The Gladiators Demo v3.0

THE GLADIATORS (tm) The Galactic Circus Games Developed by Eugen Systems Distributed by Arxel Tribe http://thegladiators.arxeltribe.com CONTENTS 1. Getting started 1.1 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS a) Minimum system requirements b) Recommended system 1.2 DEFAULT CONTROLS a) General b) Camera c) Selection d) Action e) Power Up 1.3 GAMEPLAY ADVICE 2. Multiplayer 2.1 THE BASICS OF THE MULTIPLAYER MODE 2.2 THE DIFFERENT GAME MODES a) Deathmatch b) Capture the flag c) Assault d) Co-operative 2.3 PLAY ON LAN 2.4 PLAY ON THE INTERNET 2.5 COMMUNICATE ON THE INTERNET 2.6 SERVER STATISTICS 3. Troubleshooting/Technical information 3.1 VIDEO CARD COMPATIBILITY 3.2 IMPROVING PERFORMANCE 3.3 KNOWN ISSUES 3.4 INTERNET ISSUES 3.5 HELP REFERENCES 4. Legal information 4.1 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY 4.2 EUGEN SYSTEMS LICENSE AGREEMENT 4.3 PRODUCT MAINTENANCE 4.4 XIPH.ORG COPYRIGHT NOTICE 4.5 INNO SETUP LICENSE 1. Getting Started 1.1 System requirements a) Minimum system requirements - Windows 98/2000/ME/XP with DirectX 8.0 or higher - Pentium II 300 Mhz / K6-2 300Mhz - 128 MB internal memory - 800 MB free space on hardrive - 4X CD-ROM drive - No sound card or DirectX 8.0 certified sound card - 16 MB Direct3D 8.0 compatible video card (TNT 16MB...) b) Recommended system - Windows 98/2000/ME/XP with DirectX 8.0 or higher - Pentium III 800Mhz / Athlon 800Mhz - 192 MB internal memory - 800 MB free space on hardrive - 4X CD-ROM drive - DirectX 8.0 certified sound card - 32 MB Direct3D 8.0 compatible T&L video card (Geforce 2, Radeon...) 1.2 Default Controls a) General Esc : Main menu Ctrl S : Save menu Ctrl L : Load menu Ctrl Enter : Toggle Fullscreen/Windowed mode PgUp : Increase sound volume PgDown : Decrease sound volume F9 : Quick save F10 : Quick load M : Open chat window - broadcast Ctrl M : Open chat window - team broadcast b) Camera Up arrow or E : Up Arrow Down or D : Down Arrow Left or S : Left Arrow Right or F : Right Ctrl Arrow Up or T : Zoom in Ctrl Arrow Down or G : Zoom out Ctrl Arrow Left or X : Rotate left Ctrl Arrow Right or V : Rotate right K : Use tracking camera Space : Centre camera on the last event (battle...) c) Selection Ctrl 1~9 : Create a group #1~9 : Select a group #1~9 twice : Select a group and centre camera on it Tab : Select gladiator Tab twice : Select gladiator and centre camera on it d) Action Enter : Default action (crawl...) A : Attack or Move&Attack M : Move to a square formation R : Move to a line formation Q : Move and attack in a line formation W : Move and attack in a square formation H : Hold position C : Cancel e) Power Up F1 : Heals your gladiator and nearby units F2 : Temporarily boosts the damage your gladiator can inflict F3 : Speeds up your gladiator for a while F4 : Adds a temporary damage protection on your gladiator and nearby units F5 : First magic ability of your gladiator (heroism...) F6 : Second magic ability of your gladiator (Fire ring...) 1.3 Gameplay advice In this page you will find techniques that will help you be a better gladiator, whether it be in single or multiplayer mode. - Line of sight management will strongly influence the outcome of battles. Considering this, the best places to set your troops is on top of hills or buildings to increase the damage you can inflict on you enemies as well as the distance you can see. - Some structures can grant your units extra damage protection. Look for bunkers, for example, to get the offensive edge that will allow you to overcome stronger opponents. - The joker card placed around the map can be very useful for your gladiator, because they allow him to purchase power-ups or extra troops at the spawnzones. - Learn to use keyboard shortcuts to issue move and attack orders to your troops, so they will fight the enemies they see as they move. - Some objects can provide cover for the units that are near them, but still allow those units to see properly. You can therefore use bushes to see your foes and set up ambushes without them detecting you. - All the units don't inflict the same kind of damage. There are those who are efficient in close combat, those who can hurt far away enemies, and others who can damage packed opponents. But remember, units are also not equal in terms of resisting the damage they receive. Think about this when you create your army. - The units recover their health as time passes. Don't hesitate to move wounded units away from fights, so they can regenerate instead of dying. - The single player mode of 'The Gladiators' is a true challenge, so don't forget to save your game frequently, as you can loose a lot of units in a small amount of time. - Almost all the buildings or plants can be destroyed. Feel free to blast objects that hinder you or that you think can provide cover for enemies. This is only a small overview of the tactics that can be deployed to be a feared gladiator. Go to the official web site ( http://thegladiators.arxeltribe.com ) to find out more and share your experience. 2. Multiplayer 2.1 The basics of the multiplayer mode 'The Gladiators' can be played up to 16 players through TCP/IP, depending on the speed of the network connection. You will find some more information about the multiplayer modes on the official web site ( http://thegladiators.arxeltribe.com ). 2.2 The different game modes The 'The Gladiators' multiplayer mode's goal is to innovate by introducing quick, fast paced multiplayer games. A gaming session can last just a few minutes, or can allow players to join in at any time. The various network game modes can be played in teams of one or more players. a) Deathmatch It is a game mode where to only goal is to kill as many of the opposing gladiators as possible. Every player has a gladiators at the beginning and has to use joker cards and spawnzones to built an army to be strong enough when the time arrives to attack another gladiator. b) Capture the flag The goal here is to bring a flag back to the base. The winner will be the more astute player, the one who will be able to be quick by avoiding fights. c) Assault This is the game mode that needs the most strategic preparation. The goal is for one player to besiege the base of the other and try to gain its control. The other player has to prepare a rock solid defence to avoid losing the base. d) Co-operative All solo missions can be played in co-operative mode by up to four players at the same time. Each player controls the units he wishes to but the host is the only one allowed to deal with power-ups and spawn zones. There are no cut-scenes in this mode. Scores and ranks are stored individually for each player. 2.3 Play on LAN If TCP/IP is correctly installed on the network computers, a player can create a server that will be seen by the other players who choose to list the available network games. All this is can be done in the network interface of the start menu. 2.4 Play on the Internet Internet game is easy to use, just click on the related button in the game start window and follow the interface's instruction to join a game, start a session yourself, or just chat with other players. 2.5 Communicate on the Internet The chat rooms allow you to communicate with all people in a given room. On the left panel you can see all the rooms. Left-click with your mouse on a room name to enter it. By default, you are in the « MAIN » room. On the right panel, you can see all the players in the room. 2.6 Server statistics Server statistics are automatically generated by the server in real-time, they give : - The total number of players connected on the server - The number of players in the Chat-rooms - The number of players currently playing the game - The number of game sessions actually running 3. Troubleshooting/Technical Information 3.1 Video card compatibility Below is some information gathered by our video card test and compatibility lab. While we made every effort possible to get Gladiators to work on all hardware configurations, the reality is not all video cards behave the same way ; some are older an slower and lack features. Unless otherwise noted we found that using the VERY LATEST reference drivers provided the best stability and performance on all video cards. Supported : - 3DFX Voodoo 4/5 : Works ok. - Ati Rage 128 : Frame rate and visual quality are not optimal. - Ati Radeon 7x00 : Offers good performance and visual quality. - Ati Radeon 8x00 : Offers very good performance and visual quality. - Ati Radeon 9000 : Offers excellent performance and visual quality. - Ati Radeon 9500/9700 : Offers excellent performance and visual quality. - Kyro II : Needs a powerful processor to compensate the lack of hardware T&L. - Matrox G4x0 : Works ok, but needs a powerful processor to compensate the lack of hardware T&L. - Matrox G550 : Works ok, but needs a powerful processor to compensate the lack of hardware T&L. - Matrox Parhelia-512 : Offers excellent performance and visual quality. - Nvidia TNT : Works ok, but needs a powerful processor to compensate the lack of hardware T&L. - Nvidia TNT 2 / TNT 2 M64 : Works ok, but needs a powerful processor to compensate the lack of hardware T&L. - Nvidia Geforce 256 : Works ok. - Nvidia Geforce 2 MX : Offers good performance and visual quality.. - Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS : Offers good performance and visual quality.. - Nvidia Geforce 3 : Offers very good performance and visual quality. - Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti x00 : Offers very good performance and visual quality. - Nvidia Geforce 4 MX : Offers very good performance and visual quality. - Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti 4x00 : Offers excellent performance and visual quality. Not supported : - Ati Rage pro and earlier : Card manufacturer no longer supports these video cards. - Kyro I : The game may have graphical issues and poor performance... - Nvidia Riva 128 and earlier : Card manufacturer no longer supports these video cards. - Voodoo1, 2, 3, rush and banshee : Card manufacturer no longer supports these video cards. 3.2 Improving Performance Of course getting a faster CPU, more memory, and a faster video card should drastically improve performance, but for those who don't want to or can't buy new hardware you can try some of these tips. - Gladiators requires the latest drivers for your hardware for optimal performance. Updating video drivers, sound drivers, operating system, and your system's bios significantly improved frame rate on several systems we tested. - On some systems updating the AGP chipset controller improved framerate by three or four times. This was especially true with non-Intel controllers. To see which controller you have on most systems right click on My Computer and select properties. Go to the Device Manager tab and open up System Devices. Look for an entry that mentions AGP. Most AGP controllers will be listed as Intel, Via, Ali, or AMD. Go to the appropriate website to find your newest drivers and follow their install instructions. - Try turning off or lowering your graphic options. Resolution normally has the greatest improvement on frame rate. - Close all other programs before running Gladiators, especially if you only have 128M of RAM. - Windows 2000 and Windows XP need more memory, so if you notice the hard drive constantly working, you should consider adding some memory to your system. 3.3 Known Issues 'The Gladiators' uses Microsoft's DirectX products to generate sound and graphics. These products are constantly evolving and hardware manufacturers are constantly releasing new drivers to support all the features that today's games require. You therefore need to make sure you have the latest drivers installed on you system for your graphics card, your sound card, and in some cases even your motherboard. Updating these drivers showed huge performance increases on some systems (see section "3.5 Help References") Signs indicating you need an updated driver : - You receive any Direct Draw or Direct Sound errors - Game crashes or hangs - Sound cuts out during the game - Windows desktop is distorted or corrupted - The game is a lot slower than expected If you have sound problems with a DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card : - Update your sound card drivers to the latest version available from the card manufacturer, or the latest reference driver available for your card's chipset. - Make sure that your speakers are turned on and any volume controls on them are turned up. - Check your Windows volume settings by clicking on the small yellow speaker icon on your taskbar. - Check the in-game volume settings in the "Audio Settings" menu. If you still have sound problems, reducing sound drivers acceleration can help. You have to set the hardware acceleration slider to 'Basic hardware acceleration' (second from the left) in the windows sound configuration menu. - How to do it with windows 98 and Me : Go to the Start->settings->control panel-> sound and multimedia settings .Go to audio->advanced->sound playback. In the performance tab move the hardware acceleration slider to the second notch : basic acceleration. - How to do it with Windows 2000 : Go to start->settings->control panel then to Sound and multimedia->audio. Under the playback section, click on advanced, then go to the performance tab and set the hardware acceleration slider to the second notch (basic hardware acceleration). - How to do it with Windows XP : Go to start->settings->control panel->Sound an audio devices. Then go to the Audio tab, click on advanced in the audio playback section, and set the hardware acceleration slider to the second notch (basic hardware acceleration). On some systems operating Windows XP, a DirectX8Init error can occur as you go back to the multiplayer menu. To avoid having this, launch the game in windowed mode, the switch to full-screen after loading (by using the icon in the window bar). 3.4 Internet issues - If you want other people on the internet to join your game session, your IP address has to published on the internet. If you have multiple IP addresses, make sure the one you choose is the one published on the internet. - If you are behind a corporate firewall or a Network Address Translator, you won't be able to host sessions but you may join a game session if you are the only one playing the game behind the firewall. - Connection fail : when two players connects simultaneously to the same game session, it may happen that one of the two players gets the following message connection fail : choose your gladiator faster. Should this happen, just restart the game an join the session again. 3.5 Help References Updating drivers is very important. To assist you in this effort, the following is a list of websites which may be useful in finding the latest drivers or troubleshooting and understanding this technology. This list is by no means complete and is just for reference, any information obtained here has no connection with Eugen Systems. Graphics card driver locations - http://www.nvidia.com - http://www.matrox.com - http://support.ati.com Sound Card driver locations - http://www.creative.com Troubleshooting for Advanced Users - http://www.geforcefaq.com - http://support.microsoft.com - http://www.tomshardware.com - http://www.reactorcritical.com Information on system motherboards and updates - advanced - http://support.intel.com - http://www.viatech.com 4. Legal Information 4.1 Disclaimer of Warranty The Gladiators is the property of Eugen Systems and is protected by copyright law and international treaty provisions. You are authorized to make and use copies of The Gladiators either as part of the application in which you received The Gladiators, or in conjunction with the application for which its use is intended. Except as expressly provided in the foregoing sentence, you are not authorized to reproduce and distribute The Gladiators. Eugen Systems reserve all rights not expressly granted. You may not reverse engineer, de compile, or disassemble The Gladiators, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. The Gladiators is provided to you "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. You assume the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of The Gladiators and all other risk arising out of the use or performance of the Product and documentation. EUGEN SYSTEMS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT, EVEN IF THEY HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL EUGEN SYSTEMS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, OR OTHER DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) EVEN IF EUGEN SYSTEMS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. BECAUSE SOME STATES/JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, THE ABOVE LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY. 4.2 Eugen Systems License Agreement This License Agreement is a legal agreement between you and Eugen Systems. By installing, copying, playing or otherwise using this product, you agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. If you do not agree to the terms of this Agreement, do not install, copy, play or use this product. 4.3 Product maintenance Eugen systems has no legal obligation to provide product updates or support. However, you will be able to find news, updates and patches on the official web site : http://thegladiators.arxeltribe.com 4.4 Xiph.Org copyright notice Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met : - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. - Neither the name of the Xiph.Org Foundation nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors ``as is'' and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. in no event shall the regents or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage. 4.5 InnoSetup License Except where otherwise noted, all of the documentation and software included in the Inno Setup package is copyrighted by Jordan Russell. Copyright (C) 1998-2002 Jordan Russell. All rights reserved. This software is provided "as-is", without any express or implied warranty. In no event shall the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter and redistribute it, provided that the following conditions are met : 1. All redistributions of source code files must retain all copyright notices that are currently in place, and this list of conditions without modification. 2. All redistributions in binary form must retain all occurrences of the above copyright notice and web site addresses that are currently in place (for example, in the About boxes). 3. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software to distribute a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required. 4. Modified versions in source or binary form must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. Jordan Russell jr@jrsoftware.org http://www.jrsoftware.org/ alternate address: http://www.jordanr.cjb.net/