CD-ROM Now 11

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"Welcome to Africa" ------------------- This booklet contains information about the following topics: Installation Looking at the pictures Playing the game Writing your own book Printing a picture Installation Problems Troubleshooting Donating Pictures Comments and Inquiries Copyright Credits Assumed Familiarity with Windows -------------------------------- "Welcome to Africa" assumes that you have a minimal understanding of Windows commands, i.e., that you know how to click and double-click and how to drag objects with the mouse. Familiarity with DOS file naming conventions may occasionally come useful. Remember that DOS file names cannot be more than 8 characters long plus a 3 character extension, and that several special characters are not allowed. For instance, YAMOU01.AFR is a valid file name, YAM*, YAMOUSSOU.O, and YM.OUEDRAOGO are not. The full path of a file includes the drive letter and the full directory tree that contains the file. Say the file YAMOU01.AFR is on drive C, in directory AFRICA, and subdirectory GAME, then its full path is denoted C:\AFRICA\GAME\YAMOU01.AFR. To put graphical objects into the clipboard in order to paste them into your own book, you must be familiar with Windows applications that manipulate such objects. For raster files, for instance, Windows comes with its own paint program, Paintbrush, that allows you to load, paste, modify, crop, and copy to the clipboard any digitized picture or paint art. Many other Windows applications can be used in conjunction with "Welcome to Africa" to create your own, unique book. Installation: ------------- You can install "Welcome to Africa" in two ways: You may type <CD ROM drive letter>:\install at the DOS prompt; or you may click on "File" then "Run" in Program Manager and type <CD ROM drive letter>:\install Here, <CD ROM drive letter> stands for the letter that identifies your CD ROM drive to your computer. That letter may be any letter between A and Z. If you do not know what is the letter of your CD ROM drive, double-click on "File Manager" in Windows and you will see a list of the drives on your computer. One of them is your CD ROM drive. Double-click on each of the letters in File Manager. The one that lights up the little light on your CD ROM drive is the letter you want. As "Welcome to Africa" reminds you on its second screen, text will be truncated or misaligned if you have selected a 'large font' display driver. To eliminate the problem, switch to a 'small font' display driver. If you do not know how to do this, read the first heading under 'Troubleshooting' below. Looking at the Pictures ----------------------- Once "Welcome to Africa" is successfully installed, you are ready to enjoy watching the pictures. Double-click on the icon representing Africa. This opens a book. You will first see four pictures and the title of the book. To go to the next page, click on the right arrow. This will take you to a short description of the commands that you need to navigate through "Welcome to Africa". To make things easier for you, I also have copied this description below. You can explore "Welcome to Africa" in two ways: by theme or by keyword. I have organized all the pictures according to broadly defined themes. To visit any of these themes, click on the 'Go to the main menu' button to go to the thematic menu. Clicking on any of the themes on the menu takes you to the first page of a book. You can then read the book at your leisure by clicking on the right and left arrows. The choice and organization of themes reflect my particular interests and the purpose for which this presentation was initially developed -- to teach an undergraduate course on economic development in Africa at Stanford. Your interests, however, may differ from mine. You may, for instance, wish to look at all the pictures pertaining to a particular topic. Or you may want to go directly to a picture you liked. To make your job easier, I have defined 200 keywords and associated them with the pages and pictures of my presentation. To look for a particular topic or keyword, click on the '?' button and choose "List keywords". This takes you to a menu of topics. Click on the general topic you are interested in. A window appears with a list of keywords arranged alphabetically. You can scroll the list up or down. Click on a keyword, and the computer displays a page of a book that has to do with that topic. To see another page, possibly in another book, click on the 'Redo the last search' button or the "tab" key. And so on. The resulting pictures, however, are arranged in no particular order. If you want a more structured presentation, use the thematic menu. You may also search for a word or phrase that is not in the list I have prepared. Click on ?, choose "Type myself" and enter your own word of phrase. The computer will then look in all the fields and captions of all books and find all the occurences of the word or phrase you have entered. To do so, however, the computer has to read all the books. As a result, the search may take time. Searching by keyword is much faster. If you wish to retrace your steps and go back to a page you just saw, click on the 'Retrace your steps' button. "Welcome to Africa" remembers up to 10 previous pages. You may exit at any time by clicking on 'Exit'. Playing the game ---------------- The game is a stylized yet sophisticated portrayal of the livelihood of an average African farmer. You will have to make decisions that affect the survival of your family and yourself. The environment you face is uncertain. Accumulating assets in the form of livestock is your main passport to survival and relative prosperity. Building up a group of grateful friends and relatives may enable you to count on others for help in difficult times. The game also has a detailed, self-contained information section that describes the area Yamoussou lives in and gives you numerous pointers. You do not need to read the information section in order to play. But if you want to play well, you probably will want to read at least part of it carefully. To begin the game, go to the main "Welcome to Africa" thematic menu and click on "Play the African farmer game". You may end the game and return to the main menu at any time. You can also save your game and come back to it later. The game has lots of different screens, many of which with several options. It would be tedious to even attempt to describe them all. On every page there is a 'Help' button. Click on it if you do not understand what you are supposed to do. You will rapidly notice that when you place your mouse cursor on a button at the bottom of the page, a short text is displayed on the left bottom screen that explains in a nutshell what that button does. Try out each button and see what happens. Good luck. Writing your own book --------------------- "Welcome to Africa" enables you to write your own book. Double-click on the "Your own Africa book" icon. This opens a book called YOURBOOK.TBK that resides on the CD ROM. You can make all kinds of changes to this book: add pictures, create new pages, enter your own captions, paste any graphical object via the clipboard, etc. You can then save your work under a different name and show it to your students, your teacher, or simply your friends. (Attempting to save your work under the original file name will result in an error since you cannot write on a CD ROM.) The most important commands you need are buttons at the bottom of the book. Put the mouse pointer over them to know what they do. Other commands you need to know are: <Control-Insert> Puts a picture from "Welcome to Africa" into the Windows clipboard. This is the first step you have to take if you wish to use one of "Welcome to Africa"'s pictures in your book. <Shift-Insert> Pastes the content of the Windows clipboard into your book. This can be a picture you copied from "Welcome to Africa" or any graphical object (raster or vector) that you put into the Windows clipboard. For example, you can paste clipart, drawings you made with a paint program, pictures you scanned yourself, etc. <Control-Delete> Deletes the last graphical object you entered on the page. Pressing <Control-Delete> several times deletes all the objects on the page one by one, from the most recent to the most ancient. <Control-Shift-Delete> Clears the entire page and its content. You cannot clear the page if the book has only one page left. <Control-C> Allows you to type your own caption to appear at the top of the book. <Control-M> Displays a more complete menu of options. <Control-Shift-M> Hides the more complete menu of options. You are most welcome to share your book with us, if you wish. Send a copy on diskette or on QIC 80 compliant tape to: Walnut Creek CDROM 1547 Palo Verdes Mall, Suite 260 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 Do not forget to write down your name and address. Bear in mind, however, that we will not be able to return your diskette or tape. Printing a Picture ------------------ Go to the page where the picture you want to print is located. Copy the picture into the clipboard by pressing <Control-Insert> (that is, pressing the <Control> or <Crtl> key together with the <Insert> key). Open Paintbrush or any of your favorite paint programs. Paste the picture into the paint program. Make any changes you like. Print the result using the <Print> command of the paint program. You can also print not just the image but a complete page with captions and all. First go to the desired page. Press the <Print Screen> key on your keyboard. This puts a copy of the whole screen into the clipboard. Then open Paintbrush or any of your favorite paint programs and paste the clipboard into a new picture. You may clip the resulting image to suit your need before printing it. Remember that, to print a color picture, you need a color printer. Black and white laser printers do a reasonable job at printing color pictures in shades of grey, but the printing can be time consuming. Installation Problems: ---------------------- Sitation 1 ---------- The installation program INSTALL.EXE is known to cause Windows to crash in the presence of certain TSRs (Terminate and Stay Resident programs -- usually loaded at boot up), in particular certain network TSRs. You may get rid of the problem by removing these TSRs from the CONFIG.SYS or the AUTOEXEC.BAT files, rebooting your computer, and running install again. Once "Welcome to Africa" is installed the presence of the TSRs will not affect how it runs. You may thus restore your initial CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files once the installation is complete and reboot again. If you are unsure about modifying your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files, seek advice or follow the simple instructions under "Situation 2". Situation 2 ----------- If removing TSRs does not get rid of the problem, or if the difficulty in installing "Welcome to Africa" is of another nature, you can easily install "Welcome to Africa" manually. This is what you should do: - Copy the files AFRICA.ICO and AFRICA2.ICO from the CD ROM onto your Windows main directory (usually, C:\WINDOWS). - Copy the file AFRICA.TTF from the CD ROM onto your Windows system directory (usually, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM). - Add the font AFRICA.TTF to Windows. To do this, double-click on the "Control Panel" icon, usually in the Main Group of Program Manager. Then double-click on "Fonts". Then click on "Add". Choose the drive with your Windows system directory under "Drive". Then choose your Windows system directory under "Directory". You will see a list of possible fonts. There may be quite a few of them, but they all appear in alphabetical order. Click on the font name "Southern (TrueType)". This returns you to the previous window you saw. There, click on "Cancel". This takes you back to the main "Control Panel" menu. Double-click on the upper- left square of that window to make it disappear. - Add a few lines to the WIN.INI file as follows. Doubleclick on the "Notepad" program. Open the file "Win.ini" that resides in your Windows directory. First save your current WIN.INI file under another name, say WIN.OLD. Then search for the [Toolbook] heading. If it is absent, create one simply by typing [Toolbook] at the beginning of a line. Then make sure that under the [Toolbook] heading there is a line that reads startupSysBooks=tbkmm.sbk If such a line is not there, type it in. After this line, add another one that reads windowsDirectory=<Your Windows Directory> where you replace <Your Windows Directory> with the full path of your Windows directory. For instance, if your Windows program files reside in a directory C:\WINDOWS, then the above line should read windowsDirectory=C:\WINDOWS When you are finished, save your changes to WIN.INI. Do not make other changes to WIN.INI: this may reduce the performance of Windows on your machine. - If you made changes to WIN.INI, restart Windows. If, by chance, you had problems restarting Windows, reboot your machine without starting Windows, go into your Windows directory, and replace WIN.INI with the old WIN.INI file that you saved -- i.e. rename WIN.OLD, say, as WIN.INI. - Create a Program group for "Welcome to Africa". To do this, in Program Manager, click on "File" then on "New". Choose "Program Group". Type in the name "Welcome to Africa" at the prompt. - Create an icon for the main "Welcome to Africa" program. While the "Welcome to Africa" program group is highlighted, click on "File" then "New". Choose "Program Item". In the "Name" field, type "Welcome to Africa". In the program field, type <CD ROM drive letter>:\tbook.exe <CD ROM drive letter>:\images\intro.tbk where you replace <CD ROM drive letter> by the letter that identifies your CD ROM drive. For instance, if your CD ROM drive is D, then you must type D:\tbook.exe D:\images\intro.tbk In the directory field, type <CD ROM drive letter>:\ Click on "Change icon" then on "Browse". Choose AFRICA.ICO in your Windows main directory to be the icon. Then confirm your choices. (You'll have to do this three times.) Answer "Yes" to the warning that the program may not always be available since it is not on the hard disk. - Create an icon for the "Your own Africa book" program. While the "Welcome to Africa" program group is highlighted, click on "File" then "New". Choose "Program Item". In the "Name" field, type "Your own Africa book". In the program field, type <CD ROM drive letter>:\tbook.exe <CD ROM drive letter>:\yourbook.tbk In the directory field, type <CD ROM drive letter>:\ Click on "Change icon" then on "Browse". Choose AFRICA2.ICO in your Windows main directory to be the icon. Then confirm your choices. (You'll have to do this three times.) Answer "Yes" to the warning that the program may not always be available since it is not on the hard disk. - Create an icon for the "Read Me First" program. While the "Welcome to Africa" program group is highlighted, click on "File" then "New". Choose "Program Item". In the "Name" field, type "Your own Africa book". In the program field, type <Windows Main directory>\notepad.exe <CD ROM drive letter>:\readme.txt Then confirm your choices. (You'll have to do this twice.) Answer "Yes" to the warning that the program may not always be available since it is not on the hard disk. Troubleshooting --------------- Situation 1: The text is misaligned or gets truncated ------------ This will occur if you have chosen the 'large font' option for your Windows display. To correct this problem, go into 'Windows Setup'. Click on 'Options', then on 'Change System Settings', then on the down arrow to the left of the display line. You will see a choice of display settings. Choose one that allows at least 256 colors (preferably more, e.g., 32K or 16M) but also says 'small fonts'. If this does not solve your problem, the font 'africa.ttf' that comes with 'Welcome to Africa' is probably not properly installed. Refer to the installation section, situation 2, above for instructions on how to install the font manually. Situation 2: The quality of the displayed images is bad ------------ "Welcome to Africa" requires that your computer be able to display at least 256 colors at a time. To display 256 colors or more you need three things: - 1/ a color monitor - 2/ a graphics adapter, also called a graphics card or display adapter - 3/ a Windows display driver Color monitor: If you have a monochrome monitor, you are out of luck: by definition it won't be able to display more than a range of grey scales. If you have a regular color monitor, there should be no problem: all color monitors can display as many colors as you need. The only possible exceptions are portable computers with a color screen. Some of these computers can only display 16 colors at a time. If you are unsure as to how many colors you monitor can display, check with the manufacturer. Graphics card: The graphics card or display adapter is a piece of hardware that plugs into one of the slots inside your machine. You then connect your screen to it. These days, most graphics cards available on the market can display much more than 256 colors. Many can display as many as 16 million colors (called True color); some can display 16,000, 32,000, or 64,000 colors (called High color). The number of colors that a graphics card can display at a time is function of its memory. Older cards can sometimes be upgraded to display more colors by adding a memory chip. At home, for instance, I upgraded my graphics card by buying a $20 chip. I have seen High color cards in computer shops for as little as $70. Screen resolutions higher than regular VGA (640x480 pixels), such as Super VGA (800x600 pixels), High Resolution (1024x768 pixels) or higher, require more memory than lower resolutions. As a result, there is usually a trade-off between resolution (the number of pixels the computer displays at at time) and color depth (the number of different colors the computer can display at any one time). Many graphics cards offer you a choice of resolutions and color depths. To get best results with "Welcome to Africa", choose a combination that can display in High color (16,000, 32,000, or 64,000 colors) or True color (16 million colors). Windows display driver: A display driver is a little piece of software that tells your computer how to organize the display data before sending it to the graphics card. Different cards require different drivers. Different drivers are also needed for each combination of resolution and color depth. The beauty of Windows is that you only need to worry about finding a display driver for Windows in general. It will then work for all your Windows applications including "Welcome to Africa". Microsoft Windows 3.1 comes with a standard VGA driver that displays 16 colors at a resolution of 640x480 pixels. That driver sends instructions that are understood by all VGA graphics cards, which currently constitute most of the market. The standard VGA driver, however, is not good enough for "Welcome to Africa". If "Welcome to Africa" does not display well on your computer even though you are confident that you have the appropriate display and graphics card, check which display driver Windows is set up to use. To do so, click on "Windows Setup" then on "Options" then on "Change System Settings" then on "Display". If Windows says you are currently using the "VGA" driver, you need to change it. Graphic cards typically come with a sleuth of drivers that you install after you have put the card into your computer. Go to the documentation on your graphics card and find out how to install other drivers. This will typically require that you copy a few files on your computer and that you run the "Windows Setup" command. You may also be able to find Windows drivers for your card on bulletin boards. Contact your computer or graphics card manufacturer for more information. NB: If you computer crashes trying to use an inappropriate driver, do not worry. Do a hard reboot (i.e. switch your computer off then back on), go into the Windows directory BEFORE starting Windows, type SETUP, and reset the display to VGA (or whatever display driver you were originally using). This will get Windows working again. You can then try another driver. Situation 3: The image quality is OK but colors become funny ------------ when I go from one image to another. If the displayed colors change abruptly before going to another image, there is nothing wrong with your computer. You are probably using a 256 color display setup. With this configuration, the computer adjusts the palette (or choice of 256 colors) to each image for better display quality. The adjustment takes a bit of time. As the computer goes from one palette to another, the colors of the old image change for a short moment before the new image is displayed. There is nothing to be worried about. Initially I tried to eliminate this problem by choosing the same palette of 256 colors for all images. But this significantly deteriorated the quality of the displayed images. I therefore opted for palettes adapted to each image. You can get rid of the disaggreeable effect by increasing the color depth of your display, that is, by going to High color (16,000 or 32,000 colors) or True color (16 million colors) See the comments under "Situation 2" if you do not know how to adjust the display on your computer. Situation 4: You want to run "Welcome to Africa" on a network ------------ If you have a network, you know more about networks than I do. I have no idea how to put "Welcome to Africa" on a network, but I am sure it can be done. For more information you should contact Asymmetrix (1-800-448-6543). They make Toolbook, the authoring software that I used to write "Welcome to Africa", and the software that you are using to run it as well. "Welcome to Africa" comes with a TBKNET.DLL file that may come of use somewhere in the process. Donating Pictures ----------------- You are most welcome to donate pictures to "Welcome to Africa" for possible incorporation into further updates of the product. You may do so in several ways. You may donate the picture as a slide or as a print. Your may also donate a digitized picture (preferably in high resolution, True Color, .tif or .bmp format) by sending us a diskette or a QIC 80 compliant tape. We can also read Kodak discs. If you have access to e-mail, you may also uuencode the picture and e-mail it to us at africa@cdrom.com. Our mail addresses is given above. When you send the picture, be sure to do three things: 1/ write your name and address 2/ write a short description of the time, place, and special circumstances (if any) during which the picture was taken 3/ write a short note stating that you donate the picture, i.e. something like "I donate the enclosed ___ picture(s) to Marcel Fafchamps for possible incorporation into further updates and extensions of Welcome to Africa." If your picture is used in further updates or extensions, I shall mention your name as contributor to "Welcome to Africa". If, however, you do not wish your name to be mentioned, write "I do not wish my name to be mentioned." in your accompanying letter. We shall not collect royalties on donated pictures. Your help is very much appreciated. Comments and Inquiries ---------------------- We appreciate your comments and suggestions. You may also contact us if you experience difficulties with the product that are not covered here. Address all comments and inquiries to: "Welcome to Africa" Walnut Creek CDROM 1547 Palo Verdes Mall, Suite 260 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 You may also send e-mail to kelly at africa@cdrom.com. Thanks. Copyright --------- The author retains full copyright of "Welcome to Africa" and its components, as well as of all the pictures contained in it. Copyright for Toolbook belongs to Asymmetrix. Copyright for Instalit belongs to Helpful Programs, Inc. Neither of these products can be distributed by buyers of "Welcome to Africa". Buyers are welcome to use "Welcome to Africa" for all kinds of non-paying educational purposes. They may write their own books and distribute them to students, use them in class, print pictures on fliers distributed in class, etc. They are also welcome to use "Welcome to Africa" for non-paying entertainment purposes, e.g., at home with their family and friends. Buyers are not allowed to post part or whole of "Welcome to Africa" and the pictures it contains on bulletin boards. They are not allowed to make "Welcome to Africa" available beyond the confines of their organization (school, library, college, university), either through user networks, the Internet, the World Wide Web, or any other electronic or non-electronic way. Buyers are not allowed to incorporate "Welcome to Africa", any of its parts, or any of its pictures into their own product for sale or for commercial distribution in any other way (e.g., on a network) without obtaining prior permission from the author. Course instructors, however, are welcome to incorporate a small portion of the pictures from "Welcome to Africa" (not more than 5 percent) in their own book or reader for limited commercial distribution to their own students. This does not cover courses by correspondence. Educational discounts are available from the publisher. Developers of multimedia titles are encouraged to use images from "Welcome to Africa" in the development of commercial products provided they pay royalties to the author. We have a very reasonable royalty structure. You may enquire about it by calling Walnut Creek CDROM at 800-786-9907 or sending e-mail to kelly at africa@cdrom.com. Credits ------- Marcel Fafchamps (me) took most of the pictures and did virtually all the programming. Other pictures come from Stanford students and from Clifford Gold. Michael Delaney, Sarah Gavian and Omar helped with digitizing the pictures. Daniel Brainard coded part of the game. An early version of "Welcome to Africa" was supported by a grant from the Ford foundation. Thanks to Debbie Zimmerman and Jane Marcus for encouragement and advice, and to Stanford students in my class on Economic Development in Africa for feedback and suggestions.