Shogo: Mobile Armor Division Version 2.2 Readme Copyright 1998 Monolith Productions, Inc. ****************************************************************** This document contains valuable information about running Shogo on your PC hardware. For more information about gameplay and general Shogo information, please refer the Shogo Online Manual. To access the Online Manual, click the Help button on the Shogo Launcher, or click Start...Programs...Monolith Games...Shogo...Shogo Online Manual. For the most recent information about Shogo Multiplayer Gaming be sure to check out the Shogo website at www.shogo-mad.com ****************************************************************** 1. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 2. INSTALLATION 3. DIRECTX6 4. DIRECT3D 5. SHOGO LAUNCHER 6. 3D VIDEO HARDWARE 7. SOUND CARDS AND IMA 8. DISPLAY DETAIL SETTINGS 9. PERFORMANCE TUNING 10. TROUBLESHOOTING ****************************************************************** 1. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS - Pentium 166 or equivalent (Pentium II Recommended) - Pentium 233 or equivalent for software rendering - 4MB (or greater) D3D compatible video card recommended - 32MB RAM - Windows95/98 - DIRECTX6.0 (or higher) ****************************************************************** 2. INSTALLATION If you have autoplay enabled, just place the Shogo CD into your CD-ROM drive and wait for the onscreen prompts. If you do not have autoplay enabled, run setup.exe from the root directory of the Shogo CD. The Shogo CD must be in your CD-ROM drive in order to play Shogo in Single Player mode. The CD is not required to play Shogo in Multiplayer mode. ****************************************************************** 3. DIRECTX6 DirectX6.0 (or higher) is required to play Shogo. DirextX 6.1 is included on this Shogo CD and will be installed automatically during a Normal or Minimum install of Shogo. You can also choose to install DirectX 6.1 through the Custom install option. In most cases DirectX will install new video and audio drivers for your system. If you have not updated your drivers for your video or audio hardware recently, we strongly suggest that you update your drivers during the DirectX installation. Although you may not be prompted for a restart after installing DirectX6.1, we HIGHLY recommend that you restart your computer anyway. ****************************************************************** 4. DIRECT3D Shogo supports Microsoft's Direct3D 3D Hardware API. Direct3D provides excellent performance and hardware support for most 3D video cards. However, you may need to install the most recent video drivers for your 2D/3D hardware to get the best performance from Shogo. For links to the most recent video and audio drivers, please check the Shogo Online Manual, or visit the Monolith drivers page at drivers.lith.com For information on a specific video card (including links), see the 3D HARDWARE section in this readme. For information on sound cards, 3D sound, DirectSound3D, Creative Lab's EAX and Aureal's A3D, see the SOUND CARDS & IMA section of this readme. ****************************************************************** 5. SHOGO LAUNCHER 5.1 Launch Shogo Button Click Launch to start Shogo. The first time you run Shogo, you will be prompted to select a detail level. This detail setting will scale the content in Shogo to increase performance or increase visual quality. You can change this detail setting at any time during the game by selecting Options...Display from the in-game menus. Medium detail is the default setting, and is also a good choice for most systems. The detail settings are explained in depth in the section on DISPLAY DETAIL SETTTINGS in this readme. 5.2 Multiplayer Button Click the Multiplayer button to start the Shogo multiplayer wizard. For details on setting up multiplayer games, refer to the Multiplayer section of the Online Manual. 5.3 Display... Button The first time you run Shogo, we strongly suggest that you click the Display button in the Shogo launch box. This will test your video drivers to ensure DirectX6 compatibility. Because Shogo checks the DirectX status of your video card(s) when you click Display, if you do not have DX6 compatible video drivers, you may encounter problems. Shogo uses the same routine to initialize your video card when you click Launch, but by clicking Display you can see the results. If you encounter problems after clicking Display (this is rare) please refer to the TROUBLE SHOOTING section of this readme. 5.3.1 Choose your video card Display allows you to choose your display device (e.g., the video card) that you want to use to play Shogo. Only DirectX6 compatible devices will be displayed in the display window. You can also switch your display device at any time during the game by choosing Options...Display...Change Mode. 5.3.2 LithTech Direct3D Renderer To use 3D hardware acceleration (if you have a Direct3D-compatible 3D video card installed in your computer), choose LithTech Direct3D Renderer in the Renderers window, and then choose your display driver (your video card) in the Displays window. If you are running a 2D/3D video card such as a Riva 128, your card will show up as "Primary Display Driver". If you are running a pass-through card such as a 3DFX-based card, it will be listed below Primary Display Driver as something similar to "3DFX Interactive Voodoo". Not all video cards support 3D hardware acceleration. If you are uncertain about whether your video card has 3D hardware acceleration features, please refer to your card's documentation. For more information about a specific 3D video card, see the 3D VIDEO HARDWARE section of this readme. 5.3.3 LithTech Software Renderer To run Shogo without 3D hardware acceleration, choose LithTech Software Renderer in the Renderers window. Then choose your video card in the Displays window. If you are running the LithTech software renderer on a system with multiple video cards, we strongly suggest choosing your Primary Display Driver (your 2D card) in the Displays window. 5.3.4 LithTech 3DNow! Direct3D Renderer Shogo supports AMD's 3DNow!(TM) technology, which accelerates some 3D graphics operations. If you have an AMD 3DNow! compliant CPU, using this renderer may improve graphics performance when used in conjunction with a 3D hardware accelerator. NOTE: The LithTech 3DNow! Direct3D Renderer is intended for use only in AMD 3DNow! compatible systems. We do not recommend selecting this option with non-AMD CPU's (Intel, Cyrix, etc.) For more information about a specific 3D video card, see the 3D VIDEO HARDWARE section of this readme. 5.3.5 Resolution You can also set your resolution screen size in the Shogo Display Settings. The default resolution for Shogo is 640x480 16bit. Selecting lower resolutions (512x384) may improve performance at the expense of detail. Selecting higher resolutions (800x600, 1024x768) may improve quality at the expense of performance. If you are running the LithTech Software Renderer, we suggest running a low resolution (320x200) first to test the performance on your computer. You can also change the resolution at any time during the game by choosing Options...Display...Change Mode from the in-game menus. 5.4 Customize... Button Use Customize... to add in additional resources and levels for mods, patches and multiplayer. Please visit the Shogo website www.shogo-mad.com for the most up to date information on customizing Shogo. 5.5 Advanced... Button The Advanced Options are designed for advanced users and trouble- shooting only. Some of the advanced options may not be compatible with all hardware. Mixing and matching some advanced options may cause unpredictable results. For the most up to date information on Advanced options, check out the Shogo website www.shogo-mad.com. 3D Cards... Button The 3D Cards button should be used as a reference for the best advanced settings for your particular video card. Note that the cards are listed by chip manufacturer. If you don't know the chip manufacturer of your video card, please check your video card documentation, or check with the manufacturer. 3D Sound... Button The options listed here depend on the audio hardware you have installed on your PC. For more information about 3D Sound, see the SOUND CARDS & IMA section of this readme. Disable Sound This will disable all sound fx in Shogo. Disable music This will disable Shogo's Interactive Music Architecture, or IMA. Some sound cards may have incompatibilities with IMA. Used for troubleshooting only. Disable movies Disables the Monolith Logo and Shogo Intro from playing every time you click Launch. Useful if you want to get right into the action. Disable light mapping Turns off light mapping (a shadow-lighting effect) in all display detail settings. This option is also available through the in-game menus, and is disabled in medium detail mode. Disable fog Disables all atmospheric (not clipping plane) fog. No performance increase or decrease. Strictly subjective, although may be useful on cards that "almost" support table fog. Disable line systems Disables all line systems in Shogo. Line systems are used for tracer fire on many enemy weapons. Unlikely to provide any performance increase, but useful as a troubleshooting item. Disable model full brights Some textures/models in Shogo use a palette technique that makes certain colors always bright, regardless of the surrounding light conditions (e.g., making them "fully bright"). This option is also available through the in-game menus, and is disabled in medium detail mode. Disable DirectX6 commands Use only for troubleshooting. Probably doesn't do what you think it does. Disable Joysticks This will disable all joystick input. Use for troubleshooting. Enable optimized surfaces Optimizes the way 2D surfaces (e.g., ammo, health, armor, crosshair) are drawn. Checking this on AGP cards may provide a performance increase, especially on Intel i740- based cards. This option may cause problems on some 3DFX cards, depending on which drivers are installed. Enable poly gap fixing Fixes noticeable gapping between polygons on some 3D video cards. A MUST for Riva 128 video cards. May slow performance on low-end/older 3D video cards. Not a significant performance decrease on fast 3D cards. Makes everything look "nicer". Enable triple buffering Enables a feature on some video cards that can improve performance. Most AGP video cards benefit from this feature being enabled. However, this may cause lock-ups on some PCI video cards, or video cards that only have 4mb of video memory. Enable mipmap sharpening Sharpens the mipmaps (textures) for some ATI cards. Not really useful for anything other than making the textures look strange on most cards. Enable Software pixel doubling--LithTech Software Renderer ONLY Check this option only when using the LithTech Software Renderer. Useful for simulating low resolutions (320x200, 320x240) on 2D video cards that don't support low resolutions in 16-bit color. If you check this option and have 640x480 16bit selected as your resolution, Shogo will simulate 320x240. Can provide noticeable performance increases at the expense of visual quality. Enable single-pass multi-texturing A feature that can improve performance on some high-end video cards such as the 3DFX Voodoo2 and Voodoo3, nVidia Riva TNT and TNT2, and ATI Rage 128 (there are others as well). This feature is very dependent on drivers, so please make sure you have the most recent drivers for your video card before trying this option. Checking this option on video cards that don't support multi-texturing may cause unpredictable results. Restore factory default settings This restores all configuration settings to the original factory defaults. Resets key configuration, detail level and sound. Useful if you're mucking around with detail settings and you just want things back the way they were. Command-Line Advanced users only. For more information on this feature, visit the Shogo website at www.shogo-mad.com. Always specify these command-line parameters Advanced users only. Checking this box will save anything entered into the command-line box and will always add it to the command line. 5.6 More Games... Button Click the More Games... button to access demos and movies of other Monolith titles. All Monolith titles are available at your local software retailer, or directly through Monolith at www.lith.com 5.7 Help Button Click the Help button to access the Shogo Online Manual. The Online Manual contains more information about playing Shogo. ****************************************************************** 6. 3D VIDEO HARDWARE This section contains specifics on 3D video cards, recommended Shogo settings, and driver information. You can also view this information in the Shogo launcher by clicking Advanced... 3D Cards... For the most up to date information on "Shogo Certified" drivers, please visit our driver website drivers.lith.com If you do not see your 3D video card listed here, please check with the card manufacturer for the most recent Direct3D video drivers. 6.1 3DFX Interactive www.3dfx.com In order to get the best performance from any 3DFX-based card, we STRONGLY recommend that you upgrade to the latest 3DFX reference drivers. We have found that the 3DFX reference drivers work very well under DirectX6. As of our ship date, the latest 3DFX Voodoo-1 and Voodoo2 Reference Drivers are contained in a \3DFX directory on the Shogo CD. You can update your drivers from the CD or, for the most recent 3DFX reference drivers, please check: www.3dfx.com. drivers.lith.com - 3DFX Voodoo1 Recommended Display Settings: -MEDIUM, 8-bit textures Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE - 3DFX VooDoo2 Recommended Display Settings: -HIGH Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable poly gap fixing" in Advanced Launcher for increased visual quality with minimal decrease in performance - 3DFX Voodoo Banshee Recommended Display Settings: -HIGH Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable poly gap fixing" in Advanced Launcher for increased visual quality with minimal decrease in performance -Check "Enable Optimized Surfaces" for a performance increase -Check "Enable Triple Buffer" for a decent performance increase - 3DFX Voodoo3 Recommended Display Settings: -HIGH Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable poly gap fixing" in Advanced Launcher for increased visual quality with minimal decrease in performance -Check "Enable Optimized Surfaces" for a performance increase -Check "Enable Triple Buffer" for a decent performance increase -Run in higher resolutions--this card can support it 6.2 3DLabs www.3dlabs.com/drivers - Permedia2 Works well, although no lightmapping. Recommended Display Settings: -LOW or MEDIUM (lightmapping will automatically be turned off on this card) -Turning on Shadows or Model FullBrights may cause texture corruption/flickering. Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE 6.3 ATI support.atitech.ca/drivers - ATI Rage 128 Please check the ATI website for the most up to date drivers available for this card. Recommended Display Settings: -HIGH Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable poly gap fixing" in Advanced Launcher for increased visual quality with minimal decrease in performance -Check "Enable Optimized Surfaces" for a performance increase -Check "Enable Triple Buffer" for a decent performance increase - Rage Pro AGP 2X Get the most recent drivers available from ATI--they should improve performance on this card dramatically. Recommended Display Settings: -LOW Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable mipmap sharpening" to sharpen textures 6.4 Intel i740 drivers.lith.com - ENABLE OPTIMIZED SURFACES. We have experienced instability on this card when Enable Optimized Surfaces is unchecked. We have also experienced some problems with drivers from various board manufacturers who use the i740 chipset. The Intel Reference Drivers are, in our experience, the most stable drivers. However, Intel does not recommend end-users install these drivers. Check with your card manufacturer for the most recent certified drivers. Recommended Display Settings: -MEDIUM Recommended Advanced Settings: -You must check "Enable Optimized Surfaces" on this card to avoid potential lockups -Check "Enable Triple Buffer" for a decent performance increase -LightMapping slows down this card big time. Disable it for a nice performance boost. 6.5 Matrox www.matrox.com/mgaweb/drivers Please check the Matrox website for drivers.lith.com for the most recently released drivers for all Matrox products. D3D driver support is generally good. - G200 Millennium and Mystique Recommended Display Settings: -MEDIUM or HIGH is running a high-end P2 or P3 Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable Triple Buffer" for a decent performance increase -Check "Enable Optimized Surfaces" for a slight performance increase - Matrox MGA-1064 (Millennium II and Mystique) Recommended Display Settings: -LOW, 8-bit textures Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE - Matrox M3D - You may need to update your drivers through device manager instead of the setup program that comes with the driver set - Shogo detects that this card can't do LightMapping and disables it - May experience texture mipmapping glitches - Chromed models are REALLY slow, so enabling Environment Mapping through the menus is not recommended - Some textures with alpha may draw with erratic transparency Recommended Display Settings: -LOW, 8-bit textures Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE--Shogo detects this card automatically. 6.6 nVidia www.nVidia.com - Riva 128/128ZX Please check the nVidia webpage or drivers.lith.com for the most up to date driver information on this chipset. Recommended Display Settings: -With drivers released after 9-15-98, MEDIUM -With drivers released before 9-15-98, LOW -Running in HIGH or MEDIUM or enabling LightMapping with the currently drivers released before 9-15-98 will result in gray-shaded world polygons. Disabling lightmapping fixes this problem. Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable poly gap fixing" in Advanced Launcher options for all versions of drivers. THIS IS A MUST FOR THIS CARD to remove all polygon seaming issues. -Check "Enable optimized surfaces" for a slight performance increase - Riva TNT Please check the nVidia webpage or drivers.lith.com for the most up to date info on this chipset. CHECK ENABLE TRIPLE BUFFER to cure stuttering during movie playback, as well as some other minor glitches. Recommended Display Settings: -HIGH, 16-bit textures Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Enable poly gap fixing" in Advanced Launcher for increased visual quality with minimal decrease in performance -Check "Enable Optimized Surfaces" for a performance increase -Check "Enable Triple Buffer" for a decent performance increase -Run in higher resolutions--this card can support it - Riva TNT2 Same as the TNT, only faster! 6.7 Rendition www.rendition.com - Rendition V1000 An older card. Recommended Display Settings: -LOW. 512x384 Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE - Rendition V2100/V2200 Works well, supports all features in Shogo. Recommended Display Settings: -LOW, or MEDIUM with Light Mapping set to off for best performance Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE 6.8 S3 www.s3.com - S3 Savage DISABLE FOG! There may be problems with this card and the fog settings in Shogo. Disabling fog will not provide a performance increase or decrease. Recommended Display Settings: -HIGH Recommended Advanced Settings: -Check "Disable Fog" in the advanced options. - Virge (Diamond Stealth 3D Pro 2000, IMagic 3D) - Get the most recent drivers from the S3 site. This board was an OEM video card in many, many PC's. The 3D hardware performance is questionable, but D3D will recognize this card as a 3D hardware accelerator. - runs decent in 320x240 - Lightmapping and screen flash not supported Recommended Display Settings: -LOW, 320x240 Recommended Advanced Settings: -NONE ****************************************************************** 7. SOUND CARDS & IMA In order to get the best and most reliable audio performance in Shogo, we recommend that you download or obtain the latest drivers from your sound card manufacturer. IMA Shogo uses a new Interactive Music Architecture for music playback. Because this technology is very new, you may experience some problems with some sound cards and music playback. Upgrading to the most recent drivers for your sound card usually solves any music playback problems. 3D SOUND Shogo supports a variety of 3D Sound options. The options listed are dependent on what kind of 3D sound (if any) your sound card and computer system supports. To access the 3D SOUND options, in the Shogo Launcher click Advanced... 3D Sound... A list of 3D sound "providers" will be shown along with several other options related to 3D Sound. Each option is explained below. 7.1 Providers The list of providers that you can use in Shogo is dependent on what kind of sound card you have. Shogo autodetects your hardware, so you will only receive those providers that are supported on your system. Here's the current list of providers (note that as newer providers become available in future patches or driver updates, this list may grow): - No 3D sound This option provides panning 3d and volume fades. Maximum performance w/greatest compatibility. - Miles 2D stereo positional audio Uses the Miles Sound System to create some 3D-type sound effects including panning 3d, volume fades and dopplering. Provides enhanced audio w/minor performance hit. - Microsoft DirectSound3D software emulation This option will attempt to emulate DirectSound3D hardware acceleration in software. Potentially a large performance hit. May not be compatible with all sound cards. Fun to play around with this, but not recommended for extended use. - Microsoft DirectSound3D hardware support A generic DirectSound3D provider. If this option is displayed, your sound card supports Directsound3D hardware acceleration. - Microsoft DirectSound3D with Creative Labs EAX(TM) Choose this option if you have a SoundBlaster Live! or PCI 128 from Creative Labs. We recommend that you get the newest Creative drivers when using EAX. This option kicks major ass. - Aureal A3D Interactive(TM) This option will be displayed if you have an A3D compliant sound card (Diamond MX200 or MX300, Turtle Beach Montego or Montego2 to name a few). We recommend that you get the newest drivers for your sound card when using A3D. - RSX 3D Audio from RAD Game Tools This is a software sound system that provides some additional 3D sound enhancements. 7.2 Samples The hardware and software samples tell Shogo how many different sounds you want to mix during gameplay. Some sound cards may support more than 16 Hardware Samples (for example, the Creative Labs SBLive! card supports 32 samples in hardware mixing). Changing the number of samples may affect performance on your system. Reverb This controls the amount of "echo" that you will hear when using some DirectSound3D providers (EAX, for example, provides hardware accelerated reverb). Very High will provide the most echo, Very Low provides the least amount. For specific information about problems you might be having with your sound card, check the TROUBLE SHOOTING section of this readme. For the most up to date information on sound card driver combinations and settings, please visit your sound card manufacturer's website, or visit drivers.lith.com. ****************************************************************** 8. DISPLAY DETAIL SETTINGS Shogo contains several in-game detail settings that will affect performance. You can change these detail settings through the in-game menus by choosing Options...Display. You can also choose Advanced through the in-game menus and tweak each detail setting individually. Once you choose Advanced and change a setting, your detail setting will be displayed as "Advanced". Changing your Detail Setting back to LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH will reset any advanced options. Switching detail settings while in the game will result in a restart of Shogo's renderer, which may take several seconds. LOW A good choice for systems near or at the minimum system requirements. Uses the least amount of texture memory. Turns off just about every detail option available in Shogo. Also the best choice when using the LithTech Software Renderer. MEDIUM A good choice for most systems. Uses less texture memory than high, but keeps most other special effects in place. HIGH Turns up everything in terms of visual look. Recommended only for high-end systems with fast 3D video cards. Uses the most texture memory, but looks the best. ****************************************************************** 9. PERFORMANCE TUNING Game speed and performance are dependent on several different hardware factors. The 3 major factors that affect performance in Shogo: CPU, 3D Video Card, and memory. If you are experiencing slow performance on your system, first try setting the Detail Setting under Options...Display to LOW. This setting will have the biggest single impact on performance. Shogo will default to using 8-bit (LOW) quality sounds unless you chose HIGH the first time you ran Shogo. Changing the Sound Quality to LOW under Options...Sound will save memory and can increase performance. Turning Music to OFF under Options...Sound may also increase performance slightly on slower CPU's. If you've turned everything else off and you're still looking for a couple of extra frames-per-second, set Music to Off. Model FullBrights and Environment Mapping can have a large impact on slower systems. These options are both set to ON when HIGH is selected, but are set to OFF in MEDIUM and LOW. Lightmapping can also slow some systems down. The Intel i740, for example, will see a large performance increase just by setting Lightmapping to OFF. Using 3D Sound has a significant impact on performance, especially on slower systems. If you're running Shogo on a system at or near the minimum system requirements, we recommend setting 3D Sound to "none" under the Advanced menu in the Shogo launcher. For the most recent updates on performance tuning, go to the Shogo website at www.shogo-mad.com ****************************************************************** 10. TROUBLESHOOTING Q: Many of the sounds in Shogo seem to be garbled. What's wrong? A: If you are running Shogo on a 3DFX card, your driver may be stealing some cycles from the bus. Install the latest 3DFX reference drivers located on the Shogo CD. This should cure the problem. Q: I installed DirectX6 during the Shogo installation, but now I can't use my 3D video card to run Shogo. A: This is likely the result of non-DirectX6 compliant video drivers. Please visit drivers.lith.com for the most recent information on drivers for your card. Or, try reinstalling DirectX6 and updating your video drivers when prompted. Q: When I click the Display button in the Shogo launcher, it pauses for a long time, and then nothing happens. What gives? A: Make sure that you have installed DirectX6. If you installed DirectX6, you may not have updated your video drivers. Reinstall DirectX6 and update your video drivers when prompted. Q: I have a joystick plugged into my computer, but Shogo won't recognize it. A: Check the joystick configuration in Windows. Go to Settings... Control Panel...Game Controllers and check to make sure that your joystick is configured correctly. Q: I have a joystick installed, but I can't get it to "feel" right with the Shogo joystick menus. A: See the Joystick.htm file in the \Joystick directory in the c:\games\shogo directory (or wherever you have Shogo installed). This files explains how to properly set up your joystick. Q: I can't switch to some video resolutions that are displayed under Display in the launcher and in the Change Mode option under the in-game Display menu. A: Shogo uses DirectX to query your card about display resolutions. Your driver may be reporting to DirectX that it can display at a certain resolution, even though the hardware does not support it. This is common on many 2D cards when running in software. Q: I can't get my 3D card to work with Shogo no matter what I try. A: There is a DirectX diagnostic tool that is installed when you install DX6 during a Shogo installation. You can access this diagnostic tool in Program Files...directx...setup....dxdiag.exe. Please refer to the help file that accompanies dxdiag.exe for more information on using it. Q: I have a Riva TNT card and the movies stutter during playback. A: Check "Enable triple buffering" under the Advanced options in the launcher. ****************************************************************** Monolith is dedicated to supporting its products! For the most up to date information on patches, updates, drivers, multiplayer and add-ons, please visit the Shogo Website at www.shogo-mad.com We hope you have as much fun playing Shogo as we had making it. Shogo: Mobile Armor Division Developed and Published by Monolith Productions, Inc. www.lith.com www.shogo-mad.com www.lithtech.com www.captainclaw.com www.rageofmages.com www.getmedieval.com www.blood.com Where's the luv? You know where. ->*MONOLITH*<-