═══ 1. What is Psyberball? ═══ PSYBERBALL! Internet: www.nmia.com/~graphiti/psyberball/ Psyberball is a pinball game for OS/2 Warp, developed by OS/2 fans for OS/2 fans. It features many things that are new, or seldom encountered, in the standard OS/2 games: * Fast-paced action - Psyberball can run at 66 frames per second on a 486 class machine. * Stunning graphics and music - Some graphicians and a musician are developing state-of-the art artworks. Yes, you'll get also stereo effects, to hear the ball bouncing from left to right, and surround, too. * Full screen DIVE support: play Psyberball full screen (or keep it in the Workplace Shell, if you like it). * A Psyberball Pinball Construction Kit is under development, to let you create new tables, and pass them to your friends! ═══ 2. Some special notes about music and MUSE/2 ═══ The wonderful music you will hear in the game comes of course from our musician, but you can hear it thanks to the MUSE/2 library created by Digital Immersions. We have created some classes in C++ that can play music and sound effects, basing on the most popular sound programming interfaces available today (thanks to SOM we can decide at compilation time with little efforts to tell Psyberball to use whatever sound libraries we want); for this game we've chosen MUSE/2 as our music playing library. because it is fast, efficient and is improving every day. MUSE/2 is a collection of DLLs that can export functions to others applications via SOM (the System Object Model of OS/2 Warp). They are very powerful and let you play simultaneously sound effects, tracks and whatever even with stereo, surround. One great feature of having the music routines not linked in the game is that you can upgrade the DLLs in the game's directory and enjoy the benefits of this. You can find MUSE/2 DLLs in the MUSE/2 package, a MOD/S3M/669 etc player that can be found on Hobbes (ftp hobbes.nmsu.edu). The version of MUSE/2 shipped with this demo is 1.2m. ═══ 3. What is new in Demo 3? ═══ What's New Well, a lot of things are new, even if not all of them are visible. First of all, here it comes the first INF version of the readme! We did this because the amount of informations was becoming too vast for a simple README.1ST. You'll find a section where the official beta testers wrote down their experience with Psyberball and their peripherals. Check it now! If you find that your card is not mentioned, or you want to add something to what has been reported, write to maxmars@pianeta.it on the Internet (2:332/529.12 on FidoNet). The most noticeable feature added in demo 3 is sound, for those of us who have a sound card with MMPM drivers. DART enabled drivers are required to hear sound effects correctly. If you don't install the new DART DLLs, you'll end up with non synchronized sound output. Another feature added is the status line at the bottom of the screen. It shows scores, messages, and more. Talking about graphics, we added bumpers (three kinds of them!), and added a couple of new walls. Oh, and don't forget to look the new 'credits' page. (The bumpers are animated when hit, did I mention?) A lot of menu choices have been enabled. Yes, you CAN set different volumes for sound effects and music! Menus had glitches, but now I think all of them are gone (anyway if you find some bugs, tell us!!!). Of course we corrected some bugs, and improved full screen support. We corrected the SYS 3175 problem on exit (which showed on some boxes) or at least it seems so. Smashed a bug that caused Psyberball to crash after hitting the 'NEW' menu item. The collisions between the ball and the objects should be more realistic now. I know what you are thinking: "when, oh when will you release a playable demo?!?" Soon, very soon... ═══ 4. Installation Notes. ═══ This package should contain the following files: *) Psyball.inf .. (This file) *) Flipper.exe .. (The main program) *) 12345678.dll .. (the graphics and music) *) GAMESRVR.ZIP .. (the FS DIVE package - from IBM) *) DART.ZIP .. (the DART package - from IBM) *) Mus2Base.dll .. (needed for the music, MUSE/2) *) Mus2DAC.dll .. (needed for the music, MUSE/2) *) Mus2S3M.dll .. (needed for the music, MUSE/2) You must un-compress it into a directory of your choice; to run it simply type 'flipper' on that directory or create a program object and double click on its icon. Once you've loaded the program in memory you can start it by checking NEW from the FILE menu. We strongly suggest you to play a while with the menus, because the game defaults could be too CPU-intensive for your machine, or you could miss some feature (and, being this a test release, it's very important that you check all the features). If you have a precedent version of the demo (be it 1x, or 2x) erase it and install this new one. * WARNING * The Gamesrvr package, which adds the Full Screen DIVE (FS-DIVE) support to Warp, is still in beta. We had reports of people that had a complete OS/2 lockup when trying to install this gamesrvr thing, so please if you want to try it, backup your desktop and your INIs, then backup also SVGA.EXE, SVGADATA.PMI (x:\os2) and DIVE.DLL (x:\mmos2\dll). (x: is you boot drive) To install gamesrvr (which gives you the possibility to make this and the forecoming pinball demos/betas go full screen), simply unzip the GAMESRVR.ZIP package and run GSRVINST.EXE from the directory that's been created. ═══ 5. Help! Psyberball is not working! ═══ Problem Determination Psyberball is an OS/2 application just like all the others. Howewer, unlike most applications, it has special hardware requirements, because it uses some technologies that are new (or even in beta!) to OS/2 Warp. You'll need the following things to properly run Psyberball, in addition to OS/2 Warp: 1) A video card that supports DIVE and FS-DIVE. Most of the times, if Psyberball is not displaying correctly the graphics, the problem is on the video card and/ord drivers. We included a list with the supported video cards and drivers, which will help you determine if Psyberball can run on your hardware. The official IBM driver repository for OS/2 Warp can be found on the internet www page: http://www.europe.ibm.com/getdoc/psmemea/progserv/device/ Stop there and look for updated video drivers if you have access to the internet. Warning! Psyberball can run at any resolution, howewer it requires at least 256 colors , due to the current DIVE implementation. If you have your desktop set at 16 colors, you won't be able to run Psyberball. 2) If you want to hear music and sound effects, of course you'll need a soundcard with MMPM/2 drivers (for the newbies: MMPM/2 is the multimedia subsystem of OS/2). If you want to hear also sound effects, then your sound card drivers have to be also DART compliant (whatever it means, eh Timur? :) ). Latest drivers from Creative Labs (Internet ftp.creaf.com) works very well for the SB16 and AWE32 family (including PnP models etc). For those of you who have a SB PRO (PRO 2 etc) I recommend to try to install FixPack 17: it seems that the drivers in there add DART support. As ever, let us know. 3) This game definitely needs a math coprocessor. This means 486dx, Pentium, P6 (heh!) and so on. The demo should run just fine with sound effects and 30 frames per second on a 486 dx50. YMMV, as ever, but remember that the most important thing, right after pure CPU speed, is the video card bus: Vesa Local Bus or PCI is highly recommended. ═══ 5.1. Supported video cards and drivers. ═══ Here you will find a quick reference to the video cards and drivers we've tested Psyberball with. If you don't find your video card or driver, this doesn't necessarily mean that you CAN'T run Psyberball; it simply means that we've not tested it with your card. Let us know if your configuration supports Psyberball or not! Supported video cards and drivers ATI Graphics Pro Turbo, Mach64 ATI Graphics Wonder, Mach32 Cirrus Logic 5428 Cirrus Logic 5429 Cirrus Logic 5430 Cirrus Logic 5434 Diamond Stealth 32 ET 4000 W32p and W32i Hercules Dynamite Pro Hercules Stingray 64/Video, ARK2000 chipset Matrox Ultima 2+ VLB S3 864 S3 Trio 64 Trident Microsystems TVGA8900c V7 SPEA MIRAGE (S3 S386C80X) ═══ 5.1.1. ATI Graphics Pro Turbo, Mach 64. ═══ Contributor: Kris Kwilas Computer: P90 PCI RAM: 32 MB Video Card: PCI ATI Graphics Pro Turbo(Mach 64) 2MB VRAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.00 IBM (from the Warp Connect distribution) Note: Psy works windowed ═══ 5.1.2. ATI Graphics Wonder, Mach 32. ═══ Contributor: Roman Ptashka Computer: 486 dx2 80, Vesa Local Bus. RAM: 24 MB. Video Card: ATI Graphics Wonder, Mach 32 1 MB DRAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.2 ATI (bundled with Warp) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.2 ATI (bundled with Warp) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: 2.2 ATI (bundled with Warp) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen (WPS color palette is corrupted even before psyberball is run, most likely a driver problem. Doesn't seem to affect psyberball, though) Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 2.2 ATI (bundled with Warp) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.2 ATI (bundled with Warp) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. ═══ 5.1.3. Cirrus Logic 5428. ═══ Contributor: Massimiliano Marsiglietti (others: Jimmy Teo). Computer: 486 dx4 120, Vesa Local Bus. RAM: 20 MB. Video Card: Cirrus Logic 5428 1 MB RAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: 1.50 IBM (from IBM device driver repository on the Internet) Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 1.50 IBM (from IBM device driver repository on the Internet) Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen, though a bit slow with 66+ fps. Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: 1.50 IBM (from IBM device driver repository on the Internet) Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: 1.50 IBM (from IBM device driver repository on the Internet) Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen, though a bit slow with 66+ fps. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 1.50 IBM (from IBM device driver repository on the Internet) Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen, though a bit slow with 66+ fps. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: 1.50 IBM (from IBM device driver repository on the Internet) Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen, though a bit slow with 66+ fps. ═══ 5.1.4. Cirrus Logic 5429. ═══ Contributor: Stefano Carraro Computer: 486 dx2 66, VLB. RAM: 16MB. Video Card: Cirrus Logic 5429 1 MB RAM Resolution : 1024x768 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.00b from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 800x600 Colors : 65k Drivers : 1.00b from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 800x600 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.00b from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 640x480 Colors : 65k Drivers : 1.00b from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 640x480 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.00b from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. FP17 installed. ═══ 5.1.5. Cirrus Logic 5430. ═══ Contributor: Andrea Baitelli Computer: Pentium 100, PCI, SCSI HD and CD-ROM. RAM: 32 MB. Video Card: Cirrus Logic 5430 2 MB RAM Resolution : 640x480 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 800x600 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 1024x768 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 1280x1024 Colors : 256 Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 640x480 Colors : 65k Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 800x600 Colors : 65k Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 1024x768 Colors : 65k Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. - There is a noticeable brightness difference between windowed and full screen mode. Resolution : 640x480 Colors : 16 Mil. Drivers : 1.3 from IBM Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. - Mouse problems (mouse stops being displayed until Psyberball is closed). ═══ 5.1.6. Cirrus Logic 5434. ═══ Contributor: Massimiliano Marsiglietti Computer: 486 dx4 120, PCI. RAM: 16MB. Video Card: Cirrus Logic 5434 2 MB RAM Resolution : 1024x768 Colors : 65k Drivers : Latest from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 800x600 Colors : 65k Drivers : Latest from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. Resolution : 640x480 Colors : 65k Drivers : Latest from IBM Device driver repository Notes - Psy works both windowed and full screen. FP17 installed. ═══ 5.1.7. Diamond Stealth 32. ═══ Contributor: Derek Suzuki Computer: 486 dx2 66, Vesa Local Bus. RAM: 16 MB. Video Card: Diamond Stealth 32 1 MB RAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: IBM Drivers (from Warp Connect) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. Slow. Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 65 k Drivers: IBM Drivers (from Warp Connect) Note: Psy works, but refresh rates are very low due to driver limitations Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: IBM Drivers (from Warp Connect) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. My standard resolution. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: IBM Drivers (from Warp Connect) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. Slow. Poor refresh rates. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 65 k Drivers: IBM Drivers (from Warp Connect) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. Slow. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: IBM Drivers (from Warp Connect) Note: Psy works both windowed & full screen. In all cases, full screen isn't exactly stable. Windowed is smooth and stable, though in some circumstances it locks up and grabs onto the message queue. ═══ 5.1.8. ET 4000 W32p and W32i. ═══ Contributor: Andrea Ferretti (W32p), Mauro Castagnetti (W32i) Computer: Pentium 100 mhz PCI RAM: 16 Mbytes Video Card: ET4000 W32p Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: TSENGW32.DSK (From the IBM device driver repository) Note: Psyberball only works windowed. Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 65 k Drivers: TSENGW32.DSK (From the IBM device driver repository) Note: Psyberball only works windowed. Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: TSENGW32.DSK (From the IBM device driver repository) Note: Psyberball only works windowed. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: TSENGW32.DSK (From the IBM device driver repository) Note: Psyberball only works windowed. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 65 k Drivers: TSENGW32.DSK (From the IBM device driver repository) Note: Psyberball only works windowed. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: TSENGW32.DSK (From the IBM device driver repository) Note: Psyberball only works windowed. For the W32i, with the above mentioned TSENGW32.DSK driver, Psyberball ran flawlessly both windowed and full screen in all of the video modes. The 800x600 setup, however, seemed to be the least stable. ═══ 5.1.9. Hercules Dynamite Pro ═══ Contributor: Don Benson (hurcane@ald.net) Computer: 486 dx 33, ISA bus RAM: 16 MB. Video Card: Hercules Dynamite Pro 2 MB RAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 65536 Drivers: Latest from IBM's FTP site Note: Psy works both windowed and full screen by itself. Full screen pallette is intially wrong colors. It refreshes itself after a while. When I ran it with several other applications running, specifically slippm, MR/2 ICE, and Neologic News, using Alt-Esc to get out of full screen mode locks up the system. Keyboard was functional, but display was frozen. ═══ 5.1.10. Hercules Stingray 64/Video, ARK2000 chipset. ═══ Contributor: Randall Bagwell Computer: P100, PCI RAM: 16 MB Video Card: Hercules Stingray 64/Video, ARK2000 chipset 2 MB RAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: 0629 ArkLogic (from www.hercules.com) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 65 K Drivers: 0629 ArkLogic (from www.hercules.com) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: 0629 ArkLogic (from www.hercules.com) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: 0629 ArkLogic (from www.hercules.com) Note: These drivers do not support 16 mil colors in OS/2 yet. Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 0629 ArkLogic (from www.hercules.com) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: 0629 ArkLogic (from www.hercules.com) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Special note: When installing the GAMESRVR package, SVGA.EXE failed with an 'unsupported chipset' message. This did not seem to make a difference since the gamesrvr.dll was still installed and full-screen modes work perfectly. ═══ 5.1.11. Matrox Ultima 2+ VLB. ═══ Contributor: Henry Rieke Video Card: Matrox Ultima 2+ VLB Drivers: v 2.01.012 No problems in any color depth at any resolutions. From 640x480x256 upto 1600x1280x256, 640x480x65k to 1152x882x65k, and 640x480x16.8m to 800x600x16.8m.` The game worked flawlessly at all modes, non scrolling, scrolling, and in gameserver's full screen mode at each resolution. NOTE: We have other testers running Psyberball with some flavour of Matrox video card. One of them reported that on his configuration Psy worked flawlessly both full screen and windowed, but in 24 bit color depth he had to run a special command from the Matrox utility disk (it was reported on one of the readmes in the disk). He used the last revision for both BIOS and drivers. ═══ 5.1.12. S3 864. ═══ Contributor: Lorenzo Mucchi Computer: Pentium 75, PCI RAM: 16 MB Video Card: S3 864 Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 k Drivers: 2.57D1 S3 (from IBM site) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 k Drivers: 2.57D1 S3 (from IBM site) Note: Works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 k Drivers: 2.57D1 S3 (from IBM site) Note: Works both windowed and full screen FP 17 installed. ═══ 5.1.13. S3 Trio 64. ═══ Contributor: Stefano Zamprogno Computer: P90, PCI RAM: 16 MB Video Card: S3 Trio 64, 2Mb di RAM Couldn't test full screen DIVE: 2.80.19 drivers (from S3 site) because couldn't execute properly the SVGA.EXE program during drivers installation. Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 65 k Drivers: 2.80.19 S3 (from S3 Internet official site) Note: Works only windowed (see before) Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.80.19 S3 (from S3 Internet official site) Note: Works only windowed (see before) Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 65 K Drivers: 2.80.19 S3 (from S3 Internet official site) Note: Works only windowed (see before) Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.80.19 S3 (from S3 Internet official site) Note: Works only windowed (see before) Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 16 mil Drivers: 2.80.19 S3 (from S3 Internet official site) Note: Works only windowed (see before) Resolution: 640x480 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.80.19 S3 (from S3 Internet official site) Note: Works only windowed (see before) ═══ 5.1.14. Trident Microsystems TVGA8900c. ═══ Contributor: Francisco Javier Nacher. Computer: 486 dx4 100, Vesa Local Bus. RAM: 8 MB. Video Card: Trident Microsystems TVGA8900c, 1 MB RAM Resolution: 1024x768 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.15 IBM (from Warp disks) Notes: Psyberball works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 800x600 Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.15 IBM (from Warp disks) Notes: Psyberball works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 640x480 (1 MB) Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.15 IBM (from Warp disks) Notes: Psyberball works both windowed and full screen Resolution: 640x480 (512 K) Colors: 256 Drivers: 2.15 IBM (from Warp disks) Notes: Psyberball works both windowed and full screen ═══ 5.1.15. V7 SPEA MIRAGE (S3 S386C80X). ═══ Contributor: Hendrik Pagenhardt. Computer: 486DX/33 ISA. RAM: 8 MB. FP 17 applied Video Card: V7 SPEA MIRAGE (S3 S386C80X), 1 MB RAM Driver: generic S3, shipped with WARP Output of "svga status": SVGA: PMI File Generator (v2.15) AdapterType: S3, ChipType: S386C80X, TotalMemory: 1048576 DacType: ATT20C491_RGB AT&T Microelectronics Inc. Possible Supported Modes: Graphics Mode: 640 x 480 x 16 colors. Graphics Mode: 640 x 480 x 256 colors. Graphics Mode: 640 x 480 x 64K colors. Graphics Mode: 640 x 480 x 16M colors. Graphics Mode: 800 x 600 x 16 colors. Graphics Mode: 800 x 600 x 256 colors. Graphics Mode: 800 x 600 x 64K colors. Graphics Mode: 1024 x 768 x 16 colors. Graphics Mode: 1024 x 768 x 256 colors. Text Mode: 40 cols, 25 rows. Text Mode: 80 cols, 25 rows. Text Mode: 132 cols, 25 rows. Text Mode: 132 cols, 43 rows. Graphics Mode: 320 x 200 x 256 colors. Results: Mode Note 640x480x256 Psy works both, FS and window 800x600x256 Psy works both, FS and window 1024x748x256 Psy works both, FS and window 640x480x65536 Psy works both, FS fast as above, window slower than in 256-modes 800x600x65536 Psy works both, see 640x480x65536 640x480x16M window: very slow, no complete refreshs, FS working as above Note: In all modes I found that the first switching from FS back to window takes a long time (up to 30 seconds). After that's done, there is an immidiate response to consecutive switching. This wasn't in the demos before 2b. ═══ 6. Frequently Asked Questions. ═══ Frequently Asked Questions Q: Requirements? A: Warp, 386+387 (or 486dx, or Pentium, or Pentium Pro), DIVE (part of MMOS2) installed. A video res of at least 640x480x256 colours. It will run also on 32k+ colours, but not on 16 colours video modes. The math co-processor is recommended for we've not yet optimized calculations for speed. We think this beast (the demo) should run at top speed on a 40-to-50 mhz 486 dx without music, or 486 dx4/100 with music and sound effects. If you want to hear sound, you'll have to have a DART-enabled sound card. Q: It is slow! A: Well, if you're running the full 320x400 table, try with selecting the 320x200 table, then switch to full screen with ALT+HOME. It helps much. Q: It has choppy video refresh! A: You mean it had! ;) You can choose to run the demo at 15, 30, 45, 60+ fps. Try to start with the highest (the default), and if the game seems too slow, go down one option. Let us know which option works best for you. Q: Why can't I get music and sound effects? I _have_ a sound card! A: You'll need a DART-enabled sound card with appropriate drivers. In general, it appears that if you have a sound card with MMPM2 drivers (the standard OS/2 sound drivers that you found in the Warp box, downloaded from the net or whatever) you can hear sound, but the sound effects are non-synchronized with the video. Install the DART DLLs (backup old ones!!) in the DART.ZIP package that you found here, and try with this. If no joy, then your MMPM2 driver is not capable to correctly handle the DART libs. If this is the case, disable sound effects. Q: Why is it soooo limited? A: This isn't a 'beta', it's only a way to find out if the game engine can run on your box. Yep, it's all already there: the graphic engine, the three threads, the message passing schema, the musics, sound effects. We prefer to stop a moment and see if what we've done is good or not. If this runs well, it will be a matter of speeding up all the things and create the graphics/music. Again -- This is our first attempt to create a game, we are just creating our code library; we prefer to proceed slowly but fixing all the bugs while they appear. Q: I have a problem! How can I report it? A: You can report it only if you're a beta tester. Just e-mail the log file ("a2000.log", in the pinball directory) to the authors (see below), along with explanation on what-how- why you and the program were doing. Warning: that log files is created even if all is doing fine (obviously it will have different contents). Q: Will the log file grow up till it eats all my HD space? A: No, it is re-created every time the program is run and it will grow only up to 1k or so. Q: Which are the known problems related to this application? A: At the moments, all of them are related to the use of the full screen DIVE, but all the signals indicate that video drivers are the guilty ones. * Beware of buggy video drivers! * This game relies mainly on DIVE graphics so check if your hardware can do it flawlessly. If you can, update your video drivers! We can't fix them. Q: How can I de-install it? A: Just delete the files. Q: Gamesrvr trashed my box. What next? A: Replace SVGA.EXE, SVGADATA.PMI in your \os2 directory with the ones you backed up (you did it, didn't you?) before installing GAMESRVR. Restore your old desktop and INIs, delete GAMESRVR.DLL and DIVE.DLL from \os2\dll. Restore old DIVE.DLL on the \MMOS2\DLL directory. This cancels the gamesrvr installation. Q: Full screen is SLOW on my system, and I have to reset it with C-A-D. A: Then most probably your card/driver is not able to run it. The best option you have is to run the demo windowed. Anyway we are still researching in this field. ═══ 7. Credits! ═══ The Psyberball Team Paolo Bertoni Main calcs thread Mauro Castagnetti Ball's physics Justin Curtner Graphics Dan Libby DART - music thread Max Marsiglietti DIVE - graphic thread <-- Report the bugs to maxmars@pianeta.it Jim Miller WWW home page Webmaster (home page at www.nmia.com/~graphiti/psyberball/ on the Internet) Lorenzo Mucchi PM Programming Justin "Zinc" Ray Music and sfx Greetings and thanks to: All of the beta testers! They have worked hard to help compile the video card compatibility table. Many thanks! Ahzz (he discovered that GAMESRVR can kill your OS/2!) F.Ashraf -- c9550042@hudd.ac.uk We used his track "Mr. Pringle" for this demo. Very nice! Culus, HrBeing, and Wizdom (Digital Immersions' crew) They have created this MUSE/2 digital music player, and we are using it to include music in Psyberball. Way way cool! Mike Duffy, for his help with the initial DIVE development. Many, many thanks. Nightsun, for being around. All the people who had patience on their side.