Blue's ABC Time Activities Readme Minimum System Requirements Windows CD-ROM Windows 95/98 Pentium only (P90+ recommended) PC 16 MB of RAM 10 MB hard drive space available Sound card Quad-speed (or faster) CD-ROM drive SVGA video card (640x480, 256 color video display) Installing the Game Windows 95/98 To start, insert the game CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive. When the Autoplay window pops up, click the Play button to play the game, the Humongous logo button to see the Humongous Interactive Catalog, the Blue's Clues button to see the Blue's Birthday Adventure demo, or the Quit button to quit without doing anything. To run the game again, double click on the My Computer window and double-click on the game icon. The Autoplay window will appear again. If Autoplay has been disabled, you can run the game by double-clicking My Computer, then double-clicking the game icon, and finally double-clicking AUTOABC.EXE. Or, create a shortcut to AUTOABC.EXE for a more permanent solution. Installation When you click the Play button you will see the installation dialog box. We must install support files in order for the game to run and this requires 1.3 MB of space on your hard drive. The install screen indicates how much free space is available on your hard drive. If you have enough space and want to accept the default destination directory click the OK button (the files will be installed and the demo will begin. If the program doesn't detect enough space on the destination drive, you will see a warning message. You have the option of attempting the installation anyway, but the game won't run if all of the required files are not on the hard drive. You can exit the installation, try to free up some space (for example by emptying your Recycle bin and/or deleting any temporary files from your TEMP directory) and run the installation again. If the specified directory does not already exist on your system you will see a message. Click OK and the directory will be created for you. Advanced Options You can accept the default destination or may specify the drive and directory where you want the game files installed. To change the destination, type the path (drive and directory) directly in the field where you see the c:\hegames path (click to place your cursor there first) or click on the Browse button, find the directory you want and then click OK. If you choose a directory name that does not exist you will see a message. Click OK and the directory will be created for you. After clicking OK you'll see the copy progress bar. When the files have all been installed the demo will begin. If you want to cancel the install click on the Cancel button and the files will not be installed. However, the game will not run without the files installed on your system. Making Changes to the Game The Options Screen Game-specific settings may be customized through the options dialog box, which is accessible at any time by pressing the Spacebar, then clicking the Options button. Autoplay Disabled? If you do not see the Autoplay window your CD-ROM may not be set up to take advantage of this feature or you may need to upgrade the CD-ROM driver. To check this: Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel and double click on the System icon. In System Properties click on the Device Manager tab. At the top of the list you should see CD-ROM - click the plus sign to the left of this line and double click on the CD-ROM manufacturer name which appears underneath CD-ROM. Click on the Settings tab and look for Auto Insert Notification: -make sure there is a check mark in the box to the left of this line - if there is no check mark, click in the box and one will appear, then click OK at the bottom -if there is a check mark already there click OK at the bottom of the screen Now click on the Performance tab - on this screen check to make sure you see the line "...system is configured for optimal performance" - if this line does not appear or says "Drive X is using MSDOS compatibility mode" you may need to upgrade your CD-ROM driver. Contact the manufacturer of the CD-ROM drive or of the computer system. Shortcut in 95/98 You can set up a shortcut icon in Windows 95/98 so all you need to do is insert the game CD-ROM and double click on the shortcut icon. To do this: Right click your mouse on a blank area of the desktop Click on New and then Shortcut Type in the path for the game, e.g. D:\AutoABC.exe (Be sure to replace D: with the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive) Click on Next and name the shortcut (e.g. Blue's ABC) Click Finish and the icon will be on the desktop The Controls Using the Mouse Point and click to play the activities with Blue and her friends! As you move the mouse around the screen, the pointer changes to reflect the type of action it will perform when clicked. A clear arrow acts as the standard pointer in the game. When you see the empty outline, it means the mouse is not pointing at an object or character that can be activated. Pay attention when you see the pointer turn solid. It means that the object or character you are pointing at can be picked up, manipulated, or activated. A large arrow indicates the entrance to or exit from an activity. NOTE: It may be difficult for young children to use a standard size mouse. We suggest using a child-sized mouse or some other device, like an EasyBall. Blue Skidoo! In Blue's ABC Time Activities Skidoo means jump to a remote location! Blue skidoos right into the jungle or the felt board when you click on them. It's another way to get around in Blue's world. Sign in Screen Before you start playing you must sign in. After you have entered your name click the Play buton under the eraser to go to Steve's Living Room. You can click on the letters in the Spelling Board to enter your name, or type in your name using the computer keyboard. Click on the line next to the Z to make a hyphen and use the spacebar on the keyboard to make a space. The arrow on the Spelling Board acts as a backspace and will delete one letter to the left each time you click on it. You can also use the backspace key on the keyboard. The chalk lets you spell your name in a single color or multiple colors. Click on a piece of chalk and all the letters in the Spelling Board will change to that color. Now click or type a letter and it will appear in the name field in that color. Click the arrows to the right of the names to scroll through the list of player names. The arrows will only appear if you have more than four names in the list. NOTE: Next time you play click on your name in the Player name list and then click the arrow in the upper left corner to enter the Living Room. You can type in a new name but you won't have all the saved game information associated with the other name. Clicking on the Eraser will delete the currently selected player name. If you delete a name from the list all the saved information for that player name will be erased too. When you try to delete a name the Yes/No heads will appear. Click Yes to confirm the action and No to cancel. How to Play Blue's ABC Time Activities Blue needs your help! She's creating stories for her Word Book but needs to collect some words to finish the sentences. Tickety says she'll help. Will you? There are seven activities in Blue's ABC Time Activities, including the Word Book where you can create silly stories with the words you collect while playing the other six! The characters and items you see in the Living Room represent the activities. Click on them to start an activity. For instance, click on Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper to begin the Snacktime activity in the kitchen. The activities include Alphabet Maze, Bathtime Rhymes, Felt Friend's Word Puzzles, Mailtime, Safari Snapshots and Snacktime. They are all designed to help build early vocabulary and pre-reading skills. Each time you successfully complete an activity you earn one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book, but you don't have to continue the same activity to complete a word. You can switch between activities and your letters will go with you! Blue's Word Book When you have collected a whole word you can go to Blue's Word Book and plug it in! The letters in the words you collect are color-coded to match the pages in Blue's Word Book. You must match a blue word to a blue page and so on. Click on the Word Book in the Living Room, or on the Book icon in the upper corner of any activity screen, to go to the Word Book. You can also collect several words before going to the Word Book. The words will remain "stacked" in the upper right corner of the screen until you place them in the Word Book. You can print the Word Book for more fun! Print it out before placing any words, and then write in your own to create stories you can share with your friends, or print it out after you've placed words so you can save the stories you helped Blue create. Difficulty Levels There are different difficulty levels for five of the activities and they automatically adjust to continually challenge. This way if one activity is easy the level will adjust to increase the challenge while another, which may be more difficult, will remain at the easy level until mastered. Each activity's difficulty levels function independently of the others. So, if you're really good at identifying animals the difficulty level in Safari Snapshots will adjust to keep challenging you, but if you need some work with letters and sounds the difficulty level on Snacktime will remain at the easier level. Bathtime Rhymes with Slippery Soap is the only activity that does not have any difficulty levels. You can sign in as a different player (just enter a new name at the Sign in screen) anytime you want to start over at the easy level. Blue's ABC Time Activities Blue's Word Book - Blue is creating stories to share with Steve, but she needs your help collecting words. Play the other six activities in Blue's ABC Time Activities and as you successfully complete each activity you'll collect one letter toward a complete word. When you have collected whole words you can create silly stories in Blue's Word Book. When you finish a story a picture of it will appear at the bottom of the page! The words you collect and the pages in the Word Book are color coded. You must match the words to the page color (a blue word goes on a blue page) but you can place the words in any order on the left side of that page to make serious or silly stories! The words are stacked on top of one another in the upper right corner of the screen with the last word you collected on top and are separated into color groups. For example, if the last word you collected is blue the words at the top of the stack will all be blue. To scroll through the pages of the Word Book, click the yellow arrows at the bottom of the screen until you see a page that is the same color as the word you want to place. Click on the word you want to place and it will "stick" to your cursor. Move your cursor to the blank in the story where you want to put the word and click again. The word will pop into place. Or you can place all the words in the blank spaces on the right side of the appropriate page and then place them in the story. This allows you to see all the words you have for that color page. As you complete each story Blue will draw a picture of it at the bottom of the page. You can change your stories as often as you like. Click on a new word and drop it right on top of the word you already placed. The new word will replace the original and you'll have a new story and a new picture! Click the printer icon to print the stories and share them with your friends and family! You can print them before placing any words, so you can fill in the blanks with words you pick and draw your own picture to match, or fill in the blanks with the words you've collected and then print the story and picture. Click the arrow in the upper corner to exit the Word Book. If you came to the Word Book from an activity you will return to that activity. Otherwise, you'll return to the Living Room. Felt Friend's Word Puzzles - Felicia is waiting for you to play with shapes and words! When you enter the Felt Friend's Word Puzzles activity the puzzle pieces and letters are scattered around the screen. Click on each piece and put it into place on the outline until you've put the puzzle back together. Put the letters in place to spell the word that matches the puzzle too. Click the arrows on either side of the chalkboard at the bottom of the screen to scroll through the other puzzles. When you've completed the puzzle it will animate. You can click on the puzzle to see the animation again or click on the picture of the puzzle on the chalkboard to scatter the pieces and redo the same puzzle. As you master putting the puzzles together the difficulty will increase. At the easiest level there are only a few pieces needed to complete the puzzle. As the difficulty increases you'll have more pieces to place. At the hardest level there will be more pieces than you need. If you have trouble with the harder settings the game will automatically adjust the setting to an easier level. Each time you complete a puzzle and its corresponding word you'll collect one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book. You can see the letters you've collected in the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the book icon to go to the Word Book. Click the arrow on the frame in the upper left corner to exit the activity and return to the Living Room. Safari Snapshots - The Lion Prince is ready to take you and Blue on a jungle safari! He wants to take pictures of all the animals in the alphabet. Blue has a camera but needs your help finding the animals. Look for an animal whose name starts with the letter on the Alphabet Animal Album in the lower right corner. For instance, "A" is for Alligator. Blue holds the camera with her ears and turns her head as you move the cursor. When you see the animal you're looking for click on it and Blue will snap a picture. The picture will appear on a page in the album along with a fun fact about that animal. To look for another animal, use the album to click on a letter in the onscreen alphabet or click the arrow in the upper left corner of the album and a letter will be chosen for you automatically. Once you have chosen a letter, it will remain until you find an animal with that letter or you select another letter. Look at the album in the lower right corner of the jungle screen to see which letter was chosen. Blue only has enough film for three pictures. If you choose the wrong animal the first and second times the Lion Prince will remind you which animal you're looking for. You'll lose a frame of film from the camera icon with each incorrect choice. If you click the wrong animal a third time the number of animals onscreen will decrease by one. You'll have three more opportunities to find the correct animal and if you still can't the number of animals onscreen will decrease by one again. This will continue until the only animal left onscreen is the correct animal. Each time Blue uses up the film the Lion Prince will give her more. The animals appear from three different levels, the top of the screen, the bottom of the screen and the middle of the screen. At the easier levels your travel speed is slower and the animals will stay onscreen a little longer than in the more difficult levels. You can move your cursor over the animals as they appear to hear and see their names too. As you master the activity this will change. You will move faster, the animals will disappear quicker and you won't hear or see the names. Each time you find the correct animal you'll collect one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book. You can see the letters you've collected in the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the book icon to go to the Word Book. Click the arrow on the frame in the upper left corner to exit the activity and return to the Living Room. Snacktime - Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper have been shopping but their list is torn and they need help matching the snacks to the letters on their list. They'll tell you what letter and sound they're looking for and you pick a snack food that starts with the same letter and sound. Click on the food you think matches and it will "stick" to your cursor. Move it to one of the plates and click again to place it. If you choose the wrong snack Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper will say its name and then repeat the letter and sound they are looking for. If the food you picked doesn't match they'll tell you and you can try again. Fill both plates so two of Blue's friends can join her for a snack! There may be snacks that are new to you (like scones and kumquats) and snacks that look very similar to foods you may know well but aren't, like zucchini! If you don't recognize a food you can move your cursor over it and Mr. Salt or Mrs. Pepper will say the name for you. Each time you find the correct snack, for both plates, you'll collect one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book. You can see the letters you've collected in the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the book icon to travel to the Word Book. Click the arrow in the upper left corner to exit the activity and return to the Living Room. Mailtime - Mailbox has a message to deliver but there's a problem. Some of the words are missing letters! He needs your help to fix them. The missing letters will appear as light gray outlines. Find the letter at the bottom of the screen that you think fixes the problem. Click on it and it will "stick" to your cursor. Now place the cursor where you want to place the letter and click again. If you choose the wrong letter Mailbox will tell you and you can try again until you find the correct letter. As you progress the difficulty levels will adjust. For instance, on one level you'll be fixing missing lower case letters. On another level the missing letters will be upper case. Eventually, more than one letter may be missing and instead of an outline of the letter you'll see a question mark. For more challenge sometimes the letters you choose from at the bottom of the screen may be upside down or backward! There are three pages to each message. Each time you repair all three you'll collect one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book. You can see the letters you've collected in the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the book icon to go to the Word Book. Once you've fixed all the missing letters Mailbox will read the letter to you. Click on Mailbox to repair another message or click the arrow in the upper left corner to exit the activity and return to the Living Room. Alphabet Maze - Shovel and Pail have created an alphabet maze in the backyard sandbox! Follow the alphabet to reach them and you'll collect words as you do. Click each letter in the alphabet, in the correct order, to make a path for Blue. Use the alphabet at the bottom of the screen as a guide. As you click the letters in the maze, the letters at the bottom of the screen will highlight to show you which letter is next. The letters in the maze will also change color and the last letter clicked will flash. Shovel and Pail will help by explaining what to do and calling out the letters as you click them. Then, when you've completed a maze, they'll recite the alphabet while Blue travels through the maze to find them! As you master this activity it will automatically adjust to increase the challenge. For instance, you begin with the alphabet and on one level there may be several wrong turns in the maze. If you choose the wrong path you must click each wrong letter to back up to the last correct letter and head in a different direction. On another level you'll see whole words instead of the alphabet and will need to choose words that create a sentence to lead Blue to Shovel and Pail! In the higher levels of the word mazes there will be wrong turns and dead ends too. Use the sentence at the bottom of the screen as a guide. When you've completed the sentence Shovel and Pail will read the sentence out loud. The level adjustments are made based on the length of time it takes to navigate the maze and the number of successful attempts. If you move slowly or make some wrong clicks you may be dropped a level, but can always work your way back up. Each time you complete a maze you'll collect one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book. You can see the letters you've collected in the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the book icon to go to the Word Book. Click on Shovel and Pail to start another maze or click the arrow in the upper left corner to exit the activity and return to the Living Room. Bathtime Rhymes - Slippery Soap needs your help to make some rhymes! In this activity, Blue stirs up the suds in the tub and four bubbles with pictures in them rise above her. Slippery will tell you the name of each picture. Click on one of the bubbles and Slippery will start a rhyme. Then Blue will splash four more bubbles out of her tub so you can find a word to finish the rhyme! If you don't choose a word that rhymes with the first word Slippery will give you another try. If you still can't find the word that rhymes Blue will show it to you and you can start another rhyme. To hear a word again move your cursor over a bubble and Slippery will say the name of the picture. Each time you successfully complete a rhyme you collect one letter toward a word for Blue's Word Book. You can see the letters you've collected in the upper right corner of the screen. Click on the book icon to travel to the Word Book. Click Slippery to start another rhyme or click the arrow in the upper left corner to exit the activity and return to the Living Room. Keyboard Commands Pauses the game, and opens the pause dialog box. To continue, click the Play button. Quit the game. You can also stop playing by pressing the Spacebar, then clicking the Quit button . Fast-forward through the current cutscene. Displays on-line documentation. Toggles the game between running full-screen or in a window. Increases the size of the game display if your screen resolution is 1280x1024 or higher. If the game display has already been expanded, will toggle the display size back to normal. NOTE: This may cause slow video performance. Increases the size of the game display if your screen resolution is 800x600 or 1024x768. If the game display has already been expanded, will toggle the display size back to normal. NOTE: This may move the position of your desktop icons. TROUBLESHOOTING INFORMATION Windows 95/98 If you're having trouble with your CD-ROM, sound or video card make sure you've got the most updated drivers for these devices. If you're still having problems read on: CD-ROM To make sure your CD-ROM drive is set up optimally: Click on Start, Settings and Control Panel. Double click on the System icon; in the System Properties click on the Performance tab. Now click on the File System button and then the CD-ROM tab. Check the Optimize Access Pattern setting and make sure it accurately reflects the speed of your CD-ROM drive. For instance, if you have a 4x make sure it's set up "Quad-speed or higher." Also, make sure the Supplemental Cache Size is set to large for any speed CD-ROM drive. Now open the HEGAMES.INI file, delete the entire [My Computer] section, save the changes, close the file and run the game. This will force all the tests to rerun. NOTE: Contact your computer manufacturer for help with this. Printers You want to make sure you have printer drivers that support 32-bit printing. If not, you'll need to upgrade to the 32-bit printer drivers in order to print from our game. Contact HP at 208 323 2349 for more information. Video When we say SVGA, we mean that we need a display capable of supporting a resolution of 640x480 at 256 colors (this wasn't a requirement of the original VGA spec, so we say SVGA). Almost every video adapter sold in the last six+ years is capable of this resolution and color depth. Even if you don't know it, you probably have an SVGA card. NOTE: To find your system device information, click on Start, Settings and Control Panel. Double click on the System icon; in the System Properties click on the Device Manager tab and then find Display Adapters and Sound, video and game controllers in the list. Click the plus sign to the left of each line and note the manufacturer name as it appears below. Contacting Humongous Entertainment Order Department Phone (800) 499-8386 (425) 867-2596 Fax (425) 489-3446 Internet Mail custserv@humongous.com U.S. Mail Humongous Entertainment PO Box 3383 Woodinville, WA 98073 Technical Support Phone (425) 485-1212 Fax (425) 806-0480 U.S. Mail Technical Support Humongous Entertainment 13110 NE 177th Place Suite B101 #180 Woodinville, WA 98072-9965 On-line Web Site WWW http://www.humongous.com Blue's ABC Time Activities Copyright 1998 Viacom International, Inc. All rights reserved. Software Copyright 1998 Humongous Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Archived by OldGamesDownload.com on 12th October, 2019