ALIEN ODYSSEY DEMO BACKGROUND ---------- The player assumes the role of Planetary Surveyor, Psaph Abal, whose ship crash-lands on an uncharted planet. He quickly befriends one of the planet's Yuma natives, Gaan Ta'Tukinae, and is taken back to his village. The village chief, Hoeda Un'Tukinae, reveals their plight - they have all but lost an age- old war to a malicious cybernetic race known as the Dak, once of the same species, but who split away and developed superior technologies in a bid to conquer other worlds. This enclave is all that remains of the Yuma. Psaph's arrival here gives the Yuma one last glimmer of hope. Psaph has two main objectives: to rid the planet of this scourge, and to find space-worthy transport so that he can return to his mothership. To fulfil them both he must enter each of the Dak bases, discover their secrets, battle with the enemies within, and ultimately, find a way to cause each base to self-destruct. DEMO VERSION ------------ In this demo you take control of Psaph who can explore the first two floors of the first Dak base known as the Comms Bunker. The following keys are used to control his movements: 1 - (Un)holster gun Ctrl - Fire gun Shift - Run mode Alt - Side-step mode Alt & Shift - Emergency side-roll mode Z - Crouch mode X - Jump forward Cursor Up - Move forward Cursor Down - Move backward Cursor Left/Right - Rotate/move sideways Spacebar - Activate terminals and elevators FINAL RELEASE FEATURES ---------------------- * Two full bases to explore totalling over 120 rooms. * Extensive scenery animation brings each base to life. * Interlinking sections have the player flying through a forest and down dark mineshafts at breakneck speeds. * Multiple gun upgrades. * 9 different Dak enemy types. * Full game and mission intro and outro sequences. This is a HOW TO Guide to making a boot disk. ============================================= If you are trying to run Alien Odyssey on a machine with 8 meg of ram then you will need to ensure that as much of that 8 meg as possible is available to the game. For this reason you will need to make a BOOT disk. That is, a disk that will allow you to boot your machine with a minimum of memory used. There now follows a step by step guide to making a boot disk, but please note that this is an example of how to do it. In general the setup of different PC's varies and your own setup is liable to look rather different, e.g. the pathnames used in your PATH statement, or where to find files or the installed directory of a certain driver. Step 1: Place a diskette in your A: drive. The next step will destroy any data on the disk, so a brand new blank floppy disk should be used. Make sure that the disk is the same density as the drive (Use a 1.44 MB disk in a High Density 3.5" drive, etc.). Step 2: At the C: prompt, type FORMAT A: /S and press [ENTER]. The DOS Format utility will format the disk and add the necessary DOS files required to boot from the floppy disk. Step 3: Change to drive A by typing A: and pressing [ENTER]. Then type EDIT CONFIG.SYS and press [ENTER]. The DOS Edit program will appear. Type in the lines following [CONFIG.SYS] in the example below. When you have finished typing the lines, press ALT-F to bring up the File menu, and then press X to Exit the DOS Edit program. When it asks you if you want to save your file, choose Yes: [CONFIG.SYS] DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS DOS=UMB FILES=40 BUFFERS=15,0 STACKS=9,256 DOS=HIGH DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROMDRV\D011V109.SYS /D:MSCD000 In the CONFIG.SYS file shown above, replace the last line in the example with the line from your current CONFIG.SYS file on drive C: that runs your CD-ROM drivers. It is important that you use your CD-ROM line and not our example, otherwise your CD-ROM drive will not function properly. You may also have special lines in your C:\CONFIG.SYS file that help your sound card to function properly. It is very important that you copy those lines into this new file on A: so your sound card will work. Place the appropriate lines from your CONFIG.SYS file at the end of the example shown above. Step 4: Type EDIT AUTOEXEC.BAT and press [ENTER]. The DOS Edit program will appear. Type in the lines following [AUTOEXEC.BAT] in the example below. When you are finished typing the lines, press ALT-F to bring up the File menu, and then press X to Exit the DOS Edit program. When it asks you if you want to save your file, choose Yes: [AUTOEXEC.BAT] @ECHO OFF PROMPT $P$G SET PATH=C:\DOS;C:\VIDCARD;C:\SNDCARD LH C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000 SET SOUND=C:\SBPRO SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4 C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.EXE C: CD\ODYSSEY GAME In the AUTOEXEC.BAT file shown above, you would replace line 4 with the line from your current AUTOEXEC.BAT file on drive C: that loads your CD-ROM drivers. It is important that you use your CD- ROM line and not our example, otherwise your CD-ROM drive will not function properly. You may also have special lines in your C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file that help your sound card to function properly. It is very important that you copy those lines into this new file on A: so your sound card will work. Replace the examples on lines 5 and 6 with the appropriate lines from your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Additionally, if your graphics card requires a VESA driver it should go here as well. Step 5: Reboot your system with the boot disk still in drive A. The game should start and everything should be working properly. NOTE: Once this boot disk is finished and functioning properly, and if you still do not have enough memory free, use it to boot up your system and then run the DOS MEMMAKER utility with the boot disk in the drive. MEMMAKER will ensure that you have squeezed every little bit of RAM out of the boot disk. Run the DOS command MEM before and after running MEMMAKER to see what kind of memory increase you get from this step.