****** PBA BOWLING 2 Readme ****** This readme document contains additional information about PBA BOWLING 2. This file resides in your game installation directory for viewing at any time. ****** System Requirements ****** Pentium II 266 MHz [with 3D accelerator card] 64 MB RAM Windows 95 with DirectX 5.0 or later 35 MB of Hard Drive Space 6X or faster CD-ROM DirectX 7.0 [provided on CD] Windows 95/98/2000 ****** Installation ****** 1. To install PBA Bowling 2, insert the game CD into your CD ROM drive. 2. If AutoPlay is enabled, the installer splash screen appears. Click on the Install button and follow directions. 3. If AutoPlay is not enabled, and no installer splash screen appears, double-click on My Computer on the desktop, then double-click on the icon representing your CD ROM drive. Then, to install, double-click the file called "Setup" or "Setup.exe" in your CD ROM directory window. ****** To Play PBA Bowling 2 ****** During installation, a shortcut is placed in your Start menus. To run the game, click on the Start button, then mouse your cursor to "Programs," then "PBA Bowling 2," then click on "Play PBA Bowling 2" to play. ****** Interface Notes ****** 1. In Game Options, or in Creating or Modifying Amateur Bowlers, or in Creating or Modifying Balls, left-clicking on a menu item normally advances through the available options, while right-clicking back-steps through the available options. For example, to increase the music volume, left-click on the Music Volume option. To decrease music volume, right-click on the Music Volume option. Or, for another example, left-clicking on Hair Color advances you forward through the hair color options, while right-clicking lets you back-track through the hair color options in reverse order. 2. If, when creating a game, a player is mistakenly added to a game, clicking on that player's name in the right-hand list will remove that player from the current game. ****** Quick Start ****** Here's how to play a practice game of PBA Bowling 2: 1. Start a game. On the PBA2 Bowling menu, click on "Start a New Game." On the Open Bowling menu, click on "Practice." On the Practice Game menu, click on "Human Pro." On the Pick Pro menu, click on "Tom Baker." On the Practice Game menu, click on "Bowl." 2. Position your bowler. Left-click [Mouse1] on the lower part of the Aiming Display [in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen] to adjust your bowler's position. 3. Position your aiming mark. Left-click [Mouse1] on the upper Aiming Display to adjust your aiming mark. 4. Click four times to bowl your ball at the pins. You can click your left mouse button on the Throw Display [on the lower right-hand corner of the screen], or hit the keyboard key [default key is ] to click. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE TIMING OF YOUR CLICKS. 4a. Click One: START. This click starts the needle moving clockwise on the Throw Display. 4b. Click Two: POWER: Click when the indicator shows how hard you want to bowl. The harder you bowl, the more difficult it is to bowl accurately. At 100% power, you only have one second to correctly hit the next click, the accuracy click. At 50% power, you have a whole TWO seconds to time your accuracy click. [Big difference? Try it. You'll see….] 4c. Click Three: ACCURACY: This click determines how accurately you place your ball. The harder you bowl, the harder it is to place your ball accurately. Click when the indicator is in the exact center of the grey area for 100% accuracy. The timing of you click determines the accuracy of your throw. Click when the indicator is to the left or right of the most-accurate center, and you may be as much as two feet off the target you aimed for. After the Accuracy click, the indicator continues back to the start point to be ready for the last click - the Spin click. 4d. Click Four: SPIN: This click determines whether you throw the ball straight, or whether you place spin or backspin on the ball, and how much spin. Click when the indicator shows how much spin or backspin you want. Throwing a ball with no spin sends the ball straight down the alley. Throwing with spin hooks the ball to the left for a right-handed bowler, to the right for a left-handed bowler. Throwing with backspin hooks the ball in the opposite direction from throwing with spin. 5. Practice, practice, practice. If you have a right-hand bowler, start by placing your bowler's position a little left of center. Then place your aiming mark between the second and third aiming marks to the right of the point aiming mark. Now try to bowl with about low power [so your second click marks at about the 9 o'clock point on the Throw Display] and as accurately as possible [with the third click exactly at the 6 o'clock position on the Throw Display] and as straight as possible [with the fourth click exactly at the 6 o'clock position on the Throw Display. Once you have a feel for throwing a low-speed straight ball with no spin, then try increasing your power and experimenting with spin to hook your ball into the pins. You should, of course, throw many gutter balls in the beginning -- unless you are very, very cunning, or very, very lucky. ****** Creating or Modifying Amateur Bowlers ****** With PBA Bowling 2, you can create your own amateur bowlers, selecting body type, hair style and color, shirts and pants, and other features. Here's how. 1. Select the "Create or Modify Bowler" option from the "PBA Bowling 2" menu. 2. Name your bowler. 3. Choose your picture. [Choose from the pictures provided, or add your own custom portraits, as described below.] 4. Select your bowler type according to weight and height. 5. Change the following options as you wish; a. Change Skin b. Change Hair Style c. Change Hair Color d. Change Facial Hair e. Change Glasses f. Change Shirt g. Change Pants h. Change Shoes 6. Choose your Strike Ball and Spare Ball, and customize your weight and grips to suit. ****** Creating or Modifying Balls ****** With PBA Bowling 2, you can also create and customize your own bowling balls. Here's how. 1. Select the "Create or Modify Balls" option from the "PBA Bowling 2" menu. 2. Change the following options as you wish; a. Change Texture. Left-click on "Texture" to step through the options. b. Change Logo. Left-click on "Logo" to step through the options. c. Change values for Hook and Hole Offset. Left-click on "Hook" and "Hole Offset" to step through the options. 3. When you've customized your ball to your satisfaction, use the "Save Ball" option to save your ball under any name you choose. ****** Adding Your Own Bowler Portraits to the Game ****** You can add your own custom bowler portrait to PBA Bowling 2. Here's how to do it. 1. Create a digital image, using a digital camera, a scanned photo, a piece of digital art, or any other computer graphics image. 2. From your digital image, create a 128x128 pixel .bmp [bitmap] image for use in the game. You can use any of the many fine graphics editing applications you have at hand, or use the Imaging application provided as an Accessory with Windows 98. Here's how to use the Imaging application to edit your digital image. a. Launch the Imaging application from the Start\Programs\Accessories menu. b. Select "Open" from the "File" menu and open your original image. c. Using the "Select Image" tool [the marquee tool] to select the area you want to include in your bowler portrait. d. Copy the selected image to the clipboard [control-C or "Copy" from the "Edit" menu]. e. Select "New" from the "File" menu. In the dialog box, choose the "Bitmap Image [BMP]" option under the "File Type" tab, then, under the "Size" tab, select the "Custom Size" option, specify "Pixels" as your units, then define "Width" as "128" and "Height" as "128." f. Now, Paste [or Control-V] your image from the clipboard to the New window. Now you have a 128x128-pixel image to use in the game. Save this image ["Save as..." on the "File" menu] as a bitmap image [.bmp] file. Give the file a name like "John.bmp", or "SuperBowler.bmp," and save it to your hard drive. NOTE: In addition to bitmap image files, you can also use a targa [.tga] file, but it must be saved as a 24-bit file. 3. To add your newly created bowler portrait to the game, copy the bitmap image [i.e., "John.bmp"] to the Players directory on your hard drive. Thereafter you can select your custom bowler image from the "Choose Picture" option of your "Create Player" menu. ****** Oil on the Lanes ****** Oil on the lanes makes the ball slide. A ball's spin or backspin has limited effect while it rolls on the oil, but when the ball reaches dry lane surface, the spin is much more effective in hooking the path of the ball. Different centers use different patterns and thicknesses of oil, and as the game progresses, the pattern and thickness of oil on the lane changes as the ball picks up oil and redistributes it. Amateur bowlers may not notice the subtle effects of oil on the ball's trajectory in different centers, but aggressive perfectionists can press the Oil key [keyboard default: O] to study each center's oil pattern, and to observe how the oil pattern changes during a game. ****** Troubleshooting ****** 1. Please make sure you have the latest versions of your graphics and sound drivers. Driver updates should be available from the hardware and chipset manufacturers, usually from the manufacturer's internet sites. PBA Bowling 2 uses DirectX 7.0; drivers for earlier versions of Direct X may not work with PBA Bowling 2. If you are not sure whether your drivers are up-to-date, you can use the DXDiag utility to check. Go to your system hard disk [usually C:] in the directories C:\Program Files\DirectX\setup. Run DxDiag and check the Display and Sound tabs for information on the manufacturers and current versions for your drivers. 2. If PBA Bowling 2 crashes when you use PBA Bowling Direct3D Control Panel settings other than the defaults, your video card may not support the resolutions or features you have selected. For example, if your video card does not support a given feature [like trilinear filtering], or if a given feature [like a higher resolution or triple buffering] requires more video card memory than your card has, you may experience crashes. If you experience such crashes, restore the defaults. The defaults for PBA Bowling Direct3D Control Panel settings are as follows: Hardware Accelerated Resolution: 16 bit 640x480 Texture Perspective Correction [checked] Gouraud Shading [checked] RGB Texture Format: 16 bit 0656 ARGB Alpha Texture Format: 16 bit 4444 ARGB 3. The Mouseworks software for the Kensington Expert Mouse trackball includes a button-click delay to facilitate chording [i.e., pressing two mouse buttons at once to activate special features]. This delay causes inaccurate gameplay response for PBA Bowling 2. You may prefer to use the keyboard to click. Alternatively, you can increase the chording speed in the Kensington Mouse Control Panel to remove the delay. 4. If the pins and balls are showing up black in your game, then go to: Game Options. Turn off environment mapping. ****** Performance Issues ****** 1. On older computers, Piccard Lanes may play faster than the other bowling centers. 2. If the game is running slow, then go to: Game Options: Disable: Graphics [Lane Reflections, Environmental Mapping, Transparency] Center life Music Disabling these options permits the game to run at maximum speed.