Tomb Raider: The Times level Readme file: ================================================= Contents: System Requirements DirectX 6.1 Preparing Your Hard Drive Additional Help Contacting Eidos Customer Support ------------------------------------------------- MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Windows ® 95 / 98 compatible computer system with 16Mb of RAM (32Mb recommended) Pentium 233MHz Processor (266MHz recommended) Quad speed CD-ROM drive (8x recommended) Supports most major 3D acceleration graphics cards, compatible Soundcards and Joysticks through Direct X TM 6.1 NOTE: It may be necessary for you to update your hardware drivers to run this game. *We did not test Tomb Raider: The Times level with laptop systems and therefore we cannot guarantee compatibility. Due to the wide variety of hardware configurations that ship with today's laptop systems, it would be impossible to configure a game that would work with all of them. Many laptops are limited in their ability to be used as a gaming machine because of memory configurations, their microchannel architecture, port configurations (i.e. no place for a joystick) and sound systems that are primarily designed to be used with productivity software. *The other common problem is that laptop systems will attempt to compress the traditional version of the standard 101 function keyboard (found on almost all desktop systems) into a much smaller key config- uration. This is usually done by relying on multi- function keys that allow the user to assign different functions to the same key. Unfortunately, this has been known to cause problems with our games. ------------------------------------------------- DirectX 6.1: In order for you to play the game, you must have DX6.1-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. Please note that although DirectX 6.0 is installed with the game, your video and sound card drivers will not be upgraded to DirectX 6.1 drivers. You will need to obtain the latest DX6.1 drivers from your card manufacturer. If the game does not run properly on your video card, and there are no DX6.1 drivers available for your video card, you will have to run the game in software mode, by going into Options and checking the 'Hardware Emulation' option. DirectX is available for download on the Microsoft web site. Here is a list of 3D cards that are known not to have drivers that are compliant with DX6, at the time of this writing (March 9, 1999), and as a result, will not run the game properly. You may want to contact your card manufacturer to see if up-to-date DX6.1 drivers have recently been made available. Chipset . ATI Mach 32/64 . S3 Trio 32/64 · S3 Virge 325 · S3 Virge GX/DX/VX · S3 Virge GX2 · #9 Ticket to Ride · Cirrus Logic CL-5465 · Trident Image 975 · PowerVR PCX1 · PowerVR PCX2 · Chromatic Research Mpact · ATI Rage II ------------------------------------------------- Preparing Your Hard Drive: To ensure that your installation is trouble free, you should check to see that your hard drive and file system are both tuned for optimum performance. Windows 95/98 comes with two utility programs that find and fix any errors and optimize your hard drive's performance. The first of these programs is called ScanDisk. ScanDisk will check your hard drive for problems and can fix any that it finds. You can run scandisk by clicking on the START button from the Windows 95/98 Taskbar, followed by Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally ScanDisk. Once ScanDisk has finished running, you should next optimize your hard drive's performance by running a program called Disk Defragmenter. You can run Disk Defragmenter by clicking on the START button from the Windows 95/98 desktop, followed by Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally Disk Defragmenter. ------------------------------------------------- Additional Help: For more information on technical support or game play advice, please visit: http://www.eidos.com ------------------------------------------------- We all hope you enjoy Tomb Raider: The Times level. Core Design Ltd 22:18 16/11/99 TROUBLESHOOTING ================= Tomb Raider: The Times level uses Microsoft Compressed Audio for sound and music. If you do not hear sound/music in the game you'll need to check your PC and make sure the correct Windows components are activated. To do this: 1. Exit the game and go to the Control Panel. 2. Select the Add/Remove Programs Aplet. 3. Click on the Windows Setup Tab 4. You should see a selection icon called MULTIMEDIA which will have a check in the box or no check at all. 5. Check this box (so a black check mark appears). Click 'ok' and you'll be prompted for your WINDOWS '95 CD in order to install the correct Multimedia components to your hard drive. There is also a driver issue with some sound cards and Microsoft's Compressed Audio Format. If you experience any 'skipping or stuttering audio' please try the following to clear up the problem: 1. Exit out of the game and run the TOMB4 Setup Option from the Start Bar. 2. Look at the Sound Adapter Check Box. 3. Switch from Primary Sound Driver to the other available device (most likely Yamaha). 4. Click OK SCREENGRABBER =============== Tomb Raider: The Times level has a built in screen grabber for your viewing pleasure. Hitting the " key during gameplay will snap a screenshot called TOMB0000.TGA and place it on your hard drive in the C:\Program Files\Core Design\Tomb Raider IV (or wherever you installed the game). The files will be numbered incremently as you snap them. Please do not try and map this key to one of Lara's in-game controls. 3D Graphic Cards Tomb Raider supports all 100% Direct3D compliant graphic cards. This means that Tomb Raider will run on every 3D accelerator card, providing that you have installed DirectX 6.1, and you have installed drivers for your 3D card which support all of the features of DirectX 6.1 required by Tomb Raider. Due to the fact that DirectX 6.1 is a very recent release, there are a few known problems with the current sets of drivers that are available for the various 3D graphic card chipsets. As new drivers become available, many of these problems will be fixed. Graphics card manufacturers constantly update their drivers. If you are running the game on a 3D accelerator card, make sure you have the latest drivers available for your card. See the Tomb Raider Related Web Sites section for a list of web sites where you will be able to obtain the very latest drivers for your graphics card. Technical Help There are many 3D accelerator cards available on the market, and they all will perform differently under the same conditions, depending on the chipset, amount of video memory, and drivers installed. The key to getting the best performance out of your graphics card is to set the card to a higher resolution, while maintaining a good frame rate with no texture loss. Many accelerator cards will run Tomb Raider very efficiently at 640x480 High Color. If you notice texture drop out - white blank spots on menu text, objects, terrain and characters including Lara, you will need to lower the graphics resolution. The card has run out of texture memory. The graphics resolution can be changed in the setup window. If you are experiencing very low frame rates, you may want to lower the screen resolution. You can also reduce the screen size, which will leave a border around the viewable area. The "-" key on the keypad will reduce the screen size (while in-game), and the "+" key on the keypad will increase the screen size (while in-game). Reducing the resolution and screen size will help Tomb Raider run faster. On some 3D cards, seaming may occur, drawing borders around polygons. This is most apparent when looking at the sky, which will have a tiled look to it. Turning off bi-linear filtering may help to fix this problem. If you are getting any errors when running the game, such as runtime C++ error, or cannot find dinput.dll, reinstall DirectX 6.1. DirectX 6.1 can be installed directly from the Tomb Raider CD by running the dxsetup.exe program from the directx directory. If you continue to have problems, please contact your hardware manufacturer. Setup There are a large number of options available in the Setup window, which allow you to configure the graphics, sound and controls within the game. You may need to change some of the graphics settings to achieve the best possible performance (frame rate and detail level) on your particular graphics card. Please refer to the Technical Help section for more details on graphics configuration. The Setup window is accessed by clicking the Setup button on the Autorun Menu, or by selecting Setup Tomb Raider from the Start menu. Joysticks & Gamepads Tomb Raider: The Times level supports a wide variety of Windows 95 compatible game controllers. However, there are no default settings for the joystick buttons, so you will need to assign the various controls to the joystick buttons yourself. At the Main Title screen, highlight Controls (cursor keys icon) and press the Enter key. The Default Keys should now appear on screen. Press the right cursor key to bring up the User Keys screen. It is here that you will be able to assign the joystick buttons. Highlight the particular control you want to assign by using the cursor keys. Press the Enter key to select that control, and then press the joystick button you wish to use. The text will flash on and off if you have assigned two controls to the same button. Once you have assigned controls for all of the joystick buttons, press the ESC key to exit the Controls screen. Contacting Eidos Customer Support ================================== If you have problems installing or running the game, our Customer Support Department is here to help. Our web site contains up-to-date information on the most common difficulties with our products; this information is the same as that used by our support agents. If you are unable to find the information you need on our web site, please fell free to contact us via e-mail, fax, telephone or letter. Please be sure to have the following information: · A listing of your computer's hardware and the settings from Device Manager, including what sound and video card your system has. (Contact your computer manufacturer if you aren't sure.) · What version of Windows(R) you are using. · What version of DirectX(R) is currently loaded on your computer. · How the game is currently configured. Note: Our Technical Support agents do not have access to game hints, tips, strategies or codes. Please refer to the manual for hint line information.