PC Player 1995 January

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Text File | 1994-11-11 | 12.8 KB | 359 lines

Wing Commander III PCCD Demo ------------------------------ This README file contains important information about the Demo. Contents: --------- 1. General Notes 2. System Requirements 3. Install Program 4. Game Controls 5. AI Notes 6. Boot Disk Configuration 7. Known Problems 8. Windows and OS/2 Compatibility 9. Disclaimer ------------------------------------- 1. General Notes ------------------------------------- This Demo has a Promotional Trailer which loops endlessly or until the Escape key is pressed, at which point the Demo switches into spaceflight mode. Upon completion of the Demo Mission or hitting Escape, the demo returns to the Promotional Trailer. If you have never played a Wing Commander before, PLEASE read the following. When you hit Escape to enter spaceflight, you will be in the cockpit of the Arrow Fighter. Move the joystick around and pull the trigger. You should see the ship maneuver and the guns fire. To autopilot to where the enemies are, press the A key. You will see a view of your ship flying by on its way to the enemy. When you drop back into the cockpit, the enemies will be all around you. The circular display with the red dots on it is your radar. If you maneuver the ship so that one of the dots is in the center, you should be able to see it in front of you. It will be bracketed by a red box. Maneuver each of the enemies into the crosshairs on the screen and fire. If you hit them, you will see a blue translucent effect. Keep hitting them until they explode. Once a ship is in front of you, you can also fire missiles at it using the Enter key or by pressing both buttons on the joystick. You can exit spaceflight by pressing Escape and you will also exit if you they blow you up. You will return to the Promo Trailer at that point. If the Demo appears too bright, try pressing Ctrl and the Left arrow key. If the Demo appears too dark, try pressing Ctrl and the Right arrow key. To exit the Demo, press Alt-X from spaceflight. 2. System Requirements ----------------------------------- The Wing Commander III PCCD Demo requires the following: 80486/33 Processor at least. 8MB of RAM with at least 7,000,000 worth of XMS available. At least 500K available at the DOS prompt. Double Speed CD-ROM Drive. VGA card. It is recommended that you remove any disk caching software. The Demo doesn't need it and will, in fact, run slower with it. The disk cache also uses memory that may keep you from running the game. 3. Install Program ----------------------------------- The first time you run the Wing Commander III Demo the game will automatically run its install program. This program allows you to setup sound cards, set save game directories, test machine speed, etc. You should see the screen flicker twice and then a spinning ship should appear. After rotating several times, the program will inform you of the speed characteristics of your machine. Except for the CD-ROM speed test, the lower the number, the faster your machine. You must have a rate of 275,000 or greater for your CD-ROM to keep up with the game. Also, if your video speed is slower than a rating of 12, your machine will also have difficulty keeping up. This is true REGARDLESS of processor speed. The Demo and the final game will create a small directory off of drive C on your system called c:\wc3. This directory contains the install and configuration information for your machine. Since the game plays entirely off the CD-ROM, we needed a default directory in which to save this information. The Demo supports Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and SoundBlaster 16 digital sound cards or 100% emulation. Other cards will be supported in the final release version. The Demo also supports Roland RAP-10, SCC-1, and MPU-401 General Midi Music Cards. Again, Soundblaster FM and other music cards will be supported in the final release version. The Demo and final game also run in SVGA 640x480 256 color mode. However, this mode is ONLY accessible if you have a VESA driver installed or your video card has VESA built in. If you don't have a VESA driver for your card, the game will run in VGA. There is a known problem with some VESA drivers that may cause the game to hang with an Exception 0. If it does this or the video misbehaves in SVGA, run the Demo by typing: WC3DEMO -V This will force the game to ignore the VESA driver and use VGA. The Install program can be rerun at any time by typing: WC3DEMO -I 4. Game Controls ----------------------------------- CAMERA CONTROLS ------------------------------------------ F1 Switch to Cockpit View F1 Toggle HUD View F2 Left View F3 Right View F4 Rear View Ctrl-F4 Rear View in MFD F5 Chase Camera F6 Object View Camera N Navigation Map [ Zoom in (F6 and Navmap) ] Zoom out (F6 and Navmap) Left Arrow Pan Left (F6 and Navmap) Right Arrow Pan Left (F6 and Navmap) Up Arrow Tilt Up (F6 and Navmap) Down Arrow Tilt Down (F6 and Navmap) ------------------------------------------- NAVIGATION MAP CONTROLS ------------------------------------------------ S Toggle Stars G Toggle Grid C Center on Player N Select Next Waypoint P Select Previous Waypoint T Cycle through Targets on Screen ------------------------------------------------ SPEED CONTROLS ------------------------------------------------ Minus Key Decrement Throttle 5% Plus Key Increment Throttle 5% Backspace Set Throttle to 0 \ Set Throttle to Max Tab Afterburners (while held down) ------------------------------------------------ WEAPON CONTROLS -------------------------------------------------------- G Select Next Gun Mode M Select Next Missile Mode Ctrl-S Engage Smart Targetting T Select Next Target Y Select Closest Target and Match Speed L Engage Auto-lock Mode Enter Fire Missile Space Fire Gun -------------------------------------------------------- COCKPIT CONTROLS ----------------------------------------------------------------- A Autopilot W Bring up Weapon Display S Bring up Shield Display C Bring up Communication Display D Bring up Damage Display and Toggle Text or Graph Ctrl-E Eject G Select Next Gun Type M Select Missile Mode [ Missile Mode - Select Next Missile ] Missile Mode - Activate Missile ----------------------------------------------------------------- MISCELLANEOUS CONTROLS ---------------------------------------------------------- Alt-X Exit the Demo Alt-F Display Frame Rate Alt-2 VGA Mode Alt-4 SVGA Mode Alt-L Switch Mode for Fastest Frame Rate Alt-P Pause Spaceflight Ctrl-X Alternate Flight Control Mode Alt-M Activate Keyboard Controls Alt-J Activate Joystick Controls Ctrl-Left Arrow Make Demo Darker Ctrl-Right Arrow Make Demo Brighter ---------------------------------------------------------- JOYSTICK CONTROLS ----------------------------------------------------- Back Pitch Up Forward Pitch Down Left Yaw Left Right Yaw Right Button 0 Fire Gun Button 1 & Forward Increase Throttle Button 1 & Back Decrease Throttle Button 1 & Left Roll Left Button 1 & Right Roll Right Double Click Button 1 and Hold Afterburner Button 1 & Button 0 Fire Missile ----------------------------------------------------- KEYBOARD CONTROLS ----------------------------------------------------- Up Arrow Pitch Up Down Arrow Pitch Down Left Arrow Yaw Left Right Arrow Yaw Right > Roll Left < Roll Right Shift & Above Keys Doubles rate ----------------------------------------------------- 5. AI Notes ----------------------------------- All of the Kilrathi ships in the Demo are using Rookie mode. The final AI for the game has Rookie, Veteran and Ace modes. The Rookie mode makes all pilots Rookies, the Veteran mode makes Ace pilots into Veterans with everyone else being a Rookie and Ace mode plays the game with all pilots set to their normal levels. The final game will also feature two harder modes in which every enemy pilot is a Veteran or an Ace respectively. 6. Boot Disk Configuration ----------------------------------- If you have 8MB of RAM and the game will not play, you should try to make a boot disk with the bare minimum necessary to play the game. If you need to make a boot disk, please use the below configuration as a guide: CONFIG.SYS ----------------------------------------------------------------- DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DOS=HIGH FILES=25 BUFFERS=25 <CD-ROM drivers go here> ----------------------------------------------------------------- AUTOEXEC.BAT ----------------------------------------------------------------- PROMPT $P$G PATH = C:\DOS <Your mouse driver goes here (ie. C:\mouse\mouse)> <Your MSCDEX line goes here> ----------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Known Problems ----------------------------------- Some VESA drivers will cause an Exception on startup. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Run Demo by typing: WC3DEMO -V The drive you choose for the save game files will be used for the 10MB Hard Disk Cache for the CD-ROM. If the drive is low on space or is fragmented, the game will exit with a "Can't create swapfile" error. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Select another Drive, free up space on the current drive, or run a hard drive defragmentation program like Norton Speedisk. To select another drive, rerun the install program by typing: WC3DEMO -I Some SCSI CD-ROM controller cards will cause the game to exit with an "Unknown chunk in Movie" error. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: If you have a MPU-401 General Midi card or emulator, its address may be conflicting with or too close to the SCSI card's address. Try changing the IO Address of the SCSI card to a value as far away from the General Midi card's IO Address as is possible. 8. Windows and OS/2 Compatibility ------------------------------------------ Wing Commander III is being developed to run in a DOS machine in both Windows and OS/2. The minimum memory requirement for Windows is 12MB and the minimum memory requirement for OS/2 is 16MB. The Demo SHOULD work under both Windows and OS/2. Windows must be in Enhanced 386 Mode and OS/2 must have DPMI_ENABLED set in the DOS settings. It should have at least 8MB of DPMI_MEMORY set. If the Demo has problems under Windows or OS/2, worry not. The final release will have PIFs and Icons and complete information on how to make it work with both systems. 9. Disclaimer ----------------------------------- Please remember that Wing Commander III is still in development. We have not completed our optimizations or our debugging of the final product. Much of the game has not been completely polished. If the game crashes unexpectedly, please bear this in mind. ----------------------------------- Thank You for checking out our Demo! The Wing Commander III Development Team.