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PC Gamer (Italian) 44
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PC Gamer IT CD 44 2-2.iso
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DRAKAN
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ReadMe.txt
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1999-05-29
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Drakan: Order of the Flame(tm)
Single Player Demo Version
(c) Copyright 1999 Psygnosis, Ltd. and Developed by Surreal Software, Inc.
Drakan Order of the Flame, Psygnosis and the Psygnosis logo
are (tm) or « of Psygnosis, Ltd.
For the latest Drakan information, go to http://www.drakan-game.com
Have problems installing or running Drakan? Check for the latest fixes and
discussions with other users on the Drakan Forums at:
http://www.drakan.net OR http://drakan.telefragged.com
******************************************************************
1. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
2. INSTALLATION
3. DIRECTX
4. 3D HARDWARE
5. STARTING THE GAME
6. GAME OPTIONS AND CONTROLS
7. TROUBLESHOOTING
8. KNOWN ISSUES
9. CREDITS
******************************************************************
1. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Pentium 166 or equivalent (Pentium II 233 recommended)
- 4MB (or greater) Direct3D compatible video card
- 32MB RAM
- Windows 95/98
- DIRECTX 6.1
- 100MB hard drive space
******************************************************************
2. INSTALLATION
Simply double-click SETUP to begin the installation. The Drakan
installation program will allow you to choose where to install it
on your hard drive.
******************************************************************
3. DIRECTX
You'll need Microsoft DirectX 6.1 or higher in order to run this demo.
You can download it from Microsoft
(http://www.microsoft.com/directx/download.asp),
or from a variety of other sources. Make sure you have it installed
prior to running the Drakan demo.
******************************************************************
4. 3D HARDWARE
Drakan requires a Direct 3D compatible video card or an add-on 3D
accelerator card. Before installing Drakan onto your hard drive,
it is recommended that you ensure that you have installed the latest
drivers for your 3D accelerator card. Please go to the website of your
card's manufacturer, and download and install the latest drivers for
your particular card. Updating drivers often resolves many issues even
before installation, so we strongly suggest keeping your video driver
current. Driver fixes can be most up-to-date if you download "reference"
drivers from the 3D chip manufacturer:
+ For Nvidia Riva128, we suggest obtaining the reference driver from
http://www.nvidia.com, version 337 and above.
+ Nvidia TNT-based cards work best with "Detonator" reference drivers.
These are available from http://www.nvidia.com.
+ For 3Dfx-based cards, reference driver also work well and can be
downloaded from http://www.3dfx.com For Voodoo 1, download a driver
using D3D version 2.16 or higher. For Voodoo 2, download a driver
using D3D version 2.18 or higher.
******************************************************************
5. STARTING THE GAME
When the copy procedure and installation is complete,
you may play the game, by double-clicking on the desktop icon,
or by running Drakan from the Start Menu. Hit the Start button,
then go to Programs, Psygnosis, then Drakan Demo. The first
time you run Drakan on your computer, an Options Dialog box will
come up which lets you select which 3D accelerator and sound card
you want Drakan to use. Unless you have more than one of these,
it is recommended that you use the default settings. Here you
may also change some basic 3D graphics and sound options. Click
OK to play Drakan. To access this Options Dialog in the future,
select Drakan Engine Options from the Start Menu.
Once you're inside the program, you should see a main menu with
several gems. These represent the various menu items. Multiplayer
play is not available in the Demo version.
To configure the Drakan Demo to suit your needs, read the GAME
OPTIONS section below. When you're ready to begin a new game,
just click the central "New Game" gem from the main menu.
******************************************************************
6. GAME OPTIONS AND CONTROLS
The Drakan Demo options can be accessed by starting the game, then
clicking the gem labeled "Options" from the main menu. It is divided
into four sub-sections:
COMMANDS
Here you can customize all of Drakan's in-game functions, and the
buttons or keys they correspond to. The basic defaults are as follows:
Forward E or Up Arrow
Backward D or Down Arrow
Strafe Left S or Left Arrow
Strafe Right F or Right Arrow
Descend / Crouch G or Right Control
Ascend / Jump T or Right Shift
Sneak Left Shift or Keypad 0
Directional Control Move Mouse
Primary Attack Left Mouse Button
Secondary Attack A or Middle Mouse Button or Keypad 1
Inventory End or I
Call / Mount Dragon /
Activate / Use Enter or Spacebar
Freelook Right Mouse Button
Use Health Potion H
Next Weapon ] or MouseWheel Down
Prev Weapon [ or MouseWheel Up
Map Screen Tab
Quicksave Q
Quickload L
Main Menu/Pause ESCAPE
Save Game Screen F2
Load Game Screen F3
Save Screen Shot F5
CONTROLS
Here you may configure miscellaneous options, such as:
Controller Sensitivity: This adjusts the responsiveness of your mouse,
joystick, or gamepad device. Slide it to the left to decrease, or
the right to increase the sensitivity.
Enable Joystick / Gamepad: This toggle will allow you to use a joystick
or a gamepad to control Drakan.
Reverse Controller Y-Axis: Checking this box makes it so when you pull
back on the controller, your view is aimed down. Pushing it forward
tilts your view up. This is opposite of the game default.
Always Freelook with Rynn: This is similar to the +mlook of other titles.
It is a fulltime mouselook mode, wherein you can consistently aim Rynn's
view in any direction without holding down a key.
Automatic Dragon Mount: Toggling this on allows Rynn to hop on Arokh as
soon as you get close enough to him. Toggling it off will require you to
press the "Dragon Action" key to mount Arokh.
GRAPHICS
Many of the below settings can also be accessed from the Engine settings
dialog which pops up the first time you run the Drakan Demo. But to change
these within the game interface, just click the 'Graphics' gem from within
the options menu.
You'll see a list of the below items:
Maximum Fog Distance: This is a percentage value which controls your
viewing distance. Reducing this number can speed up your performance,
at the cost of visibility into the distance.
Brightness / Gamma: This controls the amount of gamma correction
(light level) in Drakan. Use the slider to adjust your brightness.
Some display devices do not support brightness settings, so this
option may be disabled.
Resolution: This sets the screen resolution that Drakan runs at.
Simply click to cycle through your available resolutions.
Realtime Shadow Quality: This controls the game's real time shadows.
If you're having performance problems, you might want to try setting
this to "Rynn Only" or to "None". This can help performance
some, though other creatures will no longer cast shadows.
Amount of Dynamic Lights: This scales the number of lights that affect
the characters in the game. As usual, setting this to fewer lights will
lessen the impact on performance.
Texture Filtering: This setting represents the type of texture-
filtering Drakan will run. The setting should be left on Bilinear for
most hardware.
Detail Textures: Enabling detail-textures allows the Drakan engine to
overlay the low-resolution textures with sharper ones, when you get
very close to them. This option is only supported on newer hardware
like 3Dfx Voodoo 2 and Nvidia TNT.
Anti-aliasing: This is the 'smoothing' effect which 3D cards place
on in-game textures. Only some cards support this so it will be
disabled if your card does not. Using this feature will usually
slow performance.
Lens Flare Effects: The Lens Flare is another special effect which
appears when you look into the sun or use some weapons. Turning it
off may save resources on a slower machine.
Weather Effects: These are the various weather states in the game.
You may enable or disable them. Disabling them will increase performance.
Text Adjustment: If you have a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo Rush card, select
"Shifted" to clear up text rendering. Drakan should detect if you have
a card with this problem.
AUDIO
Here you may alter the volume of in-game sounds and background music.
Use the sliders to adjust volume levels. You may disable (zero volume)
music to increase performance.
******************************************************************
7. TROUBLESHOOTING
Problem: Slow frame rate or the game stalls briefly.
Solution: Changing the following settings will improve your performance.
Under the Graphics Options and Drakan Engine Options Dialog: turn off
shadows, set texture quality to low, move in the fog distance, disable
music, 3D sound buffers, weather effects, and decrease the resolution.
Problem: The game just drops out when it is run or the textures appear
corrupted during the game.
Solution: This problem is most likely caused by the desktop display being
set to 24 or 32-bit color. Switch the desktop to 16-bit color before
running Drakan (from the Display Control panel). This problem will be
fixed in the final release.
Problem: When the camera goes underwater or when some weapons explode,
the screen appears solid blue (opaque) and I can't see anything! Also,
instead of fading, the game pops to black.
Solution: There is a bug in your 3D card driver, you need to download
the latest version or install the reference drivers. If this does not help,
you can disable full-screen color filters in the graphics options screen.
Problem: Shadows look incorrect, text in the main interface is corrupted,
or trees have a strange halo surrounding the branches.
Solution: There is a bug in your 3D card driver, you need to download
the latest version or install the reference driver for your particular
card model. To find out what model you have, go to the Windows Display
control panel under Settings tab, click the Advanced button, then
choose the Adapter tab.
Problem: Sound breaks up and is crackling or hissing.
Solution: Some older sound cards cannot handle the amount of data being
processed by Drakan. Try adjusting some graphics settings to improve the
game's performance so that more processing time can be spent on sounds.
If this does not help, you may need to upgrade your sound card to a newer
model. You may also need to upgrade to a newer versions of your sound card
driver from the manufacturer's web site.
Problem: My 3Dfx Voodoo 1 card sometimes has strange garbage about 1/3
of the way down the screen and often textures become corrupted.
Solution: Setting the texture quality to low may help lessen this problem.
To reduce the texture quality, go to "Drakan Engine Options" from the Start
Menu and select the Graphics tab. Change the texture quality to a lower
setting.
******************************************************************
8. KNOWN ISSUES
(these will be fixed in the final version).
+ Some machines may experience stalls or jerking when sound effects load during
the game.
+ After a period of time on some sound cards, sounds may become garbled or drop out.
You may need to restart Drakan to fix this problem or update your sound driver.
+ Changing the display color-depth during a game may corrupt the background
image.
+ The AI enemies will sometimes penetrate objects or walls in the game.
+ When controller sensitivity is high, the camera will pop and flail in a
disorienting way when the player walks near objects.
+ Starting the game from a 24 or 32-bit desktop may cause the game to drop out
immediately after it is started.
+ Antialiasing does not work on most of the 3D cards out there. It causes slow
performance and graphical glitches.
******************************************************************
9. CREDITS
---- Surreal Software ----
Lead Programmer: Stuart Denman
Lead Designer: Alan Patmore
Lead Artist: Mike Nichols
Lead Animator: Mel Guymon
Internal Production: Nick Radovich
Programming: Tim Ebling
Armen Levonian
Shaun Leach
Satish Bhatti
Tom Vykruta
Greg Alt
Design: Todd Clineschmidt
Duncan
John Whitmore
Art/Animation: Hugh Jamieson
Hans Piwenitsky
Heron Prior
Louise Smith
Joe Olson
Ben Olson
Tom Byrne
Scott Cummings
Sound Design: Boyd Post
Nick Radovich
Clatter and Dinn
Ear Force
Pro-Motions
Music: B.L.A.S.T.
Tim Ebling
Additional Design: John McWilliams
Isaac Barry
---- Psygnosis ----
Producer: Stephen Patterson
Associate Producer: Tami Gabay
Central Product Development Manager: Rick Naylor
Public Relations Manager: Dana Oertell
US Product Marketing Manager: Doug Sherman