CHILD'S PLAY REQUIRES: 256 color video driver, Windows 3.1, VBRUN300.DLL. INSTALLING: 1. Create a directory. 2. Copy the contents (a compressed ZIP file or a disk) into the directory you created. 3. In FILE MANAGER, look into the directory you created. Look for CHLDPLAY.EXE. Click this, drag it to the program manager and drop it into the Group of choice. This sets up the icon for you. INTRODUCTION: Keep your kids busy for hours with the best paint/art program in the shareware marketplace with Child's Play. It's so easy that your kids will have this mastered in no time. More importantly, it is FUN! Child's Play mixes art creation tools, screen erasers and special effects to bring out the young artist. This is the one program that kids never seem to tire of. Child's Play takes full screen. This keeps kids from mousing over to other places in Windows and potentially destroying something. Although they can still Alt-Tab into another program, Child's Play is so mouse intensive that it isn't likely that they will do this. In addition, Child's Play is also an educational tool in that the mouse actions used to draw are the same ones used in programs used in adult programs. Drawing rectangles, dragging stamps and other actions will help prepare them for similar actions such as "drag and drop" later in life. Similarly, by supporting the right mouse button (although there is no requirement to use it) your child becomes used to the idea that more than one mouse button can do things. OPERATION: To operate, note that there are 2 3d pushbuttons on screen at the upper left. The top one is the "menu" and the one underneath is UNDO. The menu button allows you to choose from a list of buttons on a 'flyout' bar: Draw Tools/Erasers/Effects/Stamps/Text/Load/Save/Print/Sound/Help/About/Exit The HELP window will describe the operation of the first 3 sets of tools; when you have selected DRAWING TOOLS or STAMPS the red arrow buttons on the left of the screen will cycle through the available choices. STAMPS will smear if the mouse button is being pressed and the mouse is moving. This is intentional; kids like the effect. Single stamps can be deposited once per mouse click. TEXT will allow the child to type on screen. SOUND toggles the sound effects off and on. HELP brings up a window that describes the drawing tools, erasers, and special effects. ABOUT tells you who we are and how to order. EXIT lets you quit the program. COLORS: Child's Play is a 256 color program and will use either mouse button. If you look at the upper left of the screen, you'll see 2 boxes with color in them. They correspond to the colors assigned to the left and right mouse buttons. (Young children won't much care about the right mouse button, but the older kids will.) To select a color for the right mouse button, just choose a color from the color palette at the screen top with the right button instead of the left. You can access the rest of the color palette by clicking the boxes at the upper left described above; a window will pop up with the available color spectrum. HOW TO ORDER: In North America, if ordering by credit card, call 1-800-242-4775 and order product # 11588. If ordering Child's Play, it is $19.95. "Child's Play Pro" (Le Paint Petite) is $24.95. If ordering by mail, send to: ASL P.O. Box 581 Ruidoso, NM 88345 Make checks payable to "Alston Software Labs". In the UK and Europe, contact: The Thompson Partnership Churchcroft, Bramshall Uttoxeter, Staffs ST145DE (0)889-564601 Fax (0)889-563219 Tech Support/general queries in the US is at (209) 522-8666. WHAT YOU GET: Ordering Child's Play ($19.95) will get you the registered version of this program which has more sound effects, no registration reminders, and no "Test Drive" marks on saved or printed pictures. If ordering Child's Play Pro, you'll receive a copy of Le Paint Petite, which is a much more advanced program. Le Paint Petite is the same engine that is being used in many new retail products (you'll see variations of it on a few upcoming CD's from "name" companies if you look.) Offering many more tools, Le Paint Petite is also faster (we used another compiler) and has many other advantages. These are: 1) 72 Rubber Stamps 2) About 2 dozen more drawing tools, including quill pens, charcoal pencils, tri-color spray paint, freehand fills, string art, propellers, cloth, patterned fills, radio waves, and more. 3) 24 screen erasers 4) 24 special effects 5) Wordless picture loading using thumbnail pictures. What this means is that rather than giving a name to a picture to load (and having to guess if it is the correct picture), the available pictures are presented in a miniature format. Choosing the picture to play with is now as simple as pointing to it. 6) More sound effects! 7) Picture compression. On a 800x600 display, the VB based Child's Play will save a picture in BMP format at roughly 421,000 bytes. Le Paint Petite uses compressed DIB technology, meaning that pictures of the same sized drawing area will be saved in about 1/4 the size. 8) Picture management. Use of thumbnails means that the child can also delete unwanted or old pictures easily. 9) Ability to print on PostScript printers. (Child's Play will only print on printers that use a PCL type technology.) 10) Installer. 11) Le Paint Petite is FAST. 12) There's more in this list, but you get the idea. Le Paint Petite is not available as shareware, but through Child's Play we can offer it to our shareware customers. Just remember to order "Child's Play Pro". ************************************************************************** The latest ASL titles are available online at (209) 883 - 0ASL. (0275) Log in with your name, use 'ASL' as the password. ************************************************************************** VENDOR INFORMATION: There are three requirements: 1) You must include VBRUN300.DLL with any copy of Child's Play sold to the end user for purposes of evaluation. 2) You must include "ASL" in any description. 3) Don't sell this for more than $6 US, period, under any circumstance. (Not applicable to CD vendors.) Child's Play and this document Copyright (c) 1994 ASL. Le Paint Petite Copyright (c) 1994 ASL.