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What is the Hark the Sound 2 Game-Making Wizard like?
How do I make a new game?
What types of games can I make (or edit) using the wizard?
What types of files can I include a game?
How do I edit existing games?
How do I add new encouragement sounds and pictures to all the games?
When I preview a sound, it says the sound cannot be played. Why?
How do I send you a new game that I made, so others can use it too?
How do I change the voice used for the computer generated speech?
Is it compatible with JAWS?
How do I run it?
Please let us hear from you.

What is the Hark the Sound 2 Game-Making Wizard like? (back to top)

The Hark the Sound Wizard is a tool designed to make the game-making process much easier. The wizard will guide you through a step by step process to do one of three tasks: creating a new game, editing an existing game, or modifying the general encouragements folder. On each screen, there is a Help button that will give more information about the task at hand. You can exit the wizard at any point without affecting any existing games. Below are a series of screen shots that give you an idea of the process you will be taken through when you use the wizard.

The screen above shows your first task in the wizard will be to choose what option you would like from the choices above. You can create a new game, edit an existing one, or modify the elements in the general encouragements folder.

If you choose to create a new game, you will see the screen show above. Here, there is space for you to enter a name for your game and to enter a description for your game if you have one. You then must select which type of game you are going to make. Descriptions of the different game types can be found below in What type of games can I make?

If you choose to edit an existing game, you will see a screen (shown above) where you select which game you want to edit from a drop down menu.

When you are adding elements to your game, you will see a screen similar to the one shown above. The screen above shows what you would see if you were working on a category game. You would click on the tabs at the top of the screen to perform the options listed on these tabs. The screen above is where you would add sounds pictures and text to your game. You must select a category and a sound description before adding any objects to the game. On the right side of the screen you can see a list of all the objects that are present in the category already.

You can click Help on any of the screens for more information about what to do on the screen. When you are done with the game, click Finish. If you decide you do not want to finish a game or you no longer want to make any changes, click Cancel and no changes will be made.

How do I make a new game? (back to top)

Simply click on the Create a new game option when the wizard starts. Click Next and then you will be given a place to enter the name of your game, give it a description (optional), and select the type of game you are going to make. From here, you will then be able to add the necessary pieces to your game so that it will be playable in Hark the Sound 2. See the next question to learn more about how to make a legal game.

Before you begin making a new game, you should first have all of the pictures and sounds that you want to use saved on your computer. Look at the section on what types of files you can add for more information on where to find sounds. Also, you will need to complete your game in one sitting. You can always add to it later, but to be able to save it, you must have the minimum requirements listed in the next question:

What types of games can I make (or edit) using the wizard? (back to top)

There are now three types of games for Hark the Sound: Matching, General Category, and Learning Category.

Matching games are the same games that you remember from earlier versions of Hark the Sound. The object of the game is to name a sound or tune that is presented as a prompt. The requirements, along with examples in parentheses for a “Name That Animal” game, for a matching game are:

• 1 or more questions relating to the name of the game that can be used interchangeably for variety (“Can you name this animal?”, “What animal is this?”)
• 6 or more types of sounds (dog, cat, bird, horse, pig, frog). For each type of sound:
• must have 1 or more different variations of it (many different dog barking sounds)
• can have 0 or more hints that apply to all variations of this type of sound (for dog: “This animal is a furry pet that likes to play fetch.”)
• can have 0 or more answers for that type of sound (“This is a dog.”). If none is provided, the default answer is the sound description (“dog”). In most cases, the only time an answer will be provided is if the text-to-speech synthesizer is not pronouncing the answer correctly and it needs to be spelled phonetically.
• can have 0 or more pictures that represent this type of sound, to be displayed during game play
• 0 or more reward sounds (“Good job”), incorrect sounds (“Try again”), or reward pictures. If none are provided, those in the game’s main pool of encouragement sounds are used.

Learning Category games are new to Hark the Sound 2.0. The object of the game is to choose the answer that does or does not belong to the category that the question asked about. The requirements, along with examples in parentheses for a “Learning about Fruits and Veggies” game, for a learning category game are:

• 1 or more questions relating to a category that will be learned in this game; each question must either ask for which item does not belong in a category, or ask for which item does belong in a category. These questions are chosen randomly, and the answer choices depend on whether it is a does belong or does not belong question. (“Which of these foods is a fruit?”, “Which food is not a vegetable?”)
• 2 or more categories (fruit, vegetable):
  • In each category, 5 or more types of sounds (for fruit: banana, apple, orange, strawberry, grape). For each type of sound:
    • must have 1 or more different variations of it (for apple: “red delicious apple”, “granny smith apple”)
    • can have 0 or more hints that apply to all variations of this type of sound (for apple: “This is a teacher’s favorite fruit.”)
    • can have 0 or more pictures that represent this type of sound, to be displayed during game play
• 0 or more reward sounds (“Good job”), incorrect sounds (“Try again”), or reward pictures. If none are provided, those in the game’s main pool of encouragement sounds are used.
  

General Category games are also new to Hark the Sound 2.0, and they are more difficult than Learning Category games because the question does not specify a category to identify. The object of the game is to choose the answer that does not belong in the same category as the other answers. The requirements, along with examples in parentheses for a “Food Groups” game, for a general category game are:

• 1 or more questions relating to the game in general, asking for which item does not belong in the same category as the others. (“Which of these foods does not belong?”, “Can you find the food that is different from the others?”)
• 2 or more categories (fruit, vegetable).
  • In each category, 5 or more types of sounds (for fruit: banana, apple, orange, strawberry, grape). For each type of sound:
    • must have 1 or more different variations of it (for apple: “red delicious apple”, “granny smith apple”)
    • can have 0 or more hints that apply to all variations of this type of sound (for apple: “This is a teacher’s favorite fruit.”)
    • can have 0 or more pictures that represent this type of sound, to be displayed during game play
• 0 or more reward sounds (“Good job”), incorrect sounds (“Try again”), or reward pictures. If none are provided, those in the game’s main pool of encouragement sounds are used.

What types of files can I include a game? (back to top)

Any file that Hark the Sound uses can be of several different types depending on the suffix or last 3 letters of the name.

1. ".txt" files contain ordinary text that will be read by a synthesized computer voice. Sometimes you might need to misspell a word on purpose to get it to pronounce it properly.
2. ".wav" files contain recorded sounds. You can find lots of these on the Internet. You can also record your own using the Sound Recorder application that comes free with most versions of Windows (Click the Start button, go to Program Files, then to Accessories, then to Entertainment). We recorded several of the game prompts this way.
3. ".mid" files contain midi music. These are like recorded sound but are much smaller. They can only contain musical sounds. Again you can find tons of these on the Internet. We like Laura's MIDI Heaven!
4. ".jpg", ".gif", and ".png" are all files that contain graphic images that can be used for pictures in the game. You can also find lots of these on the Internet, or you can make your own.
   

How do I edit existing games? (back to top)

Simply click the Edit an existing game option when the wizard starts. Click Next and you will be given a choice of either modifying the existing game, or creating a new game based off of the game you have chosen. The second option will keep the original game the same and allow you to make a new game starting with the components of the last one. The second option might be useful, for example, if you have a Learn about Fruits game and you want to make a Learn about Vegetables game. To do this you would:

1. Name your new game 'Learn about Vegetables'
2. Give your new game a description (optional)
3. Delete the questions that are associated with the category fruit and add new questions to the vegetables category of the form: "Which of these is a vegetable?" and "Which of these is not a vegetable?".
4. Anytime throughout this process you can add more sounds, pictures, and text.
5. Click Finish when you are done making changes and your game will be available for playing.

If instead you wanted to have a Learn about Food Groups game, you could leave the fruit questions and add questions associated with the other food groups. Then, the game would randomly choose a question from one of the categories instead of having questions only associated with one category for the entire game.

How do I add new encouragement sounds and pictures to all the games? (back to top)

When the wizard starts, simply select the Add or remove encouragement sounds and pictures option. Click Next and you will see a list of all the existing encouragement sounds and pictures. You can then add new ones or delete existing ones. Remember that these encouragements are used for all the games! If you choose to delete one, it will no longer be available for ANY of the games. It is more likely that you'll want to continue to add to the list rather than delete.

"Encouragements" is the term we use for the sounds and pictures that you see and hear after you select an answer when playing a game. If you select the wrong answer, you will hear an "incorrect" encouragement, which will be something like "Try again." If you select the right answer, you will hear a "reward" encouragement, which might be a cheering sound, and you will see a "reward" picture, which might be a smiley face or fireworks.

When I preview a sound, it says the sound cannot be played. Why? (back to top)

If you click the Preview button, and then hear a message like "cannot play sound.wav", then most likely the sound's audio format is bad. For .wav files, the audio format needs to be 16-bit PCM. If you want to try to convert the sound into the proper audio format, a free program that you could use is GoldWave.

If you hear a message like "cannot play sound.mid", then you may need to update your Java Runtime Environment (JRE), using the Java Runtime Environment installer(15 megabytes). We found that a few of the midi songs would only play with JRE 1.4.2 or newer.

If you do not know anything about audio formats, we suggest finding a different sound to use. If you get this message when previewing in the wizard, then the sound will never be played in the game, either.

How do I send you a new game that I made, so others can use it too? (back to top)

Send us a zip file, which is basically the file (in this case a new Hark game) that has been compressed. This makes it easier (smaller) to send via email.

To open the Hark Games Folder: Click on Start > All Programs > Hark the Sound > click on Games Folder.

Click one time on the folder that you want to zip. (Example: Name that Musical Instrument) (Folder is now highlighted.) > Click on File > Click on Send To > Click on Compressed (zipped) Folder. You have now created a zipped folder of Named that Musical Instrument. (You will see a folder called Named that Musical Instrument with a zipped folder symbol beside the title.)

To email the zipped folder, click one time on the zipped folder. (Folder is now highlighted.) Click on File > Click on Send To > Click on Mail Recipient. (Screen will now show your email screen.) Type in gb@cs.unc.edu (in the address line) to share the new Hark game.

How do I change the voice used for the computer generated speech? (back to top)

1. Click on the "Start" button.
2. Click "Control Panel" from the menu.
3. In the Control Panel, click "Speech" to open the Speech Properties window (you may need to click "Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices" first).
4. At the top of the Speech Properties window, click the "Text to Speech" tab.
5. Use the drop-down menu to change your computer's default voice. This is the voice that Hark the Sound will use.
6. You may need to exit the wizard and restart it for this change to take effect.

Is it compatible with JAWS? (back to top)

Unfortunately, the game-making wizard is not compatible with JAWS. We are hoping to make the wizard more compatible with JAWS in the future, though.

How do I run it? (back to top)

After installing it, if you chose to create shortcuts on your desktop, simply double-click on the "Game Maker" icon. Or, you can run the game-making wizard just like other Windows applications. Click on Start, then Programs (or All Programs on some systems), then Hark the Sound 2.0, then Game Maker.

If you are using an Apple Macintosh computer, you will need to find the "HarkTheSound2" folder. Within that folder, go into the "lib" folder, and then click on "HarkTheSoundWizard.jar" to start the game-making wizard. If the wizard does not start up, make sure that there are no spaces in the path to this file. We have found that sometimes a Mac computer will automatically save the "HarkTheSound2" folder inside of a folder called "HarkTheSound2 Folder" (with a space in between). This space causes the game to not work, so just rename that folder so it does not have a space in it.

Please let us hear from you. (back to top)

We would be very happy to hear about ways you are using Hark the Sound or your suggestions for how to improve it. If you make a new game for it, please send it to us and we'll share it with others.

Send email to gb @ cs.unc.edu or meghand @ alumni.unc.edu.

This page last updated: April 25, 2004