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First Steps... Welcome to GameShadow. In order to run the service, you need to have signed up for a Gameshadow ID. You can get an ID from within GameShadow via the welcome screen, login screen or directly through our website. When you sign up be sure to enter a valid email address for your username as your password and license key will be sent to the registered email address. Registered... OK so you now have the GameShadow client installed successfully and your account is up and running. GameShadow has been designed to be as intuitive as possible, catering for both the beginner "What should I press now?" to the advanced user "Gimme everything!", with many preference options enabling you to tailor the product to suit your requirements. OK, run up the application and you will be presented with this screen: The three buttons on the upper left are the first three that you need to push to get things moving. They are arranged in the order of use from top to bottom. Enter your details and press the login button to connect to the GameShadow server and log into your account. The Server is where all of the database and patching information is kept. NB: The first time GameShadow is run, you will be required to enter the license key sent to you in the registration email. Hit the "Enter Key" button on the login screen (next to signup) and paste this key in here alongside your registered email address. I’m logged in – now what? The next thing you need to do is download a small file from the server that will contain information about all the games and patches that GameShadow currently supports. To do this just hit the GET LATEST UPDATES button. The client will connect to the server, retrieve the file automatically and tell you how many patches are contained within the file. Next, Search for Games Once you have downloaded the latest game and patching data you are ready to search your PC for any installed games. If this is the first time you have run GameShadow you will be prompted to tell GameShadow where to look. You can choose whole drives, specific directories, even network drives! Pop down to the "Preferences section" of the walkthrough to read how to do this. Remember, you can also search across multiple PCs to manage your complete network from the GameShadow console! Press the SEARCH FOR GAMES button and GameShadow will scan your hard drive(s) and network drive(s) for any games that it knows about. *TIP* It's better to tell GameShadow about specific folders as this will speed up the search process. For example, telling GameShadow to look in c:\games as opposed to searching the whole of c:\ will enhance the performance of the search. The screen is split into 3 main windows. The left hand window contains a list of all the games that GameShadow is going to search for. You can check out this list in advance either on the Games Supported button in the client (found under the Web Browser tab) or through the games list on the website. The top right hand window displays the current file that is being searched against (this will change rapidly as GameShadow searches through your hard disk(s)). The bottom right hand window will list all the games found by GameShadow once the search has completed. GameShadow has found some games! (If you have some installed of course...) Hit the My Games button on the main screen and the game information will be displayed. Remember that if you have searched across a network, all of your PCs and games are displayed in here. You can collapse and expand the data as you wish. "Click" on a game of your choice within the window. GameShadow will then display the patches available, any readme information and review links for the patch. GameShadow displays your current version and then displays all possible upgrade paths available to you. The file size of each patch is also displayed so you know in advance how long it is likely to take to download. To find out more about a specific patch, just click on the readme:/review: /forum: link. To download the patch, click the Download Icon: , select a server, and away you go! Once the patch is downloaded you can then hit the Install Icon: to get the patch to run and update your game. (NB: Some games require the patch to be run from their own install directory, in which case you will need to copy the file manually). *TIP. The GameShadow download manager will allow you to resume downloads either because they have been cancelled or stopped. If this happens you will be offered the chance to resume the download from where it was last stopped. The download manager will then attempt to continue from where it left off. If you click on the readme icon: a browser window will launch with the information on what the patch does. Patch information files can be quite large but give you up front information on the patch. OK, you’ve selected a game and you can see that GameShadow tells you there is a patch available. Simply click the download icon: and GameShadow will retrieve the patch for you into the directory you specify in the preferences (default directory: c:\program files\gameshadow\patches). GameShadow will create a new directory for each game you download for convenience). GameShadow will start to download your chosen patch. The downloader gives you information on how big the patch is, the transfer speed you are getting and an E.T.A. of how long it thinks it will take to download the patch. There is also a progress bar at the top to give you immediate visual information on how far your download has progressed. Once the patch is downloaded. If you have downloaded a patch, then you are now ready to install it! From the My Games section simply highlight the patch you want and hit the install icon: . GameShadow will then automatically fire off the install process for you. Once you have downloaded a patch you may install it at any time. If the patch is an .EXE file, GameShadow will run the entire install process. However, if the patch is a .ZIP file, GameShadow will start up your unzip program for you ready for you to unzip the patch. You must then run the .EXE yourself. Congratulations! You have just installed your first patch using GameShadow. Additional GameShadow Features. Now we have skimmed the surface of GameShadow. So far, you know how you can download and install single patches on a per game basis. We’ve included some extra functionality to enable you to use your existing download manager and favourite Anti-Virus tool to ensure effective and safe downloads. GameShadow puts all of the patches you download into a unique directory structure on your PC. You can choose the directory in the "Preferences" section of GameShadow. Once you have chosen the download directory GameShadow will create a directory for each game that you download a patch for. This tidy directory structure makes managing patches easier. What about GetRight and other Download Managers? If you have invested in GetRight (tell us if you think we should support other download managers!), and you would like to use it with GameShadow, no problem, you can tell GameShadow to use GetRight from within the preferences section. OK, but I am concerned about a Virus. First, all our patches have been virus checked. Secondly, as an added feature, GameShadow will automatically run your virus checker against the file you have just downloaded. This can be switched on in the preferences tab. Presently GameShadow supports f-secure and Norton Antivirus. The Version Management Console (VMC) During development of GameShadow the developers envisaged a more advanced mode of operation, one where the user can see all of their games at once and a "Version Management Console" (VMC for short) where you can view, manage, read up information and upgrade your suite of installed games. Let’s take a look now at the VMC. Click on the Version Management Console tab at the top of the screen.   During the search phase GameShadow creates a unique database and holds it on your PC. It interacts with the GameShadow servers to keep you and your game version information up-to-date. The VMC displays it to you in the most complete form. The VMC can be interacted with! To the left you see the Console control panel, from here you can:- EXPAND: You can expand game info by clicking the + icon next to the game. COLLAPSE: When you have hit the + key on a game, simply hit the – key to collapse again. The Main Grid The grid is split into 8 columns, and colour coded by row. The first two columns relate to the game on your PC. Game Name This is a list of games found on your PC. Version Name This is the current version of the game. The rest of the columns relate to the patches available for each game. Start Ver This is the version that you must be on to be able to apply this patch End Ver This is the version that you will be on once the patch has been applied Filesize This is the size of the patch, just to give you an idea before you download that 82MB patch down a dialup modem line! (Of course you can do this in blocks using the download managers resume features or use a download client that supports reconnection such as GetRight) The 5 small columns on the right hand side are important! Forum Link Click this and you will be taken to a discussion board on the game in question. The community area of GameShadow is important for sharing information on games, patches and gotchas. Review Information Click this and GameShadow will invoke your default web browser and direct it to the user reviews for the patch. User reviews are handy to see who else has installed the patch and any problems they may have experienced with it. Readme Information Click this and you will be presented with information on what the patch does, including information on extra features, potential problems etc. Download Click on this link to download the desired patch, you will be asked to choose a download location from a dropdown menu, which will then invoke either the GameShadow downloader or your Download Manager, depending on how you have set your preferences. Install Once a patch is downloaded GameShadow will run the patch for you from the download location if you press this button (Please note: some files require the patch to be resident in the games install directory and will not install properly if they are not run from the correct directory.) What's New Included within GameShadow is a mini web browser which can be used to view various parts of the GameShadow website. From here you can "grab" the latest supported game information among other information. Preferences The Preferences toolkit within GameShadow allows the user to configure GameShadow defaults and product plug-ins for download managers and Anti-Virus Tools. GameShadow has a preference button on the main page. Click it now to set up some default preferences. There are four preference tabs which allow easy selection of the various options: General The general tab presents you with three options Current Patch Directory: This allows you to change the default path into which GameShadow downloads the patches. GameShadow will use this path for each patch downloaded, and create a sub-directory of 'Game Name' and put the patch in the new directory. In this way GameShadow can manage all your patches for you. Account Details: This shows the username that you will log into GameShadow with. You can edit your account information via the GameShadow website. From here you can also 'register' your account once you have a valid license key (sent in the registration email). Check for GameShadow Updates: This will do a check to make sure you are running the latest version of GameShadow, and inform you of any available downloads. Search Path This is the most important option to set as it tells GameShadow where your games are located. This option 'must' be set otherwise GameShadow will prompt you to set it when you try and perform a game search for the first time. One of the most powerful features of GameShadow is that it can manage all your games across your home network. GameShadow search paths are not restricted to local machines and can handle both UNC paths and mapped drives to LAN connected machines. To add a search path to GameShadow, just hit the "add location" button and GameShadow will present a window allowing you to select the locations you want searched. GameShadow can handle multiple paths and you can add as many local and remote paths as you like. For example, if you install all your games into the subdirectory c:\games you can set the search path to be c:\games and GameShadow will look through all the subdirectories from \games\ downwards. If you wanted to set GameShadow to search all your drives then just select the drives you want searched and GameShadow will look at all the files on the drives selected.   Plug-Ins GameShadow uses plug-ins if the are available, to perform various task. GetRight: GetRight is one of the most popular and best download managers available. If you have GetRight installed then click 'Choose GetRight Directory' and select where GetRight is installed on your PC. Check the 'Use GetRight' checkbox and GameShadow will now use GetRight to perform all of your downloads. Anti-Virus: All of the patches on the GameShadow servers are already checked for Viruses using F-Secure. However you can also use your own Anti-Virus tool to automatically virus check all your downloads by checking the Anti-Virus check box and then selecting the directory that your Anti-virus tool resides in. (Note Only F-Secure and Norton Anti-Virus are supported at present). Advanced Options The advanced options tab allows you to quickly change many of the default option by use of check boxes. Currently there are twelve options: Automatically Login   If this box is checked you are automatically logged into the server whilst the client is loading (assuming you are connected to the internet and have a valid account). Get latest data on start-up   If this box is checked GameShadow automatically downloads the latest data from our server every time you run (Recommended for Broadband/ADSL users). Refresh my games on start-up   If this box is checked GameShadow automatically refreshes your games list to check for any changes. Show introduction on start-up   If checked this will display the intro screen every time GameShadow is started. Disable Tooltips (Requires restart of GameShadow)   This will disable the dialog boxes which appear over important buttons to ease your navigation of the product. Handy for novice users, but they can become tiresome to the more advanced user. Show message when search/refresh is complete   Toggle to show the prompt telling you how many games you have installed and how many patches are available when your search/refresh has completed. Remind me when my license is due to expire   This option will pop up a reminder periodically when your GameShadow subscription is approaching expiry. Remind me if there are any GameShadow updates to apply   This option will pop up a reminder periodically informing you when GameShadow requires updating to the latest version. Include Demos in searches   This option will allow you to toggle whether or not you wish GameShadow to include Game Demos in its search. Default Data View   This toggle allows you to automatically go to your preferred view; the "My Games" tab or the "Version Management Console". Display all Duplicates   If this box is checked then GameShadow will not ask about updated games, but assume them to be correct. For example, GameShadow finds that your version of GameA has moved from 1.03 to 1.04. GameShadow will normally ask if you want to accept this change but by ticking this box you are telling GameShadow to accept all these type of changes without asking. However, if a game changes to an 'Unknown' version you will always be informed as this may mean that the game has not been recognised and maybe corrupted. Always ask about multiple copies   This option allows you to toggle whether or not GameShadow gives you the option of managing any multiple game installations per PC (backup copies etc) or whether to handle all instances automatically. Shortcut Keys ALT-F4: Close Application F1: Help ALT-L: Login/Logout ALT-G: Get Latest Updates ALT-S: Search ALT-R: Refresh ALT-P: Preferences ALT-M: My Games ALT-V: VMC ALT-W: What's New This completes the walkthrough. This document will evolve with the product. Please contact the GameShadow development team via the forums or the website if you have any suggestions for improvement. Thank you