[For best results turn 'word-wrap' on and maximize the viewing window] COMMAND & CONQUER: SOLE SURVIVOR Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997 Westwood Studios, Inc. All rights reserved. "C&C", "Command & Conquer", "Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor" and "Westwood Studios" are trademarks of Westwood Studios, Inc. November 15, 1997 For latest goodies, news and updates visit WWW.WESTWOOD.COM Contents: 1. General Information. 1.1. Microsoft DirectX. 2. Troubleshooting. 2.1. Known Video Card Problems. 2.1.1. S3 TRIO video cards. 2.1.2. Screen distorts after installing Microsoft DirectX. 2.1.3. Unable to allocate primary video buffer. 2.2. Uninstalling C&C Sole Survivor. 2.3. Virtual Memory Settings. 2.4. Microsoft PowerToys. 2.5. Microsoft Home Mouse and Natural Keyboard. 2.6. Autoplay. 2.7. 16 bit CD-ROM drivers. 2.8. Microsoft Office Toolbar. 2.9. Game or audio stutters after being paused. 2.10. Choppy movie performance. 2.11. Increasing performance on minimum spec systems. 2.12. Westwood Online. 2.12.1. Duplicate Channel columns. 3. Extras. 3.1. 'Conquer.ini' file settings. 3.1.1. Team Messages. 3.1.2. Other settings. 3.2. Voice Themes. 3.3. Installing the Command & Conquer Theme Pack. 1. General Information. 1.1. Microsoft DirectX. The Windows 95 version of C&C Sole Survivor is a Microsoft DirectX application. Version 5.0 of Microsoft DirectX is included on the CD and you have the option to install it when C&C Sole Survivor is installed. If you have difficulty running Windows 95 after these new Microsoft DirectX drivers have been installed, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary, or write: Microsoft Customer Sales and Service, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399, USA USA telephone: 1-800-426-9400 International telephone: ++1-206-882-8080 All Microsoft DirectX drivers are located in the Dxsetup folder off of the root of the CD. To reinstall the Microsoft DirectX drivers go into the Dxsetup folder and run Dxsetup.exe. You can explore the CD by choosing the "Explore the CD" option in the Autoplay title screen. 2. Troubleshooting. 2.1. Known Video Card Problems. Here are some hints and tips for specific video cards found while testing C&C Sole Survivor under Windows 95. See the notes on 'conquer.ini' for specific Sole Survivor settings to address video card problems. 2.1.1. S3 TRIO video cards. We have noticed corruption on screen during both game and movies with some (but not all) examples of video cards with this chipset. There is no specific workaround but you should check with your video card manufacturer for updated driver information. 2.1.2. Screen distorts after installing Microsoft DirectX. We've found that video monitor settings may need to be adjusted after installing the Microsoft DirectX video drivers. If your screen distorts, or is shifted horizontally or vertically, you can return it to normality by adjusting the controls on your monitor. You should only need to do this once. 2.1.3. Unable to allocate primary video buffer. If you receive an "Unable to allocate primary video buffer - Aborting." error message try reinstalling the Microsoft DirectX drivers. If reinstalling the Microsoft DirectX drivers does not solve this problem, then that means that your video card manufacturer has not updated their video drivers to be Microsoft DirectX compliant. Call your video card manufacturer for updated drivers. 2.2. Uninstalling C&C Sole Survivor. After running the Uninstall program, if the C&C Sole Survivor group is still present, try rebooting your computer. This should clean up the C&C Sole Survivor start menu folder. 2.3. Virtual Memory Settings. C&C Sole Survivor may need to use more RAM than is present on your system. Windows 95 automatically takes care of this by using what is known as "Virtual Memory" - it uses space on your hard disk to simulate the memory it needs and swaps data back and forth from your hard disk as required. Windows 95 allows you to manually set the amount of hard drive space it uses for Virtual Memory: WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT DO THIS! To let Windows 95 manage the Virtual Memory, go to the Windows 95 START menu, select SETTINGS\CONTROL PANEL, then double-click SYSTEM, click PERFORMANCE\FILE SYSTEM\VIRTUAL MEMORY and then select "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings (recommended)". 2.4. Microsoft PowerToys. If you have the Microsoft PowerToys system extensions installed on your system (including QuickRes and FlexiCD) you may experience excessive accessing of the CD followed by system lockup. If this happens, you should remove the MicroSoft PowerToys while playing C&C Sole Survivor. 2.5. Microsoft Home Mouse and Natural Keyboard. If you are using a Microsoft Home Mouse, the Microsoft Natural Keyboard or are using Microsoft's IntelliPoint Tools and Controls Software, having the "Sonar" setting on under "Visibility" in the "Mouse Properties" section in the "Control Panel" can cause C&C Sole Survivor to crash. Please turn this setting off when playing C&C Sole Survivor. Using the 'point' feature of the Microsoft keyboard may cause mouse trails to be left on screen. Do not use this feature while playing C&C Sole Survivor. 2.6. Autoplay. If your CD does not Autoplay when inserted in the drive, you may have this feature disabled. To Enable Autoplay, right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties' then 'Device Manager'. Select your CD-ROM drive and click 'Properties'. Select 'Settings' and check the 'Auto insert notification' box. 2.7. 16 bit CD-ROM drivers. C&C Sole Survivor may fail to start if there is a 16 bit CD-ROM driver loadedfrom the AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS. If you have references to MSCDEX or equivalent drivers then try removing them from your autoexec and config. Windows 95 does not generally need these drivers to work and in most cases will actually perform better without them. 2.8. Microsoft Office Toolbar. If you make use of this feature of Microsoft Office and it appears over the game screen when playing C&C Sole Survivor then you will have to disable the Office Toolbar before playing. 2.9. Game or audio stutters after being paused. If the game is left in the paused state with the game options menu up for an extended period of time, performance may be reduced for a while after play is resumed. This is due to Windows 95 giving the game's resources to other tasks while it is not being played. 2.10. Choppy movie performance. If you find that the movie performance is choppy or jerky, try reducing the Windows 95 CD caching by going to the Start/Settings/Control Panel and double-clicking the System applet. In the System Properties dialog, click the Performance tab and then click the File System button. From the File System Properties dialog, click the CD-ROM tab and note the Supplemental Cache Size setting (so that you can reset the cache size if need be). Now set the Supplemental Cache Size to Small. This should have a marked effect on movie performance. 2.11. Increasing performance on minimum spec systems. If you are playing Sole Survivor on a minimum spec. system, you may be able to improve performance by turning off in-game music scores. To do this, go to the in game options menu (select the options tab) and go to the sound controls section. Move the music volume slider all the way to the left to disable in-game music. 2.12. Westwood Online. 2.12.1. Duplicate Channel names columns. We have found that certain versions of COMCTL32.DLL (the Windows common controls library which handles standard Windows interface elements) do not support certain Westwood Online features, which is most obvious in the user/channel list area when you will see repeated columns (e.g., you see each channel name listed twice). The solution to this is to update your COMCTL32.DLL and one way to do this is to install Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.02 or above. Alternatively, checkout Microsoft's web site at www.microsoft.com. 3. Extras. 3.1. 'Conquer.ini' file settings. There are various options that you can change in the 'conquer.ini' file. Be careful to change only those options listed here, changing other settings can lead to unexpected side effects (such as system instability when playing Sole Survivor, or loss of user data on the hard disk). 3.1.1. Team Messages. By editing the [TeamMessages] section of the conquer.ini file, it is possible to add hotkey text messages to save you some time when playing the game. TeamMessage1 is assigned to the '1' key, TeamMessage2 to the '2', etc. For example: [TeamMessages] TeamMessage1 = HELP!!! SAVE OUR FLAG!!! TeamMessage2 = TeamMessage3 = TeamMessage4 = TeamMessage5 = TeamMessage6 = TeamMessage7 = TeamMessage8 = TeamMessage9 = TeamMessage0 = 3.1.2. Other settings. OfflineGametime = xxx Length in minutes of an offline practice mode game. Range is 1 - 300 minutes. Default is 15 minutes. NoMovies = x Turns movies on or off. 0 = movie on (default). 1 = movies off. TypingSounds = x Turns typewriter sound on or off. 1 = sound on (default). 0 = sound off. IsVerbose = x Turns verbose in-game messages. 1 = on (default) 0 = off. VideoBackBuffer = x Try setting this to 0 if the screen draw is completely messed up (we've found S3 video cards are prone to this). Performance is better if you can leave this setting on, and you may be able to do that by getting the latest video card drivers from your card manufacturer. 1 = on (default) 0 = off HardwareFills = x Again, try setting this to 0 if the screen draw is messed up. Performance is better if you can leave this setting on, and you may be able to do that by getting the latest video card drivers from your card manufacturer. 1 = on (default) 0 = off 3.2. Voice Themes. By editing the 'voices.ini' file it is possible to add your own sound effects for certain events in the game. Your new sound effects should be 22Khz, 16 bit, mono .wav files. You can specify multiple sounds for each event by separating the filenames with a semicolon. In this case the sound effect will be selected at random from the effects specified. New voice themes are available under the in-game options 'Sound Controls' menu under 'Voice Themes'. There is a sample voices.ini file in the game directory named 'voices.smp', along with a set of example .wav files on the CD in a folder called 'voices'. To try these out, rename voices.smp to voices.ini, make a 'voices' folder inside the game directory and copy the contents of the voices folder on the CD into the in-game voices folder. The new theme will appear on the 'Voice Themes' control in the in-game options menu. 3.3. Installing the Command & Conquer Theme Pack. TO INSTALL: From the Autoplay menu, select 'Explore the CD' and run the setup program inside the Themes folder. When complete, the themes control panel should appear, allowing you to select one of the three new C&C themes. YOU MUST HAVE THE PLUS PACK TO MAKE THE ENTIRE THEME WORK! If you don't have Plus!, you can add the mouse pointers, backgrounds, and sounds by hand (from the control panel). Sorry, the colors will be inaccessible, though :( Note that these themes will ONLY work in 16Bit (high) color or above! There aren't enough colors available in a 256 color palette to cover windows colors and our C&C palette... without a lot of time invested in re-mapping, that is. There are 48x48 and 32x32 sizes for all the icons, so if you use "large icon mode", you'll see the icons in even more detail. There are also two versions of many of the icons (i.e. C&C Airstrip and C&C Airstrip II). The first version is the entire object, and the II's are cut-pieces that maintain the scale. The II's are easier to view at higher resolutions.