simultaneously.
Here are some of the common questions concerning the online Medical Mysteries Adventure Series. If your question is not answered, or you just want to send us a comment, please use our online contact form.
Is this site safe for children? What is MedMyst?Q: Is this site safe for children?
A: Reconstructors.rice.edu complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. We neither collect nor publish personal information about site visitors. Feedback from users submitted to the site may be published at our discretion on our comments page, but we do not reveal user names or email addresses.
If you have concerns about child safety on the internet, you may find the following sites useful:
A: MedMyst, short for "Medical Mysteries," is an Internet-based adventure designed with Adobe Flash® in which you are on a mission to discover the causes of diseases. As you follow clues to solve the mystery, you also are given the opportunity to explore -- chemistry, pharmacology, neuroscience, medicine, public policy, history, and more.
Q: Who are the Reconstructors?
A: The Reconstructors are the central characters with whom you interact with in the Medical Mysteries Series. They are an elite team whose goals are to rediscover lost medical knowledge and prevent the spread of disease.
Q: What is Flash, and why do you use it?
A: Flash is a media application developed and owned by Adobe Inc. Its primary use was to design and create vector-based animation for use on the World Wide Web. Flash allows for much faster downloads of graphics and animation than is possible with traditional graphics formats such as JPG, and GIF. It can also be used for scripting and programming applications and games. Our use of Flash to create the Medical Mysteries series involves all three previously mentioned areas.
Q: How do I download and install the Flash plug-in?
A: When you click on one of the mission hyperlinks, our web site will check to see if the Flash plug-in is installed on your computer. If it is not detected, you will be provided with a link to Adobe's web site to obtain the Flash plug-in. You may also visit Adobe's web site for help in getting and installing the plug-in.
Q: How long does it take to play?
A: Each mission of MedMyst is designed to be played in one sitting of approximately 30 - 45 minutes, although there are rest points and the player can control the speed of the game.
Q: Can I stop in the middle of a mission and come back to the same place later?
A: No, the program requires you to restart the mission each time you play the game.
Q: Is there a way to access a particular segment within the adventure?
A: To experience MedMyst fully in context, we recommend that you play each mission from start to finish. If, however, you would like to access individual segments, you may access a navigation menu using the keystrokes:
SHIFT and |
simultaneously.
Q: Where can I find the Cool Links page that is at the end of the game?
A: You can jump over to the Cool Links section right now! Enjoy the many informative and fun web sites.
Q: Why do certain adventures sometimes take a long time to download?
A: Each game file for the MedMyst Missions is approximately 1 MB total in size. While we apply different techniques to keep the Flash file size small, if you are connecting to the Internet with a dial-up modem, it could take several minutes. Hang in there!
Q: Why does the animation seem to move slowly?
A: There are a lot of
factors that can be the cause as to why the MedMyst Adventures appear
to be playing slowly. Most often, it is the speed of the Internet
connection and the speed of the computer playing the animation.
Different computers handle graphics and sound in different ways.
We try to find a happy medium between slow computers and faster
ones by building our base movie files at a size that will play
at nearly full screen dimensions using an 800x600 screen resolution.
If your computer's monitor is set to this resolution or higher,
and you are still experiencing slow animation, check the minimum
system recommendations below.
Q: What are the recommended system requirements for MedMyst?
A: To play MedMyst, you must have the Macromedia Flash Player 7.0 (or higher) installed on your computer and a valid Internet connection. If you need this plug-in,you may download it from Macromedia's web site. Follow the simple instructions provided to download and install the plug-in. Once this is done, you are ready to begin your adventure!
Platforms
Because MedMyst uses Flash animation to keep file sizes small, it will
run efficiently on the variety of computer platforms found in homes and
schools. Our suggested minumum requirements for platforms are:
For best performance, use a computer with at least 128 MB of memory.
Browsers
There are many web browsers that are satisfactory for use with the
MedMyst web adventures, we have found that the following browsers offer
the most optimal viewing experience:
Q: How do I get in touch with you?
A: Please feel free to contact us either through our e-mail address or our short web-based contact form.