Thank you for trying out this demonstration version of Star Wars DroidWorks. We recommend that you read this file to get the most up-to-date information about running and maximizing the performance of DroidWorks.
Look for the coming release of DroidWorks this Fall! Also, for the very latest updates related to DroidWorks, be sure to check the Lucas Learning Website at www.lucaslearning.com.
Topics
General Information
-Welcome to Lucas Learning Ltd.
-Introduction to Star Wars DroidWorks
-Using the Workshop and the Mission Map
-Using InDex
-Using the Mission Screen and How to Control your Droid
Running DroidWorks
-System Requirements
-Performance
-Memory
-Keyboard Controls
-Troubleshooting
How to Contact Lucas Learning Ltd.
General Information
Welcome to Lucas Learning Ltd.
A Message from George Lucas, Creative Director of Lucas Learning Ltd.
Many years ago as a filmmaker I developed an interest in interactive technologies. As I began to work with them, I realized that they had great potential for opening up new kinds of learning experiences for young people. They offered an alternative to some of the traditional approaches to education that did not work for me as a youth. As a result, for over 15 years I've been committed to finding ways to capture kids' natural interest in learning and engage them more actively and productively in the learning process. Lucas Learning reflects my own passion for learning as it creates products like this one. DroidWorks explores rich content in an immersive and entertaining environment as it engages the player in constructing droids and then trying them out in challenging environments. I hope you enjoy the experience and that it will contribute to your own lifetime of learning.
-George Lucas
Lucas Learning Ltd. is committed to creating uncommon learning opportunities through software that inspires and entertains. Our games are imaginative, challenging, and engaging, yet grounded in solid content and an understanding of how we actually learn. Our philosophy is based on a fundamental respect for people's natural desire to direct their own learning through exploration and discovery. Our goal is to provide you with an entertaining, enduring, and substantial learning experience set in the familiar worlds of the Star Wars galaxy.
Introduction to Star Wars DroidWorks
THE STORY SO FAR...
The fight for freedom in the galaxy continues. Rebel spies have learned that the evil empire has built a secret droid factory somewhere on the planet Tatooine. It is there that Imperial engineers are building an army of assassin droids. Once activated, these dangerous machines will terrorize the galaxy.
In DroidWorks, you assume the exciting role of an undercover agent working for the Rebel Alliance in their mission to overcome the evil Empire. Disguised as a Jawa, your job is to become a Master Droid Builder by designing and building droids that help you complete important missions. Ultimately, you must find the secret location of the Empire's Assassin Droid Factory, and reprogram the Assassin Droids before they stop the Rebellion!
Using the Workshop and the Mission Map
Everything you need to construct the perfect droid is in the Jawa Droid Workshop. Assemble a multiped or tread droid in the holographic window using the parts available.
As you build your droid, you can paint it any colors you want, zoom in and out, observe its movement, and view it from any angle. If you'd rather just design and build droids, the Jawa Droid Workshop and Sandcrawler Training Facility are always open to droid builders who just want to have fun building, painting, and playing with different droids (Training Facility only available in the full version.)
If you want to prepare for a mission and do some scientific research, use InDex.
Choose between legged or wheeled droids using the Legs/Wheels button. Or you can use the Droid Randomization button if you would like a droid created for you. Select different droid parts and drag them onto the holographic grid. Connect them together by matching the connection points. Click on the
information cards to access mission objectives, droid information, part information, and 3-D part displays. Use the zoom slider to get an up close view of your droid. You can rotate your droid using the arrow keys and hit the red button to return it to its original position. Click the paint button, select a color, and click on different parts of your droid to give it that customized look. Finally, click on the test droid button to make your droid walk and click on the droid dance button to give it a beat.
Using the InDex
Search the InDex to learn more about topics that will help you get past any obstacles you encounter in your mission. The InDex is a tool where you can do research on relevant scientific principles that will give you the information needed to get through the missions. The InDex is a major part of the product, and we tried to make it interesting, useful, and very accurate. We used outside physics and general science experts and teachers to help us write, design, and proofread it.
There are three sections to each entry. As you can see, InDex is a very powerful and fun tool. It is available from the Workshop and from within missions where you'll need it most!
Using the Mission Screen and How to Control Your Droid
The missions are where the action takes place and you take control of your droid. The missions are set in a texture-rich, 3-D environment that utilizes the LucasArts Entertainment Company's Jedi Knight engine. You are controlling your droid through the Holocam-E or "Cammy" flying droid. Cammy gives you spoken contextual help throughout the missions.
There is only one mission to try in this demo version, but the full game has 14 areas to explore: a practice area, eight training missions, four larger "secret" missions, and one final mission, the secret Assassin Droid factory! The varied droid parts and objectives as well as random in-mission object placement add to the replayability of the game. You can play the missions or just build droids for fun and see how they work in the various environments, and you can play each of the training missions at three different difficulty levels to earn more droid parts.
While on your missions, you will find items to pick up and place in your inventory. You access your inventory by using the mouse to click on the square red button at the bottom left of your screen. NOTE: When you pick up a new item, the button will flash yellow. To use an item, simply click on it. Some things can only be used in certain places so explore the area!
You will come across other characters in the missions. To start a conversation with them press the SPACEBAR. When the dialogue window appears, use your mouse to choose what you want to say or ask. Try various heads on your droids--different droid heads have different voices!
Keyboard Controls
To see the keyboard commands while playing a mission, click on the ? button.
UP ARROW run forward (double power consumed)
DOWN ARROW walk backward
SHIFT+UP ARROW walk forward
SHIFT+DN ARROW walk backward slowly
LEFT ARROW rotate left
RIGHT ARROW rotate right
OPTION LEFT ARROW step left (multiped only)
OPTION RIGHT ARROW step right (multiped only)
R or S use right arm to grab, push, etc.
L or A use left arm to grab, push, etc.
X jump (multiped only)
H turn special head attribute on/off
SPACEBAR talk to other characters
PAGE UP or E look up
PAGE DN or C look down
HOME or D look straight ahead
V+Mouse look around (hold down V and move mouse)
F11 adjust screen brightness
F12 save screen shot
+ or - adjust screen size
ESC skip a movie or dialog
PAUSE/F15 or P pause the game during a mission
CMD-Q quit game
Alternatively, you may use the numeric keypad (on the right of your keyboard) to move your droid:
8 run forward (double power consumed)
2 walk backward
SHIFT+8 walk forward
SHIFT+2 walk backward slowly
4 rotate left
6 rotate right
1 step left (multiped only)
3 step right (multiped only)
9 use right arm to grab, push, etc.
7 use left arm to grab, push, etc.
+ jump (multiped only)
* turn special head attribute on/off
0 talk to other characters
5 look straight ahead
Running DroidWorks
The minimum requirements for running DroidWorks on your Macintosh system are as follows:
COMPUTER: Apple Macintosh and 100% compatibles.
OPERATING SYSTEM: MacOS version 7.5.5 or higher.
CPU: 120Mhz PowerPC 604 or 160Mhz PowerPC 603e minimum required.
CD-ROM DRIVE: Quad-speed (4x) or higher required.
MEMORY: 32MB RAM minimum required.
INPUT DEVICES: Mouse and keyboard required.
DISPLAY: 640x480, 13” or larger display required.
HARD DISK DRIVE: at least 50Mb of hard disk space required for install, plus 16Mb of hard disk space required for DroidWorks scratch file. Additional space required for saved players/droids.
Performance
DroidWorks features a highly complex 3D environment, with streaming audio and complex, high resolution graphics. As such, it can and will push your computer’s processor to its limits. In order to achieve the best gameplay, there are several things you can do to increase your performance.
• Reduce your screen size. A slow framerate has been shown to affect gameplay in DroidWorks. On computers with slow framerates, you may have difficulty controlling your droid, and other characters may be unable to move. Decrease the screen size to improve your framerate by using the + or - keys or the slider on the right side of the screen (during a mission.)
• Quit all other applications while running. Running other applications in the background may cause DroidWorks to pause during gameplay, due to other applications requiring access to your computer's various resources. We recommend quitting all other applications prior to running DroidWorks.
Memory
Memory Before Playing
DroidWorks is a memory-intensive game, and requires at least 17564k free memory available to run (16384k free memory when virtual memory is enabled.) You may need to turn off system extensions and/or turn on virtual memory in order to meet this requirement. Before turning on virtual memory however, the more "real memory" you can free up, the better your performance and gameplay quality will be.
You can find out how much memory is available on your system by choosing "About This Computer..." from the Apple menu in the Finder. Look at the value next to the “Largest Unused Block.” This value indicates how much memory you have available for running DroidWorks. Note that if you have other applications running, they will eat up some of your memory, so you should quit them first to determine the maximum available. If it's below what you need to run DroidWorks, try using the suggestions below.
• Disable unnecessary extensions and control panels. Use the Extensions Manager control panel that shipped with your system. It is suggested that you turn off everything that isn’t vital and restart before running DroidWorks. To do this conveniently, first save your current configuration by choosing Save Set... from the pop-up menu above the list. Name this set “Standard”. Next, turn off everything in Extensions Manager and choose Save Set... again, naming this set “DroidWorks.” Now, before you run DroidWorks, simply choose your DroidWorks set from the pop-up menu in Extensions Manager, and restart your system. To return to your usual setup, choose “Standard” from the pop-up menu and restart again.
IMPORTANT: Some third-party hardware require their own drivers to operate properly. If this hardware is essential to running your computer (e.g., monitors or hard drives), you will need to make sure that you don’t disable the extensions and/or control panels that control this hardware. Consult the users manual for the hardware in question to find out what is essential.
• Quit all applications before running. Each application that is running takes up some memory that DroidWorks could be using. If you’re tight on space, make sure you quit other applications before playing the game. Some applications are notorious for not cleaning up after themselves, so if there seems to be less RAM available than there should be, it might be a good idea to restart before trying to run DroidWorks.
• Reduce the disk cache size and turn off any RAM disks. In Apple’s Memory control panel are options for controlling the disk cache size and for creating RAM disks. If you have created a RAM disk, turn it off and restart your system before running DroidWorks. If you really want to push your memory to its max, reducing the disk cache to its minimum setting can also help, at the expense of slower disk access.
• Turn off Appletalk. Disabling the networking software in your machine's system can free up to several hundred kilobytes of memory, depending on the network configuration used. To do this, go to the Chooser under the Apple menu, change the setting for Appletalk to "off" and restart your machine. IMPORTANT: Make sure that you turn Appletalk back to "on" when you're finished with the game.
• Turn on virtual memory. If, after trying the above suggestions, you still find that you do not have the minimum free memory required to run DroidWorks, you may have to turn on virtual memory. Before you do, make sure that you have freed up as much memory as you can by following the steps above. The more free memory you have, the better your performance will be with virtual memory turned on. To turn on virtual memory, go into the Memory control panel, and click the “On” button next to the Virtual Memory section. Then use the arrows next to the virtual memory control to adjust the amount of memory you wish to have. This amount should be set high enough so that when you restart your computer with virtual memory on, there is at least 16.3Mb available under "Largest Unused Block" in the "About this Computer..." info window.
Troubleshooting
DroidWorks tells me I don't have enough hard disk space for a needed scratch file and won't run. What should I do?
DroidWorks creates a temporary scratch file on your hard drive every time you run the application. If your hard drive has less than 16Mb free space available you will be alerted by DroidWorks that not enough space is available for the scratch file. We recommend that you clear enough space on your hard drive so that there is at least 16Mb of free space available (even more than 16Mb if possible). Once enough space has been cleared you should be able to run DroidWorks.
The sound output on my computer sounds flat and muddled after running DroidWorks. What's wrong?
When DroidWorks is run, the sound output quality of your computer is temporarily changed to 11kHz for optimal playback of the sounds used in the program. Normally when you quit DroidWorks the sound output quality is automatically set back to its original setting (this will be 44kHz for most machines.) In some cases however this may not happen, particularily if DroidWorks is not quit properly (i.e. the computer is restarted while DroidWorks is running, power outage, etc.) If this should happen, your sound output quality will still be set to 11kHz, even when DroidWorks isn't running. To correct this, you will need to go into the "Monitors & Sound" control panel and set your Sound Output Quality back to 44kHz.
How to Contact Lucas Learning Ltd.
This demonstration version of Star Wars DroidWorks is offered "as-is" with only online technical support. You can find some technical information about Star Wars DroidWorks on the Lucas Learning Web site at www.lucaslearning.com in the Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi section.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this game are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.
No droids were harmed in the making of this product.
