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- readme.txt v1.1 8/18/99
-
-
- Introduction
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- It all began in 1987 when we first played MechForce (by Ralph Reed)
- on the Commodore Amiga Computer.
- Those were the days when we hacked our own mech editor and played
- tournaments for hours and hours.
- After registration we build tons of Mechs and guided our teams
- through dangerous encounters.
- 4 players could play hot seat without getting bored due to the
- unique and well designed turn system.
- The Amiga era ended and still MechForce was the reason to switch
- on our ancient computers.
-
-
- NOW is the time to bring the fun to personal computers with
-
-
- TITANS of STEEL ( ToS )
-
- by Vicious Byte :
-
- Steffan Vosgerau - Grafixs
- Email : Steffan.Vosgerau@kiel.netsurf.de
-
- Kai Sausmikat - Coding
- Email : sauser@t-online.de
-
- Henrik Schmidt - Coding
- Email : hbs@ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de
-
-
- Vicious Byte is a team of friends who work for different companies in
- the computer business. We invested some thousand hours of our spare
- time to create a game which we wanted to play. Hopefully it will also
- appeal to YOU !
-
-
-
- Please note that ToS is a game which does need some time to get into.
- It has an easy to use interface but much depth which has be explored
- to fully appreciate our efforts. Check the text files if you want
- detailled information on the modules.
-
-
- To cut a long story short
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- In the year of 2066 one of the main entertainement attractions
- are contests between titanic roboters piloted by short lived rookies
- or notorious veterans, called jocks. These are assembled in teams
- and deemed to success cause loosers end dead our without money to
- maintain their expenses.
- A jocks live is dangerous indeed, therefore most of them are
- recruited directly from prison and offered pardon if they would live
- long enough to become famous.
-
- The battles are fought all over the world and watched by billions of
- spectators ...........
-
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
-
-
- ToS v1.1 consist of 3 seperate modules which deal with the
- construction of titans, the management of jocks and their teams and
- the battles itself.
- These modules are called FACTORY, HQ and BATTLE and are located in the
- progs directory of your ToS distribution.
-
-
-
- What you can expect now :
-
- The factory features 20 chassis types with 20 weapon systems and
- numerous equipment from scanners to jump ports.
- You can create small but quick recon titans as well as 200t heavy
- behemoth armed with devasting weapons.
- Choose between 4 types of armor, each with its pros and cons.
- The factory is capable of designing new titans as well as modifying/
- repairing titans which are already owned by teams.
-
- The hq can handle character creation/development and team setup.
- Choose between humans, replicants, androids and cyborgs, each described
- by 7 attributes and 19 skills. Develop these characters by distributing
- experience points gained during combat. Manage your teams money by
- carefully buying/selling your titans.
-
- The battle module is a turn based tactical game which simulates combat
- between teams of titans.
- Turns are divided into small individual time slices which will allow
- fast alternating play as well as give you time to carefully consider
- your actions.
- Battle can be played solo, hotseat or in a local area network.
- It includes 5 terrain types from swamps to hills, each affecting combat
- and movement. Line of sight is calculated, even 1m can make the difference.
-
-
-
- What you can't expect :
-
- Realtime mouse clickfests and all that fancy stuff that takes time,
- costs money and does not add to the game.
-
-
-
- What you need at least
-
- A 486 DX computer with 24 MB RAM and a graphic display adapter which
- is capable of 800x600x256 resolution and supports the VESA 1.2 or 2.0
- standard.
- The game is a protected mode DOS application which can be run in
- DOS mode or in a DOS box under Win95/98.
- Soundblaster compatible sound cards are supported if they do not use
- unusual interrupts.
- You should have about 15 MB of free space on your hard drive.
- If you own an ethernet network card you can play with up to 4
- players in a LAN via the IPX protocol ( ! that's the most fun ! ).
-
-
-
- What you can do to help us improve the game ?
-
- Try the game, do as you please.
- If you encounter problems/bugs, report them with a short note what you did
- before they occurred.
- Report inconveniences with the interface and give your opinion on the
- game mechanics.
- Be honest, tell us your likes/dislikes.
- Help us make a better game but don't expect total rewrites.
-
-
-
-
- Installation
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- Decompress the archive file.
-
- ToS comes compressed using PKZIP 2.04g compatible software.
- The file name of the archive does indicate the version of the
- software. tosv1.zip therefore includes Titans of Steel v1.1.
- You must decompress the archive file on your system.
-
- The ToS library archive has the following directory structure:
- tos\
- progs\
- sounds\
- images\
- data\
- tools\
-
-
- If you are using PKUNZIP to decompress the archive you have to
- use the "-d" switch to recreate this directory structure.
- Other PKZIP compatible programs expand directories by default.
-
-
- I you have downloaded an update archive, you should copy it into your
- tos directory and unzip there. Please overwrite any file if asked.
- Updates also include the version in their name, btlv111.zip would
- be an update of the battle module to v1.11.
-
- The archive includes a copy of csdpmi4b.zip to satisfy the demands of
- the author, Charles Sandman. We already copied the important DPMI host
- file into the progs directory.
-
-
-
- Quick Start
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- To start a quick game without bothering about titan/team creation launch
- tos.bat from the main directoy.
-
- 1. Select Battlefield, wait for battle.exe to load.
- 2. Select Hot Seat Game
- 3. Select Small Map
- 4. Select Random Player Team
- 5. Select Average Quality
- 6. Select Chose Next Team
- 7. Select Random AI Team
- 8. Select Average Quality
- 9. Select Start Game
- 10. Select Small Teams
-
-
-
-
- Start of Single Modules
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- The progs directory includes the executables of the three modules
- Titans of Steel consists of : battle.exe, factory.exe and hq.exe
-
- We did include a small launch batch file called tos.bat which allows
- starting these modules WITHOUT command line parameters by executing
- tos.bat from the main directory. If you have to use command line
- parameters (to disable sound or start netgames) you have to do so directly
- from the progs directory. All command line parameters of the modules can be
- displayed by executing with -h parameter (battle.exe -h).
-
-
-
- Legal Stuff
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- The v1.1 of ToS includes few sound files which are taken from
- various sources and may be copyrighted. These files will be
- substituted by totally legal files for the shareware version or as
- soon as demanded by their owners.
-
- We have not suffered any serious breakdowns of hard- or software during
- our extensive playtesting. Nonetheless, we do not take any responsibilities
- for damage done to your system resulting from usage of any of the game
- modules.
-
- We strongly recommend *NOT* to use the LAN version of the game
- in your office or at any site where net safety is critical. It might be safe,
- but as mentioned before, we are not responsible. You are.
-
-
-
- Acknowledgements
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- Any worthwhile enterprise can be successful only as a result of the time
- and effort invested by a number of people.
- This chapter tries to give some credit where it is due.
- The following people contributed (with or without their knowledge) to the
- development of Titans of Steel :
-
- Ralph Reed for starting this mania with MechForce. It's the all time
- greatest game on the Amiga.
- Jonathan Griffith for his excellent portable graphic library Jlib.
- Joel H. Hunter for the Sound-Blaster Library for DJGPP v2.
- DJ Delorie and his team, for the DJGPP port of GCC.
- Eric Peterson for the new improved soundset.
- 'Rosary' for her charming ingame voice acting.
- Robert Hoehne for his integrated development environment for DJGPP.
- John R. McCawley III for his basic IPX functions for DJGPP.
- Charles Sandman for the DPMI host program.
- Travis Alexander for his nice module launch program
- Clark Verbrugge for his neat line of sight algorithms.
- Tim Frazer for his Matrox Millenium patch and input to debug the game.
-
-
-
- Contacts
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-
- The ToS WWW Home Page is at
- http://www.ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~hbs/tos.html
-
- This is place to look for patches, updates and information on ToS.
-
- The members of Vicious Byte can be contacted by Email :
-
- Henrik Schmidt : hbs@ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de
- Kai Sausmikat : sauser@t-online.de
- Steffan Vosgerau : Steffan.Vosgerau@kiel.netsurf.de
-
- Don't be afraid to email us, we are all nice guys who like to
- talk about Titans of Steel.
-
-
- Henrik
- Vicious Byte
-
-
-
-
-