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- Welcome to El-Fish! Please take the time to READ ALL
- of this READ ME file as it contains crucial last
- minute information not included in the manual.
-
- I. OVERVIEW
- II. MEMORY
- III. LOW vs. HIGH RESOLUTION
- IV. SOUND CARD SUPPORT
- V. MEMORY MANAGERS (READ THIS ONE!!!!!!)
- VI. PCONVERT
- VII. MCONVERT
- VIII. MISCELLANEOUS
- IX. DISK COMPRESSION & BOOT DISKS i.e. STACKER,
- DOUBLESPACE, etc.
-
- To view this readme later, simply type "TYPE READ.ME | MORE"
- from within the El-Fish subdirectory.
-
- I. OVERVIEW
- El-Fish isn't your "typical" computer game. It doesn't
- really have a goal, and there's no real way to win.
- El-Fish is a new kind of creativity software that
- enables you to create "living art." You can create
- an unlimited number of different fish, and the
- computer brings them to life. Next, you design
- beautiful (or strange and moody) aquariums and set
- your fish loose.
-
- If there is a goal to El-Fish, it's to relax, have
- fun and exercise your personal creativity.
-
- To do what it does, El-Fish requires serious computer
- "muscle." The more powerful your computer, the better
- El-Fish will respond.
-
- II. MEMORY
- El-Fish requires 4 MB of RAM to run. The more memory
- you have, the more fish and animations El-Fish can
- display in a tank. If you overload a tank with more
- fish and animations than it can handle, the fish and
- other animations will move slower. It will also limit
- the number of fish displayed in a tank at one time due
- to memory constraints.
-
- III. LOW vs. HIGH RESOLUTION
- El-Fish can be run in three different resolutions; Low
- (376x348) and two High (640x400) and (640x480). Not all
- video cards are supported in the two high resolution modes.
- If you are unable to install for either of the high resolution
- modes, then you will have to run in regular resolution. If you
- are trying to load a VESA driver for your graphics card,
- you will need to load the VESA driver (version 1.2 of VESA
- standards) before you install El-Fish. NOTE: The version
- number of the VESA driver is displayed when the driver is
- loaded.
-
- If you have any problems when running El-Fish in high
- resolution, re-install it to run in regular resolution.
-
- IV. SOUND CARD SUPPORT
- El-Fish supports a variety of sound cards. If your sound card
- doesn't appear in the selection options or is not playing music,
- please ensure that your card is loading the required drivers.
- Some sound cards need a statement in the CONFIG.SYS and/or the
- AUTOEXEC.BAT to enable the drivers for the sound card. Please
- refer to the documentation that came with your sound card for
- this information.
-
- V. MEMORY MANAGERS
- You may experience problems using some memory managers. If
- you do have problems, please turn the memory manager off from
- the DOS prompt or rem out the statements for your memory
- managers in your CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT files. If you
- are using MS-DOS EMM386, and you have it set to the "NOEMS"
- option, El-Fish WILL NOT WORK! If you are unsure about any
- of the information described, we would suggest that you make
- a boot disk to run the program. Please run the BOOTDISK.COM
- program and follow the instructions to create a boot disk
- for El-Fish. If you have MS-DOS version 6 or higher you can
- run the MEMMAKER.EXE command and answer YES to the question
- about programs that require Expanded Memory (EMS). Earlier
- versions of MS-DOS can be corrected as described below. Use a
- text editor such as EDIT.COM (MS-DOS versions 5 and higher)
- to change the EMM386.EXE statement in your CONFIG.SYS file.
-
- Example:
- DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
-
- Change to:
- DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM
-
- For more information please consult your DOS manual
- or manual for your specific memory manager.
-
- VI. PCONVERT
- To use PCONVERT.EXE, the file you are going to convert must be
- a 256 color or 8 bit .pcx or .tif file. The background color
- must be color zero (in most cases black) and the file needs
- to be smaller than 60K. In some cases, you may have a file less
- than 60K that you have problems converting. This is due to the
- fact that some art packages have a compressed format that is
- better than the El-Fish compression. If you are converting
- a .tif file, it must be in the un-compressed format.
-
- VII. MCONVERT
- If you try to convert a MIDI file that does not have the
- volume set inside the midi file, it will play at a very low
- volume. For a midi file to be converted to the proper El-Fish
- format, it should be authored in channels 2 through 10 where
- channel 10 contains all percussion tracks.
-
- VIII. MISCELLANEOUS
- El-Fish requires FILES to be set to at least 20 and BUFFERS
- to at least 30 in your CONFIG.SYS file. If they are set lower,
- the install program will ask you if you want El-fish to change
- it or if you would prefer to do it yourself. If you ask El-Fish
- to make the changes, it will look for the CONFIG.SYS file in
- the root directory of your C: drive. If you are booting from
- another drive, you'll have to change your CONFIG.SYS file
- yourself (if it needs to be changed).
-
- IX. DISK COMPRESSION & BOOT DISKS
- You may need to make a boot disk if you have only 4 Megabytes
- (MB) of RAM memory on your computer or if another program is
- conflicting with El-Fish. Users of Stacker 3.1 and
- Doublespace need only run the normal "BOOTDISK.COM" file to
- make a boot disk. Users with Stacker 3.0 or earlier must run
- a "BOOTSTAC.COM" file instead. This file inserts the correct
- drivers to mount the compressed drive upon system start.
- The BOOTSTAC.COM file assumes that Stacker is installed to the
- default directory with the default settings. If your settings
- are different from the default and your system doesn't boot up
- correctly, simply remove the boot disk from your A: drive and
- restart your computer with the normal configuration. Consult
- your documentation for further instructions for creating a boot
- disk. (END OF READ ME FILE, Please press the ESC key.)
-
- END OF READ ME FILE, Thanks so much for reading this!
-