Game Options

Common Options

The following options exist in both Photo Match and Photo Simon, under the Edit menu:

• Play sounds - changing this option determines whether or not a sound is played after player selects a 2nd card (Photo Match) or when a picture is selected (Photo Simon). For Photo Match, this option does not affect whether narrations are played. Note you can change the sounds that are played; see the section Changing colors and sounds to learn how.
• Show filenames as tooltips - when this option is selected, the filename associated with a picture is displayed when the mouse hovers over a displayed picture. If your filenames are descriptions of the contents of the picture, this is a nice way to see a short bit of information about the picture.

Several more options can be set using the Edit options menu item under the Options menu. Selecting this option brings up a window that has four different tabs, described below.

• Hints tab - This tab is used to change the default number of hints allowed per game. This value can be changed individually for the easy, medium and hard game levels. The defaults are 1, 2 and 3, respectively
• Pictures tab - There are 5 settings that can be changed in this tab, shown in the picture below:
  
  1. You can change the default folder where Photo Match starts in when the photo folder is being selected. This value is the My Pictures folder by default.
  2. You can tell Photo Match to always start in the default folder; this is a good option if you have a young child who is not able to navigate folders very well. You can always change the folder using the Choose Photo Folder option in the Game menu if you want to use a different folder for a particular game.
  3. You can change the quality of the pictures used; Photo Match must scale your pictures to the correct size for the game. Selecting High, which is the default, gives the best quality, but takes a little bit longer. Selecting Normal saves time at the expense of image quality. Most people will want to use High, unless you have a particularly slow CPU.
  4. You can tell Photo Match to save the scaled images on your hard drive, so that the next time you play the game using those images, the scaling will not need to be completed again, making the game start up more quickly. If this option is on (which it is by default), you can also specify how much disk space to use to store the scaled images. The default value is 100 MB.
  5. You can choose whether or not to enable "zooming", which shows an enlarged version of a picture. Currently, this option is only enabled in Photo Match. You can also change which mouse actions cause a picture zoom to occur.
• Sounds/Appearance tab - on this tab, you can change the sounds that are played, as well as colors used to display player names and scores, and the color of the hidden pictures.
• Startup tab - this tab allows you to specify the size and location of the main Photo Match window.

Photo Match Options

Adding narrations to your pictures spices up the game, and adds a whole new level of reminiscing to your memories. Each player can have their own narrations associated with each picture. All you need to add narrations to your pictures is a microphone attached to your computer. Most of the time the microphone attaches to a jack in your sound card. On Windows, you can test your microphone connection using the Sound Recorder application, usually located under Accessories->Entertainment in the Start Menu.

Recording Narrations

There are two ways you can record narrations: when a picture that doesn't currently have a narration associated with it is displayed, or several at once. To enable the first option, enable the item Create narration when one doesn't exist under the Narrations menu. When a picture that doesn't currently have a narration is displayed, the window shown below appears:

Clicking the record button will begin recording the narration. Clicking the stop button ends the narration; if you want to review the narration, you can click the play button . You can re-record the narration as many times as you like; the previous narration will be replaced. When you're happy with the narration, click the OK button.

Creating several narrations at once is accomplished by choosing the item Edit Narrations ... from the Narrations menu. Doing so brings up the window shown below:

Clicking on any picture's filename will show a preview of that picture, and allow you to record a narration. If you click on a picture that already has a narration, recording a new narration will replace the previous one.

You can record narrations for as many pictures as you wish. Each time you record a new narration, the icon for that picture will have a checkmark placed next to it, allowing you to keep track of which pictures have narrations and which still need them.

Changing when narrations are played

By default, the narration for a picture is only played the first time that picture is displayed during a game. You can change this setting using the Narrations menu. There are 5 different settings you can choose from for when narrations are played:

• Always - every time a picture with a narration is selected, the narration will be played
• Once each game - this is the default option, described above
• Once for each player - similar to Once each game, except that if narrations by multiple player's exist for a picture, each player's narration will be played once
• Once each session - plays a narration for a picture only once during a single execution of the Photo Match game
• Never - narrations are not played

Four Photo match options can be set directly using the Options menu:

• Go again on match - when this option is selected, which is the default, then a player's turn continues as long as matches are made. Unselect this option to alternate between players regardless of whether or not a match is made.
• Set time pictures are shown - selecting this menu option allows you to configure how long the pictures are displayed when the second picture selected does not match the first. The default values are 1, 1.5 and 2 seconds for the easy, medium and hard levels, respectively.