Thank you for playing the demo version of Rebel Assault II!
Rebel Assault II is a totally fresh, original fantasy in the Star Wars universe—with significant improvements to the now famed Rebel engine, plus features that make it more like an interactive Star Wars experience than a game. The story? An escalating arms race. The Empire has developed a new secret weapon. Once deployed, this new weapon could eliminate the Rebel Alliance.
This demonstration version of Rebel Assault II lets you play through one of the fifteen chapters available in the full game. If you’ve enjoyed playing the demonstration version of Rebel Assault II and would like to order the full game, please check with your local software retailer or call 1-800-98-LUCAS.
Topics
Controls
Solutions to Common Problems
Compatibility Issues
Performance
Memory
Technical Support
Controls
At any time after starting Rebel Assault II, press the Esc key on your keyboard to get to the Macintosh menu bar. From there you can configure Rebel Assault II’s video, sound, and controller preferences.
Rebel Assault II supports keyboard, mouse, and joystick controls. If you have a joystick, consult the file “Read Me for Joysticks” in the Joystick Settings folder that came with this demo for information on how to install and use the joystick settings files.
If you wish to use the mouse for control, you should move the mouse to adjust your flight path or target site, and use the button to fire.
If you wish to use the keyboard for control, use either the arrow keys or the 8/6/4/2 keys on the numeric keypad to adjust your flight path or target site. The Control key fires. The Option key can be used to increase the speed of cursor movement while it is held down.
Solutions to Common Problems
Try as I might, I can’t seem to find enough free memory to run Rebel Assault II.
It is possible that with certain system configurations, there may not be a way to free up enough RAM to run Rebel Assault II on an 8 MB machine. In this case, we recommend that you play with virtual memory turned ON. Go into the Memory control panel and click the “On” button next to the virtual memory section. Then use the arrow control to adjust the amount of virtual memory you wish to use. For best performance, we recommend setting your virtual memory to the lowest possible value and using only low resolution. Once you have virtual memory turned on, you will get a warning when you launch Rebel Assault II; simply press on in spite of the warning and you will be able to play, with some performance degradation.
Voices and music are coming out slurred and distorted.
Generally, this means you are running Rebel Assault II at a frame rate significantly slower than it was designed to run. To increase the frame rate, try switching first to low detail, then to low resolution if necessary. See the Performance section, below, for details on how to increase performance.
The sound breaks up and stutters during play.
You probably either have virtual memory turned on in the Memory control panel or you are running with a third-party RAM extender utility installed. In either case, the solution is to disable the offender. To disable virtual memory, select the Memory control panel and click the “Off” button in the virtual memory section. To disable your RAM extender utility, use the Extensions Manager control panel to turn it off before playing. In either case, you will need to restart your Mac for the changes to take effect.
I keep getting a message saying the Sound Manager isn’t installed.
If you are running system software prior to System 7.5, you will need to install the items located in the “Items for your System Folder” folder on the Rebel Assault II CD. To do this, select the four icons in the folder (hold down the Shift key and click once on each icon) and drag them to the icon for your System Folder. The system will automatically place them in the correct locations. Restart your machine when you've completed the installation. Note that doing this will replace any currently existing version of the Sound Manager you might have installed.
The system won’t let me install the Sound Manager.
Your System Folder protection is probably turned on. You will need to turn it off before proceeding; after you have copied the files, you can turn the protection back on. To turn off System Folder protection, use the Performa control panel under systems prior to version 7.5, or the General Controls control panel on System 7.5 or later.
Compatibility Issues
Apple CD-ROM drivers prior to version 5.1.1
Early versions of the Apple CD-ROM software may, on some machines, eventually cause Rebel Assault II to crash. Rebel Assault II will automatically detect if you are using one of these versions and request that you upgrade to the Apple CD-ROM software version 5.1.1, which is included on the Rebel Assault II CD. Read the file “Apple CD--Read Me”, located inside the folder “CD ROM Software 5.1.1” on the CD, for instructions on how to upgrade.
Virtual memory
In general, running Rebel Assault II with virtual memory enabled is not recommended. If you are using an 8 MB system that does not have enough memory free to launch Rebel Assault II, you should first attempt to quit all open applications and turn off all unnecessary extensions and control panels (see the Memory section, below) before resorting to virtual memory. If you must run Rebel Assault II on your machine with virtual memory enabled, there are a couple of things you can do to improve its reliability. First, switch to low resolution; on an 8 MB base machine, high resolution is usually too demanding on the virtual memory system. Second, avoid switching to other applications while Rebel Assault II is running; again, trying to keep other applications in memory in addition to Rebel Assault II can stress the virtual memory system beyond its limits.
Third-party RAM extender utilities
Under no circumstances should you attempt to run Rebel Assault II in conjunction with a third-party RAM extender. If you are short of memory, use Apple’s virtual memory. Software RAM extenders are almost always incompatible with performance-intensive games such as Rebel Assault II.
RedLine! CD-ROM driver and virtual memory
Our internal testing has found that on some systems, running Rebel Assault II with virtual memory enabled and the RedLine! CD-ROM driver can lead to problems switching CD’s and occasional lockups after restarting the game. If at all possible, try to avoid running with virtual memory at all (see the Virtual Memory topic, above). However, if it is unavoidable, and you experience a lock-up during the CD switching, simply restart your computer, insert the CD you were trying to switch to, and launch Rebel Assault II again. Since you can start Rebel Assault II with either CD loaded, you will be able to pick up right where you left off.
Balloon Help
Rebel Assault II and the Full Throttle trailer do not support Balloon Help, and the trailer in particular may have trouble running properly with Balloon Help enabled. Please make sure you have turned off Balloon Help before running these products.
Performance
Rebel Assault II features fast-action, full screen video that can sometimes push your computer’s processor and CD-ROM drive to their limits. In order to achieve the best gameplay, there are several things you can do to trade off video quality and/or memory for better playing speed.
Here is a list of things you can do to increase performance on your system:
• switch to low detail. When you have Rebel Assault II set up to run in High Detail, especially in high resolution, a lot of extra work is done to smooth out the video display. This can really take its toll on performance, even on lower-end PowerPC machines. By switching to low detail, available under the Video menu, you lose a little quality but save a lot of extra processing.
• switch to low resolution. You can gain additional speed by switching back down to low resolution, using the Rebel Assault II Preferences, under the Game menu. Using low resolution not only speeds up your video display, but it also enables you to use either interlaced or small video modes to further enhance speed.
• use interlaced or small displays. On slower 68040 machines, the speed at which Rebel Assault II can copy data from its buffers to the screen becomes a performance liability. By switching to Interlaced in the Video menu, you cut down the amount of data to copy by 50%. Using the Small display mode buys you another 50% reduction.
• turn off vertical stretching. .
• turn off virtual memory. If you haven’t done so already, go into the Memory control panel and make sure the virtual memory switch is in the “off” position. Although virtual memory may give you more memory space to load Rebel Assault II, it has an adverse effect on performance.
Memory
Rebel Assault II requires a minimum of 4700k free RAM in order to run, or at least 5200k minimum to run in high resolution. If you have a Macintosh with 8MB of RAM, you may have to work a little to find the 4700k minimum that Rebel Assault II requires.
You can find out how much memory is available on your system by choosing About This Macintosh from the Apple menu in the Finder. Look at the value next to the “Largest Unused Block”. That value indicates how much memory you have available for running Rebel Assault II. Note that if you have other applications running, they will eat up some of your memory, so you should quit them first to determine the maximum available.
Here are some suggestions for reducing the memory requirements of your system in order to give more leeway to Rebel Assault II. After trying these, look again at the About This Macintosh box and adjust Rebel Assault II’s memory partition accordingly.
• disable unnecessary extensions and control panels. If you are running System 7.5 or later, use the Extensions Manager control panel that shipped with your system. It is suggested that you turn off everything that isn’t vital and restart before running Rebel Assault II. To do this conveniently, first save your current configuration by choosing Save Set... from the pop-up menu above the list. Name this set “Standard”. Next, turn off everything in Extensions Manager except your CD-ROM driver (either the Apple CD-ROM extension or your particular third-party driver) and choose Save Set... again, naming this set “Rebel Assault II”. Now, before you run Rebel Assault II, simply choose your Rebel Assault II set from the pop-up menu in Extensions Manager, and restart your system. To return to your usual setup, choose “Standard” from the pop-up menu and restart again.
If you are running a System version prior to 7.5, you can do exactly the same thing with the Extensions Manager control panel that you copied to your System Folder when you installed Rebel Assault II. You can use the pop-up menu below the extension list to save extension sets, just as described above. However, properly enabling a set with this version of Extensions Manager involves two steps. First, turn off everything by clicking the All Off button. Then, enable the set you want by selecting “Enabled Set” from the pop-up menu and—while still holding down the mouse button—moving the mouse over the name of the set you wish to turn on. When you’ve finished, restart your system to enable the set of extensions you have chosen.
IMPORTANT: Some third-party hardware requires their own drivers to operate properly. If this hardware is essential to your running Rebel Assault II (e.g., monitors or hard drives), you will need to make sure that you don’t disable the extensions and/or control panels that control the hardware. Consult the users manual for the hardware in question to find out what is essential.
• quit all applications before running. Each application that is running takes up some memory that Rebel Assault II could be using. If you’re tight on space, make sure you quit other applications before starting Rebel Assault II.
• reduce the disk cache size and turn off any RAM disks. In Apple’s Memory control panel are options for controlling the disk cache size and for creating RAM disks. If you have created a RAM disk, turn it off and restart your system before running Rebel Assault II. If you really want to push your memory to its max, reducing the disk cache to 96k or less can also help, at the expense of slower disk access.
Technical Support
If you need technical assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us after reading this Read Me file and the Rebel Assault II Player’s Guide. For your convenience, if you cannot get through to a representative by phone, you can also fax us or modem into our BBS. When contacting us, please include as much pertinent information about your computer as you can assemble: make, model, peripherals, RAM and disk size, the version of the system software used for the game, the title and version of the game, and a detailed description of the problem. If you send us a fax, include your name, return fax number with the area code, and a voice phone number so we can contact you.
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