Rune Release Notes
Rune
Developed by: Human Head Studios, Inc.
Published by: Gathering Of Developers
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STARTING RUNE
To start Rune:
1. Click on the "Start" button at the bottom of the screen.
2. Move the mouse to the "Programs" choice.
3. Move the mouse to the "Rune" choice.
4. Click on the "Play Rune" icon.
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For the latest version of this document
http://www.runegame.com/support.php?loc=Release_Notes
For the latest information and updates
http://www.runegame.com/downloads.php
Technical Support
http://www.runegame.com/support.php
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Level Editors- IMPORTANT NOTE!!
RuneEd License, Restrictions and Prohibitions Document and
Installation and Troubleshooting Document
Editor and End-user Variations.
This CD includes a non-supported, AS-IS version of the RuneEd Level
Editor. An "Editor" is a feature which allows you to modify the
Software or to construct new variations for use with it. These
modifications and variations can be both playable and non-playable.
An Editor includes its associated tools and utilities. An Editor is
NOT shareware. You may not freely distribute it to any BBS, CD,
floppy or any other media. You may not sell it or repackage it for
sale. Because the enclosed version is released AS-IS, it may contain
bugs or glitches which may affect the successful creation and
operation of levels and other functions. Technical support is not
available from Human Head Studios, Inc. or Gathering of Developers.
Furthermore, this Editor is based upon a modified version of the
UnrealEd Editor from Epic Games and, as such, is subject to the
prohibitions and restrictions of the original Editor as listed at
Using the RuneEd Editor, you may create modifications or enhancements
to the Rune game, including the construction of new levels
(collectively referred to as "Variations"), subject to the following
restrictions:
i. Your Variations must only work with the full, registered copy of
the Software, not independently or with any other software.
ii. Your Variations must not contain modifications to any executable
file.
iii. Your Variations must not contain any libelous, defamatory, or
other illegal material, material that is scandalous or invades the
rights of privacy or publicity of any third party, or contains any
trademarks, copyright-protected work, or other recognizable property
of third parties.
iv. Your variations shall not be supported by Human Head Studios,
Inc. or Gathering of Developers, or any of such parties affiliates and
subsidiaries.
v. Your Variations must be distributed solely for free. Neither you
nor any other person or party may sell them to anyone, commercially
exploit them in any way, or charge anyone for using them without a
license from Epic Games, maker of the original Unreal Editor upon
which the RuneEd Editor is based. You may, however, exchange them at
no charge among other end-users and distribute them to others over the
Internet for free.
vi. The prohibitions and restrictions in this section apply to anyone
in possession of Rune or any of your Variations.
How to get RuneEd to run on your machine:
First, check if RuneEd runs correctly. To start-up RuneEd, click
on the Start Menu, go to Programs, then chose Rune and finally chose
Rune Editor (alternatively, the editor executable is located in the
RuneSystem directory). If the editor runs fine, then you're all set!
Please note, if you have UnrealEd v1.0 (the editor released with
Unreal and Unreal Tournament) installed and it loads correctly, then
you should not have any problems loading RuneEd.
If the editor does not run fine and an error message appears, then you
might be missing some File(s) necessary to run the editor. These files
can be obtained through two different methods:
Method One:
Epic Games has released a fix for UnrealEd, called UnrealFix4.exe and
is on their website at
http://unreal.epicgames.com/UnrealEd.htm..
Method Two:
The files necessary to run RuneEd are contained within the EditorFix
directory on the Rune CD. All of these files need to be copied to
your WindowsSystem directory (usually C:WindowsSystem).
NOTE: Doing this incorrectly could cause problems with your system.
Only copy these files if you are an experienced computer user (or
don't care if you potentially mess things up :). When you copy these
files, it's possible that your computer already contains a version of
these files. If this IS the case, it is recommended that you choose
whichever file is the more recent of the two. Once these files are
copied, you may need to reboot your machine. After that, run RuneEd
again and happy mapping!
Where do you go from here?
Your first stop should be the official Rune website:
http://www.runegame.com
You can also check these Rune fansites for further information about
creating your own masterpiece levels.
http://www.runenews.com
http://www.runecenter.com
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Troubleshooting
Lockups
If Rune locks up or crashes when you first run it, try starting Rune
via the "Rune Safe Mode" icon available in the Start menu
(Start/Programs/Rune/Rune Safe Mode). This mode is similar to
Windows's Safe Mode. It runs Rune with sound, DirectDraw, and 3D
hardware support disabled. This way, you can modify the options in
Rune's "Advanced Options" menu that may be causing problems, then run
Rune again.
Crashes
If Rune stops with a "Rune has run out of virtual memory" message, you
need to free up more hard disk space on your primary drive (C:) in
order to play. Rune's large levels and rich textures take up a lot of
virtual memory. We recommend having 150 megabytes of free hard disk
space for running the game, and 300 megabytes or more of free hard
disk space for the editor.
Direct X Drivers
Rune requires that you have Direct X 7.0 or later installed on your
computer. Rune includes Direct X 7.0a as an installation option. If
you do not have at least Direct X 7.0, check the box for Install
Direct X 7 in the installation menu. Microsoft upgrades the Direct X
drivers regularly. For the latest version of Direct X, click here.
Video Modes
The first time you rune Rune, and each time you choose to change you
video mode, you will be presented with a selection screen that lists
both certified, compatible devices with an option to show all
devices. It may be necessary to show all devices for you to run the
game in Direct3D or OpenGL on certain video cards. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE
DOWNLOADED THE LATEST VIDEO DRIVERS FROM THE MANUFACTURER OF YOUR
VIDEO CARD. This solves the VAST majority of video issues. If you
haven't done so in the last three months, chances are, your video
drivers are out of date. Select the preferred video mode according to
the notes listed below:
D3D Notes
If you get an "Failed to preallocate initial textures. Make certain
you have the latest drivers installed for your video card." message,
please make sure you have downloaded the most recent drivers for your
video card. Our testing has shown that this error can occur on some
Rage 128 and VooDoo 2 cards with old drivers.
Specific Video Card Notes
ATI Rage 128 Fury and Radeon Cards (click here to access the ATI
website)
We recommend running Direct3D 32-bit color depth as the preferred
video mode. You may also run in OpenGL mode, though you may encounter
slower performance. As of this date, the current release version
drivers for the Radeon are 4.12.3056. However, you will need to
upgrade to the beta version drivers provided by ATI (version number:
4.12.3063) for complete compatibility.
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Matrox G400 Series (click here to access the Matrox website)
We recommend running Direct3D 32-bit color depth as the preferred
video mode. You may also run in OpenGL mode, though you may encounter
slower performance.
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NVidia Chipset Cards (TNT, TNT2 Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForceMX
and GeForce2 Ultra Cards) (click here to access the Nvidia website)
We recommend running Rune in Direct3D mode first. Rune is optimized
for D3D on these cards. We recommend running in 32-bit color depth,
as this presents the best possible visuals for the game. You may also
run the game in OpenGL on these cards, but you will encounter lower
performance rates than with Direct3D. We do not recommend running
Rune with a Riva128 Card.
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S3 Savage 4 and Savage 2000 Chipset Cards (click here to access the
S3 website)
We recommend running in Direct3D 32-bit color modes for best visual
performance. You may obtain faster performance in S3's proprietary
MeTaL video mode, but this mode is provided as is, and you may notice
visual anomalies. You may also run in OpenGL mode, though you may
encounter slower performance.
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VooDoo Chipset Cards (click here to access the 3Dfx website)
- VooDoo2, VooDoo Banshee and VooDoo 3 Chipset Cards
We recommend running Rune in Glide as your primary video mode. You
will encounter best performance in this mode. You may also run
Direct3D in 16-bit mode, though you will suffer a visual performance
hit. OpenGL runs VERY SLOW on VooDoo cards, and we do not recommend
running the game in OpenGL on these cards.
- VooDoo4 and VooDoo5 Chipset Cards
We recommend running in Glide for fastest performance, or Direct3D
32-bit color depth for best visual performance. The speed of the game
in both of these modes will be very fast so you should choose the
video mode that best suits you. OpenGL runs VERY SLOW on VooDoo
cards, and we do not recommend running the game in OpenGL on these
cards.
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All Other Video Cards
If your card supports hardware 3D acceleration, we recommend running
the game in Direct3D 32-bit color depth for best visual performance,
and Direct3D 16-bit for best speed performance. If your card does not
support hardware 3D acceleration, we recommend using the software
render mode. The software renderer for Rune is provided AS IS. You
may encounter visual anomalies and slow performance. We HIGHLY
RECOMMEND the use of a 3D hardware accelerator with Rune.
Video Notes
Some older DirectDraw drivers do not support low resolution 16- and
32-bit color modes (for example, 320x240, 400x300, and 512x384). If
you are playing Rune using software rendering, this is unfortunate
because the higher resolution modes like 640x400 and 640x480 run
significantly slower than the low resolution modes. If the only
full-screen options shown in Rune are high-res, you might try
obtaining a newer DirectDraw driver for your video card.
Some video drivers do not properly support DirectDraw full-screen in
16- or 32-bit color at any resolution. If you are unable to play Rune
full-screen, you should obtain a newer driver from your video board
manufacturer. If you can't find a working DirectDraw driver, you can
still play Rune in a window, though the performance and immersion are
not as good as playing full-screen.
On nearly all machines, Rune runs optimally in 32-bit color mode
(rather than 16-bit color). You can select 32-bit color either from
the main Rune window. Currently, Rune defaults to 32-bit color, so you
will want to change this in the video settings if you require faster
performance.
To maintain a consistent frame rate despite a large number of
translucent surfaces and/or explosion effects in software rendering,
you might want to set "SlowVideoBuffering" to "True" in the "Advanced
Options/Display" menu.
Sound Issues
You can obtain faster performance on lower end machines by selecting
low audio quality from the Audio Tab in the Options Menu.
The Rune audio engine currently defaults to (16) channels of audio for
single player mode and (8) channels for multiplayer mode. Users with
fast machines and at least 128 Megs of RAM would greatly benefit by
increasing the amount of sound effect channels to 24 or 36. To change
this setting: Enter Runes Main Menu and select Options. On the options
page select Game tab to enter Runes global settings. On the bottom of
the page click the Advanced Options tab. This will open the Advanced
Settings menu. Click the Audio check box and set the Effects Channels
to 24 or 32. For even better sound, set the Output Rate to 44,100Hz.
PLEASE NOTE that you will need to EXIT Rune and RESTART it before the
changes will take place.
Hardware Acceleration:
If using a Creative Labs EAX or Aureal A3D 3D sound accelerator board
such as the Diamond Monster Sound 3D, you need to go into the Audio
tab of the Options menu and check "Use3dHardware" to enable 3D sound
card support. You should obtain the newest upgrade to your sound card
from the manufacturer for best performance. Using Rune in conjunction
with old versions of the drivers causes severe performance problems
(major slowdowns on the order of 30-50% while playing sound). For the
latest drivers, check with the manufacturer of your card or these
websites for additional information:
Creative Labs (click the link for the Creative Labs website)-
makers of SoundBlaster Series of Sound Cards and the EAX sound system
Aureal Inc. (click the link for the Aureal, Inc. website)-
makers of the A3D sound system
If your computer is hooked up to a Dolby SurroundSound receiver, you
should go into the Audio tab of the Options menu and check the
"UseSurround" to take advantage of 360-degree Dolby sound panning,
which rocks.
Known sound issues:
· Because of the way the OS works, many Windows NT machines
experience significant latency in their sound effects, sometimes up to
1/4th second.
· If you have an Aureal A3D sound card with Unreal 3D sound
enabled, you must disable the Aureal's "A3D Splash Screen" in the
Aureal configuration utility. If this is not disabled, Rune may be
unable to go into full-screen mode because of the splash screen
interfering.
· On some IBM Aptiva computers equipped with MWAVE sound
cards, no sound is audible in Rune. This is a sound card driver
problem, which has since been fixed. Download the latest MWAVE drivers
from IBM's web site to restore your sound in Rune.
Network play issues
· 56k Modems or better
· Cable or DSL connections, or LAN connections via T-1/T-3
recommended
To obtain best performance, use a dedicated server for multiplayer.
If no machine can be spared as a dedicated server, make sure the
fastest machine being used is set up as the server.
Control issues
Some PC keyboards can't recognize certain combinations of 3 or more
simultaneously pressed keys. Otherwise, key mapping is completely
customizable to the player.
Processor issues
Rune contains special optimizations for the 3dNow! instruction set.
These optimizations are automatically enabled when running Rune on a
3dNow! equipped computer.
Gore Levels
Rune is by nature a violent game about a time when swords and axes
were the preferred method of settling a dispute. It is intended for
Mature audiences aged 17 or above. For those who wish to play the
game at a reduced level of violence, however, we have included
violence controls to lower the level of violence. There are three
levels of gore settings, which can be changed from the 'Game' Tab of
the 'Options' Menu. These setting are:
Normal:
Full animated gore and violence
blood splatters, arms and heads can be cut off, bloody footprints and
blood decals from splash
Low Gore
Limited Animated gore and violence
No bloodpslat decals, no bloody footprints, no
severed limbs (still has blood spray from hits, painskins and bloody
weapons)
Ultra Low
No gore or blood
Advanced Options
To access the Advanced Options menu, go to Options -> Game -> Advanced
Options. Some of the more useful options you can customize are:
Audio
AmbientFactor: Scaled ambient sound effects relative to regular sound
effects. Can be 0.0 - 1.0, defaults to 0.6.
EffectsChannels: Number of simultaneously playing sound effects.
Defaults to 16. Use a lower number to increase performance, at the
expense of sound detail.
LowSoundQuality: Increases performance and reduces memory usage, by
substituting lower-quality versions of sounds.
OutputRate: The sound playback rate. The higher the number, the
better the sound quality and the slower the performance. 11025Hz is
medium quality, 44100 is CD-quality.
Use3dHardware: Enables support for Creative Labs' EAX and Aureal A3D
sound cards.
UseDirectSound: Enables DirectSound support.
UseReverb: Enables and disables echos and reverb.
UseSurround: Enables Dolby SurroundSound(tm) support. Requires that
your computer is hooked up to a Dolby SurroundSound(tm) receiver.
Works with all sound cards.
Display
CaptureMouse: When enabled, causes Rune to hide the mouse cursor when
you are playing within a window.
LowDetailTextures: Increases performance and reduces memory usage by
substituting lower quality textures. Great for low-memory machines.
NoLighting: Turns off all lighting within the game. Looks ugly, but
increases performance on low-end machines.
StartupFullscreen: Whether to start up with the game running in a
window, or full-screen.
UseDirectDraw: Enables DirectDraw full-screen rendering support.
UseJoystick: Enables joystick support.
Drivers
GameRenderDevice: The driver for 3D rendering during gameplay. If you
install new 3D hardware, go into Advanced Options and change this.
Joystick
InvertVertical: Inverts vertical joystick movement, for people who
prefer flight simulator style controls.
ScaleRUV: Scales the sensitivity of the trackball or advanced joystick
axes.
ScaleXYZ: Scales the regular joystick axis sensitivity.
Networking / TCP/IP Network Play
DefaultByteLimit: The default transmission rate. You should set this
to reflect the speed of your Internet connection, in order to maximize
performance:
· On 56K modem connections, use 3600.
· On LAN connections, use 25000.
The Connection speed combo box under Player options can be used to
choose from some preset speed levels such as 56K, ISDN, and T1/Cable.
Rendering
Here, there are rendering options for each 3D rendering driver
installed on the system.
Coronas: Enables translucent coronas around lightsources.
DetailTextures: Enables special ultra-high resolution textures which
add detail to complex surfaces when you get up close.
HighDetailActors: Enables rendering of high detail objects in the
world. This should be turned on for fast machines, and turned off for
slow machines.
ShinySurfaces: Enables shiny (reflective) surfaces.
VolumetricLighting: Enables space-filling, volumetric lighting and
fog. Only visible on some 3D hardware drivers, and in the software
renderer on MMX PC's.
Recording Demos
You can make a recording of game play for demonstration purposes.
This feature is included AS IS, meaning that you may encounter certain
performance issues such as certain animations not functioning properly
or looking odd during playback. Demos can be created from the console
only. Hit
or <~> to access the command console. The commands
for this mode are as follows:
DemoRec Records a demo under the file name given
StopDemo Stops the current recording
DemoPlay Plays the recorded demo saved under the given
name.
Performance tips
Our focus in creating Rune has been to deliver a next-generation game
that brings 3d gaming to a new level of realism. That is good. A side
effect of this is that Rune has the same performance issues as Unreal
in running slower than past 3dgames on older or low-end PC's. That is
bad...but it's an inevitable result of the large quantity of
high-detail artwork; open, realistic, and high-detail environments;
and high-detail animations in the game.
What follows are some tips on how to up Rune's performance on machines
where the game runs slowly.
Low Detail Settings
The "Advanced Options" menu contains many settings that enable you to
trade off detail for performance. Here are the choices:
Display / Low Detail Textures: Trades memory for texture detail
(resolution). When on, reduces memory usage by 5 megabytes on
average. Recommended for slow PC's and PC's with low memory.
Audio / Low Sound Quality: Trades memory for sound quality. Turning
this on reduces sounds to 8-bit, saving a significant amount of
memory.
Audio / OutputRate: Trades speed for sound quality.
· 11025 Hz: Medium sound mixing quality; best for non-MMX
machines.
· 22050 Hz: High sound mixing quality; the default.
· 44100 Hz: Ultra high sound quality.
Audio / EffectsChannels: Trades speed for sound realism. The default
is a highly realistic 16 channels of sound. On slower machines, you
may want to change this number to 8 or 12.
Memory
Rune's performance is highly dependent on the amount of RAM you have
in your machine, and the amount of memory that is available. Machines
with less memory will access their hard disk more frequently to load
data, which causes sporadic pauses in gameplay. Thus, if you have a 64
megabyte (or less) machine, you should make sure that you don't have
other unnecessary programs loaded in memory when playing Rune.
How Rune will perform under different RAM conditions:
· 64 megabytes: This is the minimum required amount of RAM
required to run the game. You will encounter slower performance due
to machines accessing the hard drive to load data.
· 128 megabytes: This is the recommended amount of RAM for
RUNE to run at its intended performance level.
· 256 megabytes or more: You will encounter terrific
performance even on slower CPU machines.
In short, get 128MB or more if you want this game to really shine!
CPU Speed
Rune is also very sensitive to CPU speed, memory bandwidth, and cache
performance. Thus, it runs far better on leading-edge processors
such as AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III based machines than it does on
older machines.
How Rune will perform on different classes of machines:
· Pentium II; K6-2/ K6-3 with 3DNow!: Very nice rendering
speed; consistent frame rate.
· Pentium III, or Athlon machines: Very good performance.
You should experiment with the settings for best performance, but at
640x480, by 32-bit color depth, you should be able to run the game
quite smoothly with all options set to their highest settings.
Considering upgrading?
For people considering upgrading their machines, here are some tips
based on our experience running Rune on a variety of machines:
1. If you have a Pentium II or AMD k6-2 or k6-3 class machine,
the best performance increase you can get will be with adding more
RAM. We recommend increasing your system RAM to 128MB or 256MB if you
have the resources to do so.
2. Another performance gain you can get in Rune, as in Unreal
comes from having an AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III class processor
or better. These processors have dramatically improved cache
performance, memory performance, and floating-point performance
compared to earlier Pentiums and Pentium II's, and that all translates
to faster gameplay. The performance improvements in these processors
are especially accentuated in Rune, which contains much more content
(textures, sounds, animations, level geometry) than other 3D action
games.
3. The next upgrade that tends to improve Rune performance
dramatically is a new video card. We recommend the following cards
for best performance (in alphabetical order):
- ATI Radeon Chipset
- Matrox G400 Series Chipset
- Nvidia GeForce Class Chipset (GeForce/GeForce2/GeForceMX, GeForce 2
Ultra)
- VooDoo 4/5 Class Chipset
System Requirements
- Minimum System Requirements:
OS: Windows 95/98/ME, NT (with Service Pack 3 or higher), 2000
CPU: AMD K6-2 or Intel Pentium II, or Celeron 300Mhz or higher
RAM: 64MB
Video: Direct X Compatible Video Card with at least 8MB of Video Memory
(3D Accelerator STRONGLY recommended- see supported modes below)
Sound: Any Direct X Compatible Sound Card (EAX and A3D Supported)
Disk Space: 100MB Free Hard Drive Space
CD-ROM: 4x
Multiplayer: TCP/IP Connection
Video Modes Supported: Direct 3D, Glide, OpenGL, MeTal, Software
Note that only OpenGL, Glide and Software Rendering supported on Windows NT
- Recommended System:
OS: WINDOWS 95/98/ME, NT (with Service Pack 3 or higher), 2000
CPU: AMD Athalon or Intel Pentium III 450Mhz or higher
RAM: 128MB
Video: Nvidia TNT Series/GeForce Series, ATI Rage 128/Radeon, 3dfx
Voodoo5, Matrox G400
Sound: EAX or A3D sound card
Disk Space: 650MB Free Hard Drive Space
CD-ROM: 8X
Multiplayer: TCP/IP Connection via Cable/DSL or T-1/T-3 Line
Controls
Note that all controls can be customized to your liking via the
Controls tab of the Options menu. Hit the Escape key to access the
game menu.
Keyboard
ESC = menu
W, up arrow = forward
S, down arrow = back
A, left arrow = left
D, right arrow = right
q = throw weapon/ item
e = activate rune power
y = Taunt
c = crouch
space = jump
1 = stow weapon/ item
2 = select sword/ next sword
3 = select club/ next club
4 = select axe/ next axe
F1 = Restart Level
F5 = QuickLoad
F7 = QuickSave
Ctrl = use/ activate item
[ = zoom camera in
] = zoom camera out
Enter = attack
rt Shft = defend
Pause = Pause the game
Network Play Keys
CapsLock: Toggle Scoreboard
Y: Taunt
T: Send Message
R: Send Team Message
Mouse
Mouse:
Lft Btn = attack
Rt Btn = defend
Wheel = camera zoom
Mdl Btn = plant camera (or select enemy)
Although you can rely solely on your keyboard to move around in and
interact in Rune's 3D universe, using both the keyboard and mouse
simultaneously gives you much more fluid and responsive control.
When you use the mouse to control your rotational movement and aiming
you gain a degree of precision and speed that players using
keyboard-only controls can't touch. The keyboard is best used for easy
lateral and forward/backward movement, and for jumping.
To master the default controls in Rune, keep your left hand on the
keyboard, using the arrow keys for movement, the 0-9 keys for weapon
selection, and the space bar for jumping. Your right hand operates the
mouse, controlling rotation, aiming, and firing. Of course, you can
customize these controls to suit your preferences via the Options
Menu.
Joystick
You can enable joystick support in Rune through the Options menu (it's
off by default). You can use any Direct Input standard joystick or
joypad for movement and firing. In addition, Rune has built-in
support for the Panther XL joystick that supports dual joystick and
trackball play.
Standard joystick controls:
· Move/Rotate: Joystick handle
· Fire: Button 1
· AltFire: Button 2
· Jump: Button 3 (on 4-button joysticks)
· Duck: Button 4 (on 4-button joysticks)
Additional panther XL controls:
· Strafe/Look: Trackball
Internet and LAN games
The minimum speed connection for acceptable Internet play performance
is a 56K modem connection to your Internet Service Provider.
When you become disconnected from a Rune server, you are placed in a
small holding level (which looks like the mists of time). From there,
you can use the menus to reconnect or join a new server.
GamePlay
You can play Rune multiplayer by accessing the Multiplayer menu. The
first thing you want to do is to click on the 'Player' tab. Here you
can choose your own player name and look.
To play a game, you can either start your own server or join an
existing server via the Internet or Local Area Network. To start your
own server, click the 'Server' tab. Here you can name your server,
choose the game type, rules, settings and mutators. To do this,
select a map or maplist, select your settings, and hit the 'Start'
button. Others will be able to play either over the Internet or over
your LAN. Running a dedicated server is described below under
Dedicated Network Servers.
To join a game, click on the 'Join' tab. Here you can select the best
game for you to play. Servers can be sorted by their type, rules or
ping time. Ping is a measurement of how fast your connection is to a
server. Lower numbers are better, and you should play on servers that
feature ping times of less than 300. If you encounter a server with a
higher ping number, you will encounter very slow play. There are
several options under the Join Menu. You can check on the latest news
on Rune multiplayer, search for a Local Area Network Server, or search
the Internet for the best games via the 'All Servers' Tab. You can
further select a server that best matches your style of play by
selecting specific Team and Deathmatch servers. Finally, you can
select to chat via IRC with other Rune players.
News will show the newest rune happenings and updates.
Known network play issues:
· When a new player enters a network game, clients may
experience a 1/4-second pause while the mesh, skin, and other data is
loaded for that player. This is by design.
· Rune Internet play performance is highly dependent on the
bandwidth of your connection, the latency (ping time), and the packet
loss. The game is designed to be nicely playable with up to 200 msec
ping times, 5% packet loss, and 56K connection speeds. Performance
degrades heavily under worse latency, packet loss, and bandwidth
connections.
When switching between levels in a deathmatch game with a frag limit
or time limit, players are temporarily moved into the holding level (a
small level that looks like the mists of time) for 5-10 seconds while
the server switches levels and informs the clients of the level
change.
Dedicated Network Servers
Explanation
For optimal network play performance, you can launch a dedicated copy
of the Rune server on a computer. This improves performance compared
to using a non-dedicated server but, of course, it ties up a PC.
Anybody may freely run dedicated servers on the Internet; you don't
need to get permission or fill out any paperwork.
Launching
You can launch a dedicated server by going through the regular Rune
"Server" tab of the "Multiplayer" menu, setting the appropriate
options, then hitting the "Dedicated" button. This is what you'll
want to do for quick LAN games where you have an extra machine sitting
around that can act as a dedicated server.
Alternatively, you can launch a dedicated server from the command line
by running Rune.exe directly (which usually resides in the
c:RuneSystem directory, or the System subdirectory of whatever other
directory you installed the game in). For example, to launch the
level "DM-Zeto.run", run:
Rune.exe DM-Hel.run -server
Multiple Servers Per Machine
Each copy of the dedicated server can serve one and only one level at
a time.
However, you can run multiple level servers on one machine. To do
this, you must give each server a unique TCP/IP port number. The
default port number is 7777. To specify a port, use the following kind
of command line:
Rune.exe DM-Hel.run port=7778 -server
General performance guidelines
We find that a 400 MHz Pentium II can usually handle about 16 players
with decent performance. The performance varies with level complexity
and other machine speed factors, so your mileage may differ. Note
that there is no absolute maximum player limit in the game;
performance simply degrades as the number of players grows huge.
If you're running multiple levels simultaneously, Windows NT
outperforms Windows 95 because of its superior multitasking and TCP/IP
processing capabilities.
For best performance, we recommend having 64 megabytes of memory per
running level. For example, for running 4 simultaneous levels, 256
megabytes is ideal.
The Rune server uses up at least 28.8Kbits per second of outgoing
bandwidth per player (on Internet), so if you run the server on a
machine connected by a 28.8K modem, you'll only be able to support one
client with decent performance. Dedicated servers that support many
players generally require the outgoing bandwidth of a T1 line or
better.
---
The Editor
We do have an editor, called RuneEd. The editor is included on the
game disk AS IS. Look for updates and tutorials on www.runegame.com
for details on how to best use the editor to create your own levels
and weapons for Rune. Rune uses a modified version of UnrealEd,
version 1 called RuneEd. Some users may encounter problems running
RuneEd. Because of some instability issues with the original
UnrealEd, you may need to update RuneEd using the fix file
(UnrealEdFix4.exe) for the original UnrealEd provided by Epic Games.
You can obtain this fix by clicking the link directly or via these
websites:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/UnrealEd.htm
http://www.runegame.com/support.php
To run the fix- Download the file and run the executable. Change the
install directory to C:Rune where C is the drive you installed Rune
to (this is not imperative, but if you do not do this, the installer
will place an Unreal directory on your machine.) The installer will
place certain fixes into your Windows directory.
To run RuneEdit, click on 'Rune Editor' from the Rune directory in
your Start menu, or double-click the 'RuneEd.exe' icon in the
Rune/System directory.
---
Credits
Rune Game Credits:
Dedicated to the Memory of Gene Rhinehart (1950-1999)
Programming Lead
Paul MacArthur
Art Manager
Ted Halsted
Business Director
Timothy S. Gerritsen
Programmers
Paul MacArthur
Chris Rhinehart
Additional Programming
Mike Craddick
Ben Gokey
Design
Human Head Studios, Incorporated
Level Design
Mick Beard
Dave Halsted
Ted Halsted
Jim Sumwalt
Additional Level Design
Greg Marshall
Animation
Jeff DeWitt
Nathaniel Albright
Environmental Textures
Greg Marshall
Character Textures
Tim Bowman
3D Modeling
Shane Gurno
Concept Art
Tim Bowman
Jeff DeWitt
Shane Gurno
Ted Halsted
Greg Marshall
Jim Sumwalt
Loreguide
Seth Johnson
Original Concept
Ted Halsted
PR and Marketing Support
Tim Gerritsen
Trish 'Kazi Wren' Harris
Chad Savage
Historical Advisor
Laurie Wise
Viking Ship Model By:
John Falgate
Additional Animation
Mike Werckle
Rune Audio Credits:
Direction and Production:
Michael Larson
Sound Effects
Michael Larson
Music
Jim B-Reay
Romulus Mars Priscus
Michael Larson
Voice Overs
Lee Ernst
Ted Halsted
Michael Larson
Tejumola F Ologboni
Sue Quinn
Nick Skrowaczewski
Dialog
Ted Halsted
Seth Johnson
Thanks
Kenny Stoll
Sean Wipfli
Larry Hill
Published By Gathering of Developers:
Licensing/PR
Mike Wilson
Producer
Josh Galloway
PR
Lori Mezoff, Andrea Schneider, Jeff Smith
International Partnering
Harry Miller
Marketing
Jim Bloom, Mike Wilson, Devin Winterbottom, Jenny Jemison, Toni
Devaldenbro
Sales
David Gershik
Audio/Visual Production
Doug Myres
Checkwriter
Rick Stults
Writer
William Haskins
Online Support
Jordan Allen, Mike Donahue, Ian Armstrong, Jerry Wolski, Scott Dudley,
Scott Farrell
QA/Tech Support
Rich Vos
Administrative
Joanna Carr-Brown Franke
Gathering of Developers Testers
Jason Birdwell
Shane Love
Jerrod Lai
Special thanks to Epic Games for their support and assistance.
Thanks to all our family and friends for all their support. To the
wives, girlfriends, fiancés and friends that still love us even though
we don't get home much, we couldn't have made this a reality without
you.
Thanks for the Runestones and Axes
Reginleif and Kirby Wise
Thanks for the OpenGL fix to:
Daniel Vogel/Loki Software
Thanks to the Human Head Beta Testers:
Brandi Quamme
Dan Baker
Eric Peters
John Kasab
Jonathan Leitheusser
Kevin Tritz
Louise Beard
Paul Tutcher
Scott Rammer
Seth Johnson
Travis Soumis