Navigate: an Experiment in Virtual World Navigation.
Navigate is an experiment that attempts to find out what will help people move around in 3D virtual worlds, and I need your help!

Your objective in Navigate is to reach the end of the maze. Once you do, the maze will change; not the shape of the maze, but the presentation of it.

There are four variations of the maze:

1. The starting maze has very high walls, and you can't see where you are going.
2. The second maze has low walls, so you can see where your next turn is going to be.
3. The third maze goes back to high walls, but now you can see a yellow path that shows you exactly where your virtual body is and will be.
4. The fourth maze has short walls, and also displays the path.

INSTALATION:
Navigate was programmed for machines running a Win32 environment with DirectX and OpenGL.

Simply unzip the navigate.zip file into any directory you like. Make sure you preserve the subdirectory structure or the game will crash.

QUICK START:

1. Login by editing userName in the file setup.ini to your name. Make sure your name is in quotes, and that you use the same name each time you log in. Use of a different name will force you to start the experiment over. Save the setup.ini file and exit the program you used to edit it.
2. Start the navigate.exe program (Double-Click, use a shortcut, highlight and hit enter, or whatever you enjoy doing to start the program).
3. When you have completed 40 runs, or you wish to quit, press the ESC key to exit.
4. Zip up the output folder and e-mail it to me--your name will be preserved in the halls of science for eternity.

The mouse is your main control device. You can think of the mouse as the steering wheel and gas-pedal of a car. Moving the mouse forward is like pressing on the gas, and you will accelerate in the maze. You will stay at that velocity until you move the mouse back (or hit a wall; more about that later).

Steering left and right is accomplished in a similar fashion. When the mouse is in the home position (the position it was in when you started the program, or when you hit the last wall) you will go forward. Moving the mouse right (or left) will cause you to turn in that direction. You will continue turn right (or left) until the mouse is moved back to the home position.

The redline displayed on the screen is a guide to let you know where your mouse is pointing (and therefore what direction you are going in).

The ESC key exits the game. Your previously completed runs are saved; the next time you start the program (make sure you log in) you will start at the beginning of the run you were in.

HOT KEYS:

• Ctrl-Space -- fullscrean toggle.
• Ctrl-[0-6] -- change resolution.
• Ctrl-f -- Toggle FPS on and off.
• Ctrl-+ -- Increase Field Of View.
• Ctrl-- -- Decrease FOV.

TROUBLESHOOTING:
Problem: The game runs too slow.
Solution: You can always see how many frames per second (FPS) the game is running at by pressing the 'Ctrl-f' key. If the number is below 30 then you can lower the resolution by pressing 'Ctrl-0'.
You can also try turning off the fire effect at the end of the maze, just add displayFire = 0 to the setup.ini file.

Problem: There is white gibberish in the upper left corner of the screen.
Solution: The video card you are using may not have drivers that support the function wglUseFontBitmaps. I have only run this program with a TNT2 and a GeForce, so I don't know what other cards are compatible with it.

Problem: You want to start the experiment over.
Solution: You can either log in with a new name, or edit the file under the output folder with the name of the log in name you want to start over with. Whatever number is there, replace it with a 1.

Problem: There is an access violation and the game won't even start.
Solution: If you are running NT then the game may not work. It only runs under Windows 2000 and Windows 98. If you are using those operating systems and it still does not work, try adding the line sound=0 to the setup.ini file.