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Welcome to EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt!

The purpose of all EASe products is to stimulate, challenge and promote sensory processing in children on the autism spectrum and others experiencing difficulty with sensory processing and organization.

EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt brings a new and exciting element to EASe products for children on the spectrum. In addition to EASe encoded music, fun game play, and visual vestibular stimulation, EASe Funhouse includes a treasure hunt to encourage your child to follow directions, to concentrate, to explore, and to learn. Your child will have lots of fun exploring and playing EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt!

These instructions are technical and do not constitute medical advice.

It is important to carefully set up your PC so that the audio and picture are the highest quality your machine can achieve. Especially important is making sure that your child is not harmed by turning the audio volume up too high. This can happen with any audio product, so we want to be especially careful.

The most important element in all EASe games is the music. The Electronic Auditory Stimulation effect music can help your child learn to habituate to noise and allow them to experience life in a more comfortable, less frightening way. This in turn will enable other therapies your child is receiving to more effectively do their job.

We recommend that children using EASe games wear headphones, just like children listening to EASe audio CDs. Speakers are acceptable in cases where a child cannot withstand something touching his or her head, but the effect will be less. Because there are a number of volume controls available on a PC, it is important to get the best sound to the headphones or speakers as is possible.

Setting Up Audio

Before you start the game, click on the small speaker icon named Volume in the bottom right corner of the Windows system tray and set your system speaker volume to maximum.

Next, double click on the EASe Funhouse icon on your desktop. This will bring up the title screen. On the title screen, you will see Start Mission, Setup, Instructions, and Quit.

To set the audio levels for music, voice and sound effects, click the Setup button to access the Graphics, Audio, and Controls pages. Click on the Audio button and then place your headphones on your head.

To adjust the music volume, click on Test music. When the music starts playing, adjust the Master volume slider to a level that is comfortable for you. Click Test music two more times to stop and restart a different song. Remember that your child may be much more sensitive than you, so keep the initial volume on the soft side. If you hear distortion, it is probably because of a volume setting. Try adjusting the Windows volume down slightly or the EASe volume down slightly to see if the quality of sound improves. The music should be very sharp at the edgy, boosted parts and muffled in between, but never distorted.

The Voice volume slider is preset at about 75% of maximum and should not need much adjustment. Note: the voice should be low in the mix and NOT conflict with the music. If the voice is too low on your headphones to be understood, you can turn it up a bit, but the game will be most effective if the child needs to concentrate on the voice and the music is higher in the mix.

In-game SFX volume should be at about 75% of maximum volume as well. This slider controls the engine sound, start beeps, the treasure collection chimes, the audience applause, and other sound effects. As with the Voice volume, these effects should be just loud enough to be heard, but not too loud to overshadow the music.

Once you have adjusted the audio for your own listening levels, put the headphones on your child, and if your child says the music is too loud, turn it down with the Master volume slider. The relationships of the Voice and effects will remain the same and will not need further adjustment.

If you need to start off the music at an extremely quiet volume for your child, turn the music volume up slightly with each subsequent mission. After three or four sessions, the music should be playing at a robust but not uncomfortable level.

Lastly, there is an Audio device setting. By default, this is set to Generic Software, as this is the most compatible, consistent setting across all computers and in most cases does not need to be changed. However, on some computers, there may be other settings, such as Generic Hardware. Depending on the configuration of your computer, these other settings may improve or degrade the sound quality. You may need to experiment in order to determine the best choice for your computer. In general, the device that sounds loudest with all other settings equal is usually the best.

Optimizing Graphics

The second most important element of EASe games is the sense of movement and balance. We have created a visual environment that will stimulate and challenge your child's sense of balance. We call this effect Virtual Vestibular Stimulation. If you are not a game player, you may even notice yourself getting nauseous while watching your child play the game. This is intended.

It is important to set up the graphics requirements so that the game will run smoothly. Because every PC has a different combination of monitor, processor, RAM, video card, and video RAM, we have included a variety of controls to optimize the game for almost any possibility.

To set up the game graphics, click on the Graphics button in the Setup page. We recommend starting with Display Driver set to OpenGL, Resolution set to 1024 x 768, and Fullscreen Video enabled (checked). Be sure to click Apply after you have finished changing the settings. After the computer has reset its screen resolution, click OK.

Most video graphics cards can run well at this size, while some cards can run at much higher resolution and Model detail. If your video card is not capable of running smoothly at this resolution, reduce the resolution until the game action appears smooth. If your computer is capable of running higher resolutions, then be sure and give them a try. This will require that you set the video resolution and then play the game for a moment, and then reset the video resolution if necessary. You will need to restart the game after changing the resolution setting.

For those using laptops or wide aspect ratio flat screens, if your video card can handle it, it is possible to uncheck the Fullscreen Video button and run in windowed mode. This will maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio at which the game is intended to be run, and will put the window in the middle of your screen.

You should take a little time to experiment and make sure that you have adjusted everything properly so your child will get the most out of the program.

We have also included a drop down list box to allow you to select a different monitor refresh rate. Sometimes increasing the refresh rate can actually improve the look of the game, so experiment. If a higher refresh rate looks choppy, then try reducing the refresh rate. Most or all laptop and flat screen users will be restricted to 60 Hz.

Other Controls

Esc	Quit mission
F1	View help in game
Ctrl-O	Open in-game options dialog

Mouse sensitivity slider

Every computer and every mouse have different sensitivities. If your child has difficulty driving the game, it is almost certain that adjusting the mouse will correct the problem. If the mouse is too sensitive, the tractor will swerve around on the screen and may be difficult for your child to control. If the mouse is not sensitive enough, your child will not be able to turn tightly enough in small spaces.

This game includes a setting in the Controls tab of the Setup window to give you easy control without having to change the mouse setup in Windows. Stay with your child and observe how they play the game. If they have trouble with the mouse, press Ctrl-O to bring up the setup menu. Then go to the Controls tab, adjust the mouse sensitivity, and let them play some more. They should feel comfortable by the time they are done playing through the Race Track room. If not, continue to adjust the mouse until they feel in control.

Hardware

Additionally, different mice have different thresholds in handling high-speed mouse movement. Lower-quality mice cannot handle extremely fast movements, and will instead produce erratic behavior on screen. We have found that the Microsoft Optical Mouse performs suitably for PCs. Therefore, much like we recommend Sony 7506 headphones to listen to EASe products, we also suggest the Microsoft Optical Mouse to control EASe games.

Once you have adjusted the audio and video resolution, click Start Mission to select your tractor and mission. Ask your child which tractor, the male or female, is their favorite. There are both slow and fast versions of each. Start your child with a slow tractor and if they get really good with that one, the next time you have a session give them a try on a fast tractor. If they have problems move them back to the slow tractor until they get better at driving.

The first time your child plays EASe Funhouse: Treasure Hunt, you should click on the check box marked "First Time Player?" This will start the game in the Race Track room and play a short instruction telling them how to pick up treasures. Not checking this box from then on will cause the game to start at one of the six randomly selected rooms.

How to use EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt

EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt is composed of EASe encoded music, a challenging virtual vestibular environment, and a large number of goals to complete. A session of EASe Funhouse is divided into rooms, goal groups, and goals. Each room is separate and can be freely explored by the player until the player directs his or her vehicle to an active exit pad. The order of the rooms is random, but within a single session, the rooms will not repeat until all of them have been visited at least once.

In each room, there are a number of goals that must be accomplished before the player is permitted to travel to the next room. Goals are the primary teaching tool. These goals can involve locating and collecting treasure items, playing a ball game, or finding the room exit. The treasure items are composed of a variety of objects, iconic human faces, dot cards (quantity), letter cards, and word cards. Tagging treasure items is fun and challenging.

Goals are divided into groups of 1 to 7 goals, and each goal group is shown one at a time in the upper-left corner of the screen. These visual instructions are reinforced by a soothing voice-over, instructing the child to search for and collect the next item. When the current goal group has been completed, the next goal group appears. There may also be other effects from completing a goal group, such as activating an elevator that opens up previously inaccessible areas of the room. In this way, children are given clear tasks to perform while navigating the challenging 3D world.

EASe Funhouse Game Logs

We have included a data tracking function in EASe Funhouse Treasure Hunt that tracks every child's performance in every session. The can be very helpful to a therapist in determining a child's progress. However, this data is not the last word on the performance of a child with the software. This is because there are a number of ways to play the game. If a child decides to stop and explore, or play with the balls or jump off the ledges in a room, it will lengthen the time spent in the room without increasing the score value. Careful observation is still important if one is interested in developing a measurement of a child's progress. As always, functional testing is important.

Accessing the Game Logs

As stated above, EASe Funhouse retains a log of each play session. These logs are stored in the CSV file format (Comma-Separated Values), which can be opened in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. To find this file, follow these instructions:

1. Click on the Windows "Start" menu.
2. Open the "Programs" or "All Programs" menu.
3. In "Programs", open the "Vision Audio Inc" folder.
4. In "Vision Audio Inc", open the "EASe Funhouse" folder.
5. In "EASe Funhouse", click on the "Game Logs" folder.
6. In "Game Logs", there is one log file for each player named according to the name of that player. If you have Excel installed, you can double-click on the file you wish to view in order to open it in Excel.

Organization of the Game Log File

As stated above, the game log file can and should be opened in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. This will properly arrange the data into rows and columns for easy processing.

Rows

The first row is a header row which lists the names of the columns. Beyond that, the rows of the file are grouped into blocks that belong to a particular play session. They are divided by rows that are completely blank except for a single dash character in the very first column.
Each row of data corresponds to one goal group, whether completed or not.

Columns

The column headers are listed in the first row of the file. They are as follows:

• Session Start -- The time and date at which a session started. All rows pertaining to a particular play session will have the same session start time.
• Name -- The child's name, as entered into the mission selection box at the start of a session.
• Vehicle Type -- The type of vehicle that was used in the play session. Some vehicles are slower than others, and this can affect the amount of time it takes to complete goal groups.
• Room -- The room identifier. The game is divided into multiple rooms which, apart from the starting room, can occur in any order. This column records the room in which a particular log entry occurred.
• Group -- The numeric identifier of a goal group in a room. Each room has a distinct set of goals to be accomplished before the room can be exited.
• Group Name -- The special name of a goal group, if any. Most goal groups contain treasure items that a child must pick up. However, some goal groups serve other purposes, such as the ball games. This column exists to help you quickly identify these special goal groups.
• Group Score -- The number of points the player earned in a particular room and group. For treasure item groups, this will typically be the same for everyone if the goal group was completed, but for special goal groups, there will be much more variation.
• Total Score -- The total number of points the player has earned up to that point in the play session.
• Group Start Time -- The time and date at which the player was assigned the tasks to complete in the current group.
• Group Finish Time -- The time and date at which either the player completed the current group or at which the game ended.
• Completed -- There is an overall time limit to the play session. If the value in this column is 0, then the player either ran out of time before finishing the current group, or the program ended. If it is 1, then the player completed the group and moved on to the next. Typically, this value will be 1 for all rows in a particular session except for the last.

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