Check our Known Bugs page if you have a question regarding a bug. What is the fastest way for me to get started? To get started quickly, install the game and run it. Go through the first few tutorials. Use F1 for help or more information on a component or scenario. Many of the first scenarios in each section have tutorial vehicles that you can load and work with. Check out the first chapter of the manual for more ideas on getting started. After you have become familiar with the game, go back to the manual to get more detailed information on the console, capabilities, and to get a quick component reference. Detailed information about components is available by high-lighting the component and hitting F1. We have set up Player's Forums (for beginning and advanced players) so get your questions answered and make feature recommendations, etc. We want to hear from you! What are the system requirements?
Windows:Linux:For more information or support on the Linux version, please go to the Loki Software website. Loki ported MindRover to Linux, so they are the experts! What accelerator card do I need to run MindRover? To run MindRover you need to have a 3D accelerator card installed in your computer. Most new computers come with 3D acceleration today. Older computers (over 2 years) may need to add an accelerator card. If MindRover is running VERY Slowly on your machine (like the mouse is seconds behind you), then you are probably not running with hardware acceleration. Here is a list of accelerator cards that we have tested with MindRover. It is likely that other cards which support OpenGL or Direct 3D will also work but we have not tested them:
A number of portable computers are out that claim to have 3D graphics capabilities, but they may have cut corners and not implemented enough 3D features to run MindRover. Cards/chipsets that we know DON'T have OpenGL (but claim to have 3D graphics capabilities) include:
To find out what your systems graphics capabilities are for Win9x operating system, click on the windows Start menu, Settings, Control Panel. From here double click on the System icon, and then the Device Manager tab. Double click on Display Adapters and that will tell you what you are running. If it matches something in the list above, you have the hardware that you need. To determine if MindRover will run on your computer, you should download the demo (from our downloads page), and install it. If the demo runs, the full game will run. MindRover installs using a default resolution of 800x600. When you install it, it will automatically start a 'Settings' program that will allow you to test your graphic card settings and save them. If you have a 3D graphics card with OpenGL drivers installed, please choose the 'standard 3D' option. This will give you the best performance. If you are having trouble, first check that you have the latest Microsoft DirectX drivers. If the 'standard' setting doesn't work for you (the test results in an error message), then try the 'simulated openGL' setting. If that doesn't work either, then your graphics card may not support 3D, or there maybe some other problem. Please send an email to support@cognitoy.com with all your system information (graphics card, operating system, processor speed) and describe what happens when you try to run the game. Do I need to do anything special if I have a 3dfx card? Old 3dfx drivers caused crashing in some people's systems. Make sure you have the latest drivers from: www.3dfx.com. If you are still having problems, run the Settings program again and try a different graphics card setting. You will find the Settings program in the Start menu where MindRover is found; or you can find it with Explorer in the folder where you installed the game. The default folder is c:\games\mindrover. Also, make sure you get the latest DirectX drivers from Microsoft, DirectX7.0a or better:
You will find the v7.0a version on the CD in the 'drivers' directory if you have purchased the full game. This is not the latest version any more, so it is recommended that you get the latest version of the link above.
I can't seem to adjust the sliders and spinners accurately. What can I do? Instead of dragging the sliders (which is good for gross adjustments), place the mouse cursor just to the left or right of the slider and click with the left mouse or right mouse. The right mouse click will give you the finest level of control. What do I need to know about OpenGL Drivers? OpenGL is an evolving standard, and graphics card manufacturers are constantly updating their support. Starting with MindRover version 1.06, you have a choice to run MindRover using OpenGL or Direct 3D. Some computers today come with these drivers already installed. If you would like to try to run MindRover using openGL drivers and you don't have the drivers installed or you don't know, then go through the GLSetup.exe program as described below. GLSetup.exe is a file that examines your graphics card configuration and loads the appropriate drivers. This file can be found on the MindRover CD in the drivers subdirectory for people who have a demo CD or have the full game. People who have downloaded the demo from our website should follow the links below. If you do have a CD, please note that the latest version of the openGL drivers will be found at the website for GLsetup or at the website of your graphics card manufacturer. The CD drivers may not be the latest any more. Note that GLSetup requires DirectX to be installed as well. Get the latest DirectX drivers from Microsoft here:
Here is the link for the GLSetup program: Click here to get the latest version of GLSetup Click on "Where can I download glsetup..." Goto the area called "GLSetup for the web" Click on "Download the 200kb Web GLSetup..." -- this is just a setup program, not the actual drivers. Save this file to a temporary folder or pretty much anywhere you like on your hard drive. When it is done saving it, use your window explorer to go to that directory where it is saved and double click on it to run it. It has to go back out to the web to actually get your drivers so make sure you don't shut down your Internet connection while you are doing this. First it checks to see what you graphic card is, then it downloads only the appropriate OpenGL drivers right from its website.
Where can I get tips about the mode switch? Sometimes you only want to know when the ModeSwitch has changed, regardless of what mode color it has changed to. For instance, if you want a RunningLight to track ModeSwitch changes, you can draw a wire which, on Change, simply copies the ModeSwitch Mode property to the RunningLight's Mode property. That wire should be left gray (unconditional). But often you'd like something to happen when the vehicle is entering a particular mode. For example, suppose you place a BumpSensor on a wheeled vehicle. You propose that whenever the vehicle bumps into an obstacle, it should enter "red" mode, in which it would back up and turn left. Clearly you need a wire from the BumpSensor to the ModeSwitch, setting the ModeSwitch's Mode property to red on Bump. You also want to set the Engine's throttle and the Steering's Angle. Should you make the BumpSensor's Bump event trigger those changes? I would suggest instead that you trigger both those changes by drawing wires triggered by the ModeSwitch Change event. These wires should be colored red. In effect, you can read a red wire triggered by ModeSwitch Change this way: "When the ModeSwitch changes to red, fire this wire." How is that different from just wiring directly from the BumpSensor's Bump event? Why would I claim it's preferable to use ModeSwitch's Change? Well, for one thing, it eliminates a subtle order dependency. Suppose you have two wires, both fired by BumpSensor's Bump event. One goes to ModeSwitch to set its Mode to red; the other (a red wire) goes to your Engine to set its Throttle to some negative value. Question: which one gets fired first? (This matters because, if you weren't already in red mode and the BumpSensor tried to fire the red Throttle wire first, it wouldn't fire at all!) We do promise that if multiple wires are fired by the same source event, and one of them is drawn to a ModeSwitch, we'll fire the ModeSwitch wire before all the others. But there are subtler cases where multiple components are interacting, and our guarantee wouldn't necessarily catch those. With a wire activated by ModeSwitch's Change event, there's no question whatsoever. You know the red wire from ModeSwitch's Change is going to happen after the wire that changes the ModeSwitch to red in the first place. The second point is that it gives you some flexibility later on. Suppose you want to refine the circumstances under which you enter red (back up) mode? For instance, what if you want to do it only when your radar sees (or doesn't see) an enemy vehicle? If you'd wired the enter-red-mode wires, to set the Throttle and the Steering Angle, directly to BumpSensor's Bump event, you'd have to change both of them. But if they were set to fire whenever ModeSwitch entered red mode, you could leave them alone. That way, they don't care how you entered red mode. On a related note, you can use a similar "wiring idiom" to trigger some action whenever you leave a particular mode. That's what the ModeSwitch's Leave event is all about. If you draw a red wire triggered by the ModeSwitch's Leave event, you can read it as: "When the ModeSwitch is about to exit red mode, fire this wire." Whenever the ModeSwitch is told to change its mode color, it first triggers its Leave event with the current color still in effect. Then it changes the mode and immediately triggers its Change event. How do I get back the original CogniToy vehicle that goes with each level if I replaced it? If you remove the default CogniToy-supplied AI vehicle from a scenario's slot and play some other vehicle in that slot, but you later want to restore the original AI vehicle, you currently have to go to the Scenario Selection screen, pick another scenario, pick the desired scenario again, and then go back to the Vehicle Selection screen. The default vehicles will be there. Why can't I hear the soundtrack? MindRover uses 'redbook' audio which means it plays the game CD like an audio CD. If you can replace the game CD with an audio CD and hear its music, then you should be able to hear the MindRover audio track. If you can't hear a music CD or MindRover's music, then check all your volume controls (physical ones as well as windows settings). There is also a volume control in the Options settings within MindRover. If you have more than one CD player, perhaps the other player is the one you connected to the motherboard. Most computers only allow one audio connection to a CD player. Why does MindRover run at 1fps or less? Some video cards can fool MindRover into thinking that it using a full openGL driver installation and so it will allow you to play the game, but the card is not actually running openGL, so you are getting no benefit from hardware acceleration. MindRover is unplayable without hardware acceleration. It might be the case that it will work properly in windowed mode rather than the default of full screen mode. Or it might work well in 'simulated OpenGL mode'. To try out these settings, run the 'Settings' program which we have provided. You will find this in the Start menu where MindRover is located, or using Explorer, navigate to where you installed MindRover and look for the program called 'Settings'. Run this program and you can change the graphics options for MindRover. My wiring doesn't work! What's wrong? If you're changing the colors of the wires, that's not simply a decorative feature. The shipping version of MindRover has a component called the Mode Switch. You can create different behaviors by using different colored wires. Red wires only fire in the red mode, and so forth. White wires fire in all modes.
How do I rotate a component while placing it on the vehicle? To place the component you use the left mouse button, holding it down while you drag the component. To rotate the component, you must click the right mouse button while you are still holding the component. Hold the left mouse button, and click the right one.
Are there any log files that I can look at for information? Every time you start MindRover, a log file is started called 'mindrov.log'. This file can be found in the MindRover install directory (the default is c:\games\mindrover). You can read this file with a text editor or Notepad. If your openGL drivers are installed correctly and MindRover finds them, then near the top of this file will be a note about starting the openGL ICD properly. It will also list the graphics card it found. This can be helpful in trying to debug a crash before the game gets started. Can I create and save a group of components? A much requested feature for MindRover is to be able to select a group of components from the wiring screen and save them as a group. The main difficulty with implementing this request is that there is no good solution for selecting physical components and we can't be sure they will fit on the next chassis where the player might want to put them. We have discussed a number of ideas for how this can be done and none of them will be easy to implement. Even to save only logical components will require enough work to get it right and make it understandable to the player that we are not planning to implement this feature in the short term. This feature is being designed for the next major version of MindRover or the next game.
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