BUG 6/BUGCD1997_09.BIN/ZABAVA/FD/README.TXT

Text File | 1996-12-09 | 17KB | 406 lines

Fighter Duel SE Demo   December 7, 1996

(c)1996, Philips Media Games, Inc.
Written by Jaeger Software, Inc. & SPGS, Inc.
in association with Philips Media, Inc.

Portions (c) 1993-1995 SciTech Software
Portions (c) 1995 Miles Design

This demo is copyrighted, but freely distributable as long as all files
in this archive are included and kept unaltered.
Please distribute it to as many bulletin boards and information services
as you can.


The Fighter Duel SE demo is limited in these areas:

You may fly one aircraft, the Japanese A6M5 Zero and against only F4U Corsairs.
The situation is limited to only the "Surprise Attack".
You may fly for only 10 minutes at a time.
Fuel load is locked to a quantity that will last 10 minutes.
The ability to print out the flight log is disabled.

Two player modes are disabled.

A version of the Fighter Duel Net Duel module is included that is limited
to only two IPX network players.  See the NETDUEL.TXT for more details.

For the latest updates to Fighter Duel and Net Duel, check out the
Philips Media website.
www.philipmedia.com/media/games

In case you don't own Fighter Duel, but this looks like fun, its available from
most computer retailers or you can order it directly from
StarPak at 1-800-883-3767.

Other cool Fighter Duel websites:

Fighter Duel tournament information and ranking at The STUPID homepage.
http://www.crl.com/~stupid/

General FD info at RCPilot's Hanger.
http://members.aol.com/rcpilots/rcpilots.html


The file KEYS.TXT contains a listings of all keyboard commands for Fighter
Duel.

To run the demo for the first time, type Install and press (enter).
A directory named FDDEMO will be created on your C: drive, the demo
will be copied there, and you will be prompted to setup your sound card and
generate a video driver.

The demo will then run.

To run the demo later, go to your FDDEMO directory, type FD and press (enter).

The demo will run in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.
You may change the language after installation.  After installation,
type FD /L and press (enter).  A language screen will appear.


This is demo will operate the force feedback joystick line from CH products
and others. To enable the feedback joystick. Run the FFS.EXE program and
set it for the com port the stick is set to and depress the Enable button.
Save the settings and run the demo. You may quit the demo and adjust the
settings to your liking.



The contents are:

1.  Memory

2.  Windows 95

3.  Video

4.  Sound

5.  Two Player (Not in demo)

6.  Screengrabs

7.  Digital Simultaneous Voice & Data modems

8.  Notebook Gameport

9.  Troubleshooting


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. MEMORY:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fighter Duel Memory Requirements:

400k of conventional ram,
7 megs of XMS or EMS.

To see the free memory, type Mem and hit return on Dos 6.X or higher machines.
The output should look something like this. This system is pretty well
optimized.

Memory Type        Total       Used       Free
----------------  --------   --------   --------
Conventional          636K        34K       602K
Upper                 107K       107K         0K
Reserved                0K         0K         0K
Extended (XMS)     23,445K       181K    23,264K <----Should be 7,000 or larger
----------------  --------   --------   --------
Total memory       24,188K       322K    23,866K

Total under 1 MB      743K       141K       602K

Total Expanded (EMS)                   23M (24,543,232 bytes)
Free Expanded (EMS)                    16M (16,777,216 bytes)

Largest executable program size       602K (616,224 bytes) <-----400k or larger
Largest free upper memory block         0K       (0 bytes)
MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

To get more conventional memory please see your Dos manual for usage of
the Memmaker program.

Seven megabytes of XMS/EMS ram is the minimum Fighter Duel needs to safely run.
If your computer does not not have enough free ram to load an enemy aircraft,
they will fly the same aircraft as you do with whatever skill level you set for
them.  The flight log and pre-flight interface however, will not report them
as the same as your aircraft.


You should be able to get all eight different enemy at once available with about
7.3Mb of XMS available.

Do NOT edit or delete the CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT on your hard disk with out
making a backup copy first. It is safest to copy them to a floppy for backup.

The largest memory consumer on modern Dos machines is the SmartDrive harddisk
caching program used in Dos and Windows 3.1.

On an 8 meg machine unless set otherwise, it will use 2 megs of ram for its
cache. The line in the autoexec.bat line that launches usually is something
like "C:\Windows\Smartdrv" Either comment the line in the autoexec.bat file
with a leading ; or reduce Smartdrive''s cache size. The number at the end of
the Smartdrive line sets the cache size in bytes. Try 256 or 512. Disabling
Smartdrive entirely will usually significantly slow down Windows 3.X
performance. Especially loading and exiting of Windows 3.1.

If you still cannot get enough free memory to run Fighter Duel, it will be
necessary to make a boot disk.

To make a Fighter Duel boot floppy:

Format a floppy with the option to make it bootable.
Example:  FORMAT A: /S
Copy your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT from your hard drive to the floppy.
Change to the floppy.
Edit the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files on the floppy.

See your DOS manual for details on how to work with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.
The only items Fighter Duel requires are a mouse driver and a CD-ROM driver.

Here is an example of a minimum startup:

[CONFIG.SYS]

DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH
FILES=50
BUFFERS=30
<< ANY SOUND RELATED COMMANDS >>
<< CD-ROM DRIVER >>

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

PROMPT P$G$
PATH C:\DOS
<< ANY SOUND RELATED COMMANDS >>
<< MOUSE DRIVER >>
<< VESA DRIVER IF NEEDED >>
C:\DOS\MSCDEX << some addtional text follows here >>
CD C:\ << CD to the logical drive to which you installed Fighter Duel >>
CD FDUEL << CD to the directory in which Fighter Duel is installed >>
FD

Include only the items listed above. Delete or add the word "REM" to the start
of any line that is not mentioned above.

Restart your computer with your new boot disk in drive A:
The machine should boot, not show any error messages and directly run
Fighter Duel.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. WINDOWS 95
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fighter Duel will generally perform better when not run from a Windows 95
MS-DOS prompt.

When Fighter Duel is run from a Windows 95 Ms-DOS prompt, it will
attempt to determine if you in fact have enough actual free memory available.
Depending on programs run in the Windows startup and or other
Windows features such as networking, you may not have enough actual free
memory to run Fighter Duel. Windows does have a memory virtualizing system
that usually can give Fighter Duel the memory it needs by shifting other
programs in memory temporarily to the harddisk.  We found the delays and
and or large pauses during flight unacceptable. We recommend that you either
shutdown Windows 95 and restart the computer in MS-DOS mode or create a shortcut
to put your computer into MS-DOS mode while running Fighter Duel.
memory.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. VIDEO:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fighter Duel requires VESA compatibility for video access.
VESA stands for the Video Electronics Standard Association.
VESA video progamming standards allow programmers a common way to access
video cards.

Modern video cards usually offer VESA software compatibility via either a
built-in chip called a bios chip or a small TSR program run from the
autoexec.bat file.

Fighter Duel utilizes some standard high performance VESA commands that are not
properly implemented on some video card VESA bios. For compatibility and speed,
we provide VESA compatibility through the Scitech Univbe Ultra VESA graphic
library. It provides fast 32 bit protected mode VESA 2.0 graphic compatibilty
on over 200 video chipsets. Most video cards do not come with the newer VESA 2.0
standard which Univbe provides. Fighter Duel has been designed to automatically
detect and use Vesa 2.0. For best performance, use the Univbe driver with
Fighter Duel.

Univbe is updated regularly. As updates become available, a patch for Fighter
Duel will be made available.

If after installation, no error messages about VESA compatibilty are reported
on the command line, but the opening title pictures do not display properly or
the screen does not display properly during flight, your video board may not
be compatible with Univbe.


The first thing to try is to use your video card's built-in VESA bios.
Please note that some built-in VESA bios on some cards are not Fighter Duel
compatible.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. SOUND:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Miles Design AIL sound system is used for universal sound support.
On installation, the AIL Setsound.exe program is run. Follow its instructions
to configure for your sound board.

You may reconfigure or check your configuration later by typing
Setsound.exe while in the FDuel directory.

Please note that the master volume level for your sound card is a combination
of its volume knob (if equipped) and sound levels set via program command
parameter set in either your autoexec.bat file or by Windows. If the sound
seems too low, check the master volume levels in the autoexec.bat file and or
Windows sound control first.

Windows 95 will set the volume on Reveal Se400- Rev3 and Aztech Gold Washington
Sound Galaxy 16 sound cards to zero when restarting into MS-Dos mode.
The Volset.exe program will need to be run and the volume set back up before
running Fighter Duel.

Please refer to your sound card manual for details on the possible autoexec.bat
program command parameters.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. TWO PLAYER:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOT AVAILABLE IN DEMO:
Please note that Fighter Duel provides a tremendous amount of realtime
data to make your flight path appear very smooth to your opponent.  This means
that good phone lines, high speed FIFO serial port hardware, and quality modems
all help your Fighter Duel two player duels work better.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. SCREENGRABS:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fighter Duel has the built-in ability to screen grab what you are seeing
while either viewing the aircraft or flying.
Hit the TAB  key to save a 256 color 640x480 PCX format file.
Fighter Duel saves the file as a sequence beginning with FDuel0001.pcx.
Please note that screengrabbing during two player flight will interrupt the
flight for a second or two, causing an interruption in your movement to the
opponent. Screengrabbing is only allowed in the Standard Two player situation.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. DIGITAL SIMULTANEOUS VOICE & DATA MODEMS:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fighter Duel supports the new Digital Simultaneous Voice and Data Modems (DSVD)
created by a joint a venture of Intel, U.S. Robotics, Rockwell, Creative Labs,
and Hayes. These new line of V.34 28.8 modems allow you to have two computers
transfer data at up to 14.4bps while you are simultaneously talking on the same
phone line. When the voice line is not used, they function as standard V.34
28.8 modems. You may call your Fighter Duel opponent and then have Fighter Duel
start with only a quick interruption of your call as the modems negotiate the
connection. Most modem playable software requires you to set your modem to turn
off error correction, data compression, etc.
Fighter Duel is designed to work well with your modem set with error correction
and data compression on which not only improves connection reliability, but is a
requirement for DSVD modems.


Using a DSVD modem with Fighter Duel:

Enter the special DSVD init string in the Fighter Duel communications Init CMD.
This init string will function properly for connecting to DSVD as well as
non-DSVD modems.

The initialization strings for the U.S. Robotics 28.8 Digital DSVD and the
Rockwell 28.8 Digital DSVD are:

USR 28.8 Digital DSVD      | AT&F1-SSE=1
Rockwell 28.8 Digital DSVD | ATQOE1V1-SSE=1

Place a voice call to your opponent with a phone attached through the modem.
Set up Fighter Duel as if you are making a regular modem duel call including
setting the connection type to modem and selecting a phone number to dial.

When you both are ready, the Caller will click the "Dial Phone" button and
the Answerer will click the "Answer" button.  The voice line will temporarily
be disconnected as the modems negotiate their connection.  You will then hear
a beep and the voice line should be reestablished. Fighter Duel should show
the normal connect messages and be ready for the duel. You can then talk freely
as you fly duels. To fully hang up the line, disconnect Fighter Duel and hang
up both phones.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. NOTEBOOK GAMEPORT:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In addition to supporting standard PC gameports, Fighter Duel supports the
Colorado Spectrum Notebook Gameport (NG). The NG allows you to connect your
joystick, yoke, and/or rudder pedals to your notebook or desktop PC via a
standard serial port. To use the NG with Fighter Duel, install the hardware
as outlined in the NG manual, install the NG software driver, and check
its operation with the NG diagnostic program, NGDIAG.EXE. Whenever the NG is
attached and the software driver, NG.EXE is run, Fighter Duel will
automatically use it for all joystick, yoke, and/or rudder pedal functions.
Set the Flight, Throttle, and Rudder controls in the Fighter Duel pre-flight
interface as you would normally. Please note that toe brakes are not supported
through the NG.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. TROUBLE SHOOTING:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"FIGHTER DUEL REPORTS THAT I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH VIDEO MEMORY"

FDuel requires 1 meg of video ram.  If in fact you do have 1 or more megs of
video ram, you may have to manually configure the Univbe video driver.
To do this, enter the FDuel directory, type "uvconfig" and hit enter. A screen
will display that shows your detected video chipset and a guess at the video
memory. If the memory figure shows 256 or 512, use your mouse pointer to click
the down arrow to the far right of the video memory number.

Change it to match the amount of ram on your video card. Do not adjust it for
more memory than your card has.

Do not select or change the options labeled "Ignore old VBE BIOS",
"Disable VBE 2.0 extensions", or "Disable Linear Frame Buffer".
Click "OK". Uvconfig may ask to do some quick tests on your video board.
Allow it to do so. When it exits, try Fighter Duel again.

"I ONLY GET A FEW ENEMY"

In low memory situations, Fighter Duel will reduce the number of foes.
See the section above regarding memory.

"FIGHTER DUEL REPORTS I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CONVENTIONAL OR XMS MEMORY"

See the section above regarding memory.

"WHILE FLYING THE GUNSIGHT AND OR THE OVER THE SHOULDER VIEW FLICKERS"

Fighter Duel is very optimized to go as fast as it can at all times.
On very fast systems with very fast video cards flicker may occur.
On systems where you may use the UNIVBE video driver, the "Decrease Framerate
to Reduce Flicker" option in the graphics control window should stop the
flicker. Unless you experience flickering, do not use
this option as it will needlessly reduce your framerate.

"I GET NO SOUND"

The sound volume on your sound card may be too low. See the section above on
sound.