Readme.txt--------------POSITECH COMPUTING LTD---ASTEROID MINER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Release Notes V1.0 13/3/99 1)Installation 2)Requirements 3)Troubleshooting 4)Supported Hardware 5)Registration 6)Multiplayer 1)Installation Asteroid Miner does not require any special installation procedure. simply unzip the files to a directory of your choice and run the game by double clicking the Ast_miner.exe icon. 2)Requirements Asteroid Miner utilises the DirectX software supplied by Microsoft. You will need DirectX 5.2 or later to run the game. DirectX is freely available from www.microsoft.com, and comes preinstalled on Windows98. You may find that you already have DirectX installed from a previous games installation program. Asteroid Miner uses Direct3D only slightly. It is not optimised for a specific chipset and you do not need a 3D accelerator. 3)Troubleshooting Most problems with asteroid miner can be traced to DirectX drivers. The symptoms of DirectX problems include: Sound works unpredictably or not at all: solution: Go to control panel | multimedia, and adjust the properties of the audio device to disable any special audio hardware acceleration. Game crashes as soon as you use the mouse: This is a problem with display modes. Asteroid Miner requires a screen resolution of 800 by 600 in 16bit color. You may have problems with certain drivers that cannot change automatically to this resolution. If so, try setting the resolution to 800 by 600 by 16 and launching the game again. If you already are set to 800 by 600, try launching the game from a different resolution. You may need to reboot your computer if the game fails before starting again. 4)Supported Hardware: Asteroid miner has been tested with the following cards: Hercules terminator Beast 128 3D ATI Xpert@Play 8MB PCI 5)Registration Asteroid Miner is Shareware. The game is provided as a 1 level demo with unlimited multiplayer functionality. Registering the game disables the slow 'nag' screen on shutdown and allows you to access the full multilevel single player game.When you register you will be given a code to enter that enables the full game,you dont even need to restart the game to get the new levels, and you dont need to download any extra files. 6)Multiplayer Click on Start Multi on the main screen to host a multiplayer game. you need to enter a playername (just type it in), choose a service provider, and select a ship (all ships perform the same).You then need to select a level for your game. to join a game go to Join Multi. Asteroid Miner supports multiplayer play by IPX and TCP/IP. You may experience hanging when connecting to a TCP/IP game. If so, you may find that hitting the enter key solves the problem. You should not experience any problems with IPX games. Asteroid miner supports a total of 8 players in a game. Asteroid miner will allow you to select other service providers such as modem or direct serial connection. These methods are NOT tested or supported by Positech computing ltd. 7)Known Bugs If you start a multiplayer game, and then attempt to start another one, the game may crash or hang. just quit and restart the game and you should have no problems. http://www.positech.co.uk/