I.                   USING THE DESIGN WINDOW

 

The program window is your workspace. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the window, its menus, and the toolbars (shown below). The toolbars are identical in function to many of the menu commands. Briefly point the mouse at each button to display a tooltip identifying the button and its function. More specific functions related to this program are presented under Entering and Editing design icons.

 

 

 

 

Drag and drop icons from the list of icons on the left to create a game.

 

Designing games, extensive form games, matrices, combination of different
 

 

 

  1. The basic Icons needed to design an auction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Necessary icons

 

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Entering and Editing Design Icons

 

 

II.                PRIVATE VALUE AUCTIONS

 

A. First price sealed bid auction

1.      Creating private valuation for each player by defining a .

 

  1. Drag and drop a  icon into the display window. Automatically  appears in the display window. Note that  appears with the first icon appearing on the design window. If you already dragged another icon into a design window then a new  will not be added.

b. Rename the  by double clicking on the icon.  will appear. Just change the name. For example in our example we changed the name to: .

 

 
  1. Open  by clicking on the icon to select it and then double clicking at the edge of variable (the shaded area) or just click on .  
  2. The variable editor opens:

 

 

 

 

A variable with multiple tagged contains separate data space for each player. This implies multiple evaluations of a formula for such a variable in output variables. An evaluation of choice and multiple variables in the formula matters a same positioned data only.

Let's have a choice Offer where three players input 23, 11, 17. If the choice is assigned to a multiple variable, three evaluations (assignments) of the choice are performed. As result, each of the input is assigned to according part of the multiple variable. On contrary, an assignment to an ordinary variable would perform the evaluation only once and result would be [23; 11; 17].

 

 
  1. Change  if the real numbers should be created, otherwise leave .
  2. Select initial value. In the example Uniform distribution with minimum 50 and maximum 150 was selected. All the functions can be accessed by “right mouse click” and the Function editor appear. Select the appropriate function by double clicking on the function or just write the function in the editor.

 

 

  1. Select to draw a different number for each subject. If Multiple is not selected then each subject will get the SAME draw.
  2. Withoption program will associate the right value with the right subject which is needed in presentation of the data at the end of an experiment. 

 

1.      Creating a  for subjects to submit a bid.

 

  1. Drag and drop  into a design window.
  2. Double click on the  to change the name .

 
  1. Double click on the edge of the choice  or just use  to open the  editor.
  2. In the auctions subjects will submit the bids and it is up to the moderator to decide about the type.

 

 

 

 

 
  1. Change  to the desired units that subject should enter the bids (i.e. real, integer). In the figure below  was selected.
  2.   Select the lower and upper bound for the choices. In our case only the lower bound of zero  was selected:
  3. Select  so subjects do not need to click return after they typed a number. If  is not selected then subjects have to click on “Continue” at the bottom of the page to submit their decision.

 

2.      Determining player types with

  1. Double click on the  to change the name to .
  2. Note that we do not need to open  editor  given that we are dealing with only one type of players (i.e. bidders).

 

 

3.      Determining number of subjects participating in the auction

 

  1. On the top right side of the design window  is set to one by default. Change the number to the number of subjects you would like to participate in an auction by typing a number or just by using arrows. 

 

  1. In the figure below the number of subjects that will participate in one auction is 4. This does not mean that only four subjects can login to the game. It means that there will be multiple parallel auctions running with 4 subjects participating in a particular auction.

 

4.      Creating an auction with

 

  1. Drag and drop a  into a design window.
  2. Double click on the  to change the name .
  1. Double click on the edge of the stage  or just use  to open the  editor.
  2. Write the appropriate text and right click on the mouse to insert the and  in the stage or just use

  3. All the variables that are created are listed in pink color and all the choices created are listed in turquoise color. Select a variable or a choice that you want to insert and it will appear in the stage window.

     

     
     
     

 

  1. The information that you present in a  are the information that subject will see during the game (See the figure on the right side).
  2. In order for subjects to make decisions,   has to be changed to .  also means that a subjects sees all the variable values.
  3. To change the color of the text, click on , and select the appropriate color by clicking on the desired cell:
  1. To insert a picture, click on  and select “Insert image”.

  1. To insert math, Greek character, click on and select .
  2. Once you have written a text, you can use spell check by selecting