Computer Buyer 1997 August

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Computer Buyer 1997 August / Oasis demo.iso / Games / Terra / TERACIDE / README.TXT < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1997-04-23 | 15KB | 348 lines

Terracide PC Zone Demo Version (c) 1997 Eidos Interactive. Produced by Simis Developments. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [PLOT] After the mass exodus from Earth to form the galaxy-wide Terran colonies of the New Age, the little bluish-green planet which was the source of all human life began, understandably, to be ignored. The colonists, seeking out new homes in planets undreamt of by those left behind, made their bases in strange, beautiful - but unforgiving worlds. However, the harsh winds and extreme temperatures of these planets altered them, mutated them. They were forced to use machines to enhance their senses, purely to survive. Now, these colonists are returning home, to reclaim their birthright. But they have changed. Speeding through the solar system towards Earth is a flotilla of spaceships, harbouring deadly crews of robots, mutated humans, semi-alien lifeforms. Their brute force is too much for the massed Terran forces; only a single, one-man ship could hope to slip through their scanners and infiltrate their craft to destroy them from within. That craft is yours. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [KEYS] A - accelerate Z - reverse/decelerate Up arrow-key - dive Down arrow-key - climb Left arrow-key - turn left. Right arrow-key - turn right. Q or Enter - fire current weapon (centrally mounted) [or joystick for all of the above] X - fire left mounted weapon C - fire right mounted weapon F - flare (unlimited, but uses lots of energy) Space - strafe (hold down and use direction keys/joystick) [or joystick with coolie hat] Delete - strafe left Page Down - strafe right Home - strafe up End - strafe down You can reconfigure these keys within the game, should you wish. (press ALT to bring up the menus to do so.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1-7 - weapon select (repeated keypresses if needed) Shift + 1-7 - select right weapon Ctrl + 1-7 - select left weapon 0 - demount weapon G - zoom in+out according to current player view V - external camera views / on keypad- toggles shield/munition/charge indicator on HUD. * on keypad- toggles weapons indicator on HUD. Alt - pause/bring up Windows menus ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [HUD INFORMATION] On the HUD you can find the following: Munitions indicator - Munitions are the actual amount of bullets you have - all of the weapons use a shared munitions store. More powerful guns use more munitions, and need to be kept stocked up by picking up munitions barrels. You start with no munitions and a maximum of one bar on the HUD. Shield indicator - The state of your ship's hull, decreased by radiation, electricity and enemy fire. Restore it by picking up armour pickups. Your maximum armour can be increased by finding the right pickup. This starts off green (at maximum), and the skullÆs head slowly turns red, and then black. Once entirely black, youÆre dead. Charge indicator - The amount of power left in your gun-launching mechanism. This is drained each time you fire a weapon, and then recharges gradually to full power again. This means that firing large amounts of rapid-fire projectiles stops you firing so fast after a while, as the charge struggles to regenerate. On the HUD, this works exactly the same as the munitions indicator, except you start with one full bar of charge. You can fire the photon weapons with charge alone, but all the other weapons need some amount of munitions to fire. Weapon type indicators- which of the 20 weapons you currently have. Each of the weapon type icons have 3 lights above it, corresponding to the normal, rapid-fire, and scatter-fire versions of the guns. If the light is off, then this means you do not have the corresponding gun. If the light is red, it means you have the gun but it is not currently mounted. If the light is green, then it means the gun is mounted on the central gun mounting. Conversely, if the light is shaped like a left arrow or a right arrow, it means the gun is mounted on the left or right gun mount. Pickup indicator - appears when your ship is close to a pickup, and is made up of two sets of concentric circles. When your ship is close enough to the centre of both of them (ie close enough to the pickup in 3D space), the pickup will begin beaming aboard your ship. The lefthand bar of the two shows the time left until the pickup is succesfully grabbed. However, the righthand bar shows the time until the pickup explodes. External force indicator - this appears onscreen when your ship is being affected by either wind or gravity. Compass - which direction you're facing (this is a 3-dimensional heading cube.) N, E, S, W are North, East, South, and West, U stands for æUpÆ and D for æDownÆ. Pickups ------- These are spinning objects left by destroyed enemies or found around the ships may be weapons, armour, munitions, mounts or pickups to increse your maximum capabilities. Fly close to one and your proximity radar will show you its exact location. Hover close by and the pickup will be teleported inside your ship. Pickups explode a few seconds after being issued from enemies, so if you don't get to them quickly, you'll miss out. The following pickups are available in the game. Weapons : Extra weapons. Armour : Repairs any damage caused to your ship. Munitions : Extra munitions that are required to fire non-photon guns. Weapon Mounts : Extra weapon mounts to enable more weapons to be mounted at one time. You start the game with a single, central gun mount. Two more can be added to the left and right, allowing you to fire three weapons at once. You can add an extra mount by finding a gun mount pickup. When you have more than one mount, you can swap weapons betweent them by using the gun mount keys. Waypoints --------- If you find yourself unsure of where youÆre going, you can press the æWÆ key to lay a waypoint. This is a spinning object which will stay in place no matter where you go, so you can tell if youÆve been in the area before when you return there. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [TECHNICAL HELP] Whilst Terracide is designed to run as simply and easily as possible, the wealth of new options afforded by new 3D accelerators and MMX chips means configuring the game to run optimally on your system can be a little complex. DirectX Installation -------------------- You will need version 3.0a of DirectX to run Terracide on your machine. This is MicrosoftÆs system which ensures Terracide will run on all machines, whether unaccelerated, MMX accelerated, or 3D accelerated, and you should install the latest version of DirectX(V3.0a) over any earlier versions you have on your machine. For the MMX version of Terracide, it is important to remember to install the MMX option when installing DirectX. NB - if your MMX doesn't appear to work first time, try reinstalling DirectX and _not_ ticking the MMX box! DirectX Troubleshooting ----------------------- If, when you first try to run Terracide, you find an error message saying æunable to initialise DirectXÆ, or you find that your graphics card is running incorrectly (glitching, excessive slowdown..), then itÆs strongly suggested that you contact your hardware manufacturer or use the Internet to download the latest drivers for your graphics card. You should find the latest links to working drivers via the Terracide website at: http://www.eidosinteractive.com/terracide/terracide.html Please note that the release version of Terracide will include a drivers directory with the latest drivers, including 3D card drivers, allowing you to run Terracide without any trouble. If you do find yourself with an 'unable to initialise DirectX' message when you try to run Terracide, please run the dxtest.exe program provided. This will tell you whether you have DirectX drivers installed and which version of them are working - you can also test a spinning cube running under DirectX. First-time graphics settings ---------------------------- When you first run Terracide, if you have a 3D accelerator card and Terracide can detect it, then Terracide will enquire whether to attempt to use this or run in non-accelerated mode. If you have an MMX chip, Terracide will initially start up unaccelerated, and you can change to the MMX version by going to the 'Graphics Configuration' menu and picking the MMX option. - The initial resolution for the unaccelerated version of Terracide is 320x200. However, if your graphics card is unable to run in this resolution, Terracide will then default to 640x480. - The 3D accelerated version of Terracide will start at a resolution of 640x480 with all of the rendering and filtering capabilities enabled, although this may depend on specific 3D card capabilities. Any of the initial options can be changed during the game, by using the 'Graphics Configuration' menu. These options will then be saved on exit and used in future games of Terracide, so you will only have to configure your options once! If at any stage a configuration is obtained that does not work properly, and cannot be rectified using the configuration option, then deletion of the 'Teracide.cfg' file from your 'Windows/' directory will ensure that Terracide starts with its initial settings the next time it is run. Increased speed using bordering ------------------------------- Pressing the æ-æ button will reduce the size of the rendered screen within the window. Pressing æ+Æ will then increase the screen size again. Changes occur in 1/8ths of the window size and the minimum width is an1/8th of the window size. This is particularly useful if you have a graphics card which is unable to run below a certain resolution and you want Terracide to run faster. NB: The best alternative way to gain an increase in frame rate is to turn the HUD off in the options menu. Terracide Graphics Configuration Menu ------------------------------------- The graphics configuration menu is accessed through the 'Game menu', Graphics Configuration option. This menu is used to control the detail levels deciding how fast and with how much detail the game runs. The configuration options are grouped into six options, click on a tab to select the page of options associated with it. The tabs available are: Screen includes resolution, colours and software/3D card options. Texture controls various detailed texturing options. Advanced Filtering options controlling bi-linear filtering (smoothness.) Details controls levels of detail of explosions and similar features. Startup Intro video disable, and special startup options. When you have changed the options required, click on OK to apply them. Most will come into effect immediately. Clicking CANCEL will resume without any changes. We should emphasise that, in the majority of cases, Terracide will start with the correct configuration. But if you wish, you can reconfigure any part of Terracide to allow faster or more efficient running. A conventional Terracide user should only have to use the Screen and possibly the Details and Startup menus, but the more technically minded can play with any of the more complex graphics features on Terracide. Screen ------ This is the most important menu, and allows you to switch resolutions and colour usage. When you first run Terracide, you should go to this menu to decide which resolution is best for your machine. Driver Allows you to switch between unaccelerated, MMX, and hardware modes. Fullscreen Controls whether the game runs fullscreen or in a window. Video Modes Lists the resolutions available to run Terracide in. The lower the resolution, the faster Terracide will run. Higher resolutions may require you to select a lower texture detail level from the Texture menu. Colour Detail Options for the amount of colours being used in the game when running Terracide unaccelerated - hi-colour is recommended. Texture ------- This is a detailed menu dealing with texturing - generally this should only be needed by the more technically-minded user. Listed below are the most important options. Texture Detail This is especially necessary if your graphics card has a limited amount of memory on it. This option may also be required if running at high screen resolutions. Gouraud Shading Light levels are shaded smoothly when enabled - turning this off may lose visual quality but may increase speed considerably. Filtering Smooths textures when they are close to the viewer - turning this off may speed things up by a larger margin. This should be set off for the unaccelerated version. Dithering Improves colour resolution when smooth light shading is enabled - turning both this and gouraud shading off may increase frame rate significantly. Video memory/system memory - when playing the unaccelerated version of Terracide, objects can be drawn directly to the video memory on the video card, or to normal system memory. Using video memory is generally faster, especially when running in a window which has been maximised, but on some video cards system memory may be faster. Therefore, itÆs worth testing both. Details ------- Explosions - This defaults to minimal - on faster machines increase the detail for a spectacular time! Particles - with this you can toggle the coloured nature or the existance of particles given off by rocket and your shipÆs engines. Brightness - this governs how bright your screen is, and defaults to maximum brightness. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- NB - Terracide has special command switches for two of the 3D graphics cards - right click on the Terracide icon, go to 'Properties' and add the command line switch: '-FDRENDITION' if your 3D graphics card uses a Rendition chip. '-FDMATROX' if you have a 3D-accelerated Matrox graphics card. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [END] Thanks for checking out this demo, and watch out for the game itself. Yours, The "Terracide" Team.