PC Game Parade 1995 March/PCGAME.ISO/flash/ftreadme.txt

Text File | 1994-10-14 | 15.0 KB | 319 lines

Congratulations on choosing to read the README file!

Some useful keys:
   [F1 ] Displays a pop-up menu of selectable keys.
   [F2 ] Save - (Activates SAVE GAME feature.)
   [F3 ] Restore - (Restores a SAVE GAME.)
   [F4 ] Restart - (Starts the game over.)
   [F5 ] Replay - (Plays the previous clip again)
   [F6 ] Sound Options - (Adjusts your sound volume and toggles captions on/off.)
   [F7 ] Pause - (Pauses the game.)
   [F8 ] Credits - (Plays the credits of FLASH TRAFFIC.)
   [F10] Quit - (Also Alt-x and Alt-F4.)

   Tab/Shift-Tab and the arrow keys will move among text choices in most
dialog boxes. ENTER will always select the item which is highlighted.

   While in an editable field, most of the 'typical' editing keys can be
accessed. They will do 'typical' editing things, like backspace, delete,
L/R arrow, etc.

   If you don't have a mouse, holding down the Alt key and using
the arrow keys will move your cursor.  Holding down Alt and
pressing ENTER will select your choice.  Holding down Alt, Shift, and
the keypad arrow keys will cause your cursor to move for fine
control.  (If your mouse just stops working in the application, your
sound card configuration may be wrong, or your mouse driver may not
be Microsoft compatible.)


GETTING THIS THING TO WORK:

     Assumptions: You need a VGA compatible video card, a color VGA monitor,
four megabytes of RAM in your 486-33 (or better) computer, a DOUBLE-SPEED
(or better) CD ROM drive, and a Microsoft-compatible mouse.


WASN'T THAT EASY?

   The next assumption is that you have run 'INSTALL', here from
your CD-ROM drive.  INSTALL will prompt you for where you want the
software installed, what sort of sound card you have, and whatever else.
It will copy the necessary files, building the directory as needed.
The RealMagic board will play sound through its headphone jack even if you
told INSTALL you didn't have a sound card.  Pick "Internal Speaker/No Sound"
and turn on the radio if you don't want to guess how your sound card works.
INSTALL will be copied to the directory with the other files and need to be
run THERE if you change your mind about configuration.


RUNNING UNDER 'WINDOWS'

   Don't run FLASH TRAFFIC under Windows. Run it from DOS. This does
NOT mean run it from a DOS shell under Windows. If your AUTOEXEC.BAT
starts Windows automatically, exit completely from Windows (Hold down the
ALT key and press F4 until the 'Exit Windows' prompt pops up, then select 'OK'.)


WEIRD SOUND SUPPORT

   The TSAGE32.CFG on this CD contains additional documentation about
configuring the sound drivers. In case you have a Sound Blaster and
you want to play music through an external General MIDI device whatever.
Install and edit the TSAGE32.CFG on your hard drive for specific
configurations not supported by INSTALL. There are some helpful debugging
parameters there, too.


SMARTDRV.EXE

   This utility (and its many clones) is a boost to 16-Bit DOS
applications which are stuck in the lower 640K of RAM, and need to
hit the hard drive a lot to make up the difference. This game uses a
lot of high memory which SMARTDRV may be hoarding. If you find the
game has low memory (hold down ALT and press M inside the game to
find out), disable SMARTDRV.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file by editing
your autoexec file putting a 'REM' in front of the call to
SMARTDRV.EXE it, or make a boot disk.


RMINFO.EXE & PMINFO.EXE

   These two tools are provided on the CD for customer support
purposes. They will display a summary of how your computer is
configured and perform a quick benchmark test on your computer. They
actually belong to Rational Systems, came with DOS/4GW and were
recommended by Watcom.


TROUBLE-SHOOTING

Here's a list of sound cards we support:

   Sound Blaster or compatible
         This means an actual Sound Blaster card or 100% compatible such
      as a ThunderBoard. Some Sound Blaster emulations will not work.
   Sound Blaster 16
   Sound Blaster AWE-32
   Pro-Audio Spectrum / 16
   Adlib Gold 1000/2000
   Covox Sound Master II
   Roland RAP-10
         Digitized sound will only play through one channel. This is
      normal since the digital audio support on this card was made by
      space mutants who thought two separate DMA channels for stereo
      playback would be a good idea.
   No Sound Card Support
         This means you have no sound card installed. The REAL-MAGIC
      card will still play audio connected with the MPEG clips, anyway.
      The player lines and background music will not be available.


MARTIAN SOUND CARD SUPPORT:

   Although the INSTALL program supports a separate MIDI device for
music playback, our technical support does not. If you wanted to
hear both through one set of headphones or one set of speakers, there
are a lot solutions to your problem that we won't necessarily be able
to help you with. Get support from the makers of your sound devices
if you're stuck. Here's a few possible solutions:

   1. MIDI device has an output and your sound card has an input.
      This is a bad thing, but you can patch the output from the MIDI
      device to the LINE input (NOT microphone) and enable the
      LINE input volume with one of the tools that came with your
      sound card. Consult your sound cards manual/documentation and
      call their customer support for details. As an example, the
      Sound Blaster Pro comes with a tool called 'SBP-SET', for DOS
      which will enable line input by typing:
      SBP-SET /LINE:15,15

   2. Play one or both outputs through separate sets of amplified
      speakers and/or headphones.

   3. Build or acquire a patch cord with two male mini-din plugs
      connected in parallel to a female mini-din plug. (Some
      static or noise from the outputs may occur.)

                                   /---||==o LINE out from Sound card
                                  /
 Speakers/Headphone--||==o |XX|--<
                                  \
                                   \---||==o LINE out from Reel Magic


   4. Get a stereo MIXER ($$$!) to artfully combine the separate
      signals into one aesthetically pleasing output, pass the result
      to a high fidelity stereo amplifier and really nice speakers.

"VIDEO PLAYBACK PAUSES, SOUND BREAKS UP DURING A CLIP, ETC."
   Is your CD-ROM player a double-speed drive? Even if it is, it's
 driver may be telling it to run at a single-speed rate, or buffering
 in MSCDEX is too big (or too small).  The command line switches for
 the CD controller drivers and CD device drivers tend to be different
 for every CD, and are typically not documented at all.  MS-DOS 6 has
 some MSCDEX.EXE documentation.

    Is something else in hardware conflicting with anything else?

   Is your computer in fact at least a 486-33? Run PMINFO.EXE to find
 out.

   Your computer may have insufficient RAM to provide the buffering
 required for the software playback. Press ALT-M inside the game and
 check out the FREE RAM. There should be at least 512K. You might
 have to disable SMARTDRV.EXE to run the game.

 "IF IT FAILS ALL TOGETHER?"
   If you installed a sound driver, there may be one of many possible
problems:

     You just took INSTALL's word for what your sound card is, and
  the sound software is really sending data to your mouse, (the mouse
  will lock up and the software will fail somewhere in the interrupt
  handlers - DOS/4GW Exception) or some other device that didn't want
  to hear music with gun-fire overmixed.  Other symptoms are: System
  clock takes off at mach 9 (reboot to fix it), DOS/4GW goes into an
  infinite loop of exception reports (reboot / reset to fix it), etc.
  Generally, if it just blows up when you run it, it's either the
  sound, the MPEG drivers, or a bad hardware conflict.

     The sound card isn't actually configured the way you thought it
  was.  (Happens to me all the time....)

     The sound card you have is not 100% hardware compatible with
  one on the list.  A laptop's parallel interface based Sound Blaster
  emulator is one example of a sound card that isn't 100% Sound Blaster
  hardware compatible.

     If all else fails, select "Internal Speaker/No Sound" in
  INSTALL, and run without sound card support. The MPEG card will
  run happily without one, and the video clips will still have
  audio.


THE FAQ ZONE (FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS)

WHAT IS A 'HARDWARE CONFLICT'?

   To better understand more about a conflict, you should read the
following descriptions of DMA, I/O address, and IRQ. They each
contain an example of a conflict. The art of de-conflicting hardware
on a PC is setting up each of the DMA, I/O address, and IRQ
combinations on each of your cards in such a way that they all miss
each other. Most interface cards are configured with jumpers, though
(thankfully) more and more are configured by software. You must
carefully consult the manual for each card you have before attempting
any jumper modification. This should only be attempted by brave and
eager hardware mongers. You probably already know at least one person
who is qualified to do this, and at least three who say they can.
Some of the following descriptions go a bit beyond 'User Level'.
There is diagnostic software available to the average man which will
attempt to automatically detect or diagnose conflicts, and some of
this software actually works. The best way to AVOID hardware
conflicts is to determine the actual physical configuration of every
device in your system, write them all down, and look for overlaps.
This generally requires much meticulous effort, reading of manuals,
and often some computer surgery with a screwdriver (to remove
individual cards for physical jumper inspection) and needle-nose
pliers (to change the jumpers that are wrong). It is not recommended
that those without SOME electronic tinkering background attempt
manually reconfiguring their computer without at least a little basic
training from someone who DOES have some experience with hacking PCs
into pieces AND successfully putting them back together again.


WHAT IS AN 'IRQ'?

   An IRQ is a hardware-generated interrupt request. These are
generated by devices on the motherboard and external devices on the
ISA/EISA/VESA/PCI/etc. bus to let software know that something
happened. In the case of a modem, an IRQ would be raised if a new
byte is ready to enter the computer. In the case of a sound card, an
IRQ would be raised to tell the computer to dump more sound samples
into it's DMA buffer. Most devices and drivers do not take well to
IRQs being shared with other devices. If two devices have the same
IRQ, (like a sound card and a modem card) one driver will receive
messages relating to some other device's status. A mouse's IRQ would
send a sound card's handlers into serious disarray every time the
mouse is touched if they both report the same IRQ. This, too, is called a
'conflict'. It can be harmless if no handlers are installed, or the
sound card is inactive. It is usually only fatal if both devices are
used at the same time. One common IRQ conflict is IRQ7. This is the
default IRQ for many sound cards and just happens to be the one used
by the printer (LPT1) as well. Generally, turning the printer off and
rebooting clears IRQ7 for the sound card's use.

   Here's a list of IRQs and what uses them. Note that network cards and
other special purpose cards generally take an IRQ and certain software
emulations will grab IRQs as well. This list is by no means all-inclusive.

IRQ0 - Timer                       Raised 18.2 times a second.
IRQ1 - Keyboard                    Each time a key is hit
IRQ2 - LPT2                        Printer LPT2 SEND/RECV/ERROR
IRQ3 - COM2                        Serial port/modem/mouse send/recv
IRQ4 - COM1                        Serial port/modem/mouse send/recv
IRQ5 - Fixed disk                  Certain systems use it...
IRQ6 - Floppy controller           Data / DMA ready
IRQ7 - LPT1                        Printer LPT1 SEND/RECV/ERROR
// Computers after the IBM PC-AT include these IRQs
IRQ8 - CMOS real time alarm        Happens if alarm set
IRQ9 - (Redirected to 0A by BIOS)  (Complicated kludge)
IRQ10- Reserved/Not in use
IRQ11- Reserved/Not in use
IRQ12- Pointing device             Another type of mouse...
IRQ13- Math coprocessor exception  Floating point error divide/0
IRQ14- Hard disk controller        A lot of systems use it...
IRQ15- Reserved/Not in use


WHAT IS A 'DMA'?

   DMA stands for 'Direct Memory Access', and a DMA channel in a PC
is a single device that allows an interface card to continuously read
or write data to/from system RAM without bothering the CPU. A sound
card uses a DMA buffer to quietly read samples from system RAM as it
needs them, rather than ask software to cram another sample into its
digital-to-analog converter (DAC), register manually at a rate of
11025 times or more every second. If a sound card DMA channel is
mixed up with, say, a hard drive's controller's DMA channel, many bad
things, from a system lock-up to actual corruption of the hard disk's
data (extremely, extremely rare) may result. Most DMA conflicts are
between less important devices, but mix-ups in this area generally do
cause system-wide chaos as different devices do bad things to each
other's DMA buffers, at best. This is called a conflict.


WHAT IS AN 'I/O ADDRESS'

   An I/O address is an address used by the CPU to communicate with
external devices. The I/O addresses are physically separate from
memory addresses in 80x86 and Pentium CPUs. There are only 65536 I/O
addresses, and every device in your PC (built-in and on separate
boards) uses at least one. Some, like the VGA card, use ranges of
hundreds of addresses. Many devices have two addresses; one address
to select what is addressable in the other. An I/O address is
typically used to set attributes of or send data to devices, or read
information from devices. A typical interaction for this service
would be to read a palette register from the VGA card, or put another
byte on a modem's output register, or set a sound card's sample rate.
If addresses to a sound card, and a serial card are mis-matched, the
software will end up reading from or sending commands to the wrong
device. Suddenly, register information that should have set the volume
on your sound card tells your serial mouse's UART that it's OK to
stop sending characters to the mouse driver (mouse stops moving).
This is also a conflict. Often, commands sent this way will interact
in less forgiving ways than stopping the mouse.


WHAT'S A BFI?

   BFI stands for 'Brute Force & Ignorance'. This is the methodology
we used to convert captured video to something which could be played
back in a reasonably reliable manner on a wide range of currently
installed machines. It simply means we don't think you should _have_
to buy a brand new 100Mz PCI bus Pentium machine with a true-color,
high resolution, 'turbocharged' local-bus video card just to play a
computer game. It's just too much jargon and frankly, it makes my head
hurt a bit.