Mavis Beacon Ate My Brain!

blog
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You may be familiar with the classic Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing* series of software from Broderbund.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/mavis-beacon-ate-my-brain.html
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This was how I learned how to touch-type :wink:

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Thatā€™s totally coolā€¦

We should continue the product line:
ā€œMultiplication for Mummiesā€
ā€œBiology with Blood-sucking Vampiresā€
ā€œUS History and the Undeadā€

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Great find. I had never seen it until now. Is there not supposed to be any sound? I donā€™t hear anything and there are no files in my sound directory.

Thanks, Scott

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Some gameplay tipsā€¦

  • you do not have to type spaces or capitalization. However, punctuation must always be typed.

  • use ESC to ā€œbreak outā€ of a word or phrase and switch to another one. Until you do this, your cursor will lock on the word or phrase youā€™ve already started.

  • the game dynamically scales the difficulty based on how well youā€™re doing. Make a bunch of perfect phrases and it ramps up to larger, more complex phrases. Make a bunch of mistakes and youā€™ll get progressively simpler words and phrases.

  • you donā€™t need a fancy 3D card to run this game. Even crappy onboard 3D of reasonably recent vintage will suffice.

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Now you can prove how much of a keyboard ninja you are

I find that IM serves that function for me. :slight_smile:

Mavis Beacon isnā€™t a real person. Sheā€™s a logotype persona.

Imagine my disaapointment. First it was Betty Crocker, then Aunt Jemima, then Uncle Ben, then Ronald McDonald, then ā€¦ . At least Orville Redenbacher is a real person. Or is he?

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This is cool. I remember Mavis from my grade school days, she was such a role model.
Anyway, I saw in the screencap that you posted, the word ā€˜fretā€™ and I got to thinking. Couldnā€™t this same idea be extended to a guitar coach? Has this been done to anyoneā€™s knowledge? I envision the coach telling you to play some chord combination and then it can analyze the results and timing to see how you did? There are little digital tuners for guitars so why couldnā€™t you just plug into the computer?

Pat pending

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The underdogs download does have the sounds, but the installer doesnā€™t seem to unpack them. Running the setup.bat after install unpacks the sounds.

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Iā€™ve been searching the net for months looking for noCD fix for ā€œThe Typing of The Deadā€. No luck. There are patches at gamecopyworld, but they are for the english version only. Even the cd fix from the DUCK, saying ā€œAll versionsā€ is not really for all versions of the game, but for the english versions.
I have the american version in original (Todus.exe), but I canā€™t play it on my Linux box. Itā€™s installed and started but there is a kind of a CD protection (CDCheck may be) which is not emulated and makes the trouble.
Having had a Windouz I should have patched by myself up to now. Unfortunately I donā€™t have one.
If someone has a patch for the US verson of TOTD, please mail me or post a link here. Iā€™ll be very grateful.

P.S.
Iā€™ve read somewhere that the CD check is simple and that it would be enough copying some files from the CD to the install directory. Not sure about that though.

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~Just use Virtual Daemon Manager, AKA Virtual CD AKA CD Image Mounter~

It loads ISOs and works flawlessly, although the network wasnt loading? Anyone know what the port is ?

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I teach a number of high school students, and I would LOVE to use this game for my classes (Iā€™ve already started) but I ran into a slight problem:

Each of our fairly new Windows XP computers has an Admin account and a user account. The students can only use the user account, but I have to install using the admin account. For some of the computers itā€™s worked fine on both accounts, for a few I can run TOTD on the admin but not the user account.

Any suggestions? Windows is not my friend sometimes. THANKS! Please email me a response.

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just install the game, burn the installed files onto a cd and copy/paste it over to a non-admin account. make sure you have a no-cd crack though.

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Apparently this game was actually released in Japanese arcades, too. Check out the pictures:

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10244

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I actually played that in an arcade in Tokyo about four or five years ago; the best bits were the cutscenes, which perfectly mimicked the archetypal ā€œrescuer helping freshly-rescued would-be zombie victim to her feetā€ genre that we all know and love.

The key difference, of course, was that your character, instead of brandishing a shotgun, was depicted on-screen with a large Sega-branded Ghostbusters-style backpack and an actual qwerty keyboard slung in front of him, hot-dog-vendor-tray style. Priceless.

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search here for the torrent :-0
www.torrentspy.com

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can someone help me out hereā€¦i cant seem to get network to play to work with my friends. whenever we get into the game its extremely laggy/choppy. weā€™re the original version without the ati fix and iā€™ve even tried plugging direct into the cable modem (usually behind a router) and we still get the same problem. our windows firewalls are off.

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Hi, i canā€™t unpack the sound too.
worse: i canā€™t touchtypeā€¦
hope this will be the one

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Tried to play TotD online. Didnā€™t work. Mehā€¦ :o(

Itā€™s not an original version. Itā€™s that ā€œDUCK!ā€ version someone already talked about.
Canā€™t I play online with a copy?
I already unblocked the game at the Firewall on my PC or do I have to completely unable the Firewall even on my Router??

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Are there any sites out there that focus on tTofD, like in-depth walkthroughs and even patches that change the words that appear? Iā€™ve read now that tTofD2 is in the works.

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I found the torrent by googling ā€œtyping of the dead torrentā€

I found two and downloaded them both successfully.

The game runs fine, itā€™s just that the network function is REALLY choppy and such. It even kicked me out of my network game.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Also, I donā€™t notice an exit button. How do I get out of the game without the ctrl alt delete thing? (I hate having to do that everytime.)

Thanks!

ps: WOO HOO! The sequel is coming December 2007 (it was supposed to be JULY 2007, but at least itā€™s happening.)