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Text File | 2000-01-17 | 23.5 KB | 589 lines

Age of Wonders (tm) Public Demo v1.31 17 January 2000 README.TXT *************************** Contents *************************** ╖ Introduction ╖ System Requirements ╖ Background Story ╖ Features ╖ Trouble Shooting ╖ Hot Keys ╖ Changes in 1.31 demo ╖ Legal Info *************************** Introduction *************************** Welcome. You are about to experience a piece of an Ancient Saga of Strategy, War and Magic. This demo offers two scenarios, which can be played against the computer and in multi-player mode. The scenarios can be played from multiple sides and should offer several hours of gameplay. Plus, we've also included a tutorial (we highly suggest you check this out). These scenarios only includes a small segment of the total available spells, units, heroes, items and map locations. This demo features many improvements to the Age of Wonders Demo and Beta Demo, which were released previously. Some of the more important enhancements are: -Better AI -An Extra Scenario to play -Enhanced Multi Player Performance -Final 1.31 code (see below for a full list of enhancements) -Support for 5 languages (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish) Please send any comments on this demo to aowfeedback@godgames.com Any feedback is highly appreciated, but because of our busy schedule we may not be able to answer all questions. More information and updates can be found at the official website: http://www.ageofwonders.com Publisher for North America: Gathering of Developers http://www.godgames.com Publisher for Europe: Take 2 Interactive Software Europe http://www.take2games.com *************************** System Requirements *************************** O/S: Windows (R) 95/98 or NT 4.08(*) CPU: P166 MHz (P2-266 Mhz recommended) Memory: 32MB Ram Video Card: DirectX 6 compatible, capable of 16 bit high color display Sound Card: DirectX 6 compatible Available HD Space: 150MB Multiplayer: TCP/IP internet connection (for internet); Email account capable of attachments (for PBEM); DirectX 6.1a or greater, TCP/IP or IPX (for network play)(*)(**) * = To run AoW on NT4.0 machines, NT Service Pack 5 is required. ** = To play TCP/IP or Heat games under Windows95, Windows Sockets v2 is -required- Windows Sockets v2 for Win95 can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wuadmintools/s_wunetworkingtools/w95sockets2/ *************************** Background Story *************************** Somewhere to Start In the days of the world before the days mattered and were meticulously counted by short-lived things, all living beings upon the Northern Continent were ruled by the Elven Court, where the Wizard-king Inioch governed from the Valley of Wonders. He maintained a delicate balance of light and shadow and saw that the life of each subject in his Kingdom was not burdened by any great evil. The most influential and prevalent party of Inioch's Court was a popular, yet scholarly and restrictive society called "The Keepers". Dedicated to preserving order and maintaining peace for all the fair races in Inioch's Blessed Kingdom, they grew to considerable influence and power. Hailed as the "Fruit of the Elves," they symbolized all that was good and right about Elven rulership. Children of Chaos Yet for all their studies the Keepers could not foresee the future any better than any other Seer. And so it was that they sought to shelter and nurture a fledgling race called "Humans." Banished from their "Garden," yet extraordinarily gifted with an alien sense of ingenuity, these short-lived beings sought a new home, and the Keepers saw the opportunity to provide such a home an ideal opportunity to expand their influence and prosper the ways of good. Humans were different than any other race in the land. For some races, by their nature, good came speedily and without effort, while for others, by their nature, evil threatened to plunge them into a void, but for Humans it was not readily apparent. Unruly and restless they possessed many savage qualities, yet some among Humankind demonstrated a great propensity for the divine. And while there were other races in the land that was neither good nor evil, the Humans were the first to seek Inioch's sanctuary. Debate and Consequences Inioch's Court bubbled with debate, but ultimately the Keepers prevailed and the Humans were given place within the kingdom to settle, with the stipulation that the Humans were monitored strictly. Should they disrupt the goodly balance of the rich kingdom, or if they ignored the edicts of the kingdom, they were to be removed. Five years later, Inioch was slain. The court lay in ruins. The bodies of the fallen Elves were callously heaped into a mountain of dead and left to rot. Soon thereafter, Humans drove all the Elves, and any other non-Human, from the Valley of Wonders, claiming it as their new home. *************************** Features *************************** The final game, now available, includes the following: [Technical] -Native Windows« application with DirectX support. Runs in a window or full screen. -Easy to use point-and-click interface with tool tips and online help -DirectPlay and Play-by-email (PBEM) support for multiple players on a single PC or over the Internet or LAN. -Choice of Round Robin or Simultaneous turns for multiplayer games. -Simultaneous turns greatly speeds up multiplayer games! -16-bit color, 640x480 SVGA graphics, with support for resolutions up to 1280x1024. -Story-driven, non-linear single player campaign with multiple endings. -Easy to use scenario editor and tools for the creation of custom heroes and artifacts. -Rich, orchestral soundtrack and digitized sound effects. [Strategic ] -Twelve playable races, each with their own personality, tendencies, strengths and weaknesses. -Wide variety of strategic decisions involving siege units, heroes, magic, immunities, stealth, and loads of special abilities - not just a war of numbers! -Huge, detailed maps including subterranean areas, terrain interaction and dozens of special locations. -Exciting magic system including spell research and over 100 spells spread over 7 spheres of magic. -Dynamic maps allow for powerful terrain modifying spells and abilities. -Choice of automatic (fast combat) or turn-based tactical combat. -City sieges which require breaching of the city's outer wall. -In-depth racial relations with city and unit morale paradigms. [Role Playing/Adventure] -Experience system allows units to advance in power. Hand-tailor your heroes as they grow in experience and power. -An unfolding story (in the single-player game) in which player decisions influence the outcome of the entire fantasy realm. -Explore mysterious places: loot monster lairs, castle ruins, and crypts, and free prisoners from dungeons. -Hundreds of items to uncover and spells to wield. *************************** Trouble Shooting *************************** Problem: Game won't play a TCP / Heat game To play TCP/IP or Heat games under Windows95, Windows Sockets v2 is -required- Windows Sockets v2 for Win95 can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wuadmintools/s_wunetworkingtools/w95sockets2/ Problem: Game sometimes locks up for a minute when a player is disconnected from a IPX / TCP / Heat game This is a known issue in Microsoft's DirectPlay code. DirectPlay will cause AoW to appear to lock-up for about a minute, then AoW will continue as normal. Until Microsoft fixes this issue within DirectPlay, there is no work-around or fix. Problem: Game boots to a black screen Try playing the game in a Window. If the game runs in a window but not full screen, make sure you have the latest version of DirectX installed or download new video drivers for your video card. If the screen turns black or distorted after a resolution switch try turning off "Auto Res Switching". This will display the game at a fixed resolution and display scenes like the intro and setup screen boxed when the game is set to run in resolutions higher than 640x480. Problem: Game crashes at startup or won't boot In the AoW setup program, check the "Skip Intro" box, and verify that the "Use DirectSound" box is unchecked. If the game runs, there may be some incompatibilities with your Windows media drivers for video playing, and/or DirectSound drivers. Try updating your DirectX drivers Problem: No sound Try toggling "DirectSound" off/on in the game or with the AoW Setup program. Make sure you have the latest version of DirectX installed. Problem: Game runs slowly Low-end systems (sub P2s) should run the game in the lowest resolution: 640x480. If the game is still slow, run the game in the lowest detail level (you will only lose some transparency effects). Decreasing the sound quality or turning off sound altogether will also speed up the game. Problem: Mouse movement is slow The mouse movement is linked to the game's frame rate; on slower machines the mouse will move slower as well. Try running the game in a lower resolution and/or decreasing detail level using the AoW Setup program. Decreasing the sound quality or turning off sound altogether will also speed up the game. Problem: Age of Wonders can't be uninstalled Hey, don't uninstall this game! If you must UnInstall Age of Wonders for some reason, you should use the "Add/Remove Program" icon in your Control Panel. The Age of Wonders UnInstaller will leave your save games behind, in case you should come to your sense, and want to play Age of Wonders again at a later date. *************************** Key Board Shortcuts *************************** Arrow keys Scroll the map PGUP Map level up PGDN Map level down n or '.' Select next unit/army p or ',' Select prev. unit/army h Select next Hero l Select leader d Select party as 'Done' for the current turn. g Guard On/Off c Center on selected unit/army CTRL-ENTER End Turn F2 or CTRL-O Open/Load game F3 or CTRL-S Save game M Move unit o Observe enemy movement SHIFT Hold SHIFT to select multiple parties or units for a single move command. ALT-ENTER Switches between full screen and windowed mode ESC Quits from most screens F1 Recalls last tip in the Tutorial *************************** Changes since first Demo *************************** The following patch upgrades also list changes in the full-version of Age of Wonders, things like changes in the campaign do not affect the Demo 1.31 version. *************************** What's New in Version 1.31 *************************** BUG FIXES: AI: - Parties sometimes attacked cities they could not hope to defeat - When an ally attacked a location an instant before the AI tried to attack the same location, sometimes the AI would attack his ally Fast Combat: - Heroes sometimes had negative Channeling Points after casting spells *************************** What's New in Version 1.3 *************************** BUG FIXES: AI: - AI in both World and Tactical modes has been enhanced General: - Units could gain sometimes gain extra movepoints - Life Mastery / Death Mastery didn't make opposition spells cost double - The rarer and more powerful items didn't appear in randomly filled exploration sites Global: - AI parties could sometimes move over cities belonging to allies, producing strange results Tactical Combat: - AI units could sometimes move while Frozen / Entangled / etc Multi-Player: - AI sometimes caused IPX, TCP, and Heat games to go out-of-sync - IPX, TCP, and Heat games sometimes went out-of-sync when a player was defeated - Hotseat and Email games sometimes crashed when a player was defeated - When in Tactical Combat, selecting units during another player's turn didn't work properly GAMEPLAY CHANGES: - Haste now reduces the cost of moving on a hex by 1, instead of the previous 50% - Ballista now costs 72 gold instead of the previous 56 gold - Elephants now have 9 HitPoints instead of the previous 12 HitPoints - Town Gate now costs 50 mana instead of the previous 52 mana (Note: a manual addendum is available at: http://www.stratosgroup.com/ which updates the manual to match this version of the game and provides additional information.) *************************** What's New in Version 1.2 *************************** BUG FIXES: AI: - AI in both World and Tactical modes has been enhanced - World and Tactical Combat AIs sometimes produced AI errors - Fast Combat and Tactical Combat AIs now protect Heroes and Leaders better - Tactical Combat AI sometimes mis-targetted spells - World AI sometimes took structures that were being rebuilt from players the AI was at peace with - World AI is more likely to make alliances with players it is at Peace with - Lord AI Heroes now get +3 EXP/day, instead of the previous +5 EXP/day General: - On some machines, the game produced desktop redraw problems on exiting - Having Detail Level set to LOW, with sound/music ON, caused the Fast Combat and Unit Windows to lock up - Fire attacks did not set units on fire - Pressing F11 or F12 caused error messages - Various text errors have been corrected Campaign: - Heroes' skill points were not transferred between scenarios - Spells being cast were not cancelled when a scenario ended - Temporary abilities were not cancelled when a scenario ended - When a Hero gained a Level in the last fight of a scenario, they never got an Upgrade Dialog Global: - Builders could not build roads - Leaders that began scenarios with items sometimes had problems with those items - Underground, Holy Woods / Unholy Woods / Poison Plants were impassible - Summoned creatures sometimes deserted if the player ran out of gold - Warmonger didn't give new units their rank-abilities - Animated Heroes could be Animated again - Items that gave Protection and/or Immunity abilities didn't work properly - Water Nodes could not be entered when Freeze Water was cast on them - Allies could sometimes attack each other if they collided while moving to a different target - Units on razed towns that had walls could not be attacked without wallcrushing or wall-passing units - Buying and researching the same spell resulted in multiple copies in the spellbook - Having multiple Heroes in the same party could cause numerous glitches - Reloading the current game displayed the Save Game requester - When playing without Leaders on the Map, players still received Mana from their Leaders - Research book popped up even when there were no spells to research - Keyboard shortcuts for Load / Save didn't work - In the Realm Window, on the Hero page, the scrollbar didn't scroll all columns Tactical Combat: - Entering an Exploration Site when the party could not harm the defenders caused the party to disappear from the map - Breath sometimes missed a hex in it's area of effect - Player's spell ranges were all 1 hex too short - Multiple-unit movement (rectangle select) sometimes produced odd results - Sometimes Bridge combats had no Flee hexes - Having a ranged-path active when surrendering crashed - Dispel Magic could not destroy summoned creatures Multi-Player: - Having Settings->Gameplay->Combat set differently on different systems caused multi-player games to crash - IPX, TCP, and Heat multiplayer games are now more stable - Playing 2 PBEM games in one session crashed - in PBEM, losing during the Independents movement caused the game to not send to the next player Editor: - Placing an item bag sometimes crashed - Teleporters could not be set to Razed - In lower resolutions, the Unit Window wasn't always visible - Not all Heroes were shown in the Unit Window - Some tooltips were missing GAMEPLAY CHANGES: - Cursed now inflicts -2 DEF and -2 RES - Spellcasters can now initiate combat with flying units - Extra Strike now only works when attacking - Gold medal rank now gives units +1 RES - In Tactical Combat, Flying units no longer get free strikes on ground-based units that move away from them - Nature Elemental now has Entangle Strike and Healing, and loses Entangle - Highman Heroes/Leaders now have have True Vision - Reaper now has 5 DEF and 6 DAM instead of the previous 4 DEF and 5 DAM - Executioner now has 4 DAM instead of the previous 3 DAM - Elephant now has 3 DAM instead of the previous 4 DAM - Big Beetle now has Nightvision - Basilisk now costs 202 gold instead of the previous 243 gold - Green Wyvern now costs 98 gold instead of the previous 130 gold - In Global Mode, machines can no longer be healed - In Tactical Combat, walls are now slightly stronger - In Tactical Combat, Wallcrushing ability is now stronger - In Tactical Combat, when the attacked hex of a city is empty and the city has defenders in another hex, the defenders are moved into the attacked hex - Incarnate now gains EXP - Various maps tweaked for better gameplay ENHANCEMENTS AND ADDITIONS: - 2 additional AI levels have been added, King and Emperor - In multiplayer games, when player(s) are missing the chosen scenario, the game will automatically transfer the scenario to them - IPX, TCP, and Heat multiplayer games are now much faster - Message Events added to the Editor - Entangle Strike ability added - Hex Grid Display added (F5 toggles it On/Off) - Next / Previous City buttons added to the City Screen - Popup Menu of Ability descriptions available in the City Screen - Tooltips for Relation-status added to faces in the Relations Screen *************************** What's New in Version 1.1 *************************** BUG FIXES: AI: - AI in both World and Tactical modes has been enhanced - World AI sometimes produced "AI Exception" errors - World AI sometimes refused to end it's turn - World AI sometimes attacked allied players General: - On some systems, the game ran significantly slower than it should - Sometimes the game would slow down for no apparent reason - Sometimes the game would not exit to Windows properly - Sometimes sounds would not play properly, producing "clicks" - Resolution-Switching sometimes crashed or redrew incorrectly - Ice Storm was in the Air Sphere instead of the Water Sphere - In the Unit Window, selecting an ability, and sorting the ability list didn't remove the "Use Ability" button - In the File Dialog, sorting on filename didn't always sort correctly Campaign: - Losing a scenario and replaying it could give the player extra Magic Spheres - In the Leader-Selection Dialog, the buttons sometimes redrew incorrectly - In the Transfer Dialog, Unit's medals did not display on the rightmost page Global: - Movement involving multiple caves and/or teleportes sometimes caused the game to lockup - Death Mastery sometimes crashed - Merging a boat carrying units with a flying party caused the units in the boat to drown - Leaders could disappear from the map if their Morale dropped too low - Path of Frost would disappear under the unit causing it, if it didn't move for 2 turns - A previously killed Hero sometimes reappeared later in the same scenario or campaign - Upgrading a city would cause it's production queue to rearrange - Migration wasn't cancelled after taking over a city - In Classic-Turns, Diplomatic messages sometimes popped-up during other player's turns - Building a Watchtower or Shipyard did not always cause them to work properly - Teleporters on the Surface could be razed with only one unit - Walled 4-hex cities could not be entered to enable WarMode - Rebuilding a Mine or Node caused their income to become available before they were finished being rebuilt - Ground units could force Tactical Combat with flying units - Items with Movement Abilities (Free Movement, etc) did not give their abilities to their owner - Exploration Sites could be selected when not in visual range Tactical Combat: - When a unit was incapacitated (Frozen, etc) during a Free-Strike, it continued to move - If a player fled with a transporter carrying unit(s), TC would never end - Floating units could move over obstacles and walls - Recall Spirit and Animate Dead charged much more mana than they should have - Movement Paths treated the last step of a Melee or Touch path as if it were subject to Free-Strikes - Stunned was sometimes removed too soon Multi-Player: - In Classic-Turns, entering combat locked the game up - In Simultaneous-Turns, when one player ended their turn as another started a Tactical Combat, the game never allowed the first player to end their turn - In Hotseat games, when attacked by the AI, players were forced to fight using Automatic Combat - In TCP (Internet) and IPX (LAN) games, in the Scenario Setup screen, Ping times didn't display properly - In PBEM games, when fighting Independent parties, players were forced to fight using Automatic Combat Editor: - When changing the AI's Behavior, it would reset to the default - Cutting and Pasting of Random Items would cause the Editor to crash GAMEPLAY CHANGES: - All Combat Spells have been given +1 ATT - The following spells have been given an -additional- +1 ATT: Call Flames, Death Ray, Flaming Arrow, Slow, Solar Flare, Vaporize - Race Relations now go back to their default at a rate of +1/-1 per turn instead of the previous +2/-2 - Walls now protect defenders better - Flamethrower now has ATT 4, DAM 3, instead of the previous ATT 1, DAM 1 - Summoned Units can not be transferred between campaign scenarios - Leaders can no longer be given First Strike - Life Stealing now takes a maximum of 1 HP per strike, only when attacking - Great Hail now strikes 21 times (3 per hex), instead of 35 times (5 per hex) - Winds of Fury now has a +2 ATT bonus when used on Flying units - Units no longer block Breath attacks - Animated units no longer give EXP when killed - Dwarven Berzerker now has Cave Crawling - Ring of Free Movement no longer gives its owner Swimming - Valley of Wonders campaign scenario tweaked for better gameplay - Trade Route campaign scenario tweaked for better gameplay - Rise of the South custom scenario now has Wizard's Towers with spells for sale ENHANCEMENTS AND ADDITIONS: - The game now runs faster - AI is now much faster, especially on large/complicated scenarios - Rectangle-Select has been added to the game, for more easily selecting groups of parties/units - In Multi-Player (Simultaneous-Turns), a Host-controlled option has been added to the Scenario Setup screen, for enabling/disabling the viewing of other player's Tactical Combats that are outside your visual range - Relations Window now displays a Leader's Race when selected - Sound Dialog now allows double-clicks to add songs to the playlist and to play a song - Turtle Units now have corpse graphics Enjoy, The Age of Wonders Team *************************** Age of Wonders is a trademark of Triumph Studios, v.o.f. Copyright (c) 1999,2000 Triumph Studios, v.o.f. All Rights Reserved. Gathering of Developers and godgames are trademarks of Gathering of Developers, Inc. Copyright 2000 Gathering of Developers I, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft and Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.