Thanks for installing the Drakan Patch. We are confident that the new features and fixes in this patch will greatly enhance your enjoyment of Drakan. We have gone to the extra effort to ensure that your previously saved games function correctly with this new patch. The biggest change is in Drakan's multiplayer game, which has been completely rewritten using Winsock for a completely new Internet experience. Modem users should have no problems playing over the Internet now, and Drakan dedicated servers are more stable and can now handle 8+ players without trouble.
For frequent updates on the status of the patch and tips on configuring Drakan, check out the new Surreal Tech Page at http://www.surreal.com/tech
For the latest Drakan information, go to http://www.drakan-game.com
Chat with other Drakan players on the Drakan Forum at: http://www.drakan.net
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== 2. The New Drakan Multiplayer ==
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After several weeks of open beta testing, we feel the networking code in this patch is quite solid and very playable on the Internet, even with modems. Since the code is now using Winsock, the Drakan dedicated server now runs under Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 3 or newer). In addition, clients can now connect to servers from behind firewalls if configured properly (see section 3, "Playing Behind A Firewall"). Please see Section 9 "Complete List of Changes / Fixes" for additional fixes to multiplayer, and Section 7 "New Multiplayer Server Commands" for additional commands available to server operators.
In addition to network code changes, we have also tweaked with some features to improve the multiplayer gameplay. To make the Blue Energy Bow more effective and useful, we have increased the radius and damage on Blue Energy Bow explosion. We have also adjusted the Green Energy bow (DragonStrife) so that it seeks from a longer range. This should make it easier to kill the dragon and balance out Master of the Dragon levels. In addition, we have decreased the damage on ring of fire and lightning axe. Good armor will now reduce the damage on these weapons enough to survive them.
One final thing to be aware of: when running a dedicated server on a LAN and you do not have Internet access or if DNS (TCP/IP domain-name lookup) is not configured properly, the server may hang when it attempts to register itself with the master server. If you run a dedicated server on the LAN, make sure you specify +nomaster on the command-line so that Drakan will not attempt to contact the master server.
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== 3. Playing Behind A Firewall ==
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Some users who are playing from behind a firewall may experience problems such as getting kicked off the server or not being able to connect. To solve these problems, the firewall or client settings may need to be configured to run properly with Drakan. The following guidelines are required for successful play from behind a firewall or proxy server.
Make sure the game and query ports for the server you are connecting to is "open" on your firewall. "Open" means that both TCP and UDP packets, inbound AND outbound are allowed. Also make sure that all the ports for your clients are open as well. The default server ports are 27045 and 27046. The default client ports are 27055 through 27074. This configuration allows up to 20 clients to play from behind your firewall. You can change the starting port and default range (20) by modifying the settings "ClientGamePort" and "NumAlternatePortSelections" values in the Drakan.cfg file. Usually, no more than "NumAlternatePortSelections" clients can play from behind the same firewall, so this value may need to be increased, or the "ClientGamePort" value may need to be moved to a lower value for the clients that are having problems connecting.
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== 4. New Joystick / Gamepad Support ==
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Drakan adds additional joystick and gamepad support by allowing the joystick axes to now control forward/back, strafe, up/down (jump/crouch) as well as turn and pitch. There is a new interface in the Options - Controls screen which gives full control over the binding of these five movements to any joystick axis. To change which joystick axis causes a movement to occur, click on the axis in the table next to the desired movement to toggle through the available axes. You may also invert (reverse) an axis by checking the box to the right of the axis. Keep in mind that to use the joystick, you must enable joystick support by checking the box at the top of the screen. Also, you may need to calibrate your joystick in Windows and/or adjust the sensitivity setting at the top of the Controls screen.
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== 5. Benchmarking With Drakan ==
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The Drakan patch includes a new feature that allows you to benchmark 3D hardware using Drakan. Simply run Drakan using the +fpstest command-line option which will cause Drakan to run through the first cut-scene in the game, then output the average frames per second to a file called FPS.TXT which can be read by benchmarking utilities such as 3D GameGuage. Be sure to run Drakan Engine Options from the Windows Start menu first to set the Display driver, resolution, and color depth for the test. You can also disable the Sound to further limit the benchmarking to only the 3D rendering performance. Keep in mind that any variation in graphics options such as the current fog distance setting will also affect performance.
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== 6. Primary Single-Player Changes ==
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Other than the new Joystick features outlined above, several crash bugs having to do with saving games, transitioning between levels and manipulating inventory items have been fixed. Also, each time you transition from one level to the next, an auto save file is now created. The file can then be loaded in to allow you to continue from the start of the level. A bug was also fixed that caused magic crystals to sometimes be removed from the inventory when cycling through Rynn's weapons. The boss creature at the end of the game is now smarter and harder to kill and also now honors the difficulty level setting. Finally, a new "nightmare" skill level was added. To use this new skill level, click New Game and select "Too Hard" from the difficulty dialog box. The new skill level not only makes creatures do more damage and are harder to kill, but it also makes them attack faster and makes them more aggressive.
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== 7. New Multiplayer Server Commands ==
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The following new commands can be typed in by a server operator while the game is running. These are in addition to the existing commands that are documented in the README.TXT file that came with Drakan.
CHAT [ON/OFF] - Turns on or off the display of the in-game chat to the dedicated server window.
SAY [MESSAGE] - Allows the server operator to chat with players in the game. Your message will be displayed next to your player name, which is a setting in the Drakan.cfg file.
TIMELIMIT [SEC] - Changes the current time limit (in seconds). A time limit of 0 means no limit.
KILLSLIMIT [KILLS] or
SCORELIMIT [KILLS] - Changes the current kills limit. A kills limit of 0 means no limit.
LEVELLIST [FILENAME] - Changes the current level list (level group) to the given file. Only the first few letters of the file is required and the .LFL extension is optional. This changes the levels for which this server is currently cycling through.
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== 8. Guidelines For Server Administrators ==
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The new patch includes several example shortcuts to launch a Drakan dedicated server. You can copy and modify these shortcuts which exist in the installation folder for Drakan. Please refer to the Drakan Command-Line Options section of the Drakan README.TXT file for more information on command-line options.
We recommend that server operators create a Server Rules File (SRF). An SRF allows a server operator to publish additional information to a client when extended information is queried about the server. A rule is a name/value pair. To add rules to a server, simply create a text file named ServerRules.txt in the Drakan folder where you installed the game.
The file should have the following format:
RuleName1=RuleValue1
RuleName2=RuleValue2
etc...
An example would be:
Admin_Name=Your Name Here
Admin_Email=name@address.com
Admin_Web=http://www.address.com/drakan
There are several rule names that we have standardized and expect all dedicated server operators to use. This is mainly to support future levels that do not ship with Drakan to make it easy for players to obtain the levels and MODs that your server is running. Additional rules and information can be added freely.
RULE NAME DESCRIPTION
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Admin_Name The name of the server administrator or company.
Admin_Email The e-mail contact for the server administrator.
Admin_Web The URL for the administrator or server web site.
URL_Levels The URL where users can download the current set of levels the server is running.
URL_MOD The URL where users can download the current MOD that the server is running.
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== 9. Complete List of Changes / Fixes ==
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Multiplayer Changes / Fixes:
+ The DirectPlay-based networking code has been replaced with Winsock (TCP/IP and UDP).
+ Dedicated server now works under Windows NT 4.0 (SP3).
+ More reduction of network bandwidth.
+ Better packet aggregation. This feature reduces bandwidth by combining multiple packets into larger, single packets which have less overhead.
+ Smarter modem support. The server adaptively avoids bottlenecks by keeping packet flow to a minimum though tight connections like modems.
+ Dragon (air) Teamplay now sets all the players on one team to have the same dragon skin (defined by the server admin).
+ Added server commands for viewing in-game chat and talking to the players ("chat on/off" and "say MESSAGE").
+ Added server commands for changing the timelimit and kills limit in-game ("timelimit SECONDS" and "scorelimit KILLS").
+ Fixed long delay in the join-game screen if your computer's DNS settings were not correct. The system was hung while it was looking up the Drakan master server address.
+ When joining a team, the scoreboard is now displayed so you can see what players are on each team (and how many).
+ Added new rules that the server reports when queried: Number of Teams, and Network (connection) Speed.
+ Dedicated server now automatically chooses the Primary Display Adapter. This fixes the crashes when people tried to run a dedicated server on a machine with a Voodoo or other secondary card.
+ More layers of mush to prevent cheating (remaining critical holes moved server-side).
+ Fixed bug where weapons that people were holding would rarely not be visible to every player.
+ Fixed bug where weapons could be given more than once to someone or to multiple people at a spawn point.
+ Fixed bug in Master of the Dragon games where the Dragon would sometimes disappear until the level was restarted, or two dragons would appear, or a dead dragon could shoot at you.
+ Added 256 color (8-bit) and 24-bit color display support for the dedicated server window.
+ Dedicated server now displays the name of the server in the title bar of the window and the build version. The server also now displays max number of players along with the current number of players.
+ LEVELLIST now works as a command in the dedicated server.
+ Server rules are now sorted alphabetically in the Server Info Screen.
+ Fixed bug with not skipping over blank lines when reading the LFL files (it would try to load a NULL level).
+ Dedicated server is now more efficient when minimized because it does not have to use CPU for drawing the display.
+ Dedicated server now uses much less CPU and can be clamped below a certain update rate. The maximum update rate can be set in the Drakan.cfg or changed with the "maxrate" command. The default is 50 updates per second ("maxrate 50"). Server CPU usage has gone down considerably!
+ Fixed bug where it was possible for the "master of the dragon" dragon to go away and never come back.
+ Fixed bug where the Soul Stone would not get reactivated when it was supposed to.
+ Fixed a bug where your player color would get changed to purple if you picked a pure white or gray color.
+ Fixed bug with client ports getting mapped incorrectly when playing behind a firewall.
Gameplay and Design Tweaks:
+ Increased radius and damage on Blue Energy Bow explosion. This will make the bow more effective and useful.
+ Fixed Green Energy bow (DragonStrife) so that it seeks from a longer range. This should make it easier to kill the dragon.
+ Decreased damage on ring of fire and lightning axe. Good armors will reduce the damage on these weapons enough to survive them.
General Changes / Fixes:
+ Better joystick/gamepad support: joystick and gamepad axes can now be bound to forward/back, strafe right/left, and up/down (jump/crouch) as well as the existing pitch and turn. Any axis can also be inverted, not just the Y-axis. Supports joysticks with trackballs such as the PantherXL. Added new joystick axis binding interface to the Options->Controls screen.
+ New 3D benchmarking feature. The output is compatible with benchmarking utilities such as 3D GameGuage.
+ An auto save file is now created when you first transition to a level. The file can then be loaded in to allow you to continue from the start of the level.
+ Fixed bug where you would sometimes lose crystals when hot keying between weapons.
+ Fixed crash that sometimes happened when using items in the inventory.
+ Fixed rare crash when loading in saved-games. Your previous saved games (even the ones that crashed before) can still be loaded in to the patched version.
+ Fixed minor level-specific gameplay bugs.
+ The boss at the end of the game is now smarter and harder to kill and also now honors the difficulty level.
+ Added error message for when DirectDraw cannot be initialized completely (bad DirectX setup).
+ Added error message for when the Engine is run in an unsupported color depth for the game like 256 colors.
+ Fixed bug with FOV getting messed up when zoomed in (bow alt attack) and going to any Interface Screen. Now the zoom-in gets turned off when you resume the game.
+ Fixed rare crash that happened sometimes when removing a single grouped item from the inventory.
+ Bug fix where hotkeying through grouped inventory items would cause their quantity to decrease.
+ Fixed several locations in various levels where Arokh could get stuck on the ground and was not able to fly.
