Micromanía 44/Mm44.iso/thotd/README.TXT

Text File | 1998-05-01 | 9.2 KB | 207 lines

The House Of The Dead DEMO
PC DEMO version 1/5/98
=============================================================================
DEMO (trial) version

Install the game using RUNDEMO.EXE

ESC in the menus cancels or goes back screens
P or ESC pauses game or cancels current activity
CTRL-F12 takes SNAP###.BMP 8bit screen shot, in software mode only.
the files are numbered from when the game was started.


NOTES on this version:
o This version installs entirely on HD.
o This version requires DirectX 5 to be installed first. (not included with this demo)
o The blood color is GREEN and cannot be changed.
o lightgun support is NOT enabled.
o ALT-F4 will exit game immediately.
o ALT-F2 will restart game to title screen immediately.
o The game takes between 70 and 80mb of HD space.
o The game only allows ARCADE play, and some options are disabled.
o The game runs for 2min or until player(s) die (which ever comes first).

NOTES on lightgun (if it is supported):
* The gun may only work with non-3D cards (ie. native mode),
depending upon your hardware.
* If you can not shoot around the edges of the screen, you need
to configure your pc gun.  I had to adjust "Horizontal Ratio"
in the Gamebios Advanced setup to 2, to get the 320x240 mode
working properly.
* If your monitors vertical refresh rate is greater than 70hz
the gun may be unreliable.  You must set your graphics card to
a lower refresh rate (60 or 70hz).


Direct 3D Setup - What does it all mean?
========================================

When you run the game for the first time, change hardware, or run
the game in "Direct 3D Setup" mode, you will be presented with a Direct3D
setup dialog window.

Direct3D is a standard interface to 3D accelerator cards, and
3D software. Unfortunately, not all 3D cards behave in the same way.
The dialog window described below is thus necessary to tweak
Direct3D for your 3D graphics card.  If you experience any
problems with performance or graphic quality, you may need to
experiment with the options in this dialog window.  If you are
familiary with 3D graphics card terminology, you will not need to
read the following descriptions.

Select Direct Draw Device
-------------------------
This shows you what hardware device Direct 3D will use for the
game.  It usually shows "Primary Display Driver" unless you
have two or more 3D cards in your computer.  If you do, you will be
able to select which one you wish to use.  Note that the
Primary Display Driver is a generic name for the primary
device, it may represent any manufacturer.

* Only change this setting if you have more than one 3D card in you
computer and wish to select a different one. You usually
want to select the one with the highest performance.

Select Direct 3D Device
-----------------------
This shows you what device driver Direct 3D will use in the game.
It typically shows "Microsoft Direct3D Hardware acceleration
through Direct 3D HAL, Direct 3D HAL".  It is possible that other
drivers could be made available in the future

* In the future, other perhaps better drivers may be written
for Direct 3D or your card.  If this happens, you will be able to
select it/them from this item.  Otherwise just ignore it.


Bi Linear Filtering
-------------------
This has the effect of 'blurring' textures displayed on the
screen to make them appear smooth, even though they may be
drawn much larger or smaller than the source image.  It is purely
a cosmetic touch.

* It is unlikely to decrease performance when enabled.
* It should improve image quality.
* It may make some textures such as blood/trees/fences have an
ugly black edge around them.  This is due to the design of your
card.  You may disable this option to eliminate this effect, or
experiment with Alpha Transparency described elsewhere.

Force Z Sorting
---------------
This game uses Z Buffering which should allow 3D graphics to be
draw by the game in just about any order, but still appear
"correct" on the screen.  However, some graphics cards do not
handle the Z Buffer in what we believe is the correct manner.
This particularly relates to graphics which have Transparent or
Translucent parts (such as trees/fences/blood).

* If you see flickering images on screen, you should try enabling
this option.
* If you see edges on images on screen which appear to "see
through" to the background.  For example if you look at a tree
and the space between the branches shows through to the sky or
mountains in the distance instead of the scenery just behind
the tree, you should try enabling this option.
* This option will slow the game slightly.
* This may improve image quality if your card suffers from the
problems described above.

Force Low Res Textures
----------------------
This game uses a very large variety of textures, and the source
images are 16bit quality.  The game requires between 1 and 1.5
million texels (dots making up a texture image) during the game.
Unfortunately, many graphics cards have a very small amount of
memory available to store textures.  Even cards advertised with
6mb may in fact only have 2mb for textures and 4mb for frame
buffering (what you see on the screen now and later).  Even
worse, there are many formats for storing these textures,
generally the larger the bit size (eg. 8bit or 16 bit) the higher
the texture quality, but the more memory it takes to store.

* If you know you have 2mb texture memory, and the minimum pixel
format is 16bit, you will want to enable this option.
* If the game occasionally runs VERY slow, your card has probably
run out of memory.  Enable this option.
* If you see some graphics on the screen turn to Flat color
instead of a textured look, you have a scene render card with too
little memory.  Enable this option.
* If your card supports 8bit textures, try "Force 8 Bit Textures"
before trying this option, and see if this solves the memory problem.
* This option will greatly decrease image quality, but with
Bi-Linear filtering enabled, will not look too bad.

Force 8 Bit Textures
--------------------
This relates to the same situations described in "Force Low Res
Textures".  It allows you to sacrifice a little image quality and
save a lot of memory which can make the game run much faster.

* If your card supports 8bit textures and you have less than
4mb texture memory, enable this option.
* If your card does not support 8bit textures (the manual or
DirectX Device Viewer will allow you to determine this), see
"Force Low Res Textures".
* If your card has 4mb or more texture memory, don't use this
option, the game will perform best and look better with 16bit
textures (the game' s native format).  Unfortunately at this time
of writing, very few cards come standard with this much memory.

Force Alpha Transparency
------------------------
This is a cosmetic touch for cards which have enough memory,
and  support this feature (almost all do).  Images may look better
with this option enabled because the 3D card handles transparency
poorly by other means.  If you see an ugly black edge around some
transparent images on screen such as blood/trees/fences, you may
experiment with this option on.  Note that this is mutually excusive
with 8Bit Textures (They can not be used at the same time).
This is because the texture format contains alpha (visibility)
information as well as color information and requires at least
16bits (per texel) to represent this.

* This may improve image quality on cards which poorly handle
croma-key transparency (flat colour used to represent "see through" sections
of an image).  Note that some cards handle alpha transparency
poorly as well.
* This option should not decrease performance, but you will not be
able to use 8Bit textures and so performance may decrease if
you run out of memory due to the increased texture size
required by this option.
* You may need to "Force Z Sort" on some cards to make this
look correct. Some cards update their Z Buffer incorrectly when
dealing with alpha transparency.  If you see an edge around
transparent images which allows you to "see though" to distant
scenery, you will want to try "Force Z Sort" or disable this
option.


D3D NOTES:
* You will not damage your hardware by experimenting with the
Direct3D options.  Some options may not be supported by your
hardware even though the dialog check boxes are ticked.  See your
graphics card manual or DirectX Device Viewer for your cards
capabilities.

* If you card performs so poorly that the game is unplayable, or
the image quality is terrible for some reason even though you
have experimented with the Setup Dialog options, just run the
game in Native mode, that's what it's there for.  As of this
writing, you will probably find that Native mode (although
perhaps not as pretty) outperforms most current 3D cards.

Ifyou are running the game in Native mode on a low spec Pentium
such as a P133, select 320x240 from the options menu in the
game to increase performance.

* If you have more options than described here, you have a 'Beta
version' of the game with some extra debugging options.


======================= Bug fixes & Changes =================================
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