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- 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:
-
- GO WC3 -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:
-
- GO WC3 -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: GO WC3 -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: GO WC3 -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.
-
-