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Text File | 1993-01-20 | 19KB | 427 lines

Front Page Sports: Football Version 1.02 Update INTRODUCTION Thank you for purchasing Front Page Sports: Football. We hope that you enjoy the most complete professional football simulation ever created for personal computers. Football has been very well received by our customers, and we thank you for all the support and enthusiasm. Some of you have even offered suggestions. Just to let you know we are listening, we have taken many of your suggestions and incorporated them into version 1.02 of the game. If you own a previous version of Front Page Sports: Football and are upgrading to version 1.02, the Patch Disk Installation instructions are in the next section. To find out which areas of the game we have altered since version 1.0, see the New Features section of this update. For information about additions and enhancements to the manual, see Manual Changes and Technical Tips. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR PATCH DISK VERSION 1.02 These instructions assume that you are installing the Patch disk from floppy drive A: and you have installed Front Page Sports: Football to C:\DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL. If not, please substitute the appropriate drive letters and directory for A: and C:\DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL. 1. After booting your machine, insert the Patch disk into drive A:. 2. Type A: <Enter>. 3. Type INSTALL C:\DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL <Enter>. 4. Follow the on screen instructions. NEW FEATURES Weather: Prior to playing any game, a dialog box will tell you what the weather conditions will be for the game. This will not happen for simulated games. Playcalling screen: The Ready-Break! button on this screen now remains "pushed in" when it is pressed. This lets you know when the opposing team has selected their play. If you are playing defense, you have eight seconds to select your play after the offense has chosen theirs. Sound support: PC speaker and AdLib (and compatible cards) now play digitized sounds during the action game. All Pro Audio Spectrum cards (Classic, Plus and 16) now have enhanced sound support. Creating new leagues: When creating new single-season leagues, you may now select teams from any existing league. When creating new career leagues, you may select teams from any existing career league. NOTE: We have discovered an error in the schedule creation for 18-team leagues. If you have created and played an 18-team league, we recommend that you create a new 18-team league and copy the teams from your existing league into the new league. Free Agents: The number of years each free agent has been in the league are now listed on the Free Agent Pool display. League Leaders: Two new League Leaders screens have been created displaying team field goal statistics and individual and team tackle statistics. Adjustments: We have made a number of adjustments in artificial intelligence, play balancing, and compiling and displaying of statistics. MANUAL CHANGES Coin Toss (page 13): The keyboard is now active during the Coin Toss regardless of the controls selected for the team. Instant Replay (page 23): During exhibition games or practice, you may save up to five plays as highlights, but the computer will not save any plays automatically. Any highlights you save are kept until you replace them by saving new highlights. A View Highlights button has been added to the Exhibition Play screen to make it easier to view highlights from exhibition games or practice. Starting League Games (page 29): When simulating games, you may now select offensive and defensive game plans for human- owned teams after completing the password check. Player Data (page 35): You may now edit the names of players in career leagues as well as in single-season leagues, prior to the first game of any season. Injury Status (page 36): Players who receive career ending injuries are no longer kept on the roster until the end of the season. These players immediately retire. The retirement of the injured player is announced on the Team News screen. If the player was in an assigned slot, you will need to replace him before your team's next game. Trading (page 36): The Select team to trade with dialog box has been modified to show only those teams who are interested in the player you are offering. Play Sources (page 42): Teams no longer have separate league and exhibition playbooks. All plays and game plans you create are saved in the team playbook and are accessible for that team from both the Exhibition Play screen and the Team News screen. In addition, any team may use plays/game plans from any other team, although they cannot modify them. (You can, however, make changes to those files and save them to another filename.) League plays and game plans from previous versions of Front Page Sports: Football may be loaded but not modified. Exhibition files may be loaded and modified by the team that created them. TECHNICAL TIPS Joystick control: Some users have had difficulty using the joystick on the Playcalling screen, particularly on computers running at 50MHz and faster. To correct this problem, we have revised our joystick calibration routine, which is available by pressing the J key. If you are still having difficulty, we have also activated keyboard and mouse control in the Playcalling screen. The availability of mouse/keyboard are as follows: In Joystick 1 (or 2) vs. Computer games, Joystick 1 (or 2) may also use Keyboard 1 and Mouse. In Joystick 1 (or 2) vs. Keyboard games, Joystick 1 (or 2) may also use Keyboard 2 and Mouse. In Joystick 1 vs, Joystick 2 games, the Home team may also use Keyboard 1. The Visiting team may also use Keyboard 2 and Mouse. Keyboard 1 is the standard keyboard layout shown in the Quick Reference Card. In addition, the + key on the numeric keypad may be used as Button B. Keyboard 2 uses the following keys: w = up f = Button A a = left d = right g = Button B. x = down To Remove Front Page Sports: Football from your hard drive: Because of the large number of subdirectories used by Front Page Sports: Football, some users have asked for a utility to remove it from their hard drive. This is included as UNINSTAL.EXE. This program is installed in the Football directory on your hard drive. To use it, type UNINSTAL at the FOOTBALL prompt. Hard disk space: During league play, you need to have free space available on your hard drive for highlights. The amount of free space needed varies with the size of your league. In a 28-team league, you will need at least 1.2Mb (and we recommend about 4 to 5Mb). If you do not have enough space, the program may not be able to save highlights from all simulated games, save statistics, etc. The program will warn you if there is not enough memory after the introductory sequence is complete. Game plans for computer teams: Users have asked if the computer teams always use the OFF.PLN and DEF.PLN as their offensive and defensive game plans. Generally, computer teams select their game plan from the Stock game plans in accordance to their team personalities. Teams that have a Pass Aggressive offensive personality will select one of the Pass Aggressive offensive game plans. OFF.PLN and DEF.PLN are only used by the computer in QuickStart exhibition games. I. INSTALLATION NOTES Hard Drive Space Requirement Prior to the installation of Front Page Sports: Football, you must have at least 12Mb of free space on your hard disk to enable the decompression of the game files. Once installed, Front Page Sports: Football will take up 8Mb of space on your hard drive, as described in the manual. Users of disk compression utilities, such as Stacker or SuperStor, will require a minimum of 17Mb of free storage space during the installation procedure and possibly as much as 22Mb free, depend- ing upon the hardware/software configuration of the system. After installation, the program will occupy approximately 11Mb of hard disk space. Each additional league created will increase the amount of hard disk storage used by the program. Hard Disk Controller Cards with Memory Cache Disk Caching Utilities If you are using either of the caching systems listed above, you may experience some difficulties in running the program after installation. If problems do occur, we suggest you try reinstall- ing the program with the caching systems disabled during the installation process. Front Page Sports:Football should run with caching active after installation is complete. As an alternative to disabling caching, you may also try using the following Manual Installation Procedure. Manual Installation Procedure If you are experiencing problems with the Front Page Sports: Football INSTALL program, the following instructions will allow you to manually copy the game to your hard disk drive. NOTE: The following instructions should be used only as a last resort. Try creating a Football Boot Disk first. Start the INSTALL utility and choose the "Make bootable floppy disk" option. After creating the Boot Disk, reboot your computer and run the Football INSTALL program. If the INSTALL program continues to fail, use these directions to manually copy the game to your com- puter's hard disk drive. 1) Check your hard disk drive to confirm that you have at least 12Mb of disk space available (12Mb or more if you are using a disk compression utility such as Stacker). Run the "CHKDSK" utility to verify "bytes available on disk". 2) Create a DYNAMIX directory on your hard disk's root directory and a FOOTBALL subdirectory under in that DYNAMIX directory. Copy all the files from each disk into the \DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL subdirectory. 3) Go to the \DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL directory on your hard drive. 4) From the \DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL directory, type in the following commands: MD XTAPES MD LTAPES MD TEAM MD PB IMPORTANT: PLEASE MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THE "SPACE AND THE PERIOD" AT THE END OF THE NEXT COMMAND. 5) Now type: UNCHUNK RESOURCE.000 . NOTE: This statement assumes you are installing your game on your C drive. If you are installing on a different drive, then substitute the appropriate letter of your drive for the C: in the above statement. IMPORTANT: PLEASE MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THE "SPACE AND THE PERIOD" AT THE END OF THE NEXT COMMAND. 6) Use UNCHUNK again on the remaining files by typing the following commands: UNCHUNK RESOURCE.001 . UNCHUNK RESOURCE.002 . (And, if you have the 5.25-inch version, also type:) UNCHUNK RESOURCE.003 . NOTE: Be sure to UNCHUNK these resource files in numerical order. If you make a mistake, or if the UNCHUNKed files are in the wrong order, you will need to erase all of the files from the \DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL subdirectory and follow steps 2 through 5 again. Each command will take several minutes to complete. Wait until the computer is completed with each operation before typing each new line. 7) After all resource files have been UNCHUNKed, run the INSTALL program from the \DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL subdirectory by typing INSTALL at the FOOTBALL prompt. Check to confirm that the sound and music settings are correct. Choose "ACCEPT THESE CHOICES" from the options in the program. Follow all other prompts as they appear. 8) Exit the INSTALL program and try running Football. If the game works correctly, delete all resource files (RESOURCE.000- 002 for 3.5 inch disk version or RESOURCE.000-003 for 5.25 inch version). Consult your DOS manual for information on how to accomplish this step if you need further assistance. If you continue to experience any problems, or if you have any questions concerning any of the above steps, our technical support team will be more than happy to assist you. II. SOUND CARD NOTES Sound Blaster Users without Extended Memory If you are using a SoundBlaster card on a machine that does not have extended memory, you must have 590,000 bytes of free RAM. To check this, use the DOS command MEM, and look for the "Largest Executable Program Size:". Pro Audio Spectrum Users using Boot Disks If you are using the Pro Audio Spectrum card and a Boot Disk created by the INSTALL program, you may need to add the following line to the CONFIG.SYS file on the Boot Disk: DEVICE (or DEVICEHIGH)=C:\PROAUDIO\MVSOUND.SYS Gravis Ultra Sound Users If you are using the Gravis Ultra Sound card and are experiencing problems with digitized sounds during League Games, Exhibition Games, or in Practice Mode, run the INSTALL program again and select "AdLib" as your sound card choice. If you have both the Gravis Ultra Sound card and a Joystick Con- troller Card (or "Game Card"), you must plug the joystick into the joystick controller card for proper joystick response. Version 1.00 Release Notes "Subdirectory" in the following notes refers to the hard drive subdi- rectory where Front Page Sports: Football is located. If you followed the installation procedure and made no changes, this directory will be C:\DYNAMIX\FOOTBALL. Files that are not specifically identifed as being in a subdirectory can be assumed to be in this subdirectory. I. GAME PLANS Stock Game Plans We have included 36 offensive and 12 defensive game plans. You may use these during games or as the basis for your own custom game plans. These are located in the STOCK\STOCKPLN subdirectory. The stock game plans are of six general types, listed down the left side of the table. The numbers in the table complete the filename for that game plan. For example, all offensive stock plans are named STKOFF??.PLN. The first Pass - Aggressive plan is 01, so the filename would be STKOFF01.PLN. Offense: Defense: STKOFF??.PLN STKDEF??.PLN Pass - Aggressive 01 07 13 19 25 31 01 07 Pass - Balanced 02 08 14 20 26 32 02 08 Pass - Conservative 03 09 15 21 27 33 03 09 Run - Aggressive 04 10 16 22 28 34 04 10 Run - Balanced 05 11 17 23 29 35 05 11 Run - Conservative 06 12 18 24 30 36 06 12 QuickStart Default Game Plans When you start a QuickStart Exhibition game, the program automatic- ally selects OFF.PLN as the offensive game plan for both teams, and DEF.PLN as the defensive game plan for both teams. You may, if you wish, create a custom game plan and save it as OFF.PLN or DEF.PLN in the main FOOTBALL directory. II. TRADING FILES There are some types of files you might like to trade with others who have purchased Front Page Sports: Football -- Highlights, Leagues, and Exhibition Plays or Game Plans. Highlights Highlights are kept in the XTAPES and LTAPES subdirectories. XTAPES contains highlights that you have saved in Practice or Exhibition games. LTAPES holds highlights from League games. The Highlights files are named VCR.1, VCR.2, VCR.3, VCR.4, and VCR.5, corresponding to the slot they are saved into on the Save High- lights dialog box. If you want to copy highlights of a League game, go to the Box Score for that game and Show Highlights first. This puts the high- lights for that game into the VCR.* files. To give highlights to a friend, copy the VCR.? file for the highlight into your friend's XTAPES directory. You may view them by going to Practice from the Play Editor. EXAMPLE: To copy the third highlight in your Exhibition highlights directory to a floppy disk, change to the XTAPES directory and type: COPY VCR.3 A: <Enter> Leagues All files associated with a league are automatically created with the same eight-character filename that you typed in when you orig- inally created the league, so to copy all the files you need, just type COPY <filename>.*. EXAMPLE: To copy a league named MYLEAGUE to a floppy disk, change to the directory that contains the league and type: COPY MYLEAGUE.* A: <Enter> NOTE: This copies only league and team data and all players and statistics, not plays or game plans. Exhibition Plays/Game Plans When you save a play, it is normally saved to the TEAM subdirec- tory. If you want to give a play or plan you've designed to a friend, you can use the normal DOS command to copy it. You can also use the COPY command to copy game plans. Inside each game plan, the plays are listed by their filename, including the path relative to where the game plan is saved. If you copy a game plan to a friend's hard drive, make sure that you put it into the same subdirectory that it appeared on your hard drive, AND make sure to copy any custom plays in the game plan to the same subdi- rectory in which they appeared on your hard drive. III. ADDITIONAL COMMAND KEYS Two command keys have been added for use during games. <O> forces the camera to stay behind the offense. <D> forces the camera to stay be- hind the defense. Front Page Sports: Football Copyright (c) 1992 Dynamix, Inc.