Spotlight on Europe

Introduction

Spotlight on Europe is a quiz testing the user's knowledge of countries and geographical features of the continent of Europe. Features are highlighted on a map of Europe and the user must identify them, selecting an answer from a choice of six.

Any combination of the eight categories can be attempted together. These categories are:

• Countries
• Capital cities
• Cities
• Rivers
• Islands
• Peaks
• Inland features
• Seas & coastal features

The aim is to give as many correct answers as possible in two minutes.

Playing the game

The program is fully multi-tasking, and installs on the iconbar as usual. To begin a new game, either click the iconbar icon with select, or choose the 'New game...' option from the iconbar menu.

You will now see the list of question categories. You can try the categories one at a time, choose any combination of categories, or select all the categories together. The computer will choose a random category out of the ones selected in this window for each question.

Click on the button at the bottom of the window to start the game.

You will see the first geographical feature to be identified highlighted on the map of Europe, and a list of six answers to choose from. Either click on the answer of your choice, or enter the corresponding number from the keyboard. If you choose the correct answer, the program will move on immediately to the next question. If you answer incorrectly, the computer will highlight the correct answer for you. You must select the correct answer before you can continue with the next question.

When your two minutes are up, you will be told your score and asked to enter your name for the score table (if you have done well enough!)

Future improvements

Here are some of the ways in which I may improve the program in the future:

• Adding a larger number of features to each category (although the problem then is that they become too obscure!)
• Extending the map further east so that it can include Europe's highest mountain (Elbrus), the entire length of the River Volga, and some extra cities.
• Making the highlighted part of the map flash for all types of question (at present, only cities and peaks flash). This was the case in 'Spotlight on Britain', but is more difficult to implement in a multi-tasking application.

If you have any other comments or suggestions, please contact me via the e-mail button below.

Credits

My thanks to J. David Barrow, author of Spotlight on Britain which gave me the idea for this program. SLOB was featured in the August 1994 issue of Acorn User, and on the first AU cover CD-ROM.

I have recently updated SLOB to take into account the country's new administrative areas, and if J. David Barrow would like to get in touch, I would be delighted to send a copy.

Download (30K)

Return to the software index