DESCENT 3 DEMO Version 1.4.0b January 25, 2000 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 System Requirements 2 Installation of Descent 3 Mercenary Expansion 3 Playing The Game 4 Some words about 3D rendering 5 Contacting Loki Software, Inc. ----------------------- (1) SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ----------------------- Linux kernel version 2.2.X Pentium 200 or faster 3D accelerator card with OpenGL or Glide support 32 mb RAM required (64 MB recommended) 8-speed CD-ROM drive glibc 2.1 Video card capable of 640x480 resolution XFree86 version 3.3.5 or newer at 16bpp OSS compatible sound card Joystick is optional, but recommended. Hard disk drive with at least 100 mb of space Direct TCP/IP supported for network play. This product is not intended for use with any version of the Windows operating system. This product supports 3D accelerators through OpenGL and Glide. Consult http://lokigames.com/support/gldrivers for the latest news on drivers and installation. ------------------------------------------------- (2) INSTALLATION OF DESCENT 3 MERCENARY EXPANSION ------------------------------------------------- You can NOT use Descent 3: Mercenary with the demo. However, this expansion pack will work with the full version of the game. Please visit us at http://www.lokigames.com/ for ordering information. -------------------- (3) PLAYING THE GAME -------------------- Run 'descent3_demo' to start the game. There are many commandline options to tweak Descent 3 to your configuration. Among these are: --windowed (or -w) to run in a window, if possible. --fullscreen (or -f) to run fullscreen, if possible. (default) --nomousegrab (or -m) to NOT grab the mouse pointer. This allows you to move the mouse outside the Descent game, but makes it less useful for in-flight navigation. Also, popup windows (instant messenger clients, xwrits, etc...) will be able to steal the focus from Descent 3 with this option, which may have very bad results on fullscreen-only cards such as the Voodoo chipsets. --nosound (or -s) Prevents the game from accessing your sound hardware. --rend_opengl (or -G) use OpenGL for rendering. --rend_glide (or -L) use Glide for rendering. --gllibrary (or -g ) Specify an alternate OpenGL library. The default is libGL.so from your library path. --glidelibrary (or -l ) Specify an alternate Glide library. The default is libGlide2x.so from your library path. --rocknride (or -r ) Enable Rock'n'Ride support (http://www.rocknride.com) is the comport that it is attached to. If the chair is on /dev/ttyS0, you want "--rocknride 0", etc. --glfog (-o), --nopackedpixels (-x), and --nomultitexture (-t) might give you various different effects with the OpenGL renderer. If your configuration is giving you trouble, try various combinations of these command lines. --nogamma if starting the demo produces a blank screen, even though you can hear the music once everything loads up. If the env. variable MESA_GLX_FX is set, it won't be touched. If it is not set, Descent 3 will set it to either 'w' or 'f' depending on your commandline options. Note that fullscreen voodoo rendering can still have just a window on the desktop with --windowed (this is good for debugging, I've found), but it will slow your game down to less than ten frames per second. This is not fast, by any means. Please run "descent3 --help" to see other command line options. --------------------------------- (4) SOME WORDS ABOUT 3D RENDERING --------------------------------- The good news is that Descent 3 does not push nearly as many textures or polygons as Quake 3, so it'll work more comfortably on legacy hardware. D3/Linux has a Glide renderer in addition to the OpenGL renderer. Descent 3 will automatically try to use Glide, but if it can't (i.e. - you don't have a 3Dfx accelerator), it'll attempt to use OpenGL without complaint. You may specify that Descent 3 forego the Glide attempt and jump straight to OpenGL with the --rend_opengl (or just -G) command line argument. Voodoo 1s, 2s, and 3s all work. Even the original Voodoos give surprisingly good performance on this game, although the 2s and 3s obviously give you a better game. Other known-to-work-in-some-form-or-another hardware comes from ATI and Matrox, via the Utah GLX drivers. We've tried Descent 3 with the Utah GLX drivers successfully on ATI 3D Rage Pro chipsets and Matrox G400s. Reports from the field suggest that the G200 works, too. Nvidia's Xserver and OpenGL implementation (which is NOT based on Mesa) appear to work pretty well, too. We've tried it on the GeForce, and one of my beta testers said he got good results with a TNT2-based card. At the time of this writing, using the G400 in direct mode REQUIRES --nomultitexture to operate correctly. Utah GLX installs with code older than June 25th will need --nopackedpixels. You need this if everything looks scrambled. If everything is really dark, or looks like a hall of mirrors, use --nomultitexture. This is a Utah GLX issue. Also, if you're using Mesa, it couldn't hurt to grab the latest CVS. There's a patch that fixes a segfault that Descent triggers for 3Dfx hardware users, as of Friday, June 9th. If you have nvidia hardware, and the game crashes if you try to play in a resolution higher than 640x480, then you may need to upgrade your drivers. This problem was widespread before the 0.94 driver release on July 12th, 2000. Some OpenGL implementations perform faster with --nopackedpixels. Voodoo cards under XFree4 have a bug in their color table code, so when the demo attempts to adjust the gamma, the entire color table gets set to black, and even though the game is playing, you can't see it. A patch to the drivers has been submitted to the DRI maintainers, but if you are using binary RPMs from (for example) Mandrake 7.2, you will have this problem. Run the game with the --nogamma on the commandline, and Descent will not alter the gamma or color tables, and the game will be playable. With both Mesa-supported cards and Nvidia hardware, it never hurts to check for more updated drivers if you are getting wierd/poor performance with a 3D Linux application. ---------------------------------- (5) CONTACTING LOKI SOFTWARE, INC. ---------------------------------- To order the full version of the game, contact your local software reseller or buy online directly from Loki Software, Inc. at: http://www.lokigames.com/ Technical support for the demo is available from Loki Software, Inc. at: FAQ: http://faqs.lokigames.com/ Website: http://fenris.lokigames.com/ The full product has e-mail and phone technical support available. Enjoy! - The Loki Descent 3 Team