SIMISLE Introduction and Tutorial - DEMO VERSION Copyright (c) Intelligent Games Ltd. and Maxis Inc., 1995. Please note: Some features mentioned in this tutorial pertain to the full version and will be unavailable in this demo version. To change the sound card setting run the SETSOUND program in the install directory. Keys to control music/effects volume: +/- Increase/decrease music volume. [/] Increase/decrease effects volume. This file is README.TXT in the install directory. (We recommend that you print this document as it will be useful to have with you as you play.) Make sure your mouse has its boots on - we're about to trek into the rainforest, and it ain't no stroll in the park. This tutorial will lead you right into the thick of things and show you how to get out with your khakis intact - and maybe even with a little weight gain for your onscreen wallet. As the program loads, you'll be treated to the lavish title screens and a 'birds-eye view' fly-by of an island environment; you can hasten their departures by hitting any key on your keyboard or clicking your mouse. (By the way, from now on, when the tutorial says to click on a button or object, assume it means to click with your left mouse button. The right mouse button has some special functions, and you'll be alerted when you need to use it.) Step 1 - In The Beginning After the game has loaded you'll see an island with multicolored terrain elements surrounded by a sandy shoreline and ocean waters. The island is marked by a number of pins that we shall soon see represent developed sites; one of the pins has a red '8' near it. There is also a floating compass up above the left side of your island that will keep you heading in the right direction. If your sound card is paying attention, you'll also hear some lively island rhythms. You may notice that the terrain vegetation periodically changes color - that is caused by the sun's movement across the horizon. Below the island is your Control Bar, the dashboard behind which you'll drive your island-management ambitions. (If you notice the little red ball with the 'active-antenna' waves at the bottom of the Control Bar, it's not Big Brother tracking your movements, or merely eye candy - it means there's a message in the Message Bar, at the bottom of the Control Bar.) There are a host of map manipulation buttons on the right of the Control Bar that can enhance your understanding of the island landscape. The three 'plus sign' buttons in the middle of the button group are zoom buttons that change the magnification of your island view; the active (depressed) top one is the distant overview perspective you now see. We'll use the others in gameplay in a little while. For now, let's take a different look at your island territory. Click on the top-left button, the one with the square (flat view) on it. This is the 2-D (satellite) map view, which provides you with a top-down look at the island, representing developed sites as squares rather than pins. There is a group of labeled buttons on the right-hand panel that when clicked will provide you with specific terrain information, clarified by the color gauge that has appeared on the right side of the Control Bar. (You'll notice that all of your button clicks are accompanied by a distinctive sound.) There are a number of buttons already selected, mainly the ones that display the map's pin sites, under Developments. The buttons for these default selections are black; the gray (unselected) buttons will measure a geographical Feature or resource, any of which can be viewed one at a time. You will find these 'reports' very useful later in the game when your development decisions have altered the landscape. Click again on the button (which now has a diamond - isometric view - on it) to toggle it back to the 3-D view. Click on the left-facing circular arrow. Click on the right-facing circular arrow. Clicking on the circular arrows will shift your map 90 degrees in the arrow's direction, which can be useful for a quick look at adjacent zones of the map, particularly at high magnification. You'll notice that the compass will change its orientation with those actions. You can also change the island's orientation with the up-arrow and down-arrow buttons below the 2-D button, which will incrementally alter the opening 'three-quarters' 3-D view. You can choose from an aerial view directly above the island all the way to a 'floating' ground-level perspective that displays the island's topography, and set it at many levels in between. We'll leave the island as is for now. The Control Bar also has a series of pictures that represent your agents, all of whom you can employ in your supervision of the island's resources. The red number '8' near one of the pin sites (in this case, your Agent Headquarters) indicates the present location of all of your scenario's agents. When you move them to various locations around the map, pin sites at this low magnification will display the number of agents present there. Below them is the Message Bar, which among other things will report the status of your agent's actions when you've engaged their talents. Let's make sure that your agents aren't all watching soap operas. Click with your left mouse button on Rick, the agent third from the right. You've opened up Rick's personal Control Panel. The panel contains the selected agent's picture, a Close box that when clicked will return you to the main Control Panel, and a Stats box that will open the Notebook to display a curriculum vitae for the agent (not available in this demo). There is also an abilities/specialties list pertinent to the chosen agent to the right of all these boxes - you can see that Mr. Groves has a talent for Exploration and Flora & Forestry. But for the moment, we're going to concern ourselves with the last two buttons in the panel, the Move and Location buttons. Click on the Move button, and after the pointer changes into the moving boots, move it up into the middle of the 'circle' of five pins at the top corner of your island. Click on a terrain area with the tip of the pointer somewhere in the middle of the pin cluster to boot your agent along. You'll hear his jeep start, and you should see a line in the Message Bar identifying his movements. If you've placed him correctly (and he's not out of gas), a window will come onscreen telling you of your agent's good fortune in having discovered one of the forest's many rare animals. Congratulations! In other scenarios, you'll have to determine which agent is right for which job - for example, sending a non- explorer to a job that requires one will get you nowhere. In other scenarios, you won't have the luxury of getting these free directions to the island action. Since this is the Tutorial, we're going to throw you right into the lion's - or in this case, leopard's - den. Click on the OK button in the 'Rare Animal' announcement window. You'll see a new pin (with the number 1) amid the cluster of original pins. A new pin indicates a new development or map property. Let's get a little closer to that action. Click on the second of the zoom buttons on the right side of the Control Bar. (You might notice that during the course of your island work you receive SimFaxes, which are pointers on what action you might take next to solve a particular problem. Once the fax is completely onscreen, you can just click on it to make it go away. If you find the faxes more hateful than helpful, click on the Files/ Option button in the Control Bar and click on the Messages: On button, which will toggle to Messages Off. That will dis-connect your fax line.) At this second level of zoom, you can more clearly distinguish terrain char-cteristics, existing roads, and constructed properties. Among other buildings, you should see a small observation hut, which represents your developing Game Reserve headquarters. This should be near the center of your screen - the observation hut is the building represented by the new pin in the lower magnification. (You can center your map - at any magnification - in a specific spot by clicking with the right mouse button on the desired spot. You can also center the island onscreen by clicking in the middle of the arrow cluster.) But there's much more to be seen. Click on the Files/Options button and click on the Grid:Off button. (close the Files/Options box by clicking again on the Files/Option tab on the control button). This command puts a grid pattern on your terrain elements, allowing you to more tangibly discern elevation patterns and island topology. The grid is only visible at the second and third levels of magnification. Re-open the Files/Options box by clicking on its tab button again. Click on Grid:On to toggle it off. Click on the Files/Options button to close the menu. Click on the third zoom button. (The largest plus sign.) We couldn't keep this a secret long - there are all kinds of things going on here on your island. The trees are only visible at this zoom setting. Just for starters, look around onscreen for some particularly interesting stand of trees or bright foliage. Information is king: get some. Click on the terrain element that interests you. A simple explanation of terrain composition will appear in the Message Bar. There are more detailed descriptions of island environments in the Reference section of the manual and in the game's Notebook. But right now we're after bigger game. The structure that we're immediately concerned with is the observation hut. Remember that agent of yours, the intrepid Mr. Groves? Let's make sure he's manning his post, at your service. Click on the Location box on Rick Groves' agent panel. You'll see Game Reserve command window. When you have an agent at a particular site, you can click on the Location box to open the development's window. Whether or not an agent is present, you can click directly on the property site itself (at any zoom level). If the site has the correct agent, you'll see active command buttons that can employ that agent's talents toward your ends. (Grayed-out buttons tell you that different agent skills are required or that you don't have the required resources.) Regardless whether an agent is at the site, these windows also reveal useful information about current conditions there. Lets give Mr. Groves a task. Click on the Fence Area button. Well, no matter how much coffee he's had, your agent can't fence the reserve all by himself. You might have noticed that the button was dim - that means you're missing a key ingredient to carry out the command. The Message Bar tells you that you need an agent with Construction skills to build that fence. It just so happens that we have one on hand. Click on Rick's Close box. Click on the agent named Bob in the agent panel. Click on the Move button and click on the hut at the Game Reserve. You should see that the Fence Area button is still dim. But you needn't be! Click on the Fence Area button with your right mouse button. Drat! Another setback - or perhaps a learning experience. The Message Bar indicates that you need six unskilled laborers to do your fencing. You certainly have enough money; you began with a pile of dough, and you're nowhere near a shopping center. You can determine your island's Unskilled Labor totals and other resource factors in the Graph window. Close the Reserve window. Click on the Graph button. Click on the U Labor button in the Graph window. The Graph window charts the amounts of your particular resource holdings. Clicking each of the named buttons will display constantly updated volume information about the selected material's presence on the island, color-coded by button. The chart line moves from left to right over time, so that you can calculate from the relative height of the right terminus of the line what the trend has been. You can see that you haven't got squat in the Unskilled department. The U Labor figure represents the amount of unskilled labor on the entire island, and those folks are available for your construction projects wherever you might need them. You'll only need a few of these hard- working sorts to build the reserve. Click again on the button to close the Graph window. Click on the Close box of Bob Moon's panel. It will become important to periodically check the Graph and 2-D windows to see how your development decisions are affecting the presence of each of these terrain elements and resources. Severely reducing or even wiping out one or more of the island biomes will tilt the land's ecology at an unhealthy angle, and your Ecology score will consequently decrease. Step 2 - Village in Training But now it's labor we're concerned with, and the source for unskilled labor can only come from a village. You'll need someone with knowledge of the local angle and someone with personnel power. Lucky for you, Iain McNeil and Dee Jarvis are primed and ready at your Agent Headquarters. And there's a quicker method to send them on their way than opening their individual panels. Click on Iain's face with your right mouse button. Click (left button) on the cluster of village huts below the reserve. Click on Dee Jarvis' face with the right mouse button. Click on the village again. Using the right mouse button is a faster way of getting those jeeps on the road, particularly when you want more than one agent to hop to your commands. You can assign multiple agents to one map development or to properties all over the map. When you see that your lads' jeeps have finished traveling (the moving jeep in your active agent's 'picture panel' will be replaced by the agent photograph), don't let them pause to start reading magazines. Click on the village. In the Village window, click on Train. You'll find that most of the villages on this island are practicing various types of sustainable agriculture or fishing. You can read in the window's info box that the inhabitants of this village are farmers (described by Current Task), but the grayed-out Unskilled Labor button in the window indicates further possibilities. (You can see that when a game object window is open, agents present at that location will be highlighted in red in the Control Bar.) Training villagers enhances the abilities they have for their current work, improving their Efficiency, and thus bumping their Food production. Improving the food production increases village population, and increasing the population can diversify its interests - you'll get a chance to choose some suitable unskilled labor with a broad population base. However, altering their lifestyles from farming to labor can decrease their happiness. (Generally, though, the village's happiness is dependent on low local pollution levels and how many trees have been logged on the entire island.) You can see in the main Control Bar that Iain's picture has been replaced by the image of the village where he's working. Underneath his name is a moving black bar that indicates the progress of his assignment. Different tasks will take different amounts of time. While Mr. McNeil is about his task, let's find out a bit more about this village. Click on the 'i' button at the top-right of the window. The window's Notebook page comes onscreen. The Notebook is a repository of island facts and gameplay information. The information ('i') button for each game object (developed site) will provide you with a deeper understanding of that particular site and gameplay options to further your island ends. Notebook functions are thoroughly reviewed in the Reference section of the manual. Click on the Notebook button on the Control Bar to return to the game. Bring up the Village window and click again on Train, when it's available. The village will need a few rounds of training to boost Efficiency to the point where the village's population base is increased. There will be a short lag time before you see the Population line leap. Keep Mr. McNeil busy training until the Unskilled Labor button becomes active. (Keep your eye on the Efficiency total - it needs to be at least 80 percent; population totals will begin to increase with the Efficiency hike.) You can examine other relevant island information in the Graph window while you wait. When you are familiar with more of the game techniques, you'll see that you can engage your agents in simultaneous tasks at different island sites, so you'll be too busy to wait for anything. When that Unskilled Labor button is available, jump on it. Click on Unskilled Labor. Dee will now orient some of the villagers to labor practices, which will cause a modest drop in the population, Happiness, and in the Efficiency levels for the village's food production, but it will give you a couple of fence builders. You'll need about six laborers, so click on the Unskilled button two more times. Each click will reduce the village's population by 10, but will produce 2 unskilled laborers. When Dee's progress bar disappears after the third training, indicating the completion of his instructional efforts, you can attend to the erection of your Game Preserve fence. (It's not a bad idea to return here to keep Efficiency levels up - you'll see why soon.) Step 3 - Using a Little Reserve Click in the village's Close box. Click on the reserve building. Click on the Fence Area button. Mr. Moon's photo in the Control Panel will be replaced by the reserve site, indicating the whereabouts of his present labors. When his face returns, you can see that the Game Reserve window has a couple of new agent action choices, and that the info box has some new data. You might also notice a sharp new look at your game reserve, with its new headquarters and fancy fencing. Your animal population should begin to rise. You'll eventually want to use all of those reserve command buttons, but since there aren't any tourists around, opening the park will just wear out your gate, and there isn't a trained warden on the entire island. But every problem has a solution, eh? Close the Game Reserve window. Click on the down arrow and the left arrow in the scroll-arrow cluster until the town and the agent headquarters are prominent onscreen. Click on the town. Step 4 - The Town and the City Skilled labor can only be found in the urban jungle, and your wardens have to be highly trained sharpies if you want them to fend off the cutthroat poachers infiltrating your game reserve. What you need to do is increase the town's population to city size, so that there's a broader labor base to choose from. When you've developed your town into a city, you'll need to provide it with more power for its growing industries. We'll make sure now that your city will immediately have the power it needs. Anyway, that old power station to the right of the town won't run without coal - keep your agents hopping. Send John Balker down to the coal mine, located off to the right of the agent headquarters. Click on the coal mine to open its window. Click on the Mine Double button. After your agent gets his and the other workers' hands dirty, you can see in the window's info box that you've doubled the mining capacity. (There will be some subsequent increase in pollution, something you can check later in the 2-D window. You can change capacity to Mine Normal later.) But power alone does not a city make - in order to entice some more visitors to settle in, you've got to spruce up some of the local amenities. Be an empire-builder, build! Send Bob Moon over to the town. Click on the town and click on the Hospital button in the Town window. After your agent completes his deed, you can see in the town's info box that the Health Care rating has improved. The population may soon skip upward as well, boosted by that new well-being. However, doesn't it seem obvious that you can't have a specially trained warden without special training? Education could turn a town bumpkin into warden material. Back to the job site. Click on the College button. Unfortunately, it's not going to be just a matter of a few waves of your mouse to make your town's population crest to a city's - we said this would be work, didn't we? Remember how you trained that one village to boost its population, using Iain and Dee? Well, you need to continue doing that at various villages all over the island, because the higher food totals from those villages will prompt those well-fed villagers to procreate, and that good food will also draw in more outsiders to your island. Go ahead and train other villages of your choice - any and all will do - for higher food production while you engage other agents in simultaneous tasks. This island is an interconnected web, and we're going to keep those spiders humming. Make sure to repeat the food production efforts all over the island and improve the town's other amenities in between the assign-ments below. Step 5 - A Woodsman's Tale It's likely that your hospital and university projects have depleted your wood supply, and your burgeoning tourist industry doesn't stand a chance without you doing some more building. You're surrounded by trees on this island, and you've already got a sawmill - the course is clear. (Uh, don't get too many chainsaw chuckles out of this - there is a World Opinion button in the Graph window that frowns on clearcut islands, and we haven't even talked about the Score button yet.) Scroll up near the sawmill west of the game reserve. Send Mr. Moon to the side of the clump of trees just below the sawmill by clicking there. When he arrives (his jeep will appear in the terrain), click on his jeep to open the Construction Site window. (If his jeep has been obscured by the trees, you can also click on his Location button to bring up a command window.) Click on the Logging Camp button in the Construction Site window. After you've clicked on any active construction button in a Construction Site window, your pointer will change into an image of the selected development. You can move the pointer around a restricted distance within the area, indicating the boundaries of your placement choices. If the cross-hair that follows your pointer movement is red, you won't be able to build there. When you're in the white, place it right. (The building will be placed where you center the cross-hair.) Click with your logging camp pointer in a 'white zone.' A construction crane will appear, letting you know that Bob and some of your island's unskilled laborers are at work. After Bob's progress bar is gone, you'll see your new logging camp, which will soon have some logging truck traffic between it and the sawmill (you might catch the bulldozer building the road). In a short while, you'll be in log heaven (your Wood totals in the Graph window will rise). You're in business - so get busy. Besides wardens for your reserve, you'll need some goggle- eyed tourists to gawk at your rare flora and fauna there, and the only way they can dock near your reserve at the moment is by inner-tubing into that grubby old fishing village. Give them a little more consideration and they'll give you a little more coin. Step 6 - Your Money or Your Fish Use the arrow buttons to scroll up to the native fishing village on the top edge of the island, not too far from your game reserve. Send Dee Jarvis (Negotiation skills) to the village. Click on the village and click on the Buy Out button. That silver-tongued devil Mr. Jarvis is going to buy out the fishing village with a little green persuasion, because it's the ideal site for a handsome ferry port - it's one of the few spots on this island where deep water touches the land, a port requisite. Hey, since the residents are only Vaguely Happy anyway, it's not a crime, is it? Once Dee is through with his negotiations, you'll see that the village has been removed from the map. Don't worry, the village people have all moved to the town to get jobs dressing funny and singing in nightclubs. No, actually you'll probably see another pin added to your map - they are very likely to relocate to another village. Now you've got an empty site of prime property. What would any self-respecting tourist-hungry governor do? Build, man, build! Send Mr. Moon to the cleared fishing village property. Click on his jeep. In the Construction Site window, click on Ferry Port. Locate a workable site within the pointer bounds that intrigues you and click the mouse button. If You Build It... The ferry port will appear after Bob finishes supervising its construction. Your money and materials totals will decrease, as they will any time you construct something. You've still got a little money to burn - you don't want your guests to sleep on leaves, do you? Locate a nice site above and the right of your port, on the beach but nestled at the edge of the trees, and send trusty Agent Moon there. (If you don't see his jeep appear somewhere near your chosen spot, scout another nearby, get the boots pointer, and click again.) Click on his jeep and click on the Hotel button in the Construction Site window. Select the site and place the hotel. As you'll see, Mr. Moon knows his way around the building of a spiffy hotel. Right now, your tourist trap is a modest Caravan Park, but you can upgrade the property to bigger and better. Remember that commer-cial developments do produce pollution, and that will affect both flora and fauna in the immediate area. Also, tourists are reluctant to travel too far to get to lodging or attractions, so plan accordingly. Now that you've got a way to bring in the tourists, and a place to park them, you should set your reserve in order. You'll only be able to do this if you've built up your town into a city. If not, keep working on boosting food production by using the proper agents in every village. When your town becomes a city, you'll see it on your map in all its glory, including the buildings representing the urban amenities Mr. Moon built. Send Dee Jarvis to the game reserve. Click on the reserve. Click twice on the Hire Wardens button. Click on the Open/Close Park button. Mr. Jarvis will eagerly canvass the city (by phone) for wardens and will fetch two back for you. You'll notice the park specimen total will increase more rapidly after your wardens have been hired, because the warden's job is to deter those nasty poachers from decimating your exotic beasts. You should also notice the number of those other nasty beasts, the tourists, on the rise, though you might have to place another hotel near by. Be sure to hire more wardens over time. Perhaps you're a touch anxious because you've spent a pretty penny or two building up your empire. However, your hotel and game park should begin building up your funds. There are a number of other means to increase your means on the island, some of which might be a touch predatory, some of which are more benign. What's nice - and challenging - about SimIsle is that you can make choices, and those choices come in various shades. If you ever need a quick, uncomplicated way to slap your cash register awake, you can always send an agent to your sawmill to export the logs that your camps are ripping out of the jungle (remember to stop exporting after you've made some money or you'll have no wood to build with). Cash flow problems aren't all you can face in SimIsle, though. One situation that would be decidedly fretful is a shark attack, a dire event that could customize the swimwear of your carefree tourists. This disaster (and others in different scenarios) can occur randomly, so you may want to take your aspirin now. If they do occur, you might be given an opportunity to send agents to the disaster sites. In some cases (but not all), the right agent will be presented with emergency options - you're on your own, guv'nor. Step 7 - Knowing the Score Dreadful calamities like that and your response to them are monitored by the Great Scorekeeper in the Sky, and if you've got the moxie, you can check to see how you're doing. Click on the Score button. The window that appears lets you know how well you've balanced your island interests. The figures for Ecology, Industrial and Development can individually go from 1 to 100 percent, and your slant in any direction will also be pictorially rendered in the window, from vibrant forest images to choking power plant gases. You can also see just what the world thinks of you here, as well as what your island world thinks of you overall. For example, you probably received some World Opinion points for your early discovery and breeding of the rare animal, though we did help a touch on that count. How you might deal with a disaster could add to that score, as well as affect your Ecology count. Keep your eye on the score, while it keeps its eye on you. (Opening certain system windows, such as this Score window, will pause the game.) Click on the Score button again to close the window. Step 8 - Charting the Numbers It's time to do a little property assessment and development. Use your scroll arrows or whatever means you find comfortable to go over to your ferry port. Click on the ferry port. This is just a quick glance to see how things are going at the port. You can see by the inbound and outbound traffic at the port whether the island has been hosting many Rubber Band Engineers conventions and the like. Of course, if there's been a tourist boom at the port, it might be time to enlarge your accom- modations and pick up a few more dollars. Don't expect that just because the hotel has been enlarged or has brass banisters that more tourists will automatically come - they've got to be in a good mood, and that's related to how far away lodgings and attractions are, how polluted the surroundings are and other tourist concerns. Scroll to your hotel and click on the building. Send Mr. Moon over to the site. You can see that you can click on a development while another site's window is open, and the open window will be replaced by the newly clicked site's window. The window indicates that business has been good, and that no rooms are available. Do the sensible thing - expand. As soon as Bob arrives, click on the Extend Resort button. Mr. Moon doesn't seem to ever get tired, does he? You can see that he'll immediately go to work with a crew to knock together a few more rooms. (Your cash and wood totals will take a little hit.) You can return when you please and open up some more rooms, or choose the Improvements button and put some nicer carpet in every room, and those machines that dispense $4.00 candy bars. Of course, keep in mind with expansion of any sort, whether it's new construction, more coal extracted or more logs cut, your island's overall ecological balance will be affected. All developments pollute to some degree, and heavily developed areas pollute to a considerable degree. SimIsle does present you with some chances to pad your pocket while you're putting some gilt writing on your ecological CV, though. Step 9 - Let My Animals Go! Scroll to your game reserve and click on the reserve building. Send Mr. McNeil to the reserve. Click on the Export Specimens button when it's available. If you've managed the reserve well, your Export button will be active. (You'll need to have hired 5 or 6 wardens.) Mr. McNeil will snap to attention and arrange for the export of your rare creature to preserves and zoos all over the world, thus enhancing the chances of the species' survival. And if that ain't a kicker, just look at your Money total: it goes up with every creature you put in the mail. Nice job. However, if you've placed your hotels or other developments too close to your reserve, the noise and pollution could affect the breeding success, and you might not see the Export Specimens option. If you continue to export animals over time, and you've had plenty of visitors to your Game Reserve, you might even get a congratulatory onscreen message about your ecological insights. If so, just click on Continue. If your curiosity is piqued about other creatures and plants in your island's grab bag, there's a way to get some pertinent info. Step 10 - A Brief Study Session Click on the Notebook button on the Control Bar. Click on the Ecology button. Click on the topic that interests you. The Notebook is your island encyclopedia, filled with enlightening facts about the composition of your island terrain, what animals and insects reside there, and all the whys and wherefores of your island properties. You might want to keep the Notebook material in mind when you build a tourist attraction - the Triple-Nostriled Wing-wooble that you squish with a french-fry stand might be the only one left in creation. You can also select a pin site and click on the 'i' button in its window, which will open the Notebook and reveal information specific to that site. Click again on the Notebook button to close the window. Step 11 - And there's more... Well, that's one approach to island management. Over time, you will learn how to more effectively use the particular talents of each agent, so that you employ the most suitable person for the job. We didn't even get into the hiring, firing and training of agents - in other scenarios, you have 16 additional personalities at your disposal. (Whatever personnel decisions you make, at least make Bob Moon a sandwich.) As we indicated, what's compelling about SimIsle is that there are many approaches to this scenario, and this scenario has only about one-quarter of the complexity of the other islands. (We didn't want you to head back to the mainland in terror by springing anything too complicated on you.) Try your hand at some of the other scenarios - ah, they're not that easy; you'll probably have to use both hands (as well as getting the full version first...). You can approach islands with a single- minded purpose, just aiding villagers with their planting and fishing efforts, and keep it as green as the Garden of Eden, or you can ride roughshod over the land using the devouring mouth of your bulldozer. But there are always myriad ways to mix your roses with your weeds. Spend some time in the Reference section of the manual to familiarize yourself with all of the program's features - we only took a sip from a tall glass for the tutorial. There's also a nice essay on the real rainforest, and reading it will give you a small understanding of the staggering complexity and marvelous diversity of these regions. Well, that's probably enough for a year or two. Enjoy your time on the islands, and try and keep your socks dry.