Build: 3.70 Date: Wed May 10 08:41:58 2000 This document is called "readme.txt" and can be found in the Hired Guns directory when the game is installed. ==== Hired Guns Copyright 1998-2000 VR-1 / Psygnosis. This is a pre-production test version of Hired Guns - it is confidential and should not be distributed outside of VR-1, Psygnosis or legitimate parties. This version includes all levels from the full game. Please completely read this file before installing Hired Guns. If you are upgrading from an earlier pre-production version of this game, please see the section below entitled "installation instructions". Please contact one of the following if you have problems with this version: Brett Close (Producer) - brettc@vr1.com Kate Gilbreath (Production Assistant) - kate@vr1.com David McCloskey (Executive Producer) - david@vr1.com ==== -- Revision Notes -- Internal testers, see \\VR1_BOULDER_5\HG-BUILD\INDEX.HTML for additional notes. This version should function correctly on Windows 95/98/2000. It does not operate on Windows NT 4 due to outdated DirectX support (at least DirectDraw version 5 is required, NT 4 provides only DirectDraw version 3). The minimum system specification is a Pentium 2/233 with 64MB RAM, with a 3dfx Voodoo card or Direct3D hardware acceleration. The recommended video accelerators are: 3dfx Voodoo3, 3dfx Voodoo2, NVIDIA Riva TNT / TNT 2 or GeForce 256. The recommended system is a Pentium 3/500 with 128MB RAM and 3dfx Voodoo3 and an NVIDIA Riva TNT2. ==== -- Installation Instructions -- Before you install this version of Hired Guns, you should completely remove any old versions to ensure that the game is installed correctly. To be absolutely safe, you may wish to manually delete the old Hired Guns directory to make sure. The default installation folder is: "C:\Program Files\VR-1\Hired Guns" To begin installation, run the program "menu.exe". If this fails (it might on certain Windows NT configurations), go into the "setup" directory and run "setup.exe". If something goes wrong and you need to reinstall. You MUST first remove the previous installation. If you are unable to reinstall or uninstall, try deleting the directory that you installed Hired Guns to and try again. ==== -- Configuration Tips -- WARNING! Your desktop may need to be set to 16-bit color depth for Direct3D mode to function correctly. When you run Hired Guns, the game launcher will be displayed before the game starts. The first time it is run, it will attempt to automatically detect the best video configuration for the game. Details can be viewed by selecting the "video" options tab. The following video APIs are supported, and will be detected in this order: 3dfx GLIDE - best performance on Voodoo-class graphics accelerators. Direct3D - best performance for all other hardware Software - if the machine does not have Direct3D video hardware OpenGL - will be used if no other hardware acceleration can be found Please note: Direct3D and OpenGL modes will not be available if there is no hardware acceleration. You may wish to contact your hardware manufacturer for updated video hardware drivers for optimal Hired Guns performance. Hired Guns OpenGL support is currently sub-optimal, and should only be used if GLIDE or Direct3D support is not available. Depending on the class of your hardware configuration, software rendering is most likely to be faster than OpenGL support. If you have saved games, the "Load" tab will be shown. This allows you to quickly load a saved game. Switch to this tab, select a saved game and click on the "Load Saved Game!" button. ==== -- Playing the game -- Let's play! For full effect, you should insert the audio CD for in-game music (this is a separate CD). On first starting Hired Guns, you will be shown the launcher screen, as detailed in the "Configuration Tips" section above. Once you are ready to start, hit the "Play!" button to begin. After a brief loading pause, an introduction flyby sequence will play. When this has finished (or has been cancelled by pressing escape), you will be in Kircher's command center. At this point you can begin the game by walking up to one of the computer consoles - options, single player and multiplayer. The game options menu can also be accessed by pressing escape at any time in the game. Now would probably be a good time to review or change your movement controls. The default controls are listed below, but you may wish to set your own configuration. Once you have selected the "campaign" computer console, you can choose a mission to play. After viewing the mission briefing and reading the directions, hit "accept" to continue. After loading the mission, you should find yourself in the game, with a view of two or more characters in the split-screen. The most important command that you should know about is the tilde key in the top-left of the keyboard. Pressing this brings down the menu that can be used to issue commands to your team by selecting the number keys 1 to 9. Note that if you tell your team members to "hard follow" (command 2), they will ignore enemies and stay as close to you as they can. If you use the regular "follow" command (command 1), your team will break off and attack any enemies that they see, and resume following you when they have finished the battle. You can swap between your team members by using the "Z", "X" and "C" keys. If desired, you can maximize your current view window using the "R" key. If any of your team members die, your mission will be a failure. Thinking about your team is important, as you must ensure their safety. ==== -- Your Team -- - Kircher - The team's leader. His regenerative healing helps him to shrug off battlefield wounds. - Myriel - Cyborg. Her cyborg body can squeeze into places too small for a human. - Osverger - Tough ex-junkie mercenary. He's really big and strong. - Rorian - Mercenary and rogue. His night-vision is invaluable finding his way around in the dark. If you played the original Hired Guns game, these names may be familiar to you... ==== -- Known bugs / workarounds - Video cards * All video cards - Occasionally the quad view borders will start flashing black every other frame. If this happens, press the "R" key (maximize) twice to refresh the screen. * 3dfx - When trying to start the game, a blank dialog box may be displayed on screen. A corrupt installation of 3dfx GLIDE drivers can cause this problem. If you recently changed or removed a 3dfx GLIDE compatible video card from your machine, you should uninstall the old video drivers, and install the latest video drivers for the video cards that you still have. * RIVA TNT - A severe lag of up to three seconds between a mouse or keyboard input producing an effect on screen has been experienced on some systems with RIVA TNT video cards. Upgrading to the latest video drivers solved the problem - contact your hardware vendor for more details. * RIVA TNT-2 - The automatic video detection has been known to fail on RIVA TNT-2 based video cards - if this happens to you, please let us know! * RIVA TNT-2 - Problem: Distorted text. If your menu text is distorted, this due to the texel alignment setting on your TNT2 card being set to a value of 3. To correct this problem for Hired Guns, perform the following steps: 1. Right click on your desktop and select the properties tab. 2. Open up the settings tab and click on Advanced. 3. Open up the RIVA TNT2 tab and select additional properties. 4. Open up the Direct 3d Settings and select More Direct3d. 5. Move the texel alignment slider to the far left, so the texel alignment value shown is now 7. 6. Click close. 7. Click apply. Your fonts should now be legible with no discernable distortion. ==== -- Control Summary -- [ NOTE: These may be remapped from the configuration menu ] == Movement == Move Forward: Up arrow / W Move Backward: Down arrow / S Sidestep Left: A Sidestep Right: D Jump / Up: Space Crouch / Down: V Walk: Shift Strafe: M == Looking == Turn Left: Left Arrow / Mouse Turn Right: Right Arrow / Mouse Look Up: Page Up / Mouse Look Down: Page Down / Mouse Center View: Home Mouse Look (hold): End == Weapons == Fire (Mode 1): CTRL / Mouse 1 Fire (Mode 2): ALT / Mouse 2 Drop Weapon: Backspace Next Weapon: Period (.) Previous Weapon: Comma (,) Select Next Weapon: Singlequote (') Select Prev Weapon: Semicolon (;) == Items == Activate Item: Backslash Drop Item: [not assigned] Next Item: Rightbracket (]) Prev Item: Leftbracket ([) == Team == Use Special Abiltity: F Show Mission Objectives: O Toggle Quad mode: R Swap View 2 and 1: Z Swap View 3 and 1: X Swap View 4 and 1: C == System controls == ESC - Display menu / Exit flyby movies F10 - Abort mission F11 - Screen brightness F12 - Toggles hardware / software mode (should leave in hardware) See the in-game keyboard configuration menus for more (press escape to access these). The recommended control method is this: use the mouse to turn left / right and to look up / down, and the keyboard to move. By default, the "mouselook" option is turned off in the game options to help menu when you are comfortable with the controls. Vehicle / turret notes: There are several controllable vehicles and gun emplacements in the game. To take control of one, walk into them. Vehicles can be steered using the look and the strafe controls. To exit a vehicle or a turret, press escape or the secondary fire button. ==== -- Cheats / Console commands -- During the game, press TAB, and then type any of the following at the prompt. hggod - Invulnerability for the current character quadgod 1 - Invulnerability for the entire team hgghost - "Ghost" mode hgfly - Fly mode hginvisible - Invisibility mode hgbehindview - Chasecam view hgslomo - Slow down the passage of time stat fps - Show rendering times exit - Leave the game select - Return to the mission select screen intro - Return to the user interface level playersonly - Freeze time - only players can move ==== End of file.