no sound

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by Sue)
Hi, I am new here, I just downloaded Bejeweled yesterday and I have no sound no matter what I do...I have a palm Zire21....
Also I don't know if you can help or not or maybe tell me where to go with my question...
I don't understand how this game, bejeweled, works is there any good instructions somewhere? or can someone explain them to me.......thanks loads Sue

[angiecox]

Hi Sue,

Let's address the instructions first...if you start up the game, the main screen should have a button on it that you can press to get instructions on how to play. Also, when you downloaded the game, it should have an HTML document named "Astraware Bejeweled" in the same folder where you found the file for the game itself (and where you installed it from).

Basically, what you're trying to do is to switch two adjacent gems to make a group of three--but you can only switch them when it will make that group of three. Meaning you can't switch one at a time to make a line up of three, there has to be a pair of two already present when you try to swap a gem.

In the game's "Easy" mode you are able to play a more relaxed game and swap at your own pace, but your game is over once there are no more moves available (no gems can be switched to make a set of three). In the "Timed" mode, you are trying to get matches as quickly as you can to keep the timer (the bar at the bottom) from running down. When you've got a lot of time left, the bar is green, when you're getting close to running out, it becomes yellow and when you're just about out of time, it will turn red. But like I said, the faster you make matches, the more time you can buy yourself.

As for the sound, I'm not overly familiar with the Zire21 features, so I'm not even sure if it plays game sounds, but if you normally get sounds in any other application that you use, make sure you do a quick check in the sound settings and see if you don't have the game muted (or else the sounds turned all the way down).

I'm not sure if that will help or not, but if you still can't get the sound to work or if you have more questions about how to play the game itself, send an email to Kieren in Technical Support (kieren@astraware.com) and he'll get you sorted out right away. He's very friendly and very knowledgeable about these problems that can sometimes pop up.

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by Sue)
Thanks Angie for your reply.......I will work with your instrucions and see how I do......Sue

[Kieren]

Thanks very much Angie :)

Hi Sue, welcome to the world of Palm owners!

I think Angie has pretty much covered most of the rules on how the game works, you can switch gem positions by tapping on one and then on another gem next to it. you can, as Angie said, only switch gem positions if the switch would make a match - a "match" consisting of forming a vertical or horizontal line of three or more identical gems. As you remove gems, the existing ones will drop down, and randomly generated new gems will drop in from the top.
At the bottom of the screen is the "bonus" bar - this will fill up as you make matches, and when it reaches the right hand edge, it will remove a number of gems from the screen (all randomly selected), dropping new gems in from the top.
In timed mode this serves a second purpose, which I'll explain in a second!

There are three games modes, although only two have buttons on the title screen:
Easy Mode - in Easy mode you just keep making matches until you run out of moves! Normally when you run out of moves, it's game over, but below a certain threshold of points, it will be nice and give you a new set of gems (this threshold is about 4000 points, give or take a little).
One popular strategy involves trying to make matches as far up the screen as you can for preference, only moving further down if you run out at the top. This helps you play for longer, since if you were to remove all the matches at the bottom first, you would find yourself with a dead zone which you could not do anything with!
Timed Mode - Timed mode works a little differently to Easy mode. In Timed mode you will want to keep an eye on the bonus bar, because this is also your timer! The bonus bar will constantly reduce, but each match you make will add a little to the bar again. If you manage to make so many matches in a short time that the bonus bar fills up, the usual bonus effect will kick in, removing some gems from the screen!
You don't have to worry about running out of moves though, in Timed mode if you run out of moves, a new screen of gems will be created and you can keep playing - only when you run out of time does the game end!
Continuous Mode - Continuous mode is a relaxtion mode - there is no was to lose, since there is no timer and if you run out of moves it will always generate new gems. For this reason it does not keep a high score table.

You can access Continuous mode from the game menus, as it doesn't have a button like the other two. To open the menus in our games ( or any Palm application for that matter), just tap on the Palm menu button, to the bottom left of your graffiti area (it's the icon just below the Home icon)

On to your question about sound! All Palms have internal preference settings to control volume, as well as the games own volume settings. You can find it under the "System" category of icons, in the application named "Prefs".

Among the various options that you will see at that point is the "Sounds & Alerts" options. Tap on this, and look for the "Game Sound" setting - this can be set to Off, Low, Medium or High, and our games will all detect this setting and adjust their internal volume setting accordingly...or at least they should!
I've just discovered on our own Zire 21 that for some reason this feature doesn't work, so this is probably not the cause. However, the Zire 21 is *really* quiet as devices go, and I was having trouble hearing the sound effects even with everything turned up to "Loud"! If there's any background noise at all, then it's possible that it's drowning the game sounds out :(

I hope that helps, and I apologise for duplicating some of the info Angie gave you, but I thought it might make it easier to read than trying to "fill in" any gaps :)

If you've got any further questions about it feel free to either post them here, or email me directly! (kieren@astraware.com)

Warmest regards,
Kieren
Technical Support