This guide refers to all of the technical issues relating to playing Civil War.
1. Machine Specification
The minimum specification setup for playing Civil War is:
* 386DX 33MHz (but anything less than a 486SX25 is likely to be very slow).
* 4 Mb of RAM (8Mb is recommended) with at least 3.45Mb of free memory.
(The amount of free conventional memory is not important.)
* Between 2 Mb and 45 Mb hard disk space depending on which installation option is specified.
* SVGA Graphics Card, with VESA Bios extensions, capable of displaying 256 colours for a screen resolution of 640x480.
* Sound Card is optional, and needs to be either:
- SoundBlaster
- SoundBlaster Pro
- SoundBlaster 16
- Pro Audio Spectrum
- Windows Sound System
- Gravis Ultra Sound
- or any clone cards compatible with the above, for example the SoundBlaster AWE32 is compatible with SoundBlaster16.
* Mouse.
* Network Card with IPX driver is optional for multi-player mode.
* Null modem cable connection is optional for multi-player mode.
* Haye's compatible modem is optional for multi-player mode.
2. Installation and loading of Civil War
Civil War comes with its own custom hard disk installation programme, which must be run before you can play the game. In this documentation we refer to your floppy drive as A:and your CD-ROM drive as D:. If the drive specifications are different on your machine then change them as appropriate.
1. Insert the CD-ROM game disc into your CD-ROM drive, type in D:INSTALL and then press ENTER.
2. After the CD drive has been accessed, a custom installation screen for Civil War will be displayed. Follow the on-screen instructions, which tell you how to alter the specification of the default civil war game directory if you wish. Proceed with installation by selecting the CONTINUE icon at the bottom of the screen.
3. Several installation options are provided on the next screen, and these will vary the total amount of hard disk space taken up by the Civil War programme. The more files installed on your hard drive, the less the required CD access, with a consequent increase in performance. However, ensure that the available space on your machine is compatible with the selected installation option. When you have decided how to proceed, select the INSTALL icon at the bottom of the screen. Remember that whichever installation option is chosen, the CD-ROM will need to be in the drive before you play Civil War.
4. Once installation is complete you can exit from the installation procedure, and you will be transferred to the subdirectory into which the game is installed.
5. Type CIVIL and then press ENTER to load the game. First of all, you will be asked to enter details about the sound card, if any, you wish to use with the game. If you have a sound card, and it has been installed properly, then its details should be correctly displayed, and you need only click on FINISHED to continue. At this point some music will be played, and you should click your left mouse button to continue with the loading sequence. If you have any difficulties regarding the sound card, then read section 4 of this supplement. You can terminate the loading sequence at any stage by hitting any key on your keyboard.
6. Once the game has loaded you will be presented with the main menu screen of Civil War, and you should refer to the game manual to discover how to proceed.
3. Video Cards
If your graphics card does not have a VESA Bios, but does support 640 by 480 resolution in 256 colours, then you will need to obtain a VESA driver for your card. You should be able to obtain one from your card's manufacturer, or from on-line services such as Compuserve or the Internet.
4. Sound Cards
When you first run the game, you will be asked to configure your sound card in a setup information box. If you have installed your sound card correctly, using the software provided with your card, then all of the set-up values displayed should be appropriate for your system. In this case you should simply click on FINISHED to proceed.
If you need to change the sound card settings, or if you wish to alter the sound playback rate or quality, then you can select one of the listed setup categories. Each category shows the current setting on the righthand side, and if the category name on the left is selected a pop-up box will be displayed allowing you to make alterations:
Sound Card: This allows you to choose the card type. If the your card is not listed, then you should insert the model of a closely compatible card.
I/O: Displays the input/output address of your card, which can be set using jumpers on the card.
IRQ: Displays the interrupt setting of your card.
DMA: Displays the DMA setting of your card
Rate: Displays the playback rate of sound in Hertz. The higher the number, the better the quality, but the greater the use of processor time on music and sound effects. If you have a slow machine then you might wish to set this value lower (for instance 12000 Hz), and if you have a fast machine you might wish to increase the value (the maximum is 44100 Hz). The default value of 21000 Hz is of reasonable quality..
Quality: Selecting this line toggles between enable and disable ╘quality mode╒. When it is enabled, the mixing algorithm when music and sounds are mixed together is improved at the expense of processor time. Disable this feature if you have a slow machine.
Note that incorrect settings for I/O, IRQ or DMA may result in your machine locking up. If this happens, then reset the computer and re-run the sound setup program. You can do this by re-entering your civil war game directory and typing in SETUPSND.
If the settings are correct, then selecting FINISHED should result in a piece of music being played. If this doesn't happen, then re-run the sound setup program.
To change the sound values after you have installed the game, run the sound setup program again by typing SETUPSND in the main game directory.
5. Multiplayer games
5.1 Introduction
Civil War can be played by two players using separate machines. The machines may be connected by either:
an IPX compatible network.
or a Null Modem serial cable.
or a Haye's compatible modem.
To start a multi-player game, click on the single/multi-player icon on the main menu, and select which type of connection you wish to use.
5.2 IPX
This is the easiest connection to use as you have nothing to configure. If you have a network card installed and an IPX driver, then the program will immediately begin looking for another machine on the network that is waiting to play.
5.3 Serial
Connect two machines together with a null modem serial cable. After clicking on SERIAL a setup dialogue box is displayed, where you must select which COM port and which baud rate to use.
The COM port must be the one to which you have connected the serial cable! Be careful not to select the one that your mouse is connected to, if you have a serial mouse, as this may result in the mouse locking up or behaving erratically.
The baud rate setting is the speed at which the data is transferred between machines. A higher rate will result in slightly faster play, but could result in unreliable data transfer. The speed you decide to use depends on the speed of your machines and what type of UART is used for the COM port. On a 486 PC with 8250 or 16450 UARTS, then we recommend you restrict the baud rate to 9600. On a faster machine with a 16550 UART then you may be able to use faster baud rates. For a Null Modem connection, both players must select the same baud rate.
5.4 Modem
Your modem must use a Haye's compatible instruct set. After clicking on MODEM, the same serial dialogue box as described in section 5.3 will be displayed. The only difference is that the baud rate is the rate that data is transferred between your computer and your modem, and this can vary on each machine depending on what kind of modem they are using. We recommend that you use 9600 baud or less unless you have a 16550 UART.
After you have finished with the serial setup, a Modem setup screen is displayed. From here you can select the following:
Phone Number: One player's modem must dial the other player's modem. If you are going to be dialling then fill in the other player's phone number here. You may use spaces or hyphens. Refer to your modem manual for details on special characters such as commas which can be used to add delays when dialling, which may
be necessary when dialling out through a switchboard.
Init String : This is the modem command to initialise your modem. The default value resets the modem and then makes sure it is set up for verbal error messages.
Dial String: This is the modem command for dialling. The default of ATD should work in most cases, though you may want to try ATDT or ATDP for Tone or Pulse dialling.
Answer String: This is the modem command to put the modem into auto-answer mode.
Dial: Selecting this line starts the connection. Your modem will dial the phone number and attempt to connect to the other computer.
Answer: Selecting this line puts your modem in auto-answer mode, and waits for the other player to call in and connect.
6. Playing on a machine with 4 Mb Ram
If you only have 4 Mb of RAM on your computer, then we recommend you buy
some more memory. Otherwise you may have to alter your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, so as to create as much free memory in your machine as possible.
To see how much memory you have free, type in MEM from the DOS Prompt. You should try to increase the amount of free memory as much as possible. By removing unnecessary TSR programs (normally ones which are loaded on booting up your computer and which stay resident while you are using it) you should be able to achieve a total of 3450000 bytes of available free memory, which is the minimum required to run the programme satisfactorily.
Civil War runs in ╘Protected Mode╒, so you need not worry about making more conventional memory available.
If you are using DOS 6.0 or higher, then we suggest setting up an alternate startup configuration as explained in your DOS manual.
Files you will need to keep in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT are:
1. A CD-Rom driver, normally found in CONFIG.SYS on a line such as
DEVICE=C:\CDDRV\CDDRV.SYS /D:╥NAME╙
2. MSCDEX, which is usually found in AUTOEXEXC.BAT on a line such as:
MSCDEX /L:r /E /M:30 /D:╥NAME╙
3. A mouse driver, which is either found in CONFIG.SYS in a line such as:
DEVICE=C:\MOUSE\MOUSE.SYS
or in AUTOEXEC.BAT in a line such as:
C:\MOUSE\MOUSE
You may also need a sound driver, Vesa driver or SCSI driver, depending on your hardware.
Files that we definitely recommend removing are:
Any disk caching utility such as SMARTDRV.EXE, or Norton Utilities╒ NCACHE, as either will probably be using up to 1 Mb of memory.
RAMDRIVE.SYS or any other Ram drive utility program.
Before making changes to CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT, make yourself a boot disk containing copies of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT as described in your DOS manual, or by typing:
FORMAT A: /S
COPY C:\CONFIG.SYS a:
COPY C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT A:
If you do this, then even if you make a change to your start-up files that prevents your hard disk from booting on its own, you can use your floppy boot disk to start your system.
