PC Games.EXE 1997 December

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WARNING: POSTAL contains content that is adult, sophisticated and extremely violent. We strongly recommend that it should NOT be played by anyone under 17 years of age. PC System Requirements ---------------------- Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95 (Windows NT recommended) Pentium 90MHz (166Mhz or higher recommended) 16Mb RAM (32Mb recommended) 2x CD-ROM (4x recommended) 256 Color SGVA 640x480 Sound Blaster or 100% Compatible (16-bit recommended) Postal Demo Notes: ------------------ After unzipping this file, you should run Setup.exe to install the demo. This is a special demo version of Postal which includes one level of the release version. The release version includes 17 standard game levels, 15 multiplayer levels, and 23 challenge levels. This version includes 1 single player level (with 3 difficulty levels), 1 multiplayer level, and 1 challenge level. This version has most of the same options as the full release version, but some things have been cut out to keep the download to a "reasonable" size. This version only includes one of the sound quality options, the 11.025kHz 16-bit. The release version has options for 22.050kHz 16-bit or 22.050KHz 8-bit sound. This version supports Dirext X 5.0 but it was not included in the download as it would add another 15Mb of data. If you wish to use Direct X, read the special section below "Haking Direct X". Hacking Direct X ---------------- The release version of the game includes a setup for Direct X along with the drivers for Direct X 5. This was left out of the demo to cut down the file size. The insaller for this demo will assume that you do not have the latest version of Direct X and will set your video to use the standard Windows video mode. If you wish to use Direct X 5, you can download it from Microsoft's web site at http://www.microsoft.com/directx Once you download this latest version of Direct X, run it's installer. Its probably a good idea to install the latest drivers when it prompts you, even if it tells you that you already have Direct X drivers installed. Once you have the Direct X 5.0 drivers installed, you need to edit one of the Postal files so that the game will use Direct X. You can use Windows Notepad to edit the file. Open Notepad from the Start go to Programs and then Accessories and Select Notepad from that menu. From the file open menu, select the postal.ini from the directory where Postal was installed. When you open this file, find the [Video] section and under that heading there will be a line that says "Video = GDI", change that to say "Video = DirectX" and then go to the file menu and select save. Video Drivers: If you experience any video problems with the game, it is important to make sure you are using the latest video drivers from your hardware manufacturer. If your are experiencing slow frame rates, a new video driver can make a significant difference. We have experienced a doubling in speed just by upgrading the video drivers on several of our video cards. We would highly recommend checking the web site for your video hardware. Also, if you select Direct X when installing Postal, the Postal installer will run the Direct X setup program after Postal is installed. It will show you which versions of Direct X you have installed on your system. We recommend reinstalling Direct X even if the Direct X setup tells you that you have drivers installed. We have experienced some problems running the game when the drivers were not updated that were solved once the new drivers were installed. Main Menu From the main menu you can choose Start to play a new game, options to set game options and customize setting, or Editor to modify game levels or create your own. Use the arrow keys to navigate through the menus. To select and item or go to the next menu, hit Enter when your bullet is pointing on the item you wish to select. To exit the current menu and go back to the previous menu, hit ESC. Start Menu Single Player From the start menu, you have the option to play a single player game, a multiplayer game, or to view a demo. From the single player option, you can choose to start a new game from level 1, load a specific level that you may have created in the editor, load a saved game so you can start where you left off, or try a challenge level. Starting a new game will start you at level 1. As long as you meet the level goals, it will continue on to the next level. If you die before reaching your goal, you can hit space bar to start that level over. The Load Level option lets you load a specific level, like one you may have created in the editor, or one your friend made or one you download from the internet. The Load Game option lets you pick one of your saved games that will take you back to the beginning of the level that you saved and restore the weapons you had at the start of the level. The Challenge option takes you to the challenge menu. The challenge games have a variety of different scoring modes and different goals. The first option on the challenge menu is The Gauntlet. It is similar to the new game option on the single player menu. It will start you with the first challenge level, and let you play through challenge levels in order. The other options on the challenge menu will take you to a directory with the type of games you wish to play including Timed levels, goal levels, Capture the Flag levels and Checkpoint levels. At the beginning of a challenge level, the mission goal will be displayed below your score. To see the goal again you can hit F5 at any point during the level. Timed levels show a clock that counts down to zero. It will keep track of the number of kills or the number of flags captured, according to the mission goal of the level. Goal levels show a clock that counts up from zero. It will keep track of how long it took you to meet your goal. Capture the flag levels are similar to the Goal levels, a timer counts up from zero and keeps track of how long it took you to capture the flag. The checkpoint levels are similar to the racing style games where you have a set amount of time to run a course. Some flags will have a bonus time which will add time to the clock. The goal is to get as many flags as possible before time runs out. All of the challenge levels keep a high score list. If you beat the best time, or high score, you can enter your name and it will save it with the high scores for that particular level. Multiplayer Before beginning a multiplayer game, users should set the options for their network, as described above in the Options:Multiplayer section. Hosting a Multiplayer Game One of the gamers will need to serve as the gameÆs host. Users can choose Host Game from the Multiplayer menu. A dialog will come up with an edit field where the host can enter a description of the game. This description will be shown to players who are attempting to join a game. After a description is entered, a dialog box will appear with options for the multiplayer game. At the top there is chat window which shows the players name followed by their chat text. Players can chat before the game begins to discuss game options, what level to play, etc. Below that is a window showing the players who have connected to the game, with their name and color. The host can choose to drop players from this list by selecting the player and clicking on the Drop button. Below the connected players, is a list of the available multiplayer levels. Click on the name of the level you wish to play. To the right are the scoring options for the game. You can choose a time limit and set the number of minutes, you can select a Kill limit and set the number of kills or you can select both, which will end the game when either the time is up, or someone has reached the kill limit. If neither is selected, it will default to a kill limit of 10. Up to 16 players can connect to a game, however, it is recommended to keep the number down to 8 or less. Once the host has determined that enough players have joined, they can click on the Start button and the level will load on everyoneÆs machine. Joining a Multiplayer Game Gamers looking to join a multiplayer game may select Join Game from the Multiplayer menu. A secondary menu offers users the option to browse, or connect to a specific server. If a gamer selected Browse, it will scan your local network for games that are starting and it will display the description of the game that the host has entered. Gamers wishing to join that game simply click on the title and they will be automatically linked up. When playing on the internet, or if the network you are using does not allow broadcasting across routers, select the name or address of the server with which you wish to connect. Users with TCP/IP can enter the IP address of the server in the Connect To edit box and then hit Enter to connect to that system. If that computer has a registered domain name, enter the host name of the server and hit Enter to connect. To find the IP address of your machine in Windows NT, you can run ipconfig from the command prompt. From Windows 95, you can run winipcfg to display the same information. If you have a network card, this address will probably be the same every time. If you are using a modem to connect to the internet, this address will probably be different every time you dial up. Gamers using IPX must enter the IPX address including the network address and the node address with which you wish to connect. If you are on a large network, you will need to find out the network address of the segment you are connected to. If itÆs a simple network, you can try using 00000000 as the network number. The node number is the hardware address of your network card. You can find the physical ethernet address in Windows NT by running ipconfig from the command prompt, or in Windows 95, run winipcfg to show the same information. Options Menu The options menu contains 6 categories of options that can be set to customize the game and tune performance. Video The one option in the video menu is the gamma setting. If your screen is too dark, use this option to increase the gamma. If it looks too washed out, then reduce the gamma setting. Audio The mixer option allows you to set the relative volumes for different sounds in the game. There are 10 different sound groups. When the bullet is pointing to the sound category, you can use the arrow keys to adjust the volume. If you want to reset all of the volumes to the default levels, choose the last menu option. The Sound Test option in the audio menu is mostly just for fun. You can play all of the sounds that are in the game by hitting keys 0-9 and A-Z. When you press the Tab key, it will cycle to the next bank of sounds. Select exit when you are done. Controls The controls menu allows you to customize settings for you keyboard and mouse. The keyboard menu will allow you to keys to actions. The mouse settings menu will let you do the same for your mouse buttons. The controls menu also allows you to set how fast your guy turns and how sensitive the mouse is. Multiplayer On the multiplayer options screen, you can enter the name that will be shown for your character during the multiplayer games. You can also select the color of the clothes your character wears, to help you identify your player from the other players in the game. The protocol option lets you select which network protocol you will use for multiplayer games. If you are playing on the Internet, select TCP/IP. If you are playing on a local area network, you need to know what protocol is being used. If itÆs a Novell network, select IPX, otherwise its likely a TCP/IP network. The connection option is used to tune the performance of a network game. Select whether you are using a modem, ISDN connection or your network connection type. Performance The performance options by default are all enabled. If you have a slower machine and want to trade off some of the cool features in order to get higher frame rates, you can turn off some of the effects here. They are listed in order from the ones that use the most CPU power to the ones that donÆt use as much. If you disable the transparency, you will get the greatest performance gain, but the fire and smoke will be a solid color so you canÆt see what is behind them. If you disable the 3D lighting, the 3D objects in the game will not get lighter when they walk under the street lamps and other light sources in the game. The particle effects are things like the blood spurts, bullet casings and shotgun shells. Dynamic volume makes the sounds originating close to you louder, and distant sounds are not as loud which helps you determine how close a hostile is, or can help you determine the distance of a missile. Disabling the ambient sounds may help you if you are low on memory. These are the sounds like wind, crickets, car alarms and other sounds in the levels that add character to the level. Difficulty The slider bar in the difficulty menu has 4 color zones and ranges from 1 to 11. The numbers adjust how accurate the hostels are when they shoot, how often they shoot, and how much damage you take. The different color zones represent physically different level layouts for the single player games. The green is the easy level layout, the yellow is the medium difficulty, red is hard, and purple is the nightmare mode. In the easier levels you may have more hit points, more ammo, there are fewer enemies, and they use less powerful weapons against you and there are more power ups. As you move up to the harder levels, the weapons are more powerful and there are a greater number of enemies with more powerful weapons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Troubleshooting and Tips -------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the most up to date troubleshooting tips, visit our web site at www.gopostal.com. We will be adding to the troubleshooting section as problems come up. Here are a few tips to get your going. 1) If the Microsoft Office Toolbar is running, exit it before running the game because it prevents Postal from automatically switching to full screen mode. 2) If you experience low frame rates, it could be a problem with your video card drivers. Upgrading to the latest video driver for your card can in some cases more than double the speed of the game. Check the video hardware manufacturerÆs web site for the latest drivers for your card. 3) The player-character has only one life, just as in reality, but he regains health at the start of each level (the character rests between scenarios). There are also health powerups available in the levels. 4) In single player mode, there is a body count quota that must be attained before the gamer can proceed to the next level. The current population, body count and goal are displayed at the top of the screen. The mission goal can be shown by hitting F5. Once you have attained the minumum requirements for the level, you may choose to go on to the next level by hitting F1, or you can stay around and mop up. 5) When you choose the save game option from the menu that comes up when you hit ESC during the game, it will save what level you are currently on with the weapons that you had at the start of the level. When you load a saved game, you will start at the beginning of the level, not necessarily where you were when you saved the game. This makes you earn your levels and you canÆt do any of that sissy ôoh good, I killed one more guy without taking any damage, let me save my game and then kill one more guy and save my game again.ö 6) Users having problems with the mouse/keyboard configuration should go to the keyboard and mouse setup screens. Two columns of game functions show which key or mouse button they are mapped to. To remap a function, move the bullet to the command to be altered and press Enter. Any key or mouse command issued at that point will thereafter control that function. Some keys cannot be mapped because they are used for other features of the game. Note that for mouse buttons, single buttons can be used (up to three for those mice with a middle button) or combinations of buttons. This keeps users from being limited by the number of buttons, especially on a 3-button mouse, which offers seven possible commands. 7) Remember that there are two available entries for Fire, Run and Strafe commands. Example: set the initial Fire command to the Space Bar and the second to the control key. The left and right arrow default to rotating the player-character clockwise or counterclockwise. The Strafe command, meanwhile, is linked by default to the Alt key. By holding down the Alt key when using the arrow keys makes the player-character sidestep left and right rather than rotating. Some players, however, may wan their player-character to automatically fire whenever the Strafe command is deployed. They can, therefore, map Alt to Fire in addition to the default Control=Fire. The player-character will now fire whenever the Alt key is pressed, then if the player also holds the left or right arrows, they will fire while moving left or right. An even slicker example is available to players employing both the keyboard and mouse simultaneously. LetÆs assume the player wants to use the mouse to rotate the player-character, but prefer the keyboard to move him forward, backwards, strafe left or strafe right. To accomplish this, simply map the left arrow to the Left and Strafe commands and the right arrow to Right and Strafe. Once this is done, simply press the left arrow and the player-character strafes to the left, while the right arrow initiates strafing to the right. The up and down arrows, meanwhile, map to Forward and Backward. 8) If youÆve done a little too much experimentation with the keys and wish to start over, you can select the Restore Defaults option which will reset all of the keys back to the way they were when you first got the game. 9) If you are using Direct X and the game does not start properly, you should run setup again and when the Direct X setup program starts, choose to reinstall all of the Direct X drivers. 10) You can use the TAB key to move from field to field on the Multiplayer menus. 11) If you are having problems starting a Multiplayer game, you should first check the Options:Multiplayer menu and make sure that you set the correct Protocol. If you are playing on the internet, or a LAN using TCP/IP, you should make sure that your Protocol is set to TCP/IP. If you are running on a Novell network, set your Protocol to IPX. 12) PC to Mac multiplayer games are not recommended. 13) A known problem with Direct X with Multiplayer games. If you are using Direct X mode and you are hosting or joining a multiplayer game, you may experience a lock-up. Some Direct X video drivers present this problem. The problem occurs when you are using Direct X and you are using a dial-up connection for your multiplayer games. If you do not dial your modem to connect to the internet before starting Postal, when you attempt to start a multiplayer game, the Windows dialog box pops up behind the multiplayer dialog box which is asking you if you wish to dial your modem to make the connection. This may appear to lock up the machine. Most of the time, if you press ESC, it will cancel the hidden dial-up dialog box and the game will respond. Certain video drivers though will cause Direct X to lock up, forcing you to reboot your machine. To solve this problem, you should use dial-up networking to connect to the internet before starting Postal. This will prevent the dial-up dialog from popping up during the game. Alternately, you could use the standard windows video mode rather than Direct X.