SEVERANCE: Blade of Darkness DEMO - Readme (c) Codemasters 2000 Welcome to the Severance: Blade of Darkness demo. In this demo there is one level available, in which you play as the Knight, Sargon. Sargon's mission is to break out of prison and defeat the treacherous Ragnar. In the full game you can look forward to choosing from 4 characters, all with different skills and attributes, as well as many more levels to test your fighting and puzzle-solving abilities. Installation notes Please make sure all other applications are closed before proceeding. Run setup.exe to install the game on to your hard disk and follow on-screen instructions. The installation path may be changed. Once installation is complete, Severance: Blade of Darkness will place a shortcut on your desktop. Double-click on this to launch the game (or alternatively access the icon via the Windows Start Menu). Setup Here you can choose your video options (D3D only in this demo), graphics resolution and sound options. When you have selected these, choose "Play demo". Default Control Keys: Mouse movement: Look around Up arrow: Walk forwards Down arrow: Walk backwards Left arrow: Turn left Right arrow: Turn right Double tap and hold Up arrow: Run forwards Double tap and hold Down arrow: Run backwards Shift + Up arrow: Sneak forwards Left Mouse Button or Right CTRL: Attack/strike Right Mouse Button or Forward slash: Jump/climb Forward slash + Left arrow: Dodge left Forward slash + Right arrow: Dodge right Forward slash + Down arrow: Leap backwards Alt Gr: Defend/block Number pad 0: Lock on to an enemy, then cycle through all attackers End: Draw or sheath weapons (With weapons on their back, your character will run faster and jump further.) This button will also disengage enemy lock-on. Return key: Actions: pick up, open, use or activate Page Up: Cycle through weapons in inventory Page down: Cycle through nearby world objects eg. levers, locks, food Home: Cycle through objects in inventory, eg. keys and potions (press Enter to use) Insert: Cycle through shields in inventory Hold Delete + tap Attack: Throw item in right hand Hold Delete + tap Alt Gr: Drop shield in left hand Number pad minus: Cycle camera views Number pad plus: Cycle camera views On Screen Display Health (red) and Experience (blue) bars. These can be found in the top left corner of the screen. The experience bar progressively fills up each time you kill an enemy. When the bar reaches its full limit, the player will go up an experience level, and the bar will set to zero again. Higher experience levels mean that the character has a greater attack power, (see below), more health, and that more combinations of attack become available to him or her. Power The figure in the bottom right-hand corner of screen represents the total attack strength of your character; the amount of damage they are able to do. Note how this changes with different weapons. Def The figure in the bottom left-hand corner of screen represents the defensive capability of your character. This is usually zero, but will go up if they armour on, or down if they are using a clumsy weapon such as a halberd. A weapon's power and defence properties are displayed when cycling through the weapons in your inventory. Stamina bar This appears at the bottom centre of the screen during an attack. It represents the amount of stamina your character has available for a particular attack. For example, if the character performs several attacks or combos in quick succession, the bar depletes to zero rendering the character too tired to attack for a short amount of time. You must then wait for the bar to fill sufficiently to execute another attack. Higher experience levels give your character more stamina and therefore greater attack capacity. Combat Many different moves are possible. These are achieved by using the Attack button and arrow keys in different combinations. Not all weapons can be used immediately; some may require you to reach a higher experience level before being able to wield them effectively. In the full game, each character has their own weapon speciality. For example: Sargon's speciality is the one-handed sword and shield. He will not be able to use the Deathsword as effectively as the Combat Sword. Troubleshooting If you encounter any problems, please ensure that you have the latest drivers installed for your card. These should be obtained from the card or chipset manufacturer. Minimum Requirements Windows 95, 98 Pentium II 350 CPU 64MB RAM 16 bit DirectX compatible Soundcard DirectX 7.0 compatible 3D graphics card with 8Mb RAM 4x CD-ROM 100Mb Hard Drive space after installation Recommended Specification Windows 95, 98 Pentium III 500 CPU 128MB RAM 16 bit DirectX compatible Soundcard DirectX 7.0 compatible 3D graphics card with 32Mb RAM 8x CD-ROM 250Mb Hard Drive space after installation Supported 3D chipsets 3dfx Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo2, Voodoo3, Voodoo5 3Dlabs Permedia 3 ATI Matrox G200, G400 Nvidia Riva TNT, Riva TNT2, GeForce 256,GeForce 2 S3 Savage 2000 Known Issues This demo does not work with the Intel i740 graphics card. The game is still in development, and this should not be an issue with the final release. Severance: Blade of Darkness has been tested with most of the major graphics cards manufacturers, and should run perfectly on most machines. However, due to the large variety of machines and configurations available, it is inevitable that a few of you may encounter problems running Severance: Blade of Darkness. If this occurs, please make sure you have DirectX 7.0a installed and the latest drivers for your graphics card, sound card etc. Visit your card manufacturer's website for further details. Should installation of the latest drivers not work, please e-mail tech support with a detailed description of your problem, and include dxdiag results. (To do this, click 'Run' from the Start menu, type 'dxdiag' in the prompt box, and click on 'save all information'). E-mail tech support custservice@codemasters.com (c) 2000 The Codemasters Software Company Limited ("Codemasters"). All rights reserved. Codemasters is a registered trademark of Codemasters. Developed by RebelAct.