PC Format (South-Africa) 2001 February

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Welcome to Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy ---------------------------------------------- CONTENTS: 0. Technical Support 1. Common Camera & Control Questions 2. AutoPlay 3. Monitor Resolution 4. Game Initialization & Setup 5. Video Cards 6. Sound 7. Troubleshooting 8. License Agreement 0. TECHNICAL SUPPORT If you believe you have found any such error or defect in the program during the warranty period, call Hasbro Interactive Technical Support Department at (410) 568-2377, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 a.m. Monday through Friday (Eastern Time) and 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, holidays excluded. Our technical personnel will attempt to help you correct any problem that may occur. If you have a problem resulting from a manufacturing defect in the CD-ROM, Hasbro Interactive will replace your compact disc with a corrected version. For problems resulting from your system software or hardware, Hasbro Interactive will suggest technical solutions to help you avoid the problem. 1. COMMON CAMERA & CONTROL QUESTIONS Q: The camera doesn't track my men properly and starts to diverge away from where they are. A: Press the "Space Bar". Space Bar points the camera at your groups after any divergence. Q: Can I look around rather than just down at my men? A: Hold the "Shift" key down while moving the mouse and holding the right mouse button to rotate the camera. Q: How can I keep all my troops in view without adjusting the camera manually? A: Press the numpad enter key to set the camera to using the optimal distance. Q: How can I see what formations will look like on arrival when I click on the terrain in order to move my men to a new location? A: When you click on the terrain with the left mouse button, keep holding the button down. The formation will appear at the location where you clicked the mouse on the terrain. You can also rotate formations in this way by moving the mouse while holding the button down. 2 AUTOPLAY If the Windows(R) AutoPlay feature is enabled on your computer, the Starship Troopers setup screen will automatically appear when you insert the Starship Troopers CD into your CD-ROM drive. Simply click on Install and follow the on-screen instructions to continue the If the AutoPlay feature is disabled, you can begin the installation by doing the following a) Go to the Start Menu and select Run. b) Type D:\SETUP.EXE (where D is your CD-ROM drive letter) and press Enter. -or- a) Double-click on your CD-ROM drive icon. b) Double-click on SETUP.EXE. 3. MONITOR RESOLUTION: It is important that you make sure your monitor supports the game resolution you have chosen to play in. To check what resolutions your monitor supports, do the following: 1. Open up My Computer 2. Double-click on Control Panel 3. Find the Display icon and open it. 4. Choose the Settings tab. 5. Locate the resolution pointer in the Desktop Area box and drag it to the far right. The resolution choice shown is the maximum resolution your monitor is capable of displaying. If you do not want to change to this resolution now, select cancel. Your Desktop Area should be set to the game resolution you are trying to play in or higher. NOTE: Please make sure your monitor type is properly specified to insure correct reporting of available video resolutions. 4. GAME INITIALIZATION & SETUP: The video setup program will launch the first time the game is run. Complete the following steps: 1. Select configure 2. Select the video card you want to use. Most of the time this will be 'Primary' 3. If you have chosen a card other than primary, an option to select 'Auto Mip-Mapping' will appear. This will help improve the visual quality of textures during the game, at the expense of video memory. It is recommended that Voodoo2 based cards select 'No' because they don't have enough memory. The setup program can be launched again at any point if a different card is inserted into the machine or you want to try different settings. Once the setup is complete, the game can be launched. Various extra options exist in the in-game 'Options' page. 5. VIDEO CARDS: Most modern video cards released towards the end of 1999 and during 2000 will run Starship Troopers well. Recommended chipsets are: nVidia GeForce1/2 DDR Matrox Millennium - G400 6. SOUND: Starship Troopers uses extensive use of 3D sound, and as such will try to find a sound card which has at least 24 hardware channels. If it can't it will fallback to using the software sound driver. Software is still VERY fast, and in some cases is faster than hardware. It is recommended, though, for the ultimate listening experience, a sound card with the following chipsets be used: - Creative SBLive! family of sound cards, which have EAX 3D hardware support - Vortex 2 chipsets Starship Troopers uses full 3D 4 speaker surround sound with completed 3d position of all sounds, so it is recommended that you set up all four speaks when playing and set your sound card options to 4 speaker mode. 7. TROUBLESHOOTING: Before answering questions, please make sure the latest video and sound card drivers for you operating system have been installed. Q: I am considering installing Starship Troopers again. Which installation is best for me? A: Compact install consumes the least amount of space on your hard disk, but does so at the cost of performance. This is because most graphics and all sound will be being read off the CD while you are playing the game. Since CD reading is usually much slower (particularly on older CD drives) than reading from the hard disk, game activities such as level loading will suffer in performance. Typical install reads only movies and streaming sound from the CD which gives an improvement in general game play performance. Full installation reads all data off the hard drive, leading to best performance with maximum consumption of hard disk space. Remember also, that Starship Troopers attempts to cache files to the hard drive under all installations. As such, it does not consume all of its required space immediately. If the disk has insufficient space for the game to store its cache files, the game will still function, but may run more slowly. Q: I chose not to install DirectX 7 and now I realize that I need it. What do I do? A: Select the uninstall option upon launch, then process with a fresh install of Starship Troopers (this time approving the DirectX 7 option). Q: I have installed DirectX 7 but when I run the setup program a dialogue appears telling me I don't have a device which supports hardware rendering. What can I do? A: This is typical for older cards which don't have new DirectX7 drivers. They may be a discontinued chipset and the issue needs to be taken up with your hardware vendor. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do. Sorry. :( Q: My graphics are running slowly. A: Try reducing the resolution to 640x480. Try reducing the color bit-depth in the in-game options screen to 16bit. Also try reducing the texture-depth to 16bit. If this doesn't help enough try reducing the texture quality. The game won't look as sharp, but you should see a definite improvement on lower end Video cards like Voodoo 2's and nVidia Riva 128/TNT/2. If this STILL isn't helping enough start reducing the terrain/particle/surface and sound quality. This should definitely make a big difference. Q: The game has suddenly become really slow. It used to run well though. What can I do? A: Check that you haven't run out of disk space on the hard drive you have installed Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers stores temporary files that help it run smoothly, but when it runs out of space it copes with the problem at the sake of efficiency. Try clearing up some space on that drive, or uninstall Starship Troopers and reinstall onto a larger hard drive. Also, consider alternative installations when you re-install. Using a smaller install will save some space. Remember to also leave enough space for your operating system's "swap space" for virtual memory. Refer to your operating system's help for more information on virtual memory settings. Q: I have cleared some disk space, but I'm still having problems with the game running slow. What now? A: Make sure that you have no other applications running when you run Starship Troopers. If you have virus protection software running, it may be performing file checking as Starship Troopers reads files. This can lead to performance loss. Please refer to your virus protection help for more information. Q: My sound effects seem VERY loud, can I fix this? A: It has been found that certain sound card drivers cause this effect. Try setting the in-game sound options to not use hardware. Restart Starship Troopers after setting this. Q: I am seeing a big triangle or square in front of me whilst playing. How can I get rid of this? A: Certain cards, such as the nVidia TNT, do not support a blend option we need. It is suggested that you reduce the surface detail level in the in-game options (set to low). Q: It's too hard! Can I get some tips? A: You sure can! We have compiled a FAQ which can be found at http://www.stta.com/faq.html Q: I'm having problems with the intro video. The audio jumps ahead of the video. What can be done? A: This problem arises on some computers when the video player cannot keep up pace. Sometimes when this happens the video may throw frames, and stutter so as to keep up with the audio. To rectify this you may need to do a full install, so as to get videos streaming from your hard disk instead of CD. Also, you can sometimes alleviate your computers video strain by reducing the game's screen bit depth setting to 16 bit. Q: I have Win95 and installation is asking me to install Internet Explorer 4 or greater. Why? A: Early versions of Windows 95 (such as version 4.00.950 Retail) lack components necessary for Starship Troopers to function. Ignoring this will lead to a fatal error opening SHLWAPI.DLL, as well as lack of video sequences. To rectify this problem, install IE4 or greater or alternatively upgrade your operating system. Q: Can I change the name of my MI Troopers? A: Yes of course! You click on the name of the trooper at the top left during the unit information and unit equip screen during the interface. You can then modify his/her name permanently! Q: The camera drifts away when my Troopers run around. How can I stop this? A: The camera system in Troopers is very dynamic. Pressing 'Space' will center the camera on the best group of Troopers. Each time it is pressed, the most optimal group of Troopers will be chosen. You can also press the "Numpad Enter" to set the camera into a 'dynamic focus' mode whereby the camera will do it's best to focus on the currently selected Troopers. Q: I have a Voodoo2 and when I choose 1024x768 it crashes! Why? A: We have found that the card tells us it can run at that resolution and exposes the mode to us, yet fails if actually used. It is a known problem without a current fix. Q: The sound in the game stutters and repeats words in dialogue. How can I fix this? A: Certain sound cards and drivers have latency problems. Also Windows 95 does not handle multiple threads well. The way to alleviate this problem, if not fix completely, is to use a special command line option to increase the size of the sound mix buffer. The result is the in-game sounds will not sync EXACTLY with the graphics but most of the time it's not noticeable and fixes the stuttering problem. Usually it is seen as a slight delay after firing a weapon and hearing the sound. We have included prepared shortcut to do this for users. It is called "StarshipTroopersHelpSound" and is in the install directory. For interest sake, the command line option is 'soundsetlatency numberofmilliseconds'. Q: Why can't I play without a sound card? A: Because of the complexity of Starship Troopers' sound environment, it is necessary to have a sound card installed and active. If you don't an error will be displayed, and the game will terminate. 8. 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