User manual GAMES PC MINDROVER

[. . . ] MindRover: The Europa Project CogniToy, LLC 236 Central Street Acton, MA 01720 Telephone: 888 788-1792 (US and Canada), 978 264-3945 Website: www. mindrover. com or www. cognitoy. com E-mail support: support@cognitoy. com Copyright 1999-2000 by CogniToy, LLC. SciTech GLDirect(TM) graphics driver technology copyright 1997-2000, SciTech Software Inc. All rights reserved. 1 License Agreement and Warranty You should carefully read the following end user license agreement before installing this software program. By installing, copying, or otherwise using the software program, you agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. [. . . ] To get more detailed help on a component and read about its events as well as properties, select a component (by clicking on its icon) and press F1. Events Events are triggers that originate from a component and can be used to cause the vehicle's behavior to change. For example, the BumpSensor has an event called Bump. If your vehicle has a BumpSensor on it and it bumps into the wall, it will trigger a Bump event. You can use a wire to cause this Bump event to set the Angle property of a Steering wheel. 22 Concepts Wiring To give your vehicles intelligence, you wire components together such that an event from one component (the source component) sets the property of another component (the destination component). To create a wire, drag the source component with the left mouse button. You'll see a rectangular outline of the component icon following the mouse. When you pass over a valid destination component, the rectangle will vanish and be replaced by a wire connecting the two components. Drop the component when you see the wire and a connection will be made. If you do not see a wire then you may have the source and destination components backwards. The source component must be able to trigger events and the destination component must have settable input properties. For example, you can drag a MediumRadar component over a Steering component and you will get a wire. The MediumRadar is the source and can trigger many different events, such as TurnOn, TurnOff and Change. The Steering wheel has one settable property, which is the steering Angle. If you try to drag the Steering wheel over the MediumRadar component, you will not get a wire because the Steering component triggers no events. It cannot be the source of a wiring connection. To create a wire: drag the source component onto the destination component 23 Chapter 2 Once you have created a wire between components you will see an arrow from the source to the destination, indicating the direction of information flow. We have created default properties for many typical wiring connections. That means most of the time you may only have to make small changes or no changes to the wire property. So don't worry if you don't understand all the wire properties at first. You will get the hang of it! Wire properties Like components, wires also have properties. These properties describe how the wire behaves. Selecting a wire (by clicking on its direction arrow) will show you the properties for the wire in the property area along the right side of the screen. Source event The source and its event are the first items in the wire property box. [. . . ] A MediumRadar, for instance, causes an event called TurnOn whenever something passes in front of its line of sight. Wires allow you to harness these events to change the properties of other components. In effect, that is all a wire does: It listens for an event on the source component and changes a property on the destination component. With this seemingly simple model you can teach your vehicle to do almost anything. [. . . ]