SOS Games: Dracones & Parimpar U S E R M A N U A L Copyright 2000 SOS Nijmegen Published in the US by: Centaur Systems, Ltd. 407 N. Brearly St., Madison, WI 53703-1603 Phone: 608-255-6979; Fax: 608-255-6949 E-mail: Latousek@centaursystems.com Web: www.centaursystems.com Published in the UK by: J-PROGS 81 High St., Pitsford Northants NN6 9AD England Phone: 01604-880119 E-mail: Julian@j-progs.com Web: www.j-progs.com Published in the Netherlands by: SOS Nijmegen Weybroekweg 36 6546 VB Nijmegen TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction License Agreement & Warranty Installation & System Info User Guide to Dracones User Guide to Parimpar INTRODUCTION This unique pair of educational games was developed in Holland for intermediate-level Latin students to test their understanding of noun-adjective agreement and verb form discrimination. We think that students will find them fun and challenging. Dracones is based on the Chinese game, Mahjong, which uses tiles called 'dragons' and depends on matching appropriate pairs of noun and adjective tiles from several three-dimensional rows. Parimpar is a matching game for testing one's ability to distinguish quickly between verb forms (present, imperfect, and future only). The challenge is to select a combination of three tiles which are the same ('par') in one aspect (color, tense, person/number) and different ('impar') in the other aspects. Both games provide grammatical support in hints and feedback. Speed is important for achieving a high score. LICENSE AGREEMENT A school site license provides that an unlimited number of installations may be made for use at the school which purchased the license. Permission is also granted for use on a network, when the program has a network version. This allows for the program to be made concurrently available to an entire class, when facilities allow. A student pack license is designed for students in a class who desire to use the program at home. Use is limited to one person. Licenses must be purchased in groups of 10 or more, unless the purchaser owns a school site license. An individual home license provides for making copies for additional computers owned or used regularly by members of the same household, including those in an office at work. Use of the program is restricted to household members or those attending a home school while in that household. WARRANTY The publisher warrants the program and the disk on which it is distributed to the licensee for a period of one year. A description of any program defects should be sent along with a defective distribution disk to the publisher for repair or replacement. Since the disk is not copy-protected, refunds cannot be offered, unless the program is never able to be installed or used, due to hardware conflicts. Be sure to check that apparent defects are not a result of imperfect installation. Replacement master disks are available to licensees at a nominal cost. INSTALLATION NOTE: These instructions replace those in the printed manual. It is recommended that you copy the licensed program(s) from the installer CD onto a hard drive, server, or other disk. The program can be run from the installer CD, but, if you do this, you will not be able to change record any scores. You can run the J-PROGS programs in the Demos folder from the CD, if you like, but the other demos will again be limited in their flexibility unless you copy them to a writable disk or hard drive. To install the SOS Games programs, merely copy the two folders, Dracones and Parimpar, from the CD into any desired location on your hard drive or network server. Each program folder will contain the program file, labeled with the program name, and some supplementary files and/or subfolders. If you like, you can 'create a shortcut' (Win: right click menu) or 'make an alias' (Mac Classic: Cmd+'M'; Mac OSX: Cmd+'L') attached to the program file and put it on your desktop or elsewhere for easy access. You can also add the program shortcut/alias to your 'Start button' (Windows), 'Dock' (Mac OS X), or Apple Menu (Mac OS Classic), if you like. Uninstall Process Since the program folder contains all files associated with the program, you can remove the entire program from your computer simply by deleting the full program folder (use Edit menu or drag to Trash/Bin), along with any shortcuts or aliases which you may have created in association with it. Networking Network installation is no different from the standard installation process. The programs are self-contained within their folders and no auxiliary files need to be installed elsewhere. The program folders can simply be copied into any desired location, with shortcuts or aliases created to direct users to them. USER GUIDE to Dracones Dracones is a Latin version of Mahjong, an old Chinese game. The object of Mahjong is to find matching pairs of pictures. In this Latin version, it is the agreement between noun and adjective that is crucial. The sets of tiles in Mahjong are called "dragons," hence the Latin name Dracones. GOAL: The object of the game is to match every noun with an adjective that agrees with it, in number, gender and case, and to do so as fast as possible and with as few errors as possible. In DRACONES the meaning of the words is not relevant to whether two words match or not. RULES: 1. You may select only "free" tiles. Free tiles are tiles that: a. are on top of a stack. Stacks can be as high as four tiles. For instance, underneath "CLARIS" is another tile you cannot currently see; AND b. can be moved northwards or southwards. If there is a tile on both sides of the tile you want to select, to the north of it and to the south of it, then that tile is not free and cannot be selected. Even if there is no neighboring tile to the east or to the west, it still is not free: east and west direction is irrelevant, north and south is what matters. For example, you can select "SUPERBAE" because to the south of it is free space. But "INITIUM" is not free since there is a tile both on its north side (the yellow tile underneath "CLARIS") and on its south side ("MIRABILEM"). Tiles that are half-blocked ("NUMINA", half-blocked by "SUPERBAE") are also not free. 2. Click on any free noun tile and then click on any free matching adjective tile. Remember that a noun and adjective must agree in number, gender and case. The declension of the noun or adjective doesn't matter, e.g. "PERICOLOSUS" (if that tile were free) would be an excellent match for "DRACO." They are both singular, masculine, and nominative. Do not be fooled by the difference in their endings. 3. Each agreement error results in twenty penalty points. 4. The faster the better: each five seconds of used play time earns one penalty point. 5. Bonus tiles: There are two green tiles labeled "PRAEMIUM." These two are worth 100 bonus points if you can match them. These bonus tiles, however, match ONLY with each other, and not with any other tile. 6. Help is available but is expensive--three penalty points per hint. To get help, click on the question mark icon and then on the word form you want to know more about. 7. If you think that there are no more matches possible, click the "No more matches" icon. If you are wrong and there is at least one more pair that agrees, you are given five penalty points. 8. Make your matches carefully. Often there are multiple adjectives that could agree with a noun or multiple nouns that could agree with an adjective, but some tiles should be gotten rid of as soon as possible from a strategic viewpoint. If you make the wrong moves, you might end up with tiles that match but are not free. 9. Maximum score: 2740. RUNNING THE PROGRAM Screensavers It is better to switch off any screensavers before running DRACONES. Saving scores Dracones saves the high scores in a file called 'dracones.sco'. This file is created automatically after the first player is done playing and lives by default in the same folder as 'dracones.exe'. If, for some reason, you want to keep this file elsewhere--for example, because you are running it on the school server and you don't want datafiles on the server,or only in certain areas on the server--then you can do the following: 1. Copy the file 'pathname.xmp' and call the copy 'pathname.ini'. 2. Open 'pathname.ini' and specify the pathname of the folder where the datafile 'dracones.sco' should live. For example: HD:LATIN:STUDENTS:DRACONES: 3. If there are already high scores in the file 'dracones.sco', then move that file to the folder you just specified in the 'pathname.ini' file in step 2. Next time Dracones is run, the high scores are retrieved from the file 'dracones.sco' in the folder you specified in the file 'pathname.ini'. USER GUIDE to Parimpar Parimpar is a game for practicing Latin verb forms. Twelve tiles with verb forms are displayed on the screen. The object of the game is to find a group of three verb forms that, in every property, are either all equal ('par) or all different ('impar'). In order to determine equality or inequality, the user must be able to recognize forms correctly. RULES: 1. Tiles have 6 properties: color, person, number, mood, tense, and voice. 2. Three tiles form a Parimpar group if all three tiles are all equal for each of the properties of the tiles (color, person, number, mood, tense, and voice). For example: _ COLOR: all three tiles have the same color (e.g. three red ones) _ PERSON: all three tiles have the same person (e.g. three first person forms) _ NUMBER: all three tiles must have the same number (e.g. three plural forms). _ MOOD: all three tiles must have the same mood (e.g. three indicative forms). _ TENSE: all three tiles must have the same tense (e.g. three perfect forms). _ VOICE: all three tiles must have the same voice (e.g. three active forms). So, for example, this is a PARIMPAR-group: VENI VIDI VICI (all red) 3. Three tiles can also form a Parimpar-group if all three are different in some of these properties (i.e. no two of the three are the same). For example: _ COLOR: the three tiles each have a different color (for example: red, green, blue). So, this is a PARIMPAR-group: VENI VIDI VICI (red, green, blue) _ PERSON: the three tiles each have a different person (for example: one tile is first person, one second person, and one third). So, this is a PARIMPAR-group: VENI VIDISTI VICIT (blue, green, red) _ TENSE: the three tiles each have a different tense (for example: one is perfect, one future and one present). So, this is a PARIMPAR-group: VENI VIDEBIS VINCIT (green, red, blue) Note: It is not possible for all three tiles to differ in NUMBER, MOOD, and VOICE, because in PARIMPAR there are only two possibilities for each. 4. More examples: AMO ES HABET (all red) color: all equal person: 1, 2, 3: all different number: all equal mood: all equal tense: all equal genus: all equal So this is a PARIMPAR-group. VENIES VIDEBIS VINCES (blue, red, green) color: all different person: all equal getal: all equal mood: all equal tense: all equal genus: all equal So this is a PARIMPAR group. AMO HABET VINCES (red, red, green) color: neither all different nor all equal So this is not a PARIMPAR group. VINCES VIDEBIS ES (blue, red, green) color: all different person: all equal number: all equal mood: all equal tense: two future tenses and one present tense, hence neither all different nor all equal So this is NOT a PARIMPAR group. 5. Click "LEVELS" to select what kind of forms you want to practice. There are seven predefined levels, varying from only indicative/present/active, at the easiest level, to subjunctive/perfect/passive at a more difficult level. You can also make your own combinations of tenses, moods, etc., by clicking on "Make your own level." If you want to custom design a second level for yourself, you can do that by replacing one of the other predefined levels. It is possible to define up to eight levels. 6. You are dealt 12 tiles to begin with. Every time you match three tiles, three new tiles will appear from the stack in the upper right hand corner until the stack is empty. The goal of the game is to match all tiles until there are no more left in the stack and no more on the table. Select your matching tiles strategically: sometimes multiple solutions are possible, but some are better than others from a strategic viewpoint. If you don't play it right, you'll be stuck with a bunch of tiles at the end that do not match. 7. If you think that there are no PARIMPAR-groups possible anymore, then click the "No more matches" button. If you are right and indeed there are no PARIMPAR groups left, then you will get bonus points. How many points depends on the number of tiles left; the more tiles left the more bonus points you get. (If there are still tiles on the stack, then you'll get three new tiles to try to finish the game.) If, on the other hand, you are wrong, and it is still possible to make a PARIMPAR group, then you'll be given penalty points. If you still don't see the group, you can click the "No more matches" button again to have the system help you. 8. There is help available, but its use will cost you points. Just click the question mark and then the form about which you want information. 9. Scoring: _ The harder the level, the more bonus points you can get. (Levels with three different tenses are hard; levels with passive forms made up of two words, such as `amatus sum', are easier). _ You get bonus points for PARIMPAR-groups of which the tiles differ in tense. _ Points are deducted for errors in matching forms. The faster you play the better. Running the program Screensavers It is better to switch off any screensavers before running PARIMPAR. Saving scores PARIMPAR saves the high scores in a file named 'PARIMPAR.sco'. This file is created automatically after the first player is done playing and lives by default in the same folder as 'PARIMPAR.exe'. If, for some reason, you want to keep this file elsewhere--for example, because you are running it on the school server and you don't want datafiles on the server,or only in certain areas on the server, the you can do the following: 1. Copy the file 'pathname.xmp' that you find in the PARIMPAR folder and call the copy 'pathname.ini'. 2. Open 'pathname.ini' and specify the pathname of the folder where the datafile 'PARIMPAR.sco' should live. For example: C:\LATIN\STUDENTS\PARIMPAR\ 3. If there are already high scores in the file 'PARIMPAR.sco', then move the file 'PARIMPAR.sco' to the folder you just specified in the 'pathname.ini' file in step 2. Next time PARIMPAR is run, the high scores are retrieved from the file 'PARIMPAR.sco' in the folder you specified in the file 'pathname.ini'. Saving "Make your own level" PARIMPAR automatically saves the levels you defined yourself in a file called 'self.pav'. This file lives in the same folder as 'PARIMPAR.exe'. If, however, you have created a file 'pathname.ini' as described above, then the file 'self.pav' is saved in the folder as specified in that 'pathname.ini' file. If you want to create your own levels and have nobody change them, then you should make the file 'self.pav' read-only. Refer to your operating system manual for directions on how to do that.