The table window
A Volity table is a special sort of chat room. It often contains other players with whom you can chat, and also contains a referee, a computer-controlled user that sends special commands to Gamut, telling it what the game looks like. Gamut draws its depiction of the game in the game pane based on these commands, and sends commands of its own to the referee based on what you do. You'll probably spend most of your time in Gamut looking at table windows, so it's good to be familiar with its various parts.
The game pane
The most obvious part of the window is the game pane. You can think of it as the "tabletop" on which the game is being played; it contains all the interactive graphical elements that visually make up the game.
Most games you play with Gamut are mouse-driven. Different games have different rules; for help specific to a game, consult its own help controls, or ask your fellow players for advice.
When you first open the window, Gamut may have to download the game's graphics over the Internet and then set them up internally. Depending on the complexity of the game and its graphics (as well as the speed of your network connection and your computer), this may take different amounts of time. You will see a "Loading..." progress bar instead of while this is taking place.
You can resize this pane (and therefore any of the panes around it) by dragging its right or bottom borders around.
The seat pane
The seat pane along the window's right edge serves two purposes: it displays who is currently at the table (including its referee and any bots that have been summoned), and it displays all the seats currently at the table.
In the seat pane, seats are represented by colored, labeled boxes. If players' names appear in them, it means that those players are in those seats. Players who have declared readiness also get green check-mark symbols next to their names.
We'll cover seats and readiness more below.
The chat panes
The simplest parts of the table window are the chat panes. The upper one displays the utterances of you and your fellow players. (Referees also have the ability to display text here, but most keep everything to the game pane.) The lower pane is a text-entry area where you can type things for your fellow players to see.
The hint pane
Finally, there's the hint pane. Labeled with a friendly green question mark, this gives you a concise description of the game's current overall state. As a Gamut newbie, if you ever find yourself confused as to the operation of the table window, the hint pane will generally tell you what you might want to do next.
Once you get comfortable with the table window, you can minimize the hint pane by clicking that green question mark. Should you ever need those hints later, just click it again to bring them back.