad is actually CAPTURING the little frogs inside its giant stomach! The violent animation is only superficial--this program is probably safe for your kids to play. |) From the menu, you can select from a variety of subjects ranging from simple word patterns like prefixes, roots, and suffixes, to more specific subjects like DOS, Internet, C++, etc. If you haven't registered, only some of the selections will be avaiable. All these subjects are designed to increase your productivity by training you to type words that are used most frequently in your daily tasks. The small frogs will start jumping towards the robot toad. To save each frog, you must type the word that is displayed in the middle of the screen. There are four words displayed all at once, so remember to type the one at the top. After you type the word, press <ENTER> or <SPACE BAR>. This saves the frog and part of the screen will scroll to display the next word or word pattern. If you lose 4 frogs, the game is over. When you make a mistake while typing, the incorrect letter will be displayed in a different color. When you see a letter with a weird color, don't hesitate to use your <BACK SPACE> to go back and correct the mistake. Cursor keys will not work here. Game 3: DIGINET Focus - Eye Coordination & Reflexes Simply type the characters flashing in the screen. The goal of this game is to improve your eye coordination and reflexes. Letters will flash all over the screen in a random fashion. This is to simulate a situation where your eyes must focus back and forth between the monitor and a paper when typing. Type the letter as soon as you see it flash. The faster you destroy it, the more points you get. Every time you make a mistake, a significant point deduction will be made. So be careful if you don't want to end up with a negative score. There are three types of games in this session. You can use your standard keyboard (QWERTY layout) or standard keyboard with number keys, or you can also choose to use your NUMBER PAD located at the right side of your keyboard. The num-lock will automatically light up when you are in the NUMBER PAD mode. In the NUMBER-PAD game mode, you can also use the number keys layed out on the top of your keyboard instead of the separate number pad. If you choose to use these keys, remember that your home-position changes so that both of your fingers will always return to "4" and "7". Game 4: HEAD TO HEAD WITH DR. BILLY Focus - Finger Dexterity and Strength In this game, Digiboy and Dr. Billy is given a few energy cells each. The one who loses all the energy cells first loses. To damage Dr. Billy's energy cells, you must type a given word pattern repeatedly as fast as you can. Notice that these word patterns make you use your fingers in a unique pattern. This pattern helps you increase the strength and agility of each finger. At first, you will not be able to get very far and lose to Dr. Billy who increasingly types faster. It may be a good idea to use the Scratch Pad mode and practice a little at first. Your energy cells are also depleted when you make a mistake, so be very careful and type the word pattern accurately. This is the end of instructions on how to play DIGITYPE. Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the program! _______________________________________________________________________ 3. System Requirements & Trouble Shooting _______________________________________________________________________ - VGA display and adaptor card. - 386 minimum. 486 or faster CPU recommended. - Sound Blaster compatible card strongly recommended. - Novell DOS or Microsoft DOS. - 520k free DOS memory. If there is not enough free memory, the program will still try to run, however, you may occasionally see blank screens and distortions. This is because the program has reached a point where it cannot render or allocate enough memory to load screen images. This program is written strictly for DOS, and I cannot guarantee that the program will run well on other platforms such as Windows or OS/2. I've tried running the program under Windows, and DIGITYPE seems to be working fine. You can try running this program under Windows, but make sure you have enough memory in your DOS window. If you don't have enough memory in your DOS window, DIGITYPE may display blank screens or even crash. I have tried running the program under OS/2, and DIGITYPE doesn't seem to have any problems even with the Sound Blaster support enabled. When the Sound Blaster support is enabled, however, voice files may not play correctly--they will sound like record tables playing the same sound segment over and over again. DIGITYPE doesn't use many voice files, but if this bothers you, just use the "V" parameter to disable the voice file support. Background music seems to play correctly. You should have "VIDEO RETRACE EMULATION" turned off in your OS/2-DOS session. In Novell DOS, you should disable multi-tasking mode if you want DIGITYPE to support your Sound Blaster card properly. The program should run fine, but you will have the same problem as in OS/2 and the voice files may not play correctly. If you don't want to disable multi-tasking, then you should disable voice file support from DIGITYPE using the "V" paramenter. NOTE that TASKMGR program has nothing to do with Novell DOS's multi-tasking mode! You have to disable MULTI mode in the EMM386.EXE to get rid of multi-tasking mode. Use Novell's SETUP program to adjust this setting in the CONFIG.SYS file. _______________________________________________________________________ 4. Skipping The Title Screen & Disabling Sound _______________________________________________________________________ Both of these features are activated using the DOS paramenter and neither of these features are present in the unregistered program. Parameter "T" skips the title and the introduction. Example: C:\> DGTYPE T Parameter "V" disables the Sound Blaster voice file support. Example: C:\> DGTYPE V Parameter "S" disables the Sound Blaster card support. Example: C:\> DGTYPE S "DGTYPE T S" will execute both options. If you want to turn off the PC speaker, go get a wire-cutter, open the computer case, and gently disconnect the speaker wires. Whoa... wait!!! I was just kidding!!! If you want to turn off the PC speaker... well, you can't because I was to lazy to insert such a trivia feature in my program. _______________________________________________________________________ 6. Clearing Scores _______________________________________________________________________ All high score files end with the extension ".HS?". When you list the directory, you will see a bunch of high score files, *.HS1 ... .HS2 ... HS3... and so on. If you have an unregistered program you will see nothing because the unregistered program does not save scores! Delete all the files with *.HS? mask and DIGITYPE will create new ones that have no records in them. Actually, they will all have my names in it, but the scores will all be zeroes so you don't have to worry about them. It might be a good idea to back up the directory or the high score files before deleting them. Here's a simple DOS command to delete/clear ALL the high score files: C:\ASI\DGTYPE> del *.HS? Make sure you are in the DIGITYPE directory when you execute this DOS command.(*) * DISCLAIMER: If you are not familiar with DOS, be very careful with this command. If you alter the command a little bit, you can, say, wipe out your ROOT directory. If you didn't understand what I meant by ROOT directory, then just don't use this command. I will not be held liable for any damages arising out of the misuse of this instruction! ______________________________________________________________________ 6. CUSTOMER/TECH SUPPORT - CONTACT INFO. ______________________________________________________________________ NOTE: ******************************************************** All users should note that virtually ALL shareware programmers DO NOT RECEIVE ANY royalties from SHAREWARE vendors. Many SHAREWARE vendors also fail to package our programs correctly, and we have NO CONTROl over it. Please CONTACT your SHAREWARE vendor FIRST for technical support or replacement of BAD disks. *************************************************************** Since I am a full time student, I will not be be able to handle all kinds of technical support calls. I would, therefore, prefer that you WRITE or E-MAIL me if possible. Awesome Softworx, Inc. 4157 W. 5th Str SUITE 222 Los Angeles, CA 90020 BBS: (818)701-7465 (14.4k, 24 hrs.) MODEM only. FAX: (213)384-3173 My INTERNET address at UC Berkeley is: INTERNET: kimchi@soda.Berkeley.EDU (Eugene I. Kim) ---EOF