Take No Prisoners(tm) Version 1.0 README.TXT Published by Red Orb Entertainment(tm) - A Division of Broderbund Software Developed by Raven Software(tm) Windows(r)95 Version 1.0 September 9, 1997 Table of Contents System Requirements Installing and Running Take No Prisoners Performance Gameplay Multiplayer 3D Accelerator Cards Troubleshooting How to Contact Technical Support Copyright Information SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Windows(r) 95* 90MHz Pentium; 133MHz Pentium or faster recommended 16MB RAM; 24MB RAM recommended 216MB hard disk space for full installation 4X CD-ROM drive or faster 640x480 display, 256 colors Video and sound card compatible with DirectX** Multiplayer Support*** Via IPX Local Area Network connection for up to 8 players Via 28.8Kbps or faster modem connection to the Internet for 2 players Via 28.8Kbps or faster modem or null modem cable for 2 players Optional 3D Accelerator Card.**** If you experience problems with your video, sound, or 3D accelerator cards, please insure that the newest available drivers for those devices are installed properly on your machine. *System Configuration. May require minor adjustments to the configuration of your operating system and/or updates to the hardware component drivers. **If you experience problems with the installation or compatibility of DirectX on your computer, please consult the hardware manufacturer of your video or sound card. You may also want to check Microsoft's Web page www.microsoft.com for more information. ***User is responsible for all Internet access fees and phone charges. ****Take No Prisoners supports a wide range of 3D Accelerator chip sets. Please see the 3D Accelerator Cards section below. INSTALLING AND RUNNING TAKE NO PRISONERS Take No Prisoners comes on an autoplay enabled CD. Once the disc is in your CD drive, the auto-run dialog box will appear. The first time you insert the disc, you will be given the option to install Take No Prisoners. To install, click on the Install button and follow the on screen directions. Take No Prisoners offers three levels of installation. Full Installation. This option installs executable files, level maps, and movie files on to your hard drive. Choose this option for best performance. This option requires approximately 216MB of free hard drive space. Standard Installation. This option installs executable files and level maps on to your hard drive. Choosing this option will reduce the amount of free drive space needed, but may cause delays when playing movies. This option requires approximately 91MB of free hard drive space. This option requires that the Take No Prisoners CD be in the CD-ROM drive when you run the game. Minimum Installation. This option installs only the executable files on to your hard drive. Choosing this option will reduce the amount of free drive space needed, but may cause delays when loading levels and playing movies. This option requires approximately 35MB of free hard drive space. This option requires that the Take No Prisoners CD-ROM disc be in the CD-ROM drive when you run the game. To run Take No Prisoners, use the Windows 95 Start menu and click the Take No Prisoners icon under Programs/Red Orb Entertainment/Take No Prisoners. Alternatively, once Take No Prisoners has been installed, you can place the Take No Prisoners CD into your CD-ROM drive and select the Run option on the autoplay dialog box. Take No Prisoners has a musical score of 20 original CD quality tracks. To hear these tracks during game play, the CD-ROM must be in your CD-ROM drive. If the CD music does not play, select Options/Audio from the main menu to access the audio controls. There is an issue with the installer that may prevent you from selecting the install drive from the Directories list box. Clicking "Browse..." on the Installation Configuration screen displays the Choose Directory box. On some computers, clicking on a drive in the Directories scroll box may generate a Drive Not Available error. If this happens, type the full path of the location of where you would like Take No Prisoners to be installed (example C\Program Files\Red Orb Entertainment\Take No Prisoners ) and click on the OK button. This should solve the problem. PERFORMANCE RAM vs. CPU Speed The more RAM you have in your computer the better Take No Prisoners will run. You will see a slight improvement in performance on faster CPUs, but RAM is really the deciding factor. If you are running Take No Prisoners on a computer with 16MB of RAM be sure to have at least 11MB of free drive space available. Take No Prisoners uses this for swap space. Defragmenting your hard drive may also speed up performance. Please consult your Windows 95 user guide. To increase frame rate, computers with less then 24MB of RAM should be set to a resolution of less than 640x480. For optimum performance, computers with 24MB of RAM should have 16MB of free hard drive space available for swap files. For optimum performance, computers with 32MB of RAM should have 1MB of free hard drive space available for swap files. General Performance Issues Preliminary testing with DirectX5.0 shows an increase in performance over older versions. Be sure that the latest video and sound drivers are installed on your computer. Using older drivers may cause poor performance, unpredictable behavior, and possibly, system crashes. GAMEPLAY Take No Prisoners consists of 20 non-linear territories. While playing, you should explore each level thoroughly and remember to use any of the computer terminals that you find. Depending on the route you choose, it may be necessary to revisit a territory more then once. Some Zoners will drop their Personal Data Devices (PDDs) when killed. Make sure that you collect these and read the files that get downloaded into your PDD. MULTIPLAYER Internet Support Take No Prisoners supports two players over the Internet. More players may be possible depending on the speed of your Internet connection. Take No Prisoners is Red Orb Zone (our free Internet game matching service) and Mplayer enabled. To launch these services, simply select them from the Multiplayer/Choose Protocol screen accessible from the main menu or access them from the Windows 95 Start menu. See the separate README.TXT files on the CD for details on Red Orb Zone and Mplayer. (Note: To play on Red Orb Zone you will need to install the Red Orb Zone client from the CD before trying to launch Red Orb Zone from within Take No Prisoners.) Connection Types: In addition to the Internet, Take No Prisoners supports the following connection types IPX Network - for up to eight players. Modem - for two players. Direct Connect - for two players. The Multiplayer Games In addition to the single-player game, Take No Prisoners comes with six multiplayer game options. See the manual for a description of each game. Not all games are available on all levels. The maximum number of players is dictated by your multiplayer connection. The only exception to this is Strikeforce (cooperative play). This game can support a maximum of four players. Save/Load Multiplayer Games Take No Prisoners allows you to save and load multiplayer games. First have the host computer start a game using the desired protocol. Once the game is running, have the other players join the game. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU TAKE NOTE OF THE ORDER IN WHICH THE PLAYERS JOIN THE GAME. When you want to save the game, have the Host computer use the save game option from the main menu to save the game. Players may now exit the game. In order to load a multiplayer saved game, have the computer with the saved game start a new multiplayer game using the desired protocol. Once the game is running have the other players join the game IN THE SAME ORDER AS THEY DID IN THE ORIGINAL GAME. Now, have the host load the saved game from the menu. If players do not rejoin the game in the same order, their positions and inventory items will be swapped. IPX Network Users: If you are using a computer with a network card and a modem installed you must Install TNP without initializing your dial-up account. To do this select shutdown from the start menu. Next select "Close all programs and log in as a different user". Now, without launching your dialup account install TNP from the CD. Notes on Internet Play/Modem Play Performance If you have a high latency internet connection it may take up to 15 seconds for the client player to appear on screen after the level has been loaded. The bandwidth parameter is available from the console (shift-tilda) for setting an individual client's network capabilities. This defaults to 20000 bytes/second. This is useful when playing over connections such as modems that cannot handle that much data. The syntax is BANDWIDTH x where x is the desired bandwidth in bytes/second between 2000 and 10000. 2000 is a reasonable setting for connections over a modem. The fastest computer with the most RAM should always host a multiplayer game. If the host is in a high resolution video mode, the game will run slower for the other players. 3D ACCELERATOR CARDS Take No Prisoners supports a number of 3D accelerator cards. This section documents performance and technical support issues relating to 3D accelerator cards that we have tested. General When experiencing problems with a 3D accelerator card, always try the latest version of the cards driver. 3D accelerator cards with less than 4MB of memory are not recommended for Take No Prisoners. 640x400 or higher resolutions may fail. Rendition cards Unreadable text with defaults. Fix: Change "Blit Overlays" option on the Options/Video screen in the main menu from AUTO to ON. Virge cards D3D modes for this card are not recommended for Take No Prisoners. Unreadable text with defaults. Fix Change "Blit Overlays" option on the Options/Video screen in the main menu from AUTO to ON. Textures shift and warp. There is no known fix for this issue. Transparency anomalies. There is no known fix for this issue. Screen may turn black. There is no known fix for this issue. Matrox cards D3D video modes for this card are not recommended for Take No Prisoners. 3dfx Voodoo cards Lockups when overclocking. Fix Do not overclock the 3dfx. 800 x 600 is an option, but this mode fails. There is no known fix for this issue. Voodoo Rush cards handle Take No Prisoners in 800 x 600 resolution well. Permedia cards Transparency anomalies. Fix: A future driver from 3dlabs (www.3dlabs.com) may correct the problem. ATI cards (Rage, Rage II, Rage II+) Black boxes around sprites. Transparency anomalies. Lockups. Fix: Problems depend on driver version. Some driver versions work fine. A future driver from ATI (www.atitech.ca) may correct these problems. ATI Rage II chips on mother boards will not run Take No Prisoners in D3D video modes. ATI 3D Expression D3D modes for these cards are not Recommend for Take No Prisoners. Take No Prisoners does not support the D3D modes for this card. Non D3D modes work fine. TROUBLESHOOTING This section contains notes and information that can help you solve problem that you may encounter while playing Take No Prisoners. Be sure that you have newest drivers for your video, sound and 3D accelerator cards installed. "File not found error dplay.dll" at startup. Fix: Make sure that DirectX Version 3.0a has been properly installed on your computer. Sound Blaster 16 Old drivers may cause periodic crashes. Fix: Use the most up-to-date drivers. With the default key setting, on some keyboards you may not be able to move backwards while pressing the strafe and fire keys. There is no fix for this. With CD music turned on, the game may pause for a split second as the music track loops back to the beginning. There is no fix for this. Also note that if during a multiplayer game, the host has CD music on, the client computers will also pause when the track loops even if they do not have CD music switched on. Starting Take No Prisoners with your desktop set to anything but 256 colors may cause unpredictable results on some computers. Fix: Set your desktop to 256 before running Take No Prisoners. Note This is especially important for Alliance ProMotion 6422, AudioPro Motion, Matrox Millennium, and Lightspeed 128 video cards. If you have a wave device running in the background when you start Take No Prisoners, there will be no wave audio in the game. Fix: Exit Take No Prisoners, close the wave device, and restart Take No Prisoners. When trying to join a Direct Connect multiplayer game, you are only given the serial connection screen once. Fix: Exit and restart Take No Prisoners. Sleep Mode may cause Take No Prisoners to freeze. Fix: Turn the Sleep Mode off. IBM Aptiva computer with Trident 9600/968x PCI video cards may display a white box in center of the screen. There is no known fix for this issue. Take No Prisoners will run without a sound card installed. There is no card detection warning. Take No Prisoners will not run with a Number Nine Image 128 video cards. There is no known fix for this issue. Take No Prisoners will not run under Windows NT 4.0. There is no known fix for this issue. Sound may echo after selecting D3Dfx 640x480x16 video mode. Fix: Update video and sound card drivers to the newest version. Audio may echo on Aztec AZISND 3 -336 sound cards. There is no known fix for this issue. Could Not Open Line error message during modem connection. This error is generated by any number of errors that occur while using a modem. Fix: Ensure that the mode hardware and software is properly installed and working. Alt+Esc tasking is disabled. Fix: Use Alt+Tab to task in and out of Take No Prisoners. You may experience problems with some brands of joy sticks. There is no known fix for this issue. HOW TO CONTACT TECHNICAL SUPPORT If you have worked through these troubleshooting suggestions and still need assistance, you can contact Red Orb Entertainment Technical Support by using the options listed below. It will be very helpful if you can tell us your computer make and model, and the brand names of both the video card and sound card you are using. If possible, have the computer both positioned near your phone and turned on. Please also be prepared to give us a detailed description of what happens when you try to run the program. You can contact us in any of the following ways Internet - Online support is available through our World Wide Web site at http://www.redorb.com/ America Online - Use the Keyword RED ORB to find our Product Support Boards, or address your questions to BBund Tec1 or BBund Tec2 using AOL's electronic mail. Mail - Send your questions to Red Orb Entertainment Technical Correspondence, P.O. Box 6125, Novato, CA 94948-6125. Phone - Call us at (415) 382-4777 from Monday through Friday between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Pacific Time. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Copyright (c), 1997 Red Orb Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Take No Prisoners is a trademark of Broderbund Software. Red Orb Entertainment, Red Orb Zone and Broderbund are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Broderbund Software, Inc. Red Orb Entertainment is a division of Broderbund Software, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation, Inc. All other company and/or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers. End of ReadMe