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Text File | 1994-06-19 | 141KB | 3,072 lines

┌──┐ ┌┐ ┌┐ ┌──┐ ┌──┐ └┐┌┘ ┌─┐ ││ ││ └┐┌┘ └┐┌┘ ││ └─┘ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ┌─┐ ┌────┐ ┌────┐ ││ ││ ┌────┐ ┌────┐ ┌────┐ ││ ││ ││ └┐│ └┐┌─┐│ │┌──┐│ ││ ││ └───┐│ │┌──┐│ │┌───┘ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ └┘ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ │└──┘│ ││┌─┐││ ┌───┘│ ││ │└───┐ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ │┌───┘ │└┘ └┘│ │┌──┐│ ││ └───┐│ ││ ││ ││ ┌─┐ ││ ││ ││ ││ │ ┌─┐ │ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ││ ┌┘└──┘ │ ┌┘└┐ ││ ││ │└───┐ │ │ │ │ │└──┘│ ││ ┌───┘│ ┌┘└┐ ┌┘└┐ └──────┘ └──┘ └┘ └┘ └────┘ └─┘ └─┘ └────┘ └┘ └────┘ └──┘ └──┘ Developed By Patrick Aalto Published By Safari Software 10406 Holbrook Drive Potomac, MD 20854 U.S.A. Orders: 800-238-1393 Help: 301-738-2349 Fax: 301-738-0230 Copyright 1994 Safari Software and Patrick Aalto. All Rights Reserved. LineWars II is a trademark of Patrick Aalto. Other product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I couldn't produce a product like LineWars II without help and prior work of many people. My thanks to: Game Storyline: Raymond Bingham (wReam) Game Music: Jim Young (U4ia of Megawatts) Antialiasing Algorithm: M. Pitteway and D. Watkinson Interrupt Reference: Ralf Brown Overlay Decompressor: Haruyasu Yoshizaki Roland LAPC-I SysEx: Ed Federmeyer S3 Programming Info: S3 Incorporated Shading Model: Rod Salmon and Mel Slater Speaker Log. Table: Mark Cox Tweaked VGA Mode: Themie Gouthas VGA & EGA Programming: R. Ferraro Universal VESA VBE: Kendall Bennett Beta Testers: Kim Heino, Marko Happonen, Olli Männistö and others. A special thanks to all the registered users of the original LineWars, and to all of you who helped make LineWars II elegant, reliable, and friendly. The following tools were used in creating LineWars II: Compiler: Borland Turbo Assembler 2.5 Linker: Borland Turbo Link 5.1 Optimization: Borland Turbo Profiler 2.0 Debugger: Borland Turbo Debugger 3.1 CONTENTS ___________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS Introduction...............................................1 How to Use This Manual................................1 Registration and Upgrade Information..................3 Chapter 1 / LineWars II Features...........................4 Chapter 2 / Installation...................................5 Where To Put LineWars II..............................5 Unarchiving The Files.................................5 Chapter 3 / Configuration..................................6 SysInfo...............................................7 Graphics..............................................9 MCGA 320 x 200...................................9 VGA 320 x 480...................................9 VESA 640 x 480...................................9 S3 Accelerated...................................9 ATI Mach8/Mach32................................10 GRAPHDRV.LW2....................................10 Ambient Light...................................10 Control..............................................10 Keyboard........................................10 Joystick........................................11 Mouse...........................................12 ThrustMaster....................................12 X Scaling.......................................13 Y Scaling.......................................13 Laser Key.......................................14 Missile Key.....................................14 Sound................................................14 No Sound Output.................................15 Covox (8-bit DAC)...............................15 Sound Blaster...................................15 Gravis Ultrasound...............................16 Roland LAPC-I...................................16 Roland SCC-1....................................16 SOUNDDRV.LW2....................................17 Port Address....................................17 Play Frequency..................................17 Timer / Stereo / 3D.............................17 Music Volume....................................18 SoundFX Volume..................................18 Don't Say Goodbye...............................18 Hardcore Hypno 4................................18 Freudian Dream..................................18 ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / i CONTENTS ___________________________________________________________________ Japanese Intentions.............................18 Comms................................................18 No Comms Device.................................18 COM Port 1......................................18 COM Port 2......................................18 COM Port 3......................................18 COM Port 4......................................18 Shared File.....................................19 Line Speed......................................20 Handshaking.....................................20 FIFO Options....................................20 Network Dir.....................................20 Gaming...............................................21 Default Game....................................21 Demonstration...............................21 Asteroid Storm..............................21 The First Blood.............................21 Princess Escort.............................21 Pirate Ambush...............................21 Disable a Base..............................21 Defend the Base.............................21 The Convoy..................................21 Freedom Fight...............................21 Final Battle................................21 Duel Mode (COM).............................21 Wing Mode (COM).............................21 Group War (NET).............................21 Star Wars (NET).............................21 Game Speed......................................22 Call Sign.......................................22 Exit.................................................22 Chapter 4 / Playing LineWars II...........................23 Starting Without Parameters..........................23 Command Line Parameters..............................24 The Intro............................................26 The Cockpit..........................................26 Main Viewer Screen..............................27 Info Screen.....................................28 Radar Screen....................................28 Shield and Armour Status Indicator..............29 Ship Systems Status.............................29 Other Indicators................................30 Controlling Your Ships...............................30 The Demonstration....................................31 Single Play Missions.................................32 Duel Mode............................................33 Wing Mode............................................33 ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / ii CONTENTS ___________________________________________________________________ Group War............................................34 Star Wars............................................34 Appendix A / LineWars II Error Messages...................35 Appendix B / LineWars II Memory Usage.....................43 Appendix C / Technical Information........................44 Graphics..............................................44 Sound.................................................45 COM Port Routine......................................46 Network Routine.......................................46 Ship Artificial Intelligence..........................47 Overlay Decompressor..................................47 Appendix D / Building a Parallel Port DAC.................48 ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / iii CONTACTING PATRICK AALTO ___________________________________________________________________ CONTACTING PATRICK AALTO You can contact Patrick Aalto at any of the following addresses, but DO NOT SEND REGISTRATIONS OUTSIDE FINLAND TO PATRICK AALTO! Note that it takes about a week for surface mail to travel from USA to Finland, for example. By mail: Patrick Aalto Hiekkapohjan koulu FIN-40270 PALOKKA FINLAND By Fax: +358-41-637440 (Since this number is used by a firm, please include something like 'To: Patrick Aalto'.) Electronically: Internet: ap@jyu.fi (Patrick.Aalto@f151.n222.z2.fidonet.org) ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / iv INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION Welcome, and thanks for purchasing LineWars II ! I started developing LineWars II in 1990, just after I had finished the original LineWars. At first LineWars II was coded in Turbo Pascal with some Turbo Assembler subroutines, and it worked only in EGA 640x350 mode with 16 colors. During the years of development it was totally rewritten many times until it finally became the current SVGA version that is coded 100% in assembly language. I had three goals in mind when I developed LineWars II. It had to a) feature very realistic 3D graphics, b) run with a high frames- per-second rate on fast 386 machines, and c) be as small as possible. I have a strong dislike of programs that consume mega- bytes of hard disk space and consist of hundred-odd separate files, which is why LineWars II contains almost everything it needs in a single file, LW2.DAT, which is only a few hundred kilobytes in size. LineWars II will be my last program to run on 80286 processors. Although I was many times tempted to switch to 386-only code, I decided it was not quite the time yet to do so. However, since LineWars II is targeted to owners of fast 386 and i486 machines, it will most likely run too slowly on AT class machines. But it WILL run. I am something of a computer hardware addict, and thus I included support for various new hardware components along the way, most notably for S3 Graphical User Interface Accelerator chip, Gravis UltraSound sound card and Roland SCC-1 Sound Canvas Card. I have not yet seen another game that would use the accelerated features of an S3 chip as well as LineWars II does, and also the Roland SCC-1 support is far from common in ShareWare games. LineWars II also supports SoundBlaster Pro with enhanced stereo sound. How to Use This Manual I have designed this manual to be more of a reference guide than a tutorial. Getting started with LineWars II is very easy, especially if you consider yourself an 'advanced user'. You may not need to look at this manual at all unless you wish to know detailed information about something. Novice users need not worry either. If you do not understand some technical detail in the manual, you probably don't need the info anyway, and thus you may well skip the offending piece. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 1 INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________________________ This manual is divided into four chapters and four appendices. Here's a brief overview of what you'll find in each: Chapter 1 / LineWars II Features I begin with a short summary of some of LineWars II's main features to give you a taste of what LineWars II is all about. Start here if you are new to LineWars. Chapter 2 / Installation The installation instructions are very simple indeed. You may well skip this chapter if you want. Chapter 3 / LineWars II Configuration This chapter describes the many configuration options in detail. You can most likely run LineWars II quite succesfully without reading this chapter, but I do recommend you reading it. Chapter 4 / Playing LineWars II This chapter is describes how to start LineWars II, what all the dials and indicators on the cockpit mean, how to control your ship, etc. It is recommended that you read this chapter before playing the game. Appendices I have included some helpful tables here, and some information for those who like to know technical details. There are four appendices. Appendix A lists all LineWars II error messages. Look here if you need an explanation of an error message. Appendix B describes how much memory LineWars II uses in each of the main graphics and sound configurations. Look here if you wish to check if LineWars II will have enough memory on your system or if you receive Out Of Memory errors. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 2 INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________________________ Appendix C covers technical information about LineWars II. You probably won't need this information unless you are an advanced user or a programmer yourself. Appendix D describes how you can build a cheap parallel port sound output device which you can use with LineWars II. The parts cost only one or two dollars and the sound quality is not that much worse than with a Sound Blaster, so the Price/Performance ratio is extremely good. Registration and Upgrade Information If you live in Finland and you have got an unregistered copy of LineWars II (downloaded from a BBS, for example), you can register and receive the registered version if you send me the amount of 100 FIM. Please include your full name and address. If you like, you can also tell me what sort of a machine you run LineWars II on. And if you have found any bugs, I will of course be very interested to hear about them. I will send the registered version on a floppy disk within a week or two. If you live outside Finland, please contact Safari Software for registration. Their telephone numbers are: Orders: 800-238-1393 Help: 301-738-2349 Fax: 301-738-0230 The registered version includes all of the missions. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 3 CHAPTER 1 / LINEWARS II FEATURES ___________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 1 / LINEWARS II FEATURES LineWars II is basically a 3-D space arcade game. It requires almost no strategical thinking. What makes LineWars II special is the use of realtime lightsource-shaded graphics, support for high end graphics and sound cards, and the ability to play against one or many human opponents. In the star systems that you visit in LineWars II there is always a sun, a planet and various other objects. All objects are very realistically shaded with the light emitted from the sun. When you rotate in space you will see that the brightest side of any ship is always the one pointed towards the sun. This is what lightsource-shaded graphics is all about. LineWars II uses vector-based polygon graphics to represent the objects in space. The planets are represented with extremely optimized Gouraud-shaded balls. The routine to draw a Gouraud- shaded ball is one of LineWars II's most unique features. The algorithm is totally my own invention, and it uses a thoroughly different approach than traditional polygon-mesh representation of a ball. (More info can be found in the Appendix C.) The registered version of LineWars II contains a demonstration game, nine single-play missions, two two-player missions and two multi-player missions. Unregistered shareware version has the demo game, three first single-play missions and only one two-player and one multi-player mission. All the missions of LineWars II can be played many times in a row. The object of the game is to shoot a lot of enemy ships while not getting yourself killed. Your score increments every time you kill an enemy ship, and the game keeps track of your highest scores in each of the single-play missions. In the two-player and multi- player missions your score is based on your victories/deaths ratio, and it spans the current session only. LineWars II uses your VESA-compatible or S3 Accelerated SVGA card much better than most comparable games, and it supports a wide variety of sound cards, including Gravis UltraSound and Roland SCC-1. And even though it is such a complex and sophisticated game, it can run in as little as 80 kilobytes of memory, and even on AT class machines. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 4 CHAPTER 2 / INSTALLATION ___________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 2 / INSTALLATION Actually, since you are reading this, you have already installed LineWars II. Installing consists of deciding where to put the LineWars II files, and then unarchiving the files there. Where To Put LineWars II LineWars II is not very picky about the location where it sits on your disk. It is recommended that you install it on a hard disk, however. It will work without problems even from a 360KB floppy disk, but the loading will then be very slow. There is no reason why you shouldn't put LineWars II onto a Stacked or DoubleSpaced disk partition. However, since the LW2U.DAT file is already very tightly compressed, it will not compress any further on a compressed disk partition. Unarchiving The Files You may have gotten LineWars II from various sources, and the method how LineWars II is archived will vary. If you got LineWars II on a diskette, it most likely included an INSTALL program which did the unarchiving for you. Other possible distribution archives are ZIP and LZH files. They are unarchived with commands 'PKUNZIP FILENAME.ZIP' and 'LHA E FILENAME.LZH', respectively. LineWars II archive does not contain subdirectories, so you do not have to worry with giving certain flags to the unarchive commands. After you have unarchived LineWars II, you are ready to start playing it. However, I STRONGLY recommend that you first take some time to check the various configuration options (see the next chapter) LineWars II has to offer. Selecting the configuration that best suits your hardware will make the game much more enjoyable. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 5 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION To get the most out of LineWars II you must configure it for your hardware. LineWars II includes a configuration screen with which this is accomplished. To get to the configuration screen you have two options: 1) Start LineWars II without any options (that is, write just LW2 at the DOS prompt and press enter) and select the menu option 'Configure LineWars II', or 2) Start LineWars II with a command LW2 CFG at the DOS prompt (you don't have to use capital letters). In the configuration screen you may use cursors or mouse to select an option in the menu. Pressing F1 will show help about the current menu item. The configuration screen looks somewhat like this: ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ SysInfo Graphics Control Sound Comms Gaming Exit F1=Help │ │░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │╔═════════════════════ Current Configuration ════════════════════╗│ │║┌ Graphics ────────────────────┐ ┌ Control ────────────────────┐║│ │║│ Graphics Mode: S3 GUI Accel. │ │ Device: ThrustMaster │║│ │║│ Resolution: 800 x 600 │ │ Scaling: 1.00 x 1.00 y │║│ │║│ Colors: 256 │ │ Laser Key: Alt │║│ │║│ Ambient Light: 25 % │ │ Missile Key: Ctrl │║│ │║└──────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘║│ │║┌ Sound ───────────────────────┐ ┌ Communications ─────────────┐║│ │║│ Device: Sound Blaster │ │ Device: COM Port 1 │║│ │║│ Port Address: 220 Hex │ │ Line Speed: 115200 bps │║│ │║│ Frequency: 23040 Hz │ │ Handshaking: Use CTS/RTS │║│ │║│ Stereo Mode: Enhanced │ │ FIFO size: 14 bytes │║│ │║│ Music Volume: 100 % │ │ │║│ │║│ SFX Volume: 100 % │ └─────────────────────────────┘║│ │║│ │ ┌ Gaming Options ─────────────┐║│ │║└──────────────────────────────┘ │ Game Mode: Duel Mode │║│ │║┌ Network Directory ───────────┐ │ Game Speed: 116 % │║│ │║│ N/A │ │ Call Sign: The Terminator │║│ │║└──────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘║│ │╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝│ │░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │ Save configuration and Quit │ LineWars II Configuration │ └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┘ ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 6 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ The first thing you should do after starting Configuration is to select SysInfo. Do this by pressing Enter when the 'SysInfo' text on the top menu row is highlighted, or by clicking on this menu item with the mouse. SysInfo When you select 'SysInfo' from the main menu screen, LineWars II will attempt to find out the available hardware options. To check the hardware LineWars II needs to 'poke around' in your computer, and there is a chance some of the checks might cause your system to crash. Therefore you should never select SysInfo under a multitasker (such as Windows, DESQview or OS/2) unless you have saved all your work in other processes. The chance of LineWars II SysInfo crashing your system is quite small, but it never hurts to be cautious. If your system should crash, just do not select SysInfo again in the future. The SysInfo screen looks somewhat like this: ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ SysInfo Graphics Control Sound Comms Gaming Exit F1=Help │ │░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │╔══════════════════════ System Information ══════════════════════╗│ │║┌ Display Hardware ────────────┐ ┌ Control Hardware ───────────┐║│ │║│ Adapter: S3 Accelerated SVGA │ │ Keyboard: YES (Enhanced) │║│ │║│ Chipset: 86C911 │ │ Joystick: ThrustMaster FCS │║│ │║│ Memory: 1024 KB │ │ Mouse: YES │║│ │║│ │ │ │║│ │║└──────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘║│ │║┌ Sound Hardware ──────────────┐ ┌ Com Ports (UART type) ─────┐║│ │║│ Covox (LPT 1): 378h │ │ COM1: 3F8h (NS16550A) │║│ │║│ Covox (LPT 2): 278h │ │ COM2: 2F8h (NS16450) │║│ │║│ Covox (LPT 3): NONE │ │ COM3: NONE │║│ │║│ Sound Blaster: 220h (Pro I5) │ │ COM4: NONE │║│ │║│ UltraSound: 220h (1024KB) │ └─────────────────────────────┘║│ │║│ Roland: 330h (SCC-1) │ ┌ Network Packet Driver ──────┐║│ │║│ │ │ ARCEther │║│ │║└──────────────────────────────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘║│ │║┌ Processor Type ───────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌ Operating System ─────┐║│ │║│ i486 (in V86 mode) │ │ OK │ │ DOS version 6.20 │║│ │║└───────────────────────┘ └────────┘ └───────────────────────┘║│ │╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝│ │░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░│ │ Show information about this system │ LineWars II Configuration │ └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┘ ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 7 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ The SysInfo screen is divided into several distinct areas. The most important of these are 'Display Hardware', 'Control Hardware', 'Sound Hardware', and 'Com Ports'. In the bottom two boxes you can also see the CPU type and the current operating system version. The 'Display Hardware' section shows which type of graphics card your computer has, the Chipset of the card (if known), and how much memory the card has. The information presented is not necessarily 100 % accurate, it just displays what sort of display hardware LineWars II thinks you have. You can use the 'Control Hardware' section to verify that LineWars II correctly detects your Joystick and Mouse, if you have them. The 'Sound Hardware' section is perhaps the most interesting of them all. The three 'Covox' ports are not necessarily real, since there is no sure way to detect parallel port DAC devices. But if you DO have a parallel port DAC device, it will be located in one of these Covox addresses. Value 'NONE' means that the BIOS thinks the port does not exist. The Sound Blaster row gives the Sound Blaster port address, and in parenthesis the IRQ line, for example (IRQ 5). If LineWars II determined that the card is a Sound Blaster Pro, it will be shown as (Pro I5), where the Ix gives the IRQ line number. The next row displays Gravis Ultrasound port address and the amount of DRAM installed on the card. The last row tells the Roland MPU-401 port address, if found. LineWars II tries to detect which Roland version you have by looking at the MPU firmware revision. If the firmware revision equals that of an LAPC-I or an SCC-1, it will be shown in parenthesis. The 'COM Ports' section displays your COM port base addresses and UART types. The important thing is to check if LineWars II correctly detects your NS16550A or IBM Type 3 UARTs, which feature a FIFO buffer. To exit the SysInfo screen you may press any key or click a mouse button. When you select SysInfo and then return from it, LineWars II hides the configuration options that are not available with your hardware. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 8 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ Graphics When you highlight the 'Graphics' top menu item, you will be presented with the graphics submenu. In this menu you may select the graphics mode you wish LineWars II to use, and the ambient light value. MCGA 320 x 200 The MCGA mode is the traditional 256-color mode which is available on every MCGA and VGA card. The graphics are very fast but blocky due to the very low resolution. If you have a very slow machine, an MCGA card, or a non-IBM- compatible VGA card, this is the mode for you. VGA 320 x 480 This is a non-standard (that is, the BIOS of your display card does not support it) mode, and thus it requires a 100 % IBM-compatible VGA or SVGA card. This mode is also quite fast, especially on local bus machines, and it uses the least amount of main memory of all the graphics modes. If you have an IBM-compatible VGA card with only 256 KB of memory, this is the mode for you. Note that it takes a little while for a monitor to settle to this weird mode. VESA 640 x 480 This is a very nice mode on SVGA cards with at least 512 kilobytes of memory, because of the high resolution. However, this mode requires an additional 256 kilobytes of main memory to run, and your SVGA card must either have a VESA-compatible BIOS, or you must load a VESA driver for your SVGA card. Also, since the amount of data to update on the screen is over four times more than with MCGA, this mode requires quite a fast machine with a fast SVGA card and at least a 386 processor. S3 Accelerated If you have a Graphics Accelerator SVGA card with an S3 chip and with one megabyte of display memory, you are in luck. The S3 mode of LineWars II displays spectacular and fast graphics, and still uses as little main memory as the VGA mode. This mode requires at least a 386 processor. Note that in this mode the screen might seem to slightly 'jump' occassionally. This is not a real bug but a feature having to do with the way I use the memory of the card. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 9 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ ATI Mach8/Mach32 If you have one of the ATI Ultra family of graphics accelerator cards, like ATI Ultra, ATI Ultra+ or ATI Ultra Pro, you are in luck. The ATI mode displays spectacular and fast graphics, and still uses as little main memory as the VGA mode. This mode requires at least a 386 processor and at least one megabyte of display memory. GRAPHDRV.LW2 If none of the standard LineWars II graphics modes suit your hardware, you need to use a separate add-on graphics driver. This driver needs to be renamed to 'GRAPHDRV.LW2' and it needs to be in the current directory (the directory where you are when you start LW2.EXE) for LineWars II to be able to use it. At the time of this writing there are two add-on drivers available: HERCULES.LW2 and EGA.LW2 for Hercules Monochrome and EGA, respectively. Ambient Light Ambient Light is a Computer Graphics term which means back- ground light at constant intensity throughout the scene. In LineWars II this controls the brightness of polygons that are in shadow. A very low amount of ambient light would be the most realistic, but it will make the game harder to play, since you will have trouble seeing ships that come directly from the sun. Control When you highlight the 'Control' top menu item, you will be presented with the control submenu. In this menu you may select the steering device you wish to use, the scaling factors of the device, and keys to use for Laser and Missile. Keyboard If you select Keyboard as your steering device, you will use the cursor keys (either on the numeric keypad or the separate inverted-T keys) for steering. The table on the following page shows the steering keys on the keypad: ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 10 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ ┌─────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────┬─────────────┐ │ (Num Lock) │ ( ./. ) │ ( X ) │ - SpeedDown │ ├─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┤ │ 7 Dive Left │ 8 Dive │ 9 Dive Right │ │ ├─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┤ + Speed Up │ │ 4 Turn Left │ 5 Stop Turn │ 6 Turn Right │ │ ├─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┤ │ 1 Rise Left │ 2 Rise │ 3 Rise Right │ │ ├─────────────┴─────────────┼──────────────┤ ( Enter ) │ │ 0 Roll Ship Left │ , Roll Right │ │ └───────────────────────────┴──────────────┴─────────────┘ Joystick The joystick has two distinct 'modes', which are selected with the second fire button. 1) If button 2 is UP (not pressed down): - Horizontal stick position controls left and right turning of the ship. - Vertical stick position controls ship diving and climbing. - Firebutton 1 fires a laser beam. 2) If button 2 is DOWN (pressed down): - Horizontal stick position rolls the ship. - Vertical stick position controls the speed of the ship. - Firebutton 1 fires a missile, if any ships are targeted in your crosshairs and you have any missiles left. Note that using a joystick as a steering device will slow the game down slightly. This is because accurately reading the joystick position requires waiting for the joystick to report the current position, and during this waiting no other processing can be done. This means also that Covox and Internal Speaker sound output will be distorted if you use joystick, and if you use a COM port that does not have a FIFO support, it is likely that data loss will occur especially on higher COM port bps rates. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 11 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ LineWars II automatically calibrates the joystick when you start the game. However, for a succesfull calibration the joystick needs to be centered when you start LineWars II. (You may recalibrate the joystick even during the play by pressing F4, though.) Mouse Using a mouse as your steering device will make the cross- hairs slide on your screen. However, your lasers and missiles will still be launched directly ahead. The mouse has two distinct 'modes', which are selected with the rightmost mouse button. 1) If the rightmost button is UP (not pressed down): - Horizontal mouse position controls left and right turning of the ship. - Vertical mouse position controls ship diving and climbing. You can change the polarity of the controls using the 'Y Scaling' setting, if you feel that the default direction is 'backwards'. - Leftmost mouse button fires a laser beam. 2) If the rightmost button is DOWN (pressed down): - Horizontal mouse position rolls the ship. - Vertical mouse position controls the speed of the ship. Move the mouse forward to accelerate, and move the mouse backward to brake. - Leftmost mouse button fires a missile, if any ships are targeted in your crosshairs and you have any missiles left. ThrustMaster The best steering device when playing LineWars II is the ThrustMaster Flight Control System. With it you can control almost everything without touching the keyboard. The controls available when using the ThrustMaster FCS are described on the following page: ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 12 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ - Main Joystick - Push forward Ship dives. - Pull back Ship rises. - Turn left Ship turns left. - Turn right Ship turns right. - Top Joystick - Push forward Ship accelerates. - Pull back Ship brakes. - Turn left Ship rolls counterclockwise. - Turn right Ship rolls clockwise. - Trigger Fire a laser beam. - Top thumb button Launch a missile, if a ship is currently in crosshairs and you have missiles left. - Middle button Toggle between forward and aft view. - Low button Teleport to another ship. Note that using a ThrustMaster FCS as a steering device will slow the game down slightly. This is because accurately reading the joystick positions requires waiting for the joystick to report the current position, and during this waiting no other processing can be done. This means also that Covox and Internal Speaker sound output will be distorted if you use ThustMaster FCS, and if you use a COM port that does not have a FIFO support, it is likely that data loss will occur especially on higher COM port bps rates. LineWars II automatically calibrates the ThrustMaster FCS when you start the game. However, for a succesfull calibration the joysticks need to be centered when you start LineWars II. (You may recalibrate the joysticks even during the play by pressing F4, though.) X Scaling Y Scaling If you find the control device to be too sensitive or not sensitive enough, you can change the sensitivity with these settings. When you select either 'X Scaling' or 'Y Scaling', you will be presented a submenu where you can select the new sensitivity value. The possible ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 13 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ options are 0.25, 0.50, 1.00, 2.00 and 4.00. A value of 2.00 will make the controls twice as sensitive as the default value of 1.00, for example. The menu has also negative values for the sensitivity. These negative values work just like the positive ones, but they swap the polarity of the control, too. If you originally had to turn the stick left to turn left, and you select X Scaling value of -1.00, you will now have to turn the stick right to turn left. Note that the steering device sensitivity seems to change also if you select a lower or faster Game Speed value. The sensitivity does not actually change, but since the time of the game will run slower or faster, the ship will also turn slower or faster. You should always first select the Game Speed you wish to use, and only then if the sensitivity of the controls still isn't right, change the scaling factors. Laser Key Missile Key The Laser Key and Missile Key settings let you change the key you wish to use for firing lasers or launching missiles, respectively. Of course, if you use joystick or mouse as your steering device, you need not use either of these keys, so you most likely need not change them. When you select Laser Key or Missile Key, you will see a submenu with the possible keys for the setting. The keys are: Alt, Ctrl, Tab, Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Keypad X, and Keypad ./. You may select the key that seems the most natural to use. The default keys are Alt for lasers, and Ctrl for missiles. You should not select the same key for both. Sound The sound menu lets you select all the options conserning music and sound effects playing in LineWars II. The menu is split into four areas. The topmost area lets you select the sound output device. The second area lets you control some additional parameters, depending on the sound output device. The third area lets you control the sound volume, and the bottom area lets you select the song you wish to play in the background while you are playing LineWars II. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 14 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ No Sound Output The first sound output device is No Sound Output, which means you wish not play any music nor hear any sound effects. This settings uses the least amount of memory, so you may want to use it if you are very low on memory. If none of the other sound options are supported by your hardware and you have not a SOUNDDRV.LW2 for your hard- ware either, you must also choose this option. Covox (8-bit DAC) This option will play the music using a parallel port DAC output device (see Appendix D for how to build one yourself). You should also select Port Address and Play Frequency to suit your hardware, and possibly also the Timer Handling setting. Playing sound thru a parallel port DAC device uses quite a lot of CPU power, and it needs 128 kilobytes of memory to store the digitized instrument and effects samples. If you have a slow machine and especially if you use a memory manager like QEMM, you should first try with a very low Play Frequency, and only if it works reliably select a higher playing rate. Note that using a joystick as a control device might cause some distortion to the parallel port DAC sound output. Sound Blaster LineWars II will automatically detect whether you have an older Sound Blaster (which has only a mono DAC) or a newer Sound Blaster Pro. If you have a Pro version, LineWars II can play music in "Enhanced Stereo". The word "enhanced" means that unlike traditional MOD-player type programs that support Sound Blaster Pro and play each of the four channels with only either the left or the right channel, LineWars II plays all the four music channels with both the stereo channels. This makes the music much more enjoyable when using headphones. Since LineWars II plays only MOD-type music using the digitized sound, it does not utilize the FM chips on a Sound Blaster. The driver needs 128 kilobytes of memory to store the digitized instrument and effects samples. Make sure the base Port Address is correct, and select the highest Play Frequency that your machine can support ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 15 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ to get the best possible sound. Note that the Sound Blaster must use DMA channel 1 for LineWars II to be able to use it. Gravis UltraSound LineWars II will load all instrument and sound effects samples to the memory of your Gravis Ultrasound, and thus the driver uses very little main memory. Your UltraSound card needs only have 256 kilobytes of DRAM memory. The samples are only 8-bit, so the UltraSound card is not unfortunately used quite up to it's full potential. However, since the sound playing is handled totally by hardware, this sound driver will have almost no effect on the game speed. Make certain the Port Address is correct. LineWars II tries to detect the port address based on the ULTRASND environment variable, but if it fails you need to set the address yourself. If you have the optional GRAVIS3D.LW2 file, you can make LineWars II play some of the sound effects using Focal Point 3D sound. This gives an enhanced sense of direction to the sounds especially with headphones. Note that you can also use the Sound Blaster sound driver of LineWars II with your Gravis Ultrasound, but only if you have loaded SBOS with the -x2 parameter. Roland LAPC-I LineWars II will load new patches to your Roland LAPC-I, MT-32 or compatible synth module when starting. This is why the game will load a bit slowly when using this sound device. However, this driver has almost no effect on the actual game speed. You must have a Roland MPU-401 or compatible Midi Processing Unit on port address 330h for this driver to work (the LAPC-I card includes this unit). Roland SCC-1 You can use this sound driver also if you have a Roland MPU-401 Midi Processing Unit and any General Midi - compatible synth module. However, the sound effects that LineWars II uses are specific to Roland GS standard and ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 16 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ thus may not sound correct on other GM synths. The music will play correctly, though. Make sure you select the correct Port Address, too. SOUNDDRV.LW2 If none of the standard LineWars II sound drivers suit your hardware, you may want to use a separate add-on sound driver. This driver needs to be renamed to 'SOUNDDRV.LW2' and it needs to be in the current directory (the directory where you are when you start LW2.EXE) for LineWars II to be able to use it. At the time of this writing there is available a driver for PC internal speaker, named SPEAKER.LW2. Port Address Many of the sound output devices may exist in a variety of I/O port addresses. You can tell LineWars II on which port address your device is with this configuration setting. You should have selected SysInfo before changing the port address, to let LineWars II check the available port addresses that you may select. Play Frequency If you play music thru a parallel port DAC or thru a Sound Blaster, you may select the sound mixing speed with this setting. Lower rates will take less CPU time but will generally sound not as good as the higher rates. Timer / Stereo / 3D If you have selected Covox (parallel port DAC) output device, you may select if you want the timer interrupt replaced or chained to. Normally you should select the 'Replace' option. Only if some TSR programs fails to run correctly, you should select the 'Chain' option. No matter which one you select the DOS clock will be kept on time. If you have selected Sound Blaster output device and you have a Sound Blaster Pro, you may select whether you wish to use Enhanced or Standard stereo mode. Enhanced stereo takes slightly more CPU time, but it will sound nicer when using headphones. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 17 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ If you have select Gravis Ultrasound output device, you can toggle between using Focal Point 3D effect (requires a GRAVIS3D.LW2 file) and standard sound effects. Music Volume SoundFX Volume You can select the sound output volumes separately for music and sound effects. The volume may range from OFF to 120 %. Note that values over 100 % will overdrive some of the sound devices, which may cause distortion to the sound. Comms In the Communications submenu you can select the device you want to use in the two-player or multi-player missions. You may freely skip this submenu if you plan to only play the single-player missions. To play LineWars II in Duel Mode or Wing Mode requires a COM port communications device. To play the Group War or Star Wars missions, you must use either a Shared File communications device. No Comms Device If you select this option, you can only play LineWars II in single-player mode, or you must give all of the COM parameters on command line if you want to use the two- player missions. COM Port 1 COM Port 2 COM Port 3 COM Port 4 You should select one of these COM ports if you wish to use the two-player missions (Duel Mode and Wing Mode) in LineWars II. Select the port your modem or null-cable is connected to. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 18 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ LineWars II uses the standard base port addresses and IRQ lines for the COM ports. The standard values are: ┌──────┬──────┬─────┐ │ Port │ Base │ IRQ │ ├──────┼──────┼─────┤ │ COM1 │ 3F8h │ 4 │ │ COM2 │ 2F8h │ 3 │ │ COM3 │ 3E8h │ 4 │ │ COM4 │ 2E8h │ 3 │ └──────┴──────┴─────┘ If your COM port uses a non-standard base port address or IRQ line, you will have to give the correct base port and IRQ line on a command line while starting LineWars II. (See the section on command line parameters for more info about this). After you have selected the correct COM port you should select the line speed, handshaking and FIFO options for the port. Shared File If you plan to play LineWars II in multi-player mode and you have a network system that supports file sharing, you can use this communications device. You must also select the directory ("Network Dir") where LineWars II will create the node files that are used for communication between the nodes. This directory must be physically the same location for all the nodes in one game. The recommended location is a RAMdrive on a network server. If your network does not have a dedicated server, you might try using the disk of the slowest computer (if accessing a local disk is faster than accessing a remote disk) or the faster computer (if accessing a remote disk is faster). If you experience problems with this communications device, first make sure that SHARE.EXE is loaded, especially on the server machine. See your DOS manual or online documentation on more info about loading SHARE.EXE. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 19 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ Line Speed You can select the connection line speed to suit your modem between 1200 and 115200 bps. Note that the slowest recommended line speed is 9600 bps. Slower lines will work, but the movement of your opponent's ship will be somewhat jerky. If you have a direct cable to another computer, you can select the highest rate of 115200 bps. LineWars II has a very fast COM port routine which will most likely be quite reliable at this speed even on slower machines. You can also select "Use Current", which instructs LineWars II not to change the current line speed of the COM port. This is most usefull when you start LineWars II under a comms program after you have dialed your friend. Handshaking LineWars II can use CTS/RTS hardware handshaking to prevent data overrun errors on slower modems. If you use a direct cable connection, you do not need to turn the handshaking on. If you have enabled the handshaking, your modem must be able to receive data (CTS signal must be high) when you start LineWars II. FIFO Options If your COM port has NS16550A or IBM Type 3 UART, you can enable the FIFO queue to prevent data loss. This is especially effective if you use a joystick. You can select the FIFO queue length to be either 2, 8, 14 or 16 bytes, or you can disable the queue. You have to test which queue length produces the most reliable connection. Network Dir If you use the Shared File communications device, you must give the location of the common directory where the node files will be created. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 20 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ Gaming In the Gaming submenu you can select the default mission (the cursor will be positioned on this mission when you start LW2 without parameters), the virtual speed of the game, and your call sign (for two-player and multi-player missions). Default Game Demonstration If you select this as the default option, you will see the demo game when you press Enter in the LW2 main menu without making a selection. You may join the battle in the demonstration by first pressing the F3 key. Asteroid Storm The First Blood Princess Escort Pirate Ambush Disable a Base Defend the Base The Convoy Freedom Fight Final Battle These are the single-player missions. Each mission has a separate high score, and you may play the missions in whichever order you wish. Duel Mode (COM) Wing Mode (COM) These are the two-player missions. You must use a COM port with these missions. Group War (NET) Star Wars (NET) These are the multi-player missions. You must the Shared File communications device with these missions. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 21 CHAPTER 3 / CONFIGURATION ___________________________________________________________________ Game Speed With the Game Speed setting you can select the virtual speed of the game to suit your reflexes and skills. The speed can be set to be between 50 % and 233 % of the default speed. The speed of the CPU or the framerate does not affect the speed and movements of the ships, it just affects how smoothly the ships move. If you select a high Game Speed setting on a slow computer, the game has to move the ships a long distance between each frame, which will cause jerky movements. A low Game Speed on a fast machine will make the ships move very slowly and smoothly. If your machine is too slow for a certain game speed setting, you will see the FPS indicator flashing a 'SLOW' text from time to time. Call Sign You can type your call sign, up to 16 characters, which will be used to identify your ships in the two-player and multi-player missions. Exit Selecting Exit will save the current configuration settings into LW2U.DAT and exit from the configuration program. You can also perform Exit at any time by pressing Esc. Note that there is no way to quit without saving the configuration. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 22 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II After you have configured LineWars II for your hardware, you are ready to start playing the game. This chapter describes your options for starting the game, the layout of the cockpit of your Cobra spaceship, the keys and controls in the game, and finally the goal and story of the first missions. Starting Without Parameters If you start LineWars II without giving any command line parameters, you will see the main menu. The main menu screen looks somewhat like this: ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ LineWars II Copyright 1994 Safari Software & Patrick Aalto │ │ Version 1.02 Made in Finland 06.03.1994 │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ┌ DISTRIBUTED BY ┐┌─ SELECT MISSION TO PLAY ──┐┌─── THE AUTHOR ───┐ │ Safari Software││ Configure LineWars II ││ Patrick Aalto │ │ 10406 Holbrook ││ View Demonstration ││ Hiekkapohjan │ │ Drive, Potomac ││ "Asteroid Storm" (1) ││ koulu, │ │ MD 20854 ││ "The First Blood" (2) ││ 40270 PALOKKA │ │ U.S.A. ││ "Princess Escort" (3) ││ FINLAND │ │ 301-738-2349 ││ "The Pirate Ambush" (4) ││ E-mail: ap@jyu.fi│ └────────────────┘│ "Disable the Base" (5) │└──────────────────┘ ┌─ UNREGISTERED ─┐│ "Defend the Base" (6) │┌─ SPECIAL THANKS ─┐ │ Please register││ "Destroy the Convoy" (7) ││ Borland Inc, Ralf│ │ your copy of ││ "Fight for Freedom" (8) ││ Brown, Mark Cox, │ │ LineWars II !! ││ "The Final Battle" (9) ││ R.Ferraro, Themie│ │ Finns may regis││ Duel Mode (modem game) ││ Gouthas,Marko Hap│ │ ter via author,││ Wing Mode (modem game) ││ ponen, Kim Heino,│ │ others please ││ Group War (network game) ││ S3 Incorporated, │ │ contact Safari.││ Star Wars (network game) ││ Tim Sweeney, U4ia│ └────────────────┘└───────────────────────────┘└──────────────────┘ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Please see the documentation file "LW2.DOC" for more details. │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The main menu screen displays the version number of your copy of Linewars II, the copyright information and the date when LineWars II was last compiled (in DD.MM.YYYY format). On both sides of the mission menu are some possibly usefull info, like contact addresses for Safari Software and me. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 23 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ The menu bar will be positioned on whichever mission you have chosen as the default mission in LineWars II Configuration. To choose the mission you wish to play (or to configure your copy of Linewars II) you can move the menu bar with up and down arrow keys, and select the mission with pressing Enter. If you wish to quit LineWars II at this point, you can press ESC. If you have your mouse driver loaded, you can also select the mission by moving the mouse pointer (and thus the menu bar) on top of the mission you wish to play and clicking the left mouse button. Clicking the right mouse button will quit LW2. After you have chosen your mission, LineWars II loads the driver overlays and other data from LW2U.DAT and then begins to run the intro. When you start LineWars II without any command line parameters, all the configuration options you have selected are in effect. Command Line Parameters It is possible to override some of the configuration settings you have given in LineWars II Configuration by giving the new setting on the command line. If you give any parameters on the command line, the main menu is not displayed and LineWars II goes directly into the intro screen. There are five distinct groups of command line parameters that LineWars II recognizes. You can: 1) Start the LineWars II Configuration program, 2) Select the mission you wish to play, 3) Select the graphics mode you wish to use, 4) Select the control device you wish to use, and 5) Select the COM port options for two-player missions. The table on the following page summarizes the command line parameters and displays the shortest abbreviations that are recognized. Note that you cannot setup the sound options or multi-player options on the command line. Use the LineWars II configuration to setup these. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 24 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ ┌──────────────┬──────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐ │ Parameter │ Abbreviation │ Meaning │ ├──────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ CFG │ CF │ Linewars II Configuration │ ├──────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ DEMO │ DE │ Play the Demonstration game │ │ GAME n │ G n │ Play the Mission number n, │ │ │ │ where n is 1, 2, ... , 9 │ │ DUEL │ DU │ Play the Duel Mode mission │ │ WING │ WI │ Play the Wing Mode mission │ ├──────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ MCGA │ MC │ Use MCGA graphics mode │ │ VGA │ VG │ Use VGA graphics mode │ │ VESA │ VE │ Use VESA graphics mode │ │ S3 │ S3 │ Use S3 graphics mode │ │ ATI │ AT │ Use ATI graphics mode │ ├──────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ KEYBOARD │ K │ Use keyboard for steering │ │ JOYSTICK │ J │ Use joystick for steering │ │ MOUSE │ MO │ Use mouse for steering │ │ FCS │ F │ Use ThrustMaster FCS controls │ ├──────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │ PORT n │ P n │ Use COM port number n, where │ │ │ │ n is 1, 2, 3 or 4 │ │ PORTX b,i │ PX b,i │ Use a non-standard COM port, │ │ │ │ where b is the base address │ │ │ │ (in HEX) and i is the IRQ │ │ │ │ line, as in PORTX 3E8,5 │ │ BAUD n │ B n │ COM port bps rate, where n │ │ │ │ is 1200, 2400, ... , 115200 │ │ CTS │ CT │ Use CTS/RTS handshaking │ │ │ │ │ │ NOCTS │ N │ Disable CTS/RTS handshaking │ └──────────────┴──────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘ You may give the parameters in either upper or lower case, and multiple parameters may be in any order. The command line parameters are most usefull when you start LineWars II under a comms program. You can configure LineWars II as an add-on transfer protocol to your comms program, and then create a batch file that tells the current COM port number and BPS rate to LineWars II on the command line. When the comms program runs the batch file, LineWars II will load and use the correct COM port settings. Other use for the command line parameters is to automatically skip the main menu. If you give the graphics mode on the command line, LineWars II works just like if you had given the mode in LineWars II Configuration, but skips the menu. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 25 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ The Intro When you have selected the mission you wish to play (either from the main menu or from the command line), LineWars II begins to run the intro. The intro screen displays a looping 'planet flyby' animation and a scrolling intro text for the mission you are about to start. You can skip the intro by pressing Enter, and you can quit LineWars II at this point by pressing ESC. If you are using a joustick or mouse, you can also skip the intro using the fire button or the left mouse button. Note however that it is not possible to skip the intro when using a two-player mission, because in these missions LineWars II tries to establish connection to the other computer during the intro. The game will start immediately after a connection is made. The 'planet flyby' animation displays our solar system as it would be seen from a comet or a probe flying in a highly elliptical orbit. The camera of the probe is constantly pointed towards Jupiter. Note that even though the orbits of the planets are relatively correct, the sizes of the planets and sun are greatly exaggerated. It is a good idea to read the scrolling text thru at least once, to get an idea of what the mission is all about. The Cockpit When the mission you have chosen begins, you will be sitting at the controls of your spaceship. The cockpit consists of several distinct areas. On the top is the logo text. The biggest area in the middle is the Main Viewer Screen, which is like a window to space. On the left and right borders of the Main Viewer are Ship Systems Status indicators. The wide area below the Main Viewer and below the registration text is for messages received from other friendly ships. On the bottom left corner is the Ship Speed Indicator, beside which is the Info Screen, which can show various information, selected with the F1 key. On the bottom right side is the Radar Screen, which includes Ship Class Counters. On the bottom middle is the Shield and Armour Status Indicator, and on top of it you can see which ship you are currently controlling. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 26 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ The Cockpit looks somewhat like this: ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │L i n e W a r s I I b y P a t r i c k A a l t o 1 9 9 4│ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ── ── │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Lasr│ │Radr│ │Misl│ │Comm│ │Shld│ │Hull│ │Thrs│ │Ctrl│ ├────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────┤ │View│ R e g i s t e r e d V e r s i o n │Misl│ │Fore│ │3 │ ├────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────┤ │ Messages from other Cobras are shown here. │ ├────┬─────────────────────┬───────────┬─────────────────────┬────┤ │████│ Info Screen, which │CONTROLLING│Long Range 3D Scanner│ │ │████│ can be selected with│ COBRA 1 │ ______ Friend ├────┤ │████│ F1 key to display ├───────────┤ / \ 2 │ │ │████│ score page, keyboard│ Shield & │ │ Radar │ Foe ├────┤ │████│ help, radar help, or│ Armour │ │ Screen │ 2 │Time│ │KM/H│ memory status page. │ Status │ \______/ Other ├────┤ │3250│ │ Indicator │ 10 │FPS │ └────┴─────────────────────┴───────────┴─────────────────────┴────┘ Main Viewer Screen The Main Viewer Screen displays a 3D representation of space either in front of your ship or behind your ship. The F2 key toggles between Fore View and Aft View. You can see which view you are currently using from the ship system status indicator on the left border, beside the big 'Registered Version' or 'Unregistered Shareware Version' text. The status indicator shows either 'Fore' or 'Rear'. On the fore view you have crosshairs which you can use to aim your lasers and target your missiles. Your ship is equipped with a Target Identification Computer, which can display the distance to the object, the speed of the ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 27 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ object, the general class of the object and whether it is 'Friend', 'Foe' or 'Other'. This data will be shown if you have an object targeted on your crosshairs and it is near enough. The data might display the CallSign of the ship captain if you play a two-player or multi-player mission. Info Screen The Info Screen has four pages which you can select with the F1 key. The first page, which is displayed when you start LineWars II, tells a short description of the mission (in single-player missions), and your scores. In two-player and multi-player missions this screen also has a chat window, where the text you type and the texts other players have typed will be shown. Thus you may chat in the middle of the game. The second page displays help for some keys that can be used in the game. The third page displays a quick reference for how to interpret the 3D radar screen. The fourth page displays the memory status. It shows how much memory LineWars II uses for code, data and stack (this info is mostly for my debugging purposes), how much memory the overlay drivers use, how much additional data memory is used, and how much memory is still free. Radar Screen This circular display, divided into two sections, show how much you have to turn to bring a target into your crosshairs. Radar contacts are displayed as dots. A dot in the outermost ring represents a ship behind you. If a dot is in the middle of the inner circle, the ship is directly in front of you. The color of each dot indicates what it is: red is for an enemy ship, blue for a friendly ship, and gray for other objects (like asteroids). The shade of the dot indicates it's range: the brighter the dot, the closer to you it is. If a ship has just shot you, it is shown in bright yellow. In the radar screen are also counters for friendly, enemy and other ships. They show how many ships of each type are ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 28 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ in your vicinity. If the number of friendly ships gets to zero, you have lost the battle, and if the number of enemy ships gets to zero, you have obviously won. Shield and Armour Status Indicator This indicator displays the status of your fore and aft deflector shields (which protect your ship from lasers) and the armour around your ship (which protect you in collisions and missile hits, and also from lasers if your shields are exhausted). The shield indicators have the words 'Fro' and 'Aft' beside them. Green color means healthy shields and armour, red color means exhausted shields or damaged armour. Your shields recharge when not under fire, but if your armour gets damaged it doesn't regenerate. If the Shield Generator of your ship is damaged, your shields can only charge up to 25 % of their maximum value. If your shields and armour are very low, your ship systems may get damaged under enemy fire. Ship Systems Status The Ship System Status indicators are the eight warning lights on the left and right border of your Main Viewer Screen. From top to bottom and left to right, these show the status of your Lasers, Missile Launcher, Shield Generator, Thrusters, Radar System, Communications System, Ship's Hull and Steering Controls. If any of these systems is damaged, the corresponding warning light will show a yellow text on a red background. If your lasers are damaged, they fire only occasionally. If your missile launching system is damaged, you cannot launch missiles. If the shield generator is damaged, your shield will only charge to upo to 25 % of their maximum value. If your thrusters are damaged, the maximum speed of your ship will be 500 km/h. If your radar is damaged, no radar contacts will be shown, but the radar can still detect the number of ships in your vicinity. If your communications system is damaged, you cannot receive messages. If the hull is damaged, the status of your ship is critical, since the next hit that reaches to the hull will rupture it and destroy your ship. Lastly, if the steering controls are damaged, your ship will jerk slightly from side to side. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 29 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ Other Indicators Besides the aforementioned groups, there are five more indicators. On the bottom left side is the speed indicator. It shows the current speed of your ship in kilometres per hour. On the right side, below the Main Viewer screen is the missile counter. It shows how many missiles your ship has left. On the bottom right corner is the Frames Per Second counter. It gets updated every second, and it counts how many frames was drawn during the previous second. If your computer is too slow for the game (in the current configuration), the indicator will flash a 'SLOW' text. You should not play the game if this happens a lot, since it means that LineWars II has to skip more than five frames per every frame it draws to stay in real time, so the movement of the ships will be very jerky. Above the FPS indicator is the clock. It shows the current DOS time in HHMM format. Above the Shield and Armour Indicator is an indicator that shows which ship you are currently controlling. You can teleport to another ship at any time during the game with the F3 key. When you teleport, the ship you were controlling will be controlled by the computer, and you will control the ship you just teleported into. Controlling Your Ships LineWars II is unique in that instead of controlling just one ship, as in most other space arcade games, you can control a whole fleet of friendly ships (in most of the missions). This is accomplished with a feature called 'teleporting'. Since you obviously can only control one ship at a time with your joystick, mouse or keyboard, you need to be able to quickly select a ship that you wish to control in any particular time. To 'teleport' from ship to ship, you use the F3 key (or if you have a ThrustMaster FCS, the lowest button). When you press the key, you are instantly teleported to another ship, which you can now control, and the ship you just left is given over to the computer. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 30 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ The biggest difference between controlling a ship yourself and letting the computer to control the ship, is that the computer cannot launch missiles. Since neither the enemy computer- controlled ships, nor the friendly computer-controlled ships can launch missiles, you have a clear advantage. To make most of this advantage, it is often wise to teleport quickly from ship to ship and launch all three missiles of the ship to different targets. The basic steering controls which you can use are as follows: - Dive - Climb - Turn left - Turn right - Rotate counterclockwise - Rotate clockwise - Increase speed - Decrease speed The way these controls are activated depends on the steering device you have selected. Look at the 'Control' section in the 'Configuration' chapter for detailed info. You have two weapons systems on your ship, lasers and missiles. Lasers are most effective against capital ships and asteroids, and since they constantly recharge, you have unlimited ammunition for them. Against fighters the missiles are more effective, however, since the fighters have good deflector shielding but only a light armour. All the ships can carry a maximum of three missiles only. You can launch a missile, if you have any left, when the Target Identification Computer data is displayed on your crosshairs, for the target you wish to launch the missile to. The lasers are always sent directly ahead from your ship, and they will hit the nearest target ahead of you. Since the deflector shielding of many of the ships reaches a bit beyond the physical size of the ship, sometimes the laser blast will hit the ship even if it is not aimed quite directly towards the ship. It can take quite a few laser hits before the target is destroyed, since the deflector shielding of the target constantly recharges when the ship is not under fire. The Demonstration The first 'mission' you can choose is the demonstration game. In this mission you don't need to do anything, you can just ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 31 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ watch the computer play against itself. You can study this mission to see how the computer plays. Since even the ship you are looking from is controlled by the computer, you can easily see what sort of tactics the computer uses. If you get bored to watch the enemy ships beat your friendly ships (although it is not at all certain this will always happen), you can 'teleport' into one of your friendly ships and control it. Since there are no scoring in this mission, you can practice the game leisurely using this mission. If you win (all the enemy ships are destroyed) or if you lose (all your ships are destroyed), the demonstration will restart. Note that if you wish to continue controlling a ship, you must 'teleport' again after the restart. Single Play Missions When the single play mission you have selected begins, it will start with the easiest difficulty level. This means that with a bit of practice you should not have a lot of trouble winning the game. ("The Final Battle" may seem a bit hard at first, though...) In all the single play missions your job is to destroy all the enemy ships before either all of your ships (in some of the missions), or a certain ship you must protect (in other missions) gets destroyed. Your score will increase per every destroyed ship, either by you or by your computer co-pilots. The score indicator will show your current score, the best score your have got within this run, and the best score you have ever had on this mission. If you win the game, your mission will restart, but this time it will be a bit more difficult. Usually this means that there are more enemy ships that you must destroy. On some missions also the number of friendly ships will increase when the difficulty level increases. If you lose the game, your current score will get to zero and the game will restart from the easiest difficulty level. If you get thru all the difficulty levels of a mission, you will see a lead-in text to the next mission. If you get enough of the game, press ESC and the game will exit to the main menu (if you started without command line parameters). ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 32 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ Duel Mode To play the duel mode you need to have a modem or a direct serial cable connecting two computers. Both players need to have a copy of LineWars II on their machines. Before you start the duel mode, first use 'LineWars II Configuration' to setup the correct COM port, communications speed, hand- shaking method, FIFO options, and preferably also CallSign. If you use a modem, before you start LineWars II you need to call your friend using a communications program. When you have connected, exit (or jump to DOS shell from) the communications program, and start LineWars II. Select the Duel Mode from the main menu, and look at the intro until LineWars II has made a connection with the copy running at the other machine. When the connection is made, the game will begin. You have two ships that you can control, and so does your opponent. You must shoot the ships of the opponent to win the game. No missiles are available in this mission. The score page displays the victories and losses of both you and your opponent. Naturally you should try to get as many victories and as few losses as possible. You can also chat while you are playing. The character keys you press will be sent to your opponent, and also displayed on your screen. Note that the keyboard layout is US, and it cannot be changed with language-specific keyboard drivers like KEYBUK, KEYBSU etc. The game will end if either of the players presses ESC, or if the connection is lost. Wing Mode The Wing Mode is similar to the Duel Mode, but instead of fighting against your friend, you will fight with him/her against two computer-controlled enemy ships. The score page shows the victories/losses ratio of all the four ships. If either you or your wingman gets destroyed, the game will restart. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 33 CHAPTER 4 / PLAYING LINEWARS II ___________________________________________________________________ Group War The Group War mission requires that you use a 'Shared File' communications device and you use a network. Before you can start the mission, you need to configure LineWars II to use this communications device. Look at the detailed info in the relevant sections in the 'Configuration' chapter. When you start the mission, the game will start immediately, without any intro. You will have two ships to control, and so do all of the other players. One by one the other players (up to seven) can pop into the game. You need to destroy as many enemy ships as possible to get the best score. You can of course try to create alliances, but the computer-controlled ships will still attack any ships they can. You can also chat while you are playing, but note that the messages you receive may seem garbled if more than one person transmits at the same time. Star Wars This mission is similar to the Group War mission, but instead of 'all-against-all' battle, all of the human players are on the same side, fighting against computer-controlled enemy ships. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 34 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES There are several error messages LineWars II may give in case it encounters a problem. Some of these messages may be given by LineWars II kernel code, others may be given by an overlay code (graphics and sound drivers are overlays, for example). The most common error messages are explained here in alphabetical order. ATIDRV ERROR: 800x600 mode with 256 colors not available ! LineWars II could not initiate the accelerated 800x600 ATI graphics mode. Either you don't have enough display memory (a full megabyte is needed), or the BIOS of your display card is not compatible with a real ATI card. ATIDRV ERROR: ATI driver requires a 386 or better CPU ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in ATI mode on a computer that does not have a 386 or i486 processor. ATIDRV ERROR: ATI Mach8 or Mach32 accelerator not found ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in ATI accelerated graphics mode, but you don't have an ATI Graphics Ultra, ATI Graphics Ultra+ or ATI Graphics Ultra Pro display card. BLASTDRV ERROR: Base address differs from BLASTER=Axxx ! You have given a Sound Blaster base port address which differs from that in the 'BLASTER=' environment variable. BLASTDRV cannot determine which one is correct and cannot continue. Either correct the port address in LineWars II Configuration, or fix the 'BLASTER=' environment variable. BLASTDRV ERROR: Not enough memory for DMA buffers ! This message may be given by the Sound Blaster driver, if there is not enough free memory to allocate a DMA transfer buffer. Try to free more memory, or lower the output frequency. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 35 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ BLASTDRV ERROR: SoundBlaster did not reset ! This message may be given by the Sound Blaster driver, if the Sound Blaster card does not respond to a reset command. This is most likely due to an invalid port address. This may also happen if some badly written program has left your Sound Blaster into a mixed-up state. BLASTDRV ERROR: Unsupported DMA channel in BLASTER=Dx ! Sound Blaster driver supports only DMA channel 1, and the 'BLASTER=' environment variable has a different setting. If you want to use LineWars II with Sound Blaster sound, you must configure your Sound Blaster for DMA channel 1. DUELDRV ERROR: CTS/RTS handshake enabled, but CTS signal is low ! You have enabled CTS/RTS handshake in LineWars II Configuration or from the command line, and the ClearToSend (CTS) signal was low when you started LineWars II in Duel Mode. LineWars II needs to be able to send data immediately when it starts, thus the CTS signal must be high (active). DUELDRV ERROR: No COM port communications device selected ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in a two-player mode, but you have not selected a COM port. Run the configuration and select the required Comms settings. Error loading graphics driver code! LineWars II kernel could not load the graphics driver code from 'LW2.EXE'. This may be due to a corrupt LW2.EXE, you may have specified a graphics mode that this version of LW2 does not recognize, you may have selected to load GRAPHDRV.LW", but there is no such file, or there may not be enough memory to load the driver. Error loading mission data! LineWars II kernel could not load the mission data you requested. This may be due to a corrupt LW2.EXE, ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 36 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ or you may have specified a mission that this version of LineWars II does not include, or there may not be enough memory to load the driver. Try to free more memory before starting LineWars II, and make sure you have selected a correct mission. Error loading song or instrument data! LineWars II kernel could not load song data, instrument samples or Roland LAPC-1 timbres from LW2.EXE. This may be due to a corrupt LW2.EXE, or there may not be enough memory to load the data. Try to free more memory before starting LineWars II. Error loading sound driver code! LineWars II kernel could not load the sound driver code from 'LW2.EXE'. This may be due to a corrupt LW2.EXE, or you may have specified a sound driver that this version of LW2 does not recognize, or there may not be enough memory to load the driver. Try to free more memory before starting LineWars II, and make sure you have selected the correct sound driver in LineWars II Configuration. Error loading the CFG overlay! LineWars II kernel could not load the LineWars II Configuration overlay module. This may be due to a corrupt LW2.EXE or you may have insufficient free memory. Try freeing more memory before starting LW2. GroupWar ERROR: No network communications device selected! You are attempting to run the Group War mission, but you have not select a network communications device. Run the LineWars II Configuration and select the required Comms settings. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 37 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ GroupWar ERROR ? creating file NODE?.LW2 ! The Shared File network driver of LineWars II could not create a node file for your node on the shared directory. Make sure you have write access to the directory, that SHARE.EXE is loaded, and that there are no old nodefiles left over from some earlier game in the directory. LAPCDRV ERROR: MPU-401 interface did not reset ! This message may be given by the Roland LAPC-I driver, if the Roland LAPC-I card does not respond to a reset command. This is most likely due to a badly written program having left the MPU interface into a mixed-up state. Sometimes the problem may go away if you try to restart LineWars II a few times. LineWars II cannot run on 8088/8086 processors! You are attempting to run LineWars II on a computer that has only 8088 or 8086 processor. You need to have at least an 80186 processor to run LineWars II. MCGADRV ERROR: Not enough memory for display buffer ! The MCGA driver of LineWars II needs 56 kilobytes of memory for a viewscreen buffer. This amount of memory was not available. You should try to free more memory before starting LineWars II in MCGA mode. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 38 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ S3DRV ERROR: Only 512 kilobytes of display memory ! The S3 driver of LineWars II determined that your S3 card has only 512 kilobytes of RAM. The S3 driver requires at least one megabyte of display RAM. S3DRV ERROR: S3 driver requires i386 or better CPU ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in S3 mode on a computer that does not have a 386 or i486 processor. S3DRV ERROR: VESA Enhanced 800x600 mode with 256 colors not available ! The S3 driver of LineWars determined that VESA mode 203h was not available. Your S3 graphics card may have incompatible BIOS, or you may not have an S3 accelerated graphics card. SCCDRV ERROR: MPU-401 interface did not reset ! This message may be given by the Roland SCC-1 driver, if the Roland SCC-1 card does not respond to a reset command. You may have given a wrong MPU base port address in LineWars II Configuration, or a badly written program may have left the MPU interface into a mixed-up state. Sometimes the problem may go away if you try to restart LineWars II a few times. Sorry, but LineWars II requires DOS 3.0 or better! You must have at least DOS version 3.0 if you want to play LineWars II. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 39 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ StarWars ERROR: No network communications device selected! You are attempting to run the Star Wars mission, but you have not select a network communications device. Run the LineWars II Configuration and select the required Comms settings. StarWars ERROR ? creating file NODE?.LW2 ! The Shared File network driver of LineWars II could not create a node file for your node on the shared directory. Make sure you have write access to the directory, that SHARE.EXE is loaded, and that there are no old nodefiles left over from some earlier game in the directory. ULTRADRV ERROR: Error loading FP3D file "GRAVIS3D.LW2" ! You have configured LineWars II to use Focal Point 3D sound with your Gravis UltraSound card, but LineWars II could not find the GRAVIS3D.LW2 file on your current directory, or there was not enough memory to load the file. Check that the file exists, and try to free more memory. ULTRADRV ERROR: Gravis Ultrasound not found ! The Gravis Ultrasound driver could not find a Gravis Ultrasound card at the given port address. Make sure you have given the correct port address in LineWars II Configuration. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 40 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ VESADRV ERROR: Not a enough memory for display buffer ! The VESA driver of LineWars II needs 256 kilobytes of memory for a viewscreen buffer. This amount of memory was not available. You should try to free more memory before starting LineWars II in VESA mode. VESADRV ERROR: Sorry, but mode features unsupported parameters ! Your SVGA card has some attributes in 640x480x256 mode that the VESA driver of LineWars II does not support. The VESA driver requires this mode to have 640 bytes per scanline and a granularity of 64K. If you can provide me (Patrick Aalto) with information about these parameters in your SVGA card, I may be able to fix the VESA driver to support your SVGA card. VESADRV ERROR: VESA 640x480 mode with 256 colors not available ! The VESA driver determined that VESA mode 101h was not available. There may be several reasons for this error message: Your SVGA card does not have VESA BIOS extensions, you have not loaded a VESA TSR program, or your SVGA card may have only 256 kilobytes of display memory. If your SVGA card does not have the VESA extensions in BIOS, you need to get a separate VESA TSR program and load it before you can use LineWars II in VESA mode. VESADRV ERROR: VESA driver requires i386 or better CPU ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in VESA mode on a computer that does not have a 386 or i486 processor. VGADRV ERROR: Not a VGA graphics adapter ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in VGA mode with a display card that is not VGA compatible. WINGDRV ERROR: CTS/RTS handshake enabled, but CTS signal is low ! You have enabled CTS/RTS handshake in LineWars II Configuration or from the command line, and the ClearToSend (CTS) signal was low when you started ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 41 APPENDIX A / LINEWARS II ERROR MESSAGES ___________________________________________________________________ LineWars II in Wing Mode. LineWars II needs to be able to send data immediately when it starts, thus the CTS signal must be high (active). WINGDRV ERROR: No COM port communications device selected ! You are attempting to run LineWars II in a two-player mode, but you have not selected a COM port. Run the configuration and select the required Comms settings. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 42 APPENDIX B / LINEWARS II MEMORY USAGE ___________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX B / LINEWARS II MEMORY USAGE LineWars II is designed to use as little memory as possible. However, the memory requirements vary greatly depending on graphics and sound options, and also depending on many other configuration options. The following table may be used as a guideline to determine how much free memory LineWars II will need in the main configurations. ┌──────────────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬───────┐ │ MEMORY USAGE │ MCGA │ VGA │ VESA │ S3/ATI│ ├──────────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤ │ No Sound │ 131 K │ 76 K │ 338 K │ 76 K │ ├──────────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤ │ Covox │ 293 K │ 238 K │ 500 K │ 238 K │ ├──────────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤ │ SoundBlaster │ 322 K │ 266 K │ 528 K │ 266 K │ ├──────────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤ │ UltraSound │ 162 K │ 107 K │ 369 K │ 107 K │ ├──────────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤ │ Roland │ 165 K │ 110 K │ 372 K │ 110 K │ └──────────────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴───────┘ Special memory requirements of some of the drivers are described below. - MCGA graphics driver requires 56 kilobytes of memory for triple-buffering. - VESA graphics driver requires 256 kilobytes of memory for triple-buffering. - Covox sound driver requires 128 kilobytes of memory for digitized instrument and sound effects samples. - SoundBlaster sound driver requires 128 kilobytes of memory for digitized instrument and sound effects samples, plus a few kilobytes (depending on playing rate) for a DMA transfer buffer. - Gravis UltraSound needs temporarily an additional 64K block while loading the sample data. This memory will be freed after the samples are loaded to GUS RAM. This block is NOT included in the table above. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 43 APPENDIX C / TECHNICAL INFORMATION ___________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX C / TECHNICAL INFORMATION This appendix describes some of the technical aspects behind LineWars II. Graphics LineWars II uses polygon-based 3D graphics. The basic algorithms are pretty old, I have not changed them much since the original LineWars (which was made in 1989). However, I added flat shading to the algorithms, since there is always a sun in the game universe. The shading value is based on the angle between a polygon surface normal vector and a vector from the object to the sun. The Gouraud-shaded planet routine uses an algorithm that I first thought of in 1991, but at that time I could not make it fast enough. In December 1992 I finally was able to improve it enough so it runs in real-time. The algorithm uses a 3D version of the classic Bresenham circle algorithm and linear interpolation to calculate the color of the pixels. Using a lot of precalculation I was able to have the algorithm require only one addition per pixel, a few multiplications per scanline, and one square root per the whole planet. The palette I use is a very simple one-color scale, which makes shading and anti-aliasing very easy. I could not have anti-aliasing and Gouraud shading for the planets at the same time using a more colorfull palette, since anti-aliasing requires a 'full' palette of all colors between any two basic colors, and my planet routine requires 128 shades of a basic color. The MCGA and VESA graphics modes use a 'dirty pixel' approach, which means that I have two standard memory buffers, one which is used to draw the ships, and other which contains the ships of the previous frame. The sizes of these buffers are 256x110 (28160 bytes) and 512x256 (128KB), respectively. I only update those parts of the video RAM that have changed since the last frame. The MCGA mode waits for vertical retrace (even though it would not have to, but it would be silly to update the screen up to 150 times per second), but the VESA mode does not. On Pentium machine with a local bus video card the VESA mode might therefore run at more than 100 frames per second. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 44 APPENDIX C / TECHNICAL INFORMATION ___________________________________________________________________ In the MCGA graphics mode the vertical polygon boundaries are anti-aliased, using a very simple technique. Since the X-coordinate must be between 0 and 255, I can use high byte of a word register for the integer part and low byte for the fractional part of the coordinate, per every scanline of the polygon. The fractional part directly gives the amount of polygon color (versus the current background color) to use on this polygon border pixel. The VGA graphics mode uses a tweaked split-screen mode. The screen resolution is 320x480, and the upper portion of the screen is double-buffered within the VGA memory. The same anti-aliasing technique is used in VGA mode as in MCGA mode. Since the vertical resolution is much better than in MCGA mode, using only horizontal anti-aliasing produces pretty good results. The S3 and ATI graphics modes use the accelerator functions to draw everything else except the Gouraud planet. The planet is drawn by directly poking the pixels to the display RAM, which is somewhat slow but the only available technique. Both modes use a 1024x1024 physical screen even though the display is only 800x600. The reamaining area is used to double-buffer the graphics. In S3 mode I use split screen (just like in the VGA mode) so I don't have to physically copy the hidden buffer to the visible area, as I do in the ATI mode. Sound The music LineWars II plays was originally composed by U4Ia as MOD files for the Amiga. I have converted them to a sort of 4-track MIDI file format. All of the songs use the same instrument sample library, which takes 64 kilobytes. On MIDI equipment this library is not loaded since it corresponds to the sounds in the synth, and on Gravis Ultrasound this is loaded into it's RAM. The samples are 8-bit, and they were sampled from a Roland LAPC-I synth at 10480 Hz frequency. In addition to the music samples I use another 64K library of sound effects samples. There is also a third library for Focal Point 3D sounds, which contain two 6-track samples, for the Gravis UltraSound. These 3D samples are a laser blast (sampled from a Roland SCC-1 at 30kHz frequency) and an explosion sound (also from an SCC-1, sampled at about 8kHz). The music routine first converts from the MIDI format back to a MOD format, if the music is played thru a non-MIDI ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 45 APPENDIX C / TECHNICAL INFORMATION ___________________________________________________________________ device. The Covox driver uses the timer interrupt to mix one byte at a time, but the SoundBlaster driver uses DMA to output a full pre-mixed block at a time. The Covox and SB drivers use 6 channels, four for music and two for sound effects. On a Gravis Ultrasound I use four music channels, four simple sound effects channels (for sounds that originate within the player's ship), and 12 channels for the 3D sounds. The MIDI driver uses five music channels and two sound effects channels. COM Port Routine In Duel Mode and Wing Mode LineWars II uses a COM port for the communications. The routine tries to send data at 768 bytes per second, regardless of the line speed. This means that the line speed should be at least 7680 bps for all the data to get thru in time. If the BPS rate is less than this, some frames need to be skipped, which may cause jerky movement of the ships. The full data for one frame takes 30 bytes, so the data is sent at a speed of about 25 frames per second. Since the real thruput is only 7680 bps, even slow machines can cope with a line speed of 115200 bps quite easily, and this is the recommended speed on direct null-modem cables. Network Routine In Group War or Star Wars missions LineWars II can use a shared file for communications. When using a shared file, LineWars II writes the data about the current positions of the local player ships to a file that corresponds to this node once per every frame, and it then reads all the other node files to get the data for the other players. To cope with the possibly different speeds of the machines, the blocks are numbered and LineWars II keeps a 16-slot FIFO queue for incoming data. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 46 APPENDIX C / TECHNICAL INFORMATION ___________________________________________________________________ Ship Artificial Intelligence The computer-controlled ships use a very simple state machine to control their movements. I have however tried to make their movement algorithms as 'real-like' as possible. The ships constantly check their distance to other objects in front of them (but not behind them!) to see if they should try to avoid any obstacles. They try to slowly go around any obstacle they see, but while they are avoiding one obstacle they often fail to notice others. I felt that this caused them to move very human-like, when concentrating on something you often fail to notice something else. The ships will attempt to shoot at the enemy ship that is nearest the 'optimal' distance of around 5000 metres, and in front of them. If the ship gets too near it's target, it will accelerate away from the target and start to rotate at the same time. If it finds a better target then, it will attack this new target. The enemy ships do not know which ship is controlled by you and which by your wingmen, so they treat every ship the same way. Overlay Decompressor The overlays (drivers, mission datas etc) are all compressed, and the internal decompressor of LineWars II unpacks them as they are loaded. This is why the .DAT takes only a bit over 200 kilobytes of disk space, even though it contains about 500 kilobytes of uncompressed data, in more than 20 separate files. The decompressor routine is based on the source code of the LHA packer by Haruyasu Yoshizaki. It was pretty heavily modified to allow the unpacking directly into a memory block and to get rid of the unnecessary directory info in a standard .LZH file. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 47 APPENDIX D / BUILDING A PARALLEL PORT DAC ___________________________________________________________________ APPENDIX D / BUILDING A PARALLEL PORT DAC This is the schematics I used to build mine. This is from the HARDWARE.DOC file included with ModPlay 2.10 by Mark Cox. There exists many different versions of this schematics, but I have found this one to be the most reliable and best sounding. You need one plug for your amp, one for your parallel port and 9 pieces of 20k and 9 pieces of 10K resistors. Use 1% resistors if possible ─ and 20k sound much better than 22k. Printer Port: signal pin 20k 20k D0 2 >───░░░─┬─░░░──0v 20k ░ 10k D1 3 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k D2 4 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k D3 5 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k D4 6 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k D5 7 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k D6 8 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k D7 9 >───░░░─┤ 20k ░ 10k 100nF ├──────┤█────> TO AMPLIFIER ░ 10k GND 20 >───────┼────────────> 0v Thanks to Harry Stox for the above circuit. Make sure all the 0v lines are connected together. The 100nF capacitor may not be needed, try removing it if this circuit sounds poor. ___________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994, Patrick Aalto LineWars II Manual / 48