SID MEIER'S ALIEN CROSSFIRE DEMO
README.TXT
9/28/99

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the demo of Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, the expansion disk for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri from Firaxis Games! This is a 100-turn single-player demo that captures the early excitement of exploration and conflict on an alien world. For a brief introduction on gameplay basics, take a look at the file "demo quickstart.doc", located in the root directory of the demo.

Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire is slated for release in late October of 1999. Please visit www.alphacentauri.com for more information about the game, or just to post your thoughts on the demo.  Have fun!

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE

If you are experiencing performance problems, try some of the following tips:

*  Reduce your resolution to 800 x 600, rather than 1024 x 768. This can greatly improve all game performance.
*  Disable the sound using the Audio/Visual Preferences menu.
*  Disable map animations, sliding windows, and sliding scrollbars.
*  Enable the following preferences: Move Friendly Pieces Quickly, Fast Battle Resolution, Move Units with orders quickly,
Don't Center On Units With Orders
*  Increase the amount of free hard drive space on the C: drive.
*  Increase the amount of RAM in your system.

GAMMA CORRECTION / "IF THE GRAPHICS SEEM TOO DARK"

We've added a Gamma Correction feature to allow the customer to adjust the brightness of the palette without adjusting
their monitor. It is accessible from any of the preference menus. The default value is 1.0.

WINDOWS NT

Almost all features of SMACX should work under Windows NT 4.0. You'll need to obtain NT Service Pack 3 or higher from
Microsoft and install it, which includes DirectX 3 or higher support. Note: Sound support under NT currently requires us to
use emulated drivers; this can in some cases produce poor sound results, including static and sound breaking up.

CPU OVERCLOCKING

If you experience random crashes and you are overclocking your CPU (especially with AMD K-5 and K-6 processors), try
returning your CPU speed to it's original setting. 

ADDITIONAL TWEAKS

Once the game is installed, a file is created called "Alpha Centauri.ini". This file contains various settings and
preferences for the game, but can also be edited by the user. The following commands will allow you some control over the
look of various parts of the game.

WindowsFileBox=1
Settings this to 1 allows you to use the traditional Win95/98 file navigation dialog.

MainFontSize=16
You can increase or decrease the size of the font used throughout the game. 

DirectDraw=0
Settings this to 0 disables DirectDraw. This disables the automatic window resolution resizing during program launch.

Video Mode=800 or Video Mode=1024
This forces the screen resolution to either of these two sizes.

8BitMovieSound=1
This forces the sound quality to 8-bit from the original 16-bit. If your sound card has DirectX compatibility issues, this
may improve movie performance.

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1
If the game crashes intermittently, try adding this line.

TROUBLESHOOTING - If your computer has problems playing the demo (crashes, returning to desktop, etc.), please try the
following:

1. Reinstall DirectX 6.1.

2. Rename the SOUND.DLL to SOUND.DL_. While disabling the sound, it may correct your original problem.

3. If you receive the message "CPU Not Supported", and you have a non-Intel processor such as an AMD K-5, try to run the
game anyway. Many AMD processors show up as a 486 in verification tests, but if your machine is 'Pentium Compatible', it
shouldn't be a problem.

4. Increase amount of free hard drive space on the C: drive, especially if you have 16 or 32 megs of memory. Defragmenting
this drive will also often increase the amount of space available for Windows to use as Virtual Memory. Also keep in mind
that larger maps require more memory. Try a smaller map.

5. Let Windows handle your swap file size. This can be adjusted by running the System Control Panel, selecting the
Performance menu tab, then the Virtual Memory button, and selecting "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings".

6. Update the Windows 95/98 drivers for your Video card, Sound card, and Monitor.

7. When running the game you return directly to the desktop, you may not have your monitor setup correctly. Try to manually
set your desktop to one of the resolutions the game supports (1024x768x8bit (256 colors) or 800x600x8bit). If you cannot
manually set the resolution, you will need to contact your computer's manufacturer for details on how to do so.

8. If you are using an TNT2 based video card (Hercules TNT2, Diamond Viper v770, etc.) try setting your hardware
acceleration to 0 in the system control panel.

9. If the game's volume has changed since installing Alien Crossfire, try setting those values in the audio/visual
preferences.

10. If you're experiencing crashes in the sound.dll, perhaps your sound card is having difficulty supporting the Alien
Crossfire's 3D Audio. Try setting the EAX and DS3D entries in the 'alpha centauri.ini' file to 0.

11. Any 'Unable to allocate draw-buffer' errors most likely relate to DirectX not being installed. Try reinstalling DirectX
6.1.

Enjoy,

The Firaxis Games Team


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