The Soundblaster Multimedia Experience 4

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Text File | 1994-10-31 | 26KB | 476 lines

░░▒▒▓▓██ RAPTOR: CALL OF THE SHADOWS v1.1 ON-DISK TECHNICAL SUPPORT ██▓▓▒▒░░ Copyright 1994 - Cygnus Studios Distributed by Apogee Software Ltd. P.O. Box 496389 ■ Garland, TX 75049 ■ Hints line: (214) 278-5655 =================== SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS =================== ■ Raptor: Call of the Shadows requires MS/DOS 5.0 or greater. It also requires a 386 computer with a minimum of 2 megabytes of memory. Apogee recommends a 486 computer with 4 meg of memory for optimal performance. A sound card is also recommended. ================= WHAT'S NEW IN 1.1 ================= ■ Raptor v1.1 has one new feature that was not in v1.0. That is direct support for the Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE 32 Sound Card. Fixed in v1.1 : » Joystick Calibration. v1.0 had some problems where joysticks were not being calibrated properly. If you chose a joystick as a control device, the game will ask you to calibrate your joystick before you play. Please see the section called "Raptor Detailed Help" for more assistance in this matter. » Pro Audio Spectrum 16 SFX. PAS16 owners could not get sound effects working on v1.0 (unless they used Sound Blaster Emulation). This has been fixed in v1.1, and PAS16 sound card owners now have full support. » Color Palette Change. The setup program from v1.0 would change the color palette on some computers forcing you to have darkened text when you quit the game and ran anything else. This didn't harm anything, but made your system's colors look funny. This has been fixed in v1.1. ======================== BEFORE RUNNING THIS GAME ======================== ■ This game is not designed to be run under MicroSoft Windows. Windows takes up far too many system resources that our programs require for efficient and proper operation. When running this program, DO NOT LAUNCH FROM WINDOWS. Run it directly from DOS. If you are in the Windows environment, quit Windows and then run the program. (NOTE: Using the MS/DOS Icon does not exit you from Windows. That is a shell from Windows. You need to completely close down the Program Manager to totally exit from Windows. To test this, type the word exit. If nothing happens, then you're at the DOS prompt. If you return to Windows, then you were only shelled.) ■ Any kind of menu program such as Dos Shell will most likely cause problems. We recommend running our programs completely from the DOS prompt. To test this, enter the word "exit". If nothing at all happens, then you are completely at the dos prompt, and not "shelled" from anything else. If you type exit, and return to another program (such as Windows or the MS/DOS Shell), then you need to completely exit the program that you returned to before attempting to run Raptor. ■ Raptor is a protected mode game, which means that it doesn't really care about how much conventional memory you have, it looks at your TOTAL memory. However, Raptor requires a minimum of 2 meg of memory, but 4 megs is really recommended. Read further on in this file for a more detailed explanation of what a protected mode program is. ==================== RAPTOR DETAILED HELP ==================== ■ If you get an error running the game that says "LoadFile: Open Failed!", this means you do not have enough files and buffers defined in your CONFIG.SYS file. You will need to edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files to have a value of 20 (each) for the FILES and BUFFERS commands. (Please see your DOS manual if you are unaware or are unsure on how to edit this file.) If, for some reason, you have a really high number of save game files in your Raptor directory, this may also cause the game to crash, even if you do have enough files and buffers defined. Raptor requires a file handle for each game file, some overhead, and for each save game file that exists. Under most normal setups, the default value is enough, but if you find that the game is crashing, try removing some of your save games, or increase the FILES and BUFFERS statements to something that is higher than 20. ■ If your copy of Raptor locks up, you may wish to check some settings in your CMOS configuration. If either "Hidden Refresh", or "Hardware Video Shadowing", or both are on, turn them off. These can interfere with the proper operation of the program. See your computer's instruction manual for instructions on how to do this. Also, if you are loading RAMBIOS.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS file, disable it. That also causes problems. ■ If you hear static when you are playing with a Sound Blaster or compatible card, make sure to turn the MIC and LINE volumes to zero. Your card may be seeing input from these, and it would cause static. (For a Sound Blaster Pro, this program is SBP-SET; see your card's manual for precise instructions on how to do this.) If you still continue to hear static after doing this, try disconnecting any parallel port devices. IRQ5 and IRQ7, which are used by sound cards, are often frequently used by printers as well. If you have both plugged in, it may cause static, and poor sound performance. ■ If you are playing with the mouse, and you get lockups when dragging the slidebars in the volume control section of the game, it's most likely due to the fact that you're using an old mouse driver. You will need to obtain a newer mouse driver in order to resolve this problem. When playing the game, if your ship only appears to traverse part of the screen, and not all of it, or gets stuck, this is also related to the age of your mouse driver. Check with the manufacturer of your mouse to see if a more recent version of their driver is available. ■ If you are running a Compaq computer, and the game tells you that you do not have a VGA card, and you know for a fact that you do, or you experience lockups, this is what you'll need to do. You'll need to contact Compaq for an update. The reason for this is that Compaq has some video cards that do not conform to all proper detection methods. There is a device driver available from Compaq that will fix this problem. The driver's name is FINDVGA.SYS. Compaq does have this file available for download on their BBS with the filename SP0117.ZIP. ■ If you are playing with a joystick, and your performance seems erratic, make sure to calibrate the joystick when you start the game. If you select joystick as your input device in the setup program, you will be asked to calibrate the joystick when you start the game. Follow the on-screen instructions, and all should be well. If you continue to have problems after calibrating, you can try these steps.. 1) Try recalibrating, but wait a second or two after each joystick option. You are asked to center the joystick, press a button, and then go to the next calibration step. Wait 1 or 2 seconds between steps. You may be calibrating too fast for the system to properly recognize what you are doing. 2) Try calibrating your joystick with the turbo button on your computer OFF. Some faster speed machines have difficulty with joystick calibration routines, and they are more reliable if you slow your machine down for the calibration. Once calibrated, you can then speed your machine up again. ■ If you have a Gravis GamePad, and your controller is acting as if some of the buttons aren't being pressed, it's may be because you have your GamePad incorrectly set. If you're playing with the buttons on the right side, the switch on the top needs to be pushed to the left, and the switch on the bottom needs to be pushed to the right. If you're playing with the buttons on the left side, then the switch on the top needs to be pushed to the right, and the button on the bottom needs to be pushed towards the left. Please see figure 3 in your Gravis GamePad manual for more information, and some visual instructions on how to do this. Also, you should make sure that the controller card you have is capable of supporting a joystick with more than 2 buttons. The Gravis GamePad is technically a joystick, and not all joystick controllers can handle the input that the GamePad is giving them. There is no support for the fourth button in Raptor, but there is for the third button, and this qualifies the Gravis GamePad in this case as a 4 button controller. Check the manual for whatever card you're plugging the GamePad into to make sure that it can handle more than 2 buttons of input. ■ If you notice the game running slowly on your system, here are a few suggestions on improving game performance. » Disable your disk cache. Raptor does its own internal caching, and sometimes external caches such as SmartDrive can get in the way, and slow things down. » Disable your upper memory manager (QEMM, 386Max, EMM386, etc). Since Raptor is a protected mode game, the services of these programs are not needed. If you only have 2 meg of ram, this may be necessary to get your game to run in the first place. » Change from High graphic detail to low graphic detail. This sacrifices a small amount of video quality in the game play screen, but gains speed. » Try reducing the amount of digital channels in the setup program. Some system configurations have problems with having Raptor set for higher than 4 digital channels. ================================= ATTENTION GRAVIS ULTRASOUND USERS ================================= (The information in this section applies only to Gravis Ultrasound owners, it does not apply to any other sound card supported in Raptor) If you are playing the game, and experience slowdowns in the music during heavy action, you'll need to reduce the number of digital channels to less than 4. An extremely small percentage of our play-testers who have UltraSound cards had slowdowns during game play. While it is unlikely that you will experience the same slowdowns, the possibility does exist. Doing this should stop any slowdowns you may encounter. The sound effect of your ship's gunfire is the usual culprit of the slowdowns. Selecting 3 or less digital channels will shut off the gunfire sound effect, and cease the slowdowns. Increasing the amount of memory on your GUS card may sometimes help the problem, but this is not a guaranteed solution for the problem. Some computers during the testing period would sometimes lock up after extended periods of play. This is usually caused by a combination of things: first, the sound slowdowns mentioned in the previous paragraph, and second, a lack of memory. Raptor requires a minimum of 2 megs of memory in order to run, but we really recommend 4 megs. Giving your computer more memory can help. To do this try disabling your memory manager (QEMM, EMM386, Netroom, Fnordmem486, etc). If you are running a compressed drive such as DoubleSpace or Stacker, this can also cause problems. If you are running with a GUS and a compressed drive, and the above solutions do not work, try this. Move Raptor to an uncompressed portion of your hard drive, and do not load your compressed disk driver in your config.sys and/or autoexec.bat files. That should also help. It may be possible to totally bypass the driver during the boot-up process (depending on which version of DOS, and which driver you're running). See your manuals for information on how to boot without your driver (if possible). ============================ HOW TO USE THE SETUP PROGRAM ============================ Before you run Raptor, you must run the setup program. This is a separate program that cannot be called from within Raptor; so all changes must be made outside the game. This program lets you select what type of controller you wish to use to play the game, and what sound card, etc. When you run the setup program for the first time, you will automatically be taken through all the options in the setup program. Once you setup the game, and save your settings to disk, any further uses of the setup program will require you to pick each option you wish to choose manually. The setup program saves its settings to a file called "SETUP.INI" in whatever directory the SETUP.EXE file is run from. If you delete this file (SETUP.INI), the setup program will think you're running the game for the first time, and will take you through all the settings. SETUP.INI is an ASCII text file, and can be edited with any text editor, but we *STRONGLY* recommend that you do not do that, and only use the SETUP.EXE program to change your settings. Unless you know precisely what you're doing, you can corrupt your copy of Raptor if you incorrectly set something in the SETUP.INI file. Here is a brief explanation of all the options in the setup program for Raptor. ■ Select Music Card » Pick which sound card (if any) you wish to use to hear the background music from. ■ Select Sound FX » Pick which sound card (if any) you wish to use to hear the game's sound effects from. ■ Select Controller » Pick which method you wish to play the game from. (Joystick, Mouse, or Keyboard) ■ Controller Config » Select Options for your selected controller. ■ Save Settings » Save your selected settings and quit back to DOS. Of these, the Controller Configuration option is the only one that has further sub-options. The Controller Configuration lets you assign such things as different keys for keyboard operations, or mice buttons, etc. The keys you need to press for all these options are on-screen in the setup program. Note to Mice Owners: This game supports three button mice. If you only have a two button mouse, the option for third button is meaningless. You can select it, but it will do nothing. The option you would assign to button three (by default is a MegaBomb) will need to be controlled by the keyboard. Note to Joystick Owners: If you select joystick as your input device, you will be required to calibrate your joystick when you start Raptor. There is a three step method to doing this; the instructions are on screen. To allow for proper calibration, please allow 1 or 2 seconds between each step. If you go through the calibration too fast, the game may not be able to properly read your input. Once you've made all your selections, you should select "SAVE OPTIONS". This will save all your settings, and you'll be ready to play Raptor! If you ever wish to change any of your options for any reason, you'll need to rerun the setup program. ============================== RAPTOR COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS ============================== There are no command line options in Raptor. Please see the use of the setup program to change any options you might wish to change. ==================================== HOW TO GET RAPTOR RUNNING UNDER OS/2 ==================================== Apogee recommends running this game under DOS only. However, we have managed to get the game running under our OS/2 v2.1 test machine, and these settings should work for you. Make the following changes to the default settings for a program object: AUDIO_ADAPTER_SHARING=Required DOS_BACKGROUND_EXECUTION=OFF DOS_HIGH=OFF DOS_UMB=OFF DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT=8 EMS_FRAME_LOCATION=NONE EMS_LOW_OS_MAP_REGION=0 EMS_MEMORY_LIMIT=0 HW_TIMER=ON IDLE_SENSITIVITY=100 INT_DURING_IO=ON KBD_ALTHOME_BYPASS=ON MOUSE_EXCLUSIVE_ACCESS=ON VIDEO_8514A_XGA_IOTRAP=OFF VIDEO_ONDEMAND_MEMORY=OFF VIDEO_RETRACE_EMULATION=OFF VIDEO_ROM_EMULATION=OFF XMS_HANDLES=0 XMS_MEMORY_LIMIT=5120 Some OS/2 v2.1 owners were having problems with sounds dropping out during game play. These are the steps we took to resolve the problem. 1) Install the OS/2 2.11 Service Pack 2) Uninstall any existing version of MMPM/2 that may be installed. Follow the instructions on disk 1 of the MMPM/2 Service Pack Disk to completely uninstall and delete MMPM/2. 3) Install MMPM/2 from the Service Pack disks. 4) Reboot at least twice to stabilize the system; then fire up Raptor. These settings are not officially supported by Apogee. Your mileage may vary. Thanks to Lee Jackson of Apogee Tech Support for the OS/2 settings. ======================= WHAT IS PROTECTED MODE? ======================= As promised earlier in this document, here is an explanation of Protected mode. This information is not necessary to get the game running, but it's included as background information for the curious. Historically, DOS programs have always required that you run them in the first 640k of ram. This was a limitation imposed on DOS back when v1.0 was the only thing around. For compatibility's sake, this is the way things have remained. Any memory above 640k could only be used for data storage, not for program execution. That's why you always saw those dreaded "Out of Memory" messages. As time went on, certain programs, (and later DOS itself) gained the ability to load part of themselves "high", leaving more conventional (the first 640k) of memory available. You still had the limitation of the 640k barrier, but some more breathing room was made by these memory advances. More recently, advances were made in memory management so that programs could run in protected mode. Protected mode is a special way of programming so that your program doesn't have the 640k barrier. Depending on how the program is written, the entire thing is in protected mode, or it requires the use of a DOS "Extender" to run that way. Raptor is such a program. Raptor uses a DOS extender to access much more memory than it would have been able to if it were written the old way. A game of this complexity would have never been able to have been written if the old 640k barrier method of programming was used. Well, you might be asking, what about my older programs? Can't I just use a DOS extender, and have that run something like "Wolfenstein 3D", and never get those out of memory errors? Well, it's not as simple as that. If a program is using a DOS extender, it has to be written a special way. A DOS extender isn't just a magic wand that you can use to wipe away your memory problems for non-protected mode programs. The program has to be written a special way to make use of the DOS extender. To summarize, Protected mode (sometimes referred to as "flat memory") is a way for a DOS program (either by itself, or through the use of a DOS extender) to access more than just the first 640k of memory for program execution. Because of this, more complex programs (such as Raptor) are able to be written. If using the old 640k barrier method (sometimes referred to as "segmented memory"), this type of program would not have been possible. If you're still confused, don't worry about it. As I said above, this information is not necessary for the proper play of Raptor. It's in here for background information only. If you're still inclined, check out some DOS programming books available at your library or a book store. They have far more verbose explanations of this than would be possible in this document. ========================== THANKS TO THE BETA TESTERS ========================== Apogee wishes to extend a heartfelt thanks to the Apogee Beta Team. Without them, it would be far more difficult to produce the quality games we do within a reasonable amount of time. Thanks guys (and Gals). Here is a list of the people involved. The few. The Proud. The Raptor Beta Squadron! Test Pilot Call Sign Test Pilot Call Sign ─────────- ────────- ─────────- ─────────- Brad Arnold "Honemaster" │Lee Jackson "Fnord" Todd Aubin "Sly Fox" │Danny John-Jules "Cat" Chris Barrie "Ace Rimmer" │Hank Leukart "Covox"/"Baxter" Mike Bartelt "Sandman" │Jim Lietzan "Hoosier" Jason Blochowiak "Blockhead" │Robert Llewellyn "Kryten" Neil Bonner "T-Rex" │Ken Mayer "Hirsch" Glenn Brensinger "Doc Shadow" │Wayne Millard "Believer" Douglas Brewer "GrayBeard" │Scott Miller "Kid Kroz" George Broussard "SharkMan" │Penny Plant "Gunnin' Granny" Craig Charles "Lister" │Adam Pedersen "Amazing Gumby" Mike Chavez "Lostboy" │Brian Prinner "Viking" Todd Crawford "Biggs Darklighter" │Steve Quarrella "Dopefish" Daniel Creeron "Cupelix" │Jeff Rausch "Phoenix" Scott Darling "Creator" │Dennis Rivard "Wedge" Brian Dhatt "Grendel" │Neil Rubenking "MOMMEEEEEE!" Jason Ewasiuk "Arch Mage" │Keith Schuler "Dagger" Bryan D. Gilchrist "Phantom" │Joseph Selinske "Wolverine" Kevin Green "Asdfghjkl;" │Joe Siegler "Johnny Blade" Terry Herrin "Deathstar" │Andrew Stegman "Socrates" Greg Hively "DocNsanE" │Glenn Thorn "Spam Eggs & Spam" Doug Howell "Flash" │Gary Weinfurther "Hari Kari" Robert Hunley "MicroPilot" │Chris White "Hudson" ============================ CONTACTING TECHNICAL SUPPORT ============================ Apogee thanks you very much for playing our games. Customer satisfaction is a high priority of Apogee's, and we strive to please everyone. Our Technical Support staff is available to assist all of our customers in solving any technical problems that may be experienced. Our Technical Support Department is available to answer your questions Monday through Friday during the hours of 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Central Standard Time. The phone number for the Tech Support Department is (214) 278-5655. However, the voice line isn't your only channel of contact. We are also reachable via a fax machine at (214) 278-4670, (24 Hours a Day) or you can write to us. Our mailing address is: Apogee Software POB 496389 Garland, TX 75049-6389 United States of America Voice: (214) 278-5655 Fax: (214) 278-4670 (24 hrs) Apogee Technical Support can also be contacted via a variety of electronic medium. Several major online services are monitored, and Apogee's E-Mail addresses are listed below. Also, a variety of Bulletin Board networks are monitored as well, and those are also listed. If you do contact our Technical Support department, please be at your computer, and have it ready for assistance. If you can't be at your computer, please have printouts of the following things available, so that we may assist you better. It may be possible do provide technical support without these things, but it will be much more difficult. The needed files are CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT, plus what happens when you execute the "MEM /C" command (or just MEM if you get an error using MEM /C). ■ Major Online Services Internet -> joe.siegler@swcbbs.com CompuServe -> 74200,553 America Online -> APOGEE GEnie -> APOGEE Delphi -> APOGEE NVN -> APOGEE Prodigy -> CXVP94A Portal -> COMING SOON See the appropriate instructions for these various services on how to send private mail to these addresses. All of these services have Internet E-Mail gateways, but please, if you're sending Internet E-Mail, use the swcbbs.com address. ■ Bulletin Board Networks There are several BBS networks that are monitored for Apogee messages. Our Online Support Representative monitors all of the following BBS networks. Fidonet, Relaynet (Rime), Intelec, Ilink, U'NI-Net, Smartnet, & City2City. All of these BBS networks have Games, Shareware, and Apogee conferences. Fidonet -> 1:124/9006 Rime -> APOGEE (or 1674) And of course, we can be reached on Software Creations, the Apogee BBS. Software Creations can be reached by calling 1-508-368-7036. Apogee games are uploaded to Software Creations FIRST, before anywhere else in the world!! [ END OF FILE ]