1942: THE PACIFIC AIR WAR Machine Requirements: -------------------- To run 1942: The Pacific Air War, you will need: 1) A 386 SX processor (386 DX 33 MHz or higher recommended) 2) 570k free conventional memory 3) 1.5 Meg free EMS memory 4) 16 MB free hard disk space 5) Joystick or mouse NOTE - 1942: The Pacific Air War has not been tested under Microsoft Windows Design Changes -------------- During the ongoing playtest process, we made design adjustments that could not be included in the manual or technical supplements. The following is a list of these changes: 1. Autopilot When flying in traning mode, the autopilot key will enable full computer control of your aircraft. The autopilot will land, divebomb, and make torpedo runs. We encourage you to use this feature to learn how to perform difficult manuevers (such as carrier landings!). When not in training mode, your autopilot will only takeoff, maintain formation on the way to and from the target, and fly your patrol route on CAP. Landing, dogfighting, divebombing, and torpedo bombing must be done by you. 2. Kill Credits Pilots are given credit for a kill based on the percentage of damage they inflicted on the plane. If two pilots damaged the same enemy plane, the pilot who inflicted the most damage will get credit for the kill. So you may not receive credit for a kill even if you are the last pilot to damage a plane. 3. Ditching Planes can be successfully ditched in the ocean. You need to hit the water at a very slow speed (stall the plane below 50 ft.). During a pilot career, ditching will be treated the same as if you bailed out (you will be rescued, captured, or killed). 4. Setting Cruising Altitudes When a strike flies to a target, there is always a lead flight that everyone else follows. For mutual fire support reasons, the flights in a strike stay close to each other until they reach their target. Because of this, you may only adjust the cruising altitude of the lead flight. All other flights will automatically adjust their cruising altitudes to match. 5. Freeing Up Hard Drive Space If you wish to free some space on your hard drive, you can delete animations from the game. 1942 will detect that the animation files are missing, and continue to run normally The following files (and ONLY these files!) are O.K. to delete: OPEN.FLC (1,563,324 bytes - 1942 title animation) MPSLOGO.FLC ( 794,272 bytes - MicroProse animation) ANIM.CDF (1,931,486 bytes - Carrier battle newsreels) 6. Virtual Cockpit Padlock Feature When you select the padlock feature from within the Virtual Cockpit, 1942 will lock on the enemy plane closest to the center of the screen. The easiest way to padlock an enemy is to center the virtual cockpit view and use the gunsight to line up the enemy plane. 7. Carrier Battle 3-D Engagements If you abort out of a 3-D engagement before the mission is completed, the computer will finish the attack as if you had selected to observe. Keep in mind that, due to limitations in the number of planes that can be represented in 3-D, damage from large strikes will be a combination of the damage done in 3-D, and damage calculated statistically. Your performance in 3-D, however, will have a limited effect upon the outcome of the statistical damage. 8. Realistic Flight Option The difference between realistic and non-realistic flight modes is quite significant. We decided to combine all the realistic and potentially irritating problems that a pilot faces into this category. The "purist" can select this mode to experience a more accurate simulation of air combat, while the casual gamer can focus on the more "fun" elements. Here is a list of probems added in this mode: - Engine torque will effect flight. - Planes will shake and break apart if flown too fast. - Engines will overheat and burn up if kept at max power. - Torpedos will fail if dropped at too high a speed or altitude. - Arrestor cables will be limited to the rear 1/3 of carrier. 9. Career Tailgunners After much debate within the design team, we decided not to allow you to enter the tailgunner during a career mission. The reason is that while you are in the tail gunner the computer is flying the plane. We feel that you must earn the points as a pilot, not as a passenger. 10. Japanese Radios (or Lack Thereof) The Japanese usually preferred not to carry radios in their aircraft due to their excessive weight. Therefore, as a Japanese pilot, you will not receive the radio messages the Americans did in flight. 11. Scuttling Ships in a Carrier Battle When severely damaged ships slow a Task Group down to a degree that is dangerous to the remaining ships, you should scuttle the ship. This was not an uncommon practice used to prevent the enemy from capturing the ship. You can scuttle ships in the Damaged Ships option in the Taskgroup menu. Select a any displayed ship to scuttle. FUTURE FEATURES: Our development philosophy during 1942 has been to create the best simulation of WW II air combat in existence. We believe that these air battles were some of the most exciting battles of any kind in history, and an accurate representation of them would captivate your interest for quite some time. In order to achieve this goal in only a year and a half, we were forced to leave some features out that we would like to add in the future: 1. Modem play - we originally planned to have this feature in the initial release, so we are offering it as a free upgrade during the summer of 1994. 2. Digitized sound - at present, 1942 does not contain digitized sound. We will be releasing an add-on product in summer or fall 1994 with extensive digitized speech included. 3. More planes and more missions - we plan to release a scenario disk fall 1994. It will focus on US Army Air Corps and Japanese Army air combat over New Guinea and the Phillipines. We will include 6 new planes and hundreds of new missions in this scenario disk. Technical Issues: 1. Thrustmaster WCS Mark II Support We have provided a configuration file for the WCS Mark II. It's name is 1942PAW.ADV. Consult your Thrustmaster documentation for instructions concerning how to upload this configuration. 2. Tandy Keyboard Problems If you are using a Tandy computer and are experiencing problems with the game not properly responding to game keystrokes, the 'Alt' status of the keyboard has probably reversed. That is, pressing 'A' results in an 'Alt-A' keystroke and vice-versa. To fix this problem, tap on the 'Alt' key until the status reverses back again. We apologize for the inconvenience, but there seems to be something unique to the Tandy keyboard BIOS that causes this problem. Our playtesters using Tandy machines report that this problem occurs infrequently and does not significantly detract from the enjoyment of 1942. We will try to work with Tandy to solve this problem in a future update. 3. Bootdisk Problems In some Packard Bell computers, there may be a problem with the standard Microprose bootdisk application and some memory configurations. If you experience a lock up and you are using a bootdisk made by the 1942 install program, alter the config.sys file on the bootdisk from: Device=EMM386.EXE ramx=b0000-c400 /d=48 frame =e000 6800 to (for DOS 5.0): Device=EMM386.EXE 2048 ram or to (for DOS 6.0 or later): Device=EMM386.EXE ram highscan If your hard drive is doublespaced, you are using the bootdisk, and you experience a problem, please add the following line to the end of the config.sys file on the bootdisk: Devicehigh= C:\DOS\DBLSPACE.SYS /move ******************** **** THANK YOUS **** ******************** Thanks to the following people who helped our playtest efforts: Bob Abe Charlie Andaloro Jim Hendry Doug Whatley