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VANGERS: One for the Road (tm) - COVER DEMO (c)1997-98 All Rights Reserved Published by Interactive Magic Licensed by Buka Entertainment Developed by K-D Lab MS Windows 95/MS Windows NT required DirectX is not included in this version. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vangers. Mysterious creatures from the future of mankind: Mercenary murderers, victims of the cruel experiments, masters of the roads, scum of the Bouillon of Spawn? Name your native bios, and we'll tell you, for how long you'll live - Eleepods?.. Beeboorats?.. Zeexen?.. The Lost Chain of Worlds cursed forever, the Larvae have already started to bore the eternity, and mechoses have commanded their own slaves. The new universe is built and is waiting for the explorers... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of contents ----------------- What's This Game Like Highlights Starting the Game Main Ideas Controls System Requirements Troubleshooting Performance Recommendations Contacts What's This Game Like --------------------- Currently, we don't know any analogs for "Vangers", which could be used as a reference point for defining the genre of our game. "Vangers" is a mixture of various, yet consistent gameplay components. The player enters the strange world of the future, emerged as a result of the clash between humankind and another intelligent race of creatures, and now living according to its own rules. The world challenges for the quest. The player will be involved in various activities, where exploring huge game spaces combines with massive action utilizing various weapons and tactics of combat. Racing is a key element. Chasing and pursuing in unique vehicles on the surface, in air, on water, under water and underground and trading miscellaneous goods. The player learns the complicated construction of this world, basing on his own experience and dialogues with characters he meets in the cities-escaves. The game is unique in that there's no fixed missions in it: the player is absolutely free in determining his line of behavior, basing his decisions on the acquired information and personal inclinations. The game uses a new unique technology, which we called Surmap A-R-T. By using this technology we created huge game spaces with quality design, viewed from the top, where the camera smoothly follows the player in real time, can zoom in or out, rotate and tilt. The visualization of the active area is very dynamic and the presentation quality is outstanding. 3D visualization and perfect physics model allow the player to enjoy the experience of driving futuristic armed vehicles in overly complex voxel spaces in real time. Dynamic rendering technology allows to change the landscape on the fly and animate it with unique features like elevators, traps, hideouts, geological processes, integrating the player into a live game environment. All the changes in the game environment (on the land surface or in other objects) may remain as needed until the end of game. We are unaware of any direct analogs of this technology on the market. Highlights ---------- - miscellaneous and solid gameplay (shooting, racing, exploring, trading, dialogues, artifacts, hunter/victim situations on large game areas etc.), new gaming experience; - huge multi-layer continuous voxel spaces (mountains, rivers, deserts, rubble, tunnels, bridges, plants, arterial roads, huge installations etc.) - the CD contains almost solely the in-game information, rather than trivial single-shot animations; - unique Surmap A-R-T graphics system developed by K-D Lab, spiced with original neo-naturalistic design, never seen before; - alive landscape! Everything you see may change: tracks, craters buried in the ground, moving hills, tides, variable traps, morphing zones, elevators - virtually no "wallpaper"; - greatly detailed top-bottom view with smooth camera motion, tilt, rotation and zoom in/out; - perfect physics model of the objects; realistic model of 3D landscape affects the movement of the vehicle; the player can travel on land surface, fly, float on/under water or crawl under the ground; - highly detailed real-time 3D objects (several thousands of polygons per object); 3D debris after explosion; dynamic shadows and lighting; - many real-time special effects like dust, plasma, water, etc; - many types of mechoses (high-speed motor vehicles, ATV, horrifying trucks, etc), various weapons (both guns/cannons/missiles and smart cyberinsectoid "wasp"/"worm" terminators), many amusing widgets and items; - elaborate and original sci-fi back story that involves the player into the worlds of the Lost Chain. Lots of dialogues with strange characters, having their own, original lingo; - unprecedented freedom of play without fixed missions guarantees replay-ability. The player is completely up to him in the continuous flow of events. The line of player's adventures never repeats; - original music themes; - multiplayer. Starting the game ----------------- After successful installation you can run the game from Start\Program\I-Magic\Vangers Cover Demo\ folder. "Vangers Playable Demo" will run the interactive full playable version of game. After the launch the main menu appears, where the player can configure the options: turn on or off the sound effects, tune the sound volume. The game mode for 32MB or 16MB RAM is also selected here. In the 16MB mode the player won't be able to use all available modes of camera movement and the number of visual special effects will be limited. Also player can customize the control keys. For Russian texts please run the game with /russian key. Forced mute mode runnung with /m key. If you have slow sound card we recommend you to switch off in Sound Options such parameters as Engine Noise, Background Sound and Effects Panning. Select "New Game" option for starting new game or "Load Game" for restoring saved game. After selecting New Game the player can see a brief introductory legend and basic ideas of the world of vangers. After that, the game universe is launched and the player gets into a city-escave, where he or she meets the first character - the counsellor. The button pointing to the right leads to the local shop. The player may buy a mechos - the vehicle on which he or she will explore the world. The player can also buy some weapons and goods placing them in the cargo bay of his/her mechos. The exit button is located on the screen with counsellor in the top-left corner. This demo version contains only one world of the Chain available for the player - Fostral, however the game universe is fully functional and artificial vangers can transfer between the worlds. The player's goal in this demo is to gain access to the Passage that leads into another world. To accomplish this, the player should try to understand the laws of Fostral and it's inhabitants. Main Ideas ---------- Here are some key ideas that the player might want to learn afer playing for some time in order to better understand the game. 1. When the player comes out on the surface, two information panels appear on the right side of the screen. By default, one of them contains the map of the world, and the other is inactive. Any panel can be activated by clicking mouse over it, which displays a menu of all possible modes for that panel. THE CHAIN - displays the global map of the worlds (so-called Chain), which reflects the player's possibilities to transfer between the worlds. COMPASS - displays a menu of possible destinations for the compass, which allows to find directions to different places. CAMERA - displays three icons which can be used to turn on/off camera modes: rotation, zoom in / zoom out and tilt. In the "16MB Good" game mode only one of them can be activated, while the "32MB Excellent" mode allows to set any combination of these three camera modes. 2. To successfully finish this demo, the player must take an active part in the race from the Incubator to Podish - the Eleerection. The player will get the offer to take an eLeech and participate in the Eleerection if he/she arrives into the Incubator during the Plump-up - this is how the first stage of the eleepods' cycle is called. Each cycle on Fostral is characterized by its own palette of colors and its affection on the councillors. Default Controls -------- Mechos control: <Numpad 4>/<Numpad 6> - turn the wheels left/right <Numpad 8>/<Numpad 5> - move forward/backward <Numpad 7>/<Numpad 9> - device down/up (if available) <INS> - activate the spring - KiD ("Kinetix Device"); gives the mechos a strong impulse (consuming energy from the main power source); the power of the impulse depends on the duration of keypress <Numpad 1>/<Numpad 3> - left/right turn over <Shift> - acceleration <C> - handbrake <ENTER> - inventory screen on/off <SPACEBAR> - activate the object under mechos <1>,<2>,<3>,<4> - fire the weapon in the slot <x> <CTRL> - fire all active weapons at once <TAB> - change current target (with Vector device) Camera control: <F1> - full screen on/off <F2> - reduce viewable area <F3> - enlarge viewable area <F5> - rotation on/off <F6> - automatic zoom on/off <F7> - automatic tilt on/off <+> - zoom in <-> - zoom out <0> - standard zoom System keys: <F11> - getting screenshots in TGA format <ESC>/<P> - pause the game with access to Options System Requirements ------------------- Minimum Configuration: Operating System: Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0+ with DirectX 3.0 CPU: Pentium 133MHz Memory: 16MB RAM Hard Disk: 85MB Graphics Card: SVGA with 800x600x8bpp support Input Device: Keyboard and Mouse Recommended Hardware: CPU: Pentium 200MHz MMX Memory: 32MB RAM Sound Card: 16-bit sound card compatible with DirectX 3.0 Troubleshooting --------------- Problem: When the player comes out to the surface of the world, the screen starts to flip and a very high HDD activity can be seen. Solution: Check the options in the main menu. If you have 16MB of RAM, switch the option MEMORY to "16MB Good". If you have 32MB or more of RAM, check if other programs are running that intensively consume the resources of your system. Under Windows 95 this effect can be observed several times during the first few minutes of the game, and each time the problem disappears after a few seconds. This is the specific of Windows 95. Problem: After the launch, a message appears stating that some files with ".DLL" extension were not found. Solution: You don't have DirectX installed on your system. You should install it under Windows 95. You don't have the option Video Compression installed on your system. You should install it from the standard Windows 95 distribution disk. Use Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs, Windows Tab, Multimedia. Performance Recommendations --------------------------- 1. This game is run under a multitasking operating system. Any resource-intensive tasks running on your computer will slow the game down. 2. This game uses the hard disk very intensively, and thus it should be installed into the fastest hard disk partition on your system. It is also recommended to defragment the partition before installing the game. Contacts -------- WWW.IMAGICGAMES.COM WWW.BUKA.COM WWW.KDLAB.COM ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1997 Interactive Magic. All rights reserved. Licensed by Buka Entertainment. All rights reserved. Developed by K-D Lab. All rights reserved. "VANGERS: One For The Road" is used under license with Buka Entertainment (R) and with permission of K-D Lab. "VANGERS: One For The Road" is a trademark of Buka Entertainment (R) Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation, Inc. All other company and/or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers.