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- DEFENSE COMMANDER README - January 24, 2000
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- Defense Commander is a mini-game / technology demo. There are two versions,
- one for PC and one for Dreamcast. The Dreamcast version is not included.
-
-
- HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:
-
- Defense Commander has fairly heavy system requirements. A 350MHz machine with
- a 16 meg 3D video card is a rough minimum for running Defense Commander in
- high detail mode. Voodoo 1 and 2 video cards are not supported. Various
- configuration options are available during startup to allow you to better tune
- the game to your system. The game has been successfully tested on Voodoo 3,
- G400 and TNT systems.
-
-
- SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:
-
- DirectX 7 run-time installed.
-
-
- THE GAME
-
- You, the player, control a gun turret in the center of a small city. You must
- defend your turret and the city against waves of attacking craft. The game
- proceeds in stages. Each stage is more difficult than the previous and there
- are infinitely many stages. If you can get past stage 10, you are doing well.
-
- Attacking craft are of the following types:
-
- Power Up Drone: These small red ships fly in formations of 5 or more. They do
- not attack. If you destroy all ships in a formation a power
- up will appear. There are five different formations, each of
- which give a different power up. To receive the power up you
- must shoot it.
-
- Gunship Fighter: Red ships which attack your turret with guns.
-
- Rocket Fighter: Yellow ships which attack your turret with rockets. They do
- more damage than the red gunship fighters but are slower.
-
- Bomber: Large blue ships which drop bombs on the city. Once all
- buildings in the city are destroyed they will drop bombs on
- your turret. Be warned, a single bomb will destroy your
- turret.
-
- You have the following weapons at your disposal:
-
- Guns: Your primary form of defense. You have unlimited amunition.
- Some power ups will give the guns enhanced capabilities
- for short periods.
-
- Missiles: Missiles lock onto a target and will seek towards that
- target until it is destroyed. You have unlimted missiles.
- You must wait for the missile lock to engage before a
- missile can be fired. Missiles do more damage than a single
- gun shot.
-
- Smart Bomb: Smart bombs instantly destroy all enemy objects including
- craft, weapons fire and power ups. Smart bombs are limited
- so are best used sparingly.
-
- The following power ups are available during the game:
-
- Damage Repair: Repairs up to 50% of the damage to the turret.
-
- Smart Bomb: Gives you another smart bomb.
-
- Rapid Fire: Doubles the rate of fire of guns.
-
- Explosive Tip: The guns do a lot more damage to the enemy ships. This
- power up will override rapid fire.
-
- Seeker: The gun fire will seek towards the craft they are fired at.
- You must fire in the general direction of the craft you
- wish to hit. This power up will override rapid fire and
- explosive tip.
-
- During game play, the following information is displayed to assist you:
-
- Damage Indicators: The bottom right of the screen has two damage indicator
- bars, one for the city and one for the turret. When a
- damage level is becoming critical the bar will turn red.
-
- Smart Bombs: The number of available smart bombs is displayed in the
- bottom left of the screen.
-
- Radar: A radar is located at the left of the screen. Larger objects
- appear larger on the radar.
-
- Gun Power Up: The currently active power up (if any) will be indicated on
- the right of the screen by a small icon. A bar indicates the
- amount of the power up remaining.
-
-
- CONTROLS
-
- Mouse: Moving the mouse controls direction. Left mouse button fires
- guns, right mouse button fires missiles and center mouse
- button (if any) triggers smart bomb.
-
- Keyboard: F1: Toggle help screen.
- F2: Toggle observer mode.
- F3: Pause/unpause time.
- F4: Toggles frame rate display.
- F5: Toggles "show triangles" (PC only).
- F6: Toggle god mode. Neither the turret nor the
- city can be damaged in god mode.
- F7/F8: Start/stop demo record. A file NEW.DEM will be
- created on the Defense Commander folder. To use
- it, replace the existing DC.DEM with it.
- F9: Run the benchmark.
- F10: Exit game (to Windows).
- F11: Takes a screen shot (PC only). Screen shots are
- saved in the Defense Commander folder.
- Ctrl: Fire guns.
- Alt: Fire missile.
- Space: Trigger smart bomb.
- Enter/Return: Start the game.
- Esc: End the game being played or quits
- Arrow keys: Move while in observer mode.
- W/A/S/D: Also move while in observer mode.
-
-
- NETWORKING:
-
- The networking implementation is quite simple and limited. Its purpose is to
- demonstrate the ability of PC and Dreamcast to network together. Only direct
- serial cable connections are supported. The server machine can play the game
- as normal. The client machine can only act as an observer to what is
- happening on the server machine. On the PC, server or client can be selected
- on startup. Dreamcast is fixed to operate as a server and retail Dreamcast
- machines require a special adaptor to use a serial cable (not readily
- available).
-
-
- BENCHMARK:
-
- A benchmark feature is included with Defense Commander. To use, start the game
- and press the F9 key. The demo sequence will play back as fast as the system
- can manage and at the end an average frame rate will be displayed.
-
- PC benchmarking notes: A major issue when benchmarking is vsync. This allows
- for a flicker free display but can cause benchmark numbers to be much lower
- than they otherwise should be. Two systems which are actually similar in
- performance can give very different benchmark results. To minimize this effect
- always run benchmarks with triple buffering enabled and try to ensure all
- test platforms are using the same refresh rate. A better solution is to
- disable vsync but is only viable when all video cards under test support it.
-
- Defense Commander uses Direct3D's T&L pipeline and while we haven't tested it,
- video cards with hardware T&L should perform well. It is recommended that
- benchmarks are run in both low resolution modes (to test triangle performance)
- as well as high resolution modes (to test fill rate).
-