Shadowrun for Windows Vista Readme File May 2007 © 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Welcome to Shadowrun! This Readme file contains late-breaking information as well as troubleshooting information about Shadowrun. You can find information on Microsoft Product Support Services in the printed or online manual. Contents A. System Requirements B. Installation Installing Shadowrun Installing DirectX 9.0c Installation Issues Starting Shadowrun C. Getting Help Overview Viewing the Online Manual D. Gameplay Issues Training Missions Rich Presence Invites Bandwidth E. Configuration Issues Party Privacy Dedicated Server Preference System Controls F. Graphics Issues Gamma Display Screen Resolutions Using Multiple Monitors Graphics Cards and Video Drivers Graphics Card Drivers and Manufacturers Supported Graphics Cards Unsupported Graphics Cards A. System Requirements Shadowrun requires a personal computer with the following minimum requirements. Minimum system requirements: • CPU: P4 3.2 GHz processor or higher • Video: ATI X800 (256 MB or higher), Nvidia 6800 (256 MB or higher) • Memory: 1 GB RAM Recommended system requirements: • CPU: Intel Core Duo CPU/ AMD FX Dual Core CPU • Video: ATI X1800 (256 MB or higher), Nvidia 7800 (256 MB or higher) • Memory: 2 GB RAM B. Installation This section describes how to manually install the software components necessary to play Shadowrun in the event that they are not installed automatically. Note We recommend that you uninstall earlier Beta or Trial versions of the game before you install the Retail version. You can use Add or Remove Programs to remove previous versions of Shadowrun. To do so, click Start, point to Settings, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs. Locate any previous instances of Shadowrun and remove them. Installing Shadowrun When you insert the Shadowrun DVD into the DVD drive, setup should begin automatically. Click Install to install all necessary Shadowrun files in their default locations. If your computer does not automatically start Shadowrun Setup after the DVD is inserted into the DVD drive, perform the following procedure. To install Shadowrun manually 1. On the Windows taskbar, click Start, and then click Run. 2. Type x:\setup, where x is the letter of your DVD drive, and then click OK. For example, if your DVD drive letter is D, type d:\setup 3. Click Install. Installing DirectX 9.0c If for some reason DirectX 9.0c was not installed with the game, use the following procedure to install it manually. To install DirectX 9.0c manually 1. Insert the Shadowrun DVD in the DVD drive. 2. On the Windows taskbar, click Start, and then click Run. 3. Type x:\directx9\dxsetup, where x is the letter of your DVD drive, and then click OK. For example, if your DVD drive letter is D, type d:\directx9\dxsetup 4. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen. You must restart your computer when the installation is complete. If you experience video, graphics, or sound problems using DirectX, always check with your graphics or sound card manufacturer for the latest DirectX-compatible drivers, or go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/ for the latest troubleshooting information. Installation Issues Unable to activate Shadowrun. If the user has User Account Control (or UAC, formerly known as "Least-privileged User Account", or "LUA") disabled and they are not an administrator, they will be unable to activate the game. To fix this issue, the user has to either log in as a user with administrator rights or turn UAC back on. To turn UAC back on, however, the user must be an administrator. Starting Shadowrun To start Shadowrun • Click Start, then point to All Programs, then to Games, then to Game Explorer, and double-click the Shadowrun icon. C. Getting Help Overview You can get help for Shadowrun in the following ways: • Visit the official Shadowrun Web site for the latest updates and support information: http://support.microsoft.com/games/ • For an overview of the game as well as for information about getting started and playing the game, see the Shadowrun printed manual. Viewing the Online Manual Adobe Reader allows you to view and print the online version of the Shadowrun manual, which is located in the Manuals folder of the Shadowrun DVD as a .pdf file. To install Adobe Reader, visit the Adobe Web site at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html. Copyright © 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe and Reader are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. D. Gameplay Issues Training Missions The training missions must be played using default control layout. Rich Presence The Rich Presence feature of Shadowrun allows your friends know what you are up to. A large amount of information is available through a gamercard. Depending on what you are doing, your gamercard may display to other players if you are in training, playing a solo match with friends, or if you are in a public or private match. If you are in a public or private match, the current score of the game will be displayed. It may take some time for this data to propagate to a friend viewing your gamercard, so it may lag behind the game. In addition to the current gamer score, a gamercard will indicate if a friend can be added to your Friends list. Invites Shadowrun uses Invites differently than other Xbox LIVE games. If you receive an invite or choose to Join Session in Progress, you are actually joining your friend’s party. In this case, a successful request to join a game will add you to the game your friend is playing, as well as their party. The party leader has the power to take you to other games. You can also drop out of the party whenever you want. There is a system for voting to kick players out of the match. If any party member is kicked out of a match, the entire party goes with that player. Furthermore, all party members are put on that match's Ban List and cannot re-enter the match. Choose your party members wisely. Joining a game in progress or accepting an invite can fail. The most common reasons for a failure are a full game, or incompatible Network Address Translation (NAT). For more information on NAT and compatibility issues, visit http://www.xbox.com Bandwidth Shadowrun employs a number of techniques to help improve network performance, the notable ones being Dynamic Bandwidth Utilization and Hosting History. It is recommended that you do not run any Internet applications while playing Shadowrun. Many applications can intermittently saturate the network link and interfere with applications that require a smooth stream of data, such as games. When a link is saturated, network messages can be dropped and latency can occur, which causes gameplay to degrade. Examples of such applications include various peer file sharing utilities and some Voice over IP (VoIP) Internet phone services. Hosting History. Shadowrun is continually measuring and monitoring your connection’s quality and amount of bandwidth. At the beginning of each session, the connection with the best history is dynamically chosen. Shadowrun then keeps a history of the host quality to help ensure that high quality hosts are chosen over connections that may have high latencies, packet loss, or other intermittent problems. Dynamic Bandwidth Utilization. Shadowrun will dynamically utilize the maximum amount of available upload bandwidth in an attempt to provide for the best possible network experience. Given enough available bandwidth, Shadowrun will scale all the way up to an equivalent System Link experience. When brand new hosts are chosen for larger games, you may notice that the first one or two rounds are of lower quality, but that the quality increases over time. This is the dynamic bandwidth system at work, as it identifies the top end of the players bandwidth. Once achieved, your optimum bandwidth is stored in history. If an administrator of a dedicated server wants to hard set the bandwidth limit, he or she may do so by editing the DSAdminConfig.ini file as follows: • Set UseFixedBandwidth to 1 • Set KBPSBandwidthCap to the appropriate upload bits per second. It is recommended that the administrator measure their upload bandwidth before setting this value. Setting this value over the actual available bandwidth will saturate the network link and degrade Shadowrun performance. E. Configuration Issues Visit the official Shadowrun Web site for the latest updates and support information: http://shadowrun.com/ Party Privacy There are two party privacy settings: Open and Invite. Open. Anyone can join the party using the Guide, including players who aren't on your Friends list but who join using the Recent Players list. Invites also allow joining an Open party. Invite. An invite from a party member is necessary to join a party. In a public match, anyone who joins a party member using the Guide will join the game session, but not the party itself. Party privacy is set to Invite by default, but the party leader can change the setting in the party screen. Note that in public matches, having an Invite-only party does not prevent players from joining your game through Invites, it only prevents them from joining your party. Dedicated Server Hosting a dedicated server Launching the Shadowrun Dedicated Server Setup program presents the user with a number of options. These options are grouped into the following panes, selectable at the top of the window: • Server Identity • Permissions • Preferences The functionality of each of these panes is described below. Basic Options: Server Identity Pane The Server Identity pane includes information on how the dedicated server is viewed by the rest of the Shadowrun world, including: • Server Name. Specifies what the dedicated server is called in the browser interface. • Message of the Day. Displays on the server summary screen and may be up to seven lines of text. This message can include contact information or any server-specific rules that the administrator wants users to honor. The Administrator Username and Password boxes on this screen must be entered the first time the dedicated server is started. The Administrator Username box should contain the e-mail address of the Microsoft Passport account associated with the administrator's gamertag, and not the gamertag itself. The Password box contains the password associated with that Passport account. To find your Windows LIVE account e-mail address: 1. Launch Shadowrun. 2. Open the Guide by pressing the Home key. 3. If you are already signed into LIVE, press the Sign Out button. 4. Press the Sign In button and select a LIVE-enabled profile to view the Sign In screen containing your Windows LIVE account e-mail address. After entering the server administrator's Passport account and password, the administrator should press the Launch Server button in the lower-left corner of the window. This will start the dedicated server. When the dedicated server starts, both the administrator username and password will be stored securely by the Games for Windows – LIVE system. If the administrator subsequently changes options and wants to restart the server, the password and username do not need to be entered again. If the administrator later wants to change which gamertag is being used to host the dedicated server, a new Passport e-mail address and password must be entered. Advanced Options: Permissions Pane The Permissions pane controls who the administrator allows to access the dedicated server. The administrator can specify an entry password for the dedicated server, whether or not the server is only available to Games for Windows – LIVE Gold members, or if any previous players on the server are permanently barred entry. To set an entry password for the dedicated server, the administrator must select the Yes check box in the Password section and specify a password in the text box. Password-protected servers will show up with a lock icon in the Dedicated Server browser screen and users must enter the correct password on the Server Summary screen in order to gain entry to the game. Setting the Gold Only status to Yes will prevent Games for Windows – LIVE Silver users from connecting to the dedicated server. After the dedicated server has been run, subsequent starts of the Dedicated Server Setup program will include a list of gamertags that have been recently active on the server. Any of these gamertags can be permanently banned by selecting the gamertag in the left column and clicking the right arrow to copy the gamertag into the Banned column. Players who are banned will be unable to connect to the dedicated server. After selecting a list of users to ban from the dedicated server, the administrator must shut down and restart the dedicated server before the changes will take effect. During a match, players on a dedicated server may vote to Kick a player from a dedicated server. If a player is kicked from a server, he will be unable to rejoin the dedicated server for the remaining time that the server is active. However, players who have been kicked from a dedicated server do not go into the ban list; shutting down and restarting the dedicated server will allow previously kicked players the opportunity to rejoin the game. Players who have gamertags in the Ban List will be banned for all restarts of the dedicated server, until their name is removed from the Ban List using the Dedicated Server Setup program. Advanced Options: Preferences Pane The Preferences pane contains only two options: the maximum number of players allowed on the server and the map cycle selected for the server. The Maximum Number of Players option controls whether or not a player attempting to connect to a dedicated server will be allowed to join the game. If there are more players on a dedicated server than either the maximum player count or the maximum number of players allowed on a particular map, no new players will be allowed to join the dedicated server until some players leave. The Map/Mode Cycle controls which maps and gameplay modes are available on a dedicated server, and the order in which they are played. When a dedicated server is running, it will cycle every match using the Map/Mode Cycle list on the right side of the window. Dedicated server administrators can add or remove maps from this map cycle with ease. To add a map to the map cycle, select the map/mode from the list on the left and press the right arrow to copy them to the end of the map cycle list. The administrator can add the same map/mode cycle multiple times, so that maps repeat if desired. To remove maps from the map cycle, highlight the selected map and press the left arrow button. Dedicated Server Issues • In the Preferences pane of the Dedicated Server Setup program, some maps are listed twice, both for their native game type (Raid or Extraction) and the Attrition game type. • Player preferences (set through the in-game preferences interface) are ignored on dedicated servers. Only the dedicated server map/mode cycle, which is set by the server administrator, is honored. • If a dedicated server loses its connection to the Games for Windows – LIVE service, a message will be sent to the output console stating that the server is disconnecting. The dedicated server will attempt to reconnect every two minutes until reconnection is successful. Due to variances in network topologies, it is possible for players to remain connected to a dedicated server even though the dedicated server loses connection to the Games for Windows – LIVE service. In this case, no new players will be able to join the server through the dedicated server browser, though the game in progress will continue normally. • Multiplayer achievements are not granted on dedicated servers. • All text entered through the Dedicated Server Setup program is subject to the Games for Windows – LIVE suitability filter. Profanity or otherwise offensive text will be replaced by blank text. This includes the Message of the Day, the Server Name, and the dedicated server Password boxes. Bandwidth throttling overrides the maximum number of players specified by the dedicated server, but this does not display in the user interface. For example, if the server is set to a maximum of 16 players, but throttling will only allow 14 players, then the server will show 14/16. Clients attempting to join the dedicated server will fail to connect with no error message. Note Bandwidth throttling is a method of limiting the transfer rate of data over a network connection. Preference System The preference system is designed to streamline the process for setting the game parameters (picking maps, game types, and the size of the game). It influences matchmaking (finding a good session to join) and picking the next map and game type after a match has ended. Saving preferences. There are two kinds of preferences that each player can set: maximum size (8, 12, or 16 maximum number of players allowed in a session) and Map/Game type combo. Selecting a specific Maximum size (for example, 8 players) means that you only want to play in sessions that are limited to 8 players. Alternatively, checking 8, 12, and 16 means that you don’t care how big a match is. Each Map/Game type combination possible in Shadowrun can be individually selected, so you can indicate a preference for the game type Raid on Dig Site, while at the same time showing that you prefer not to play the game type Attrition on Dig Site. Matchmaking. The preference system is used during matchmaking to find game sessions that are using maps and game types that match your preferred maps, game types and maximum size: • Maximum size. Preferences for maximum size are 'hard' factors, meaning that if a player selects only 16 player matches, that player will only end up in matches with a player maximum player count of 16. Note that Shadowrun is bandwidth-adaptive, meaning that if no player in the session has sufficient bandwidth to successfully host 16 players, the session will limit itself to the maximum number of players that the host can support. • Map/game type. Preferences for map/game type are 'soft' factors, meaning that players are not guaranteed to always get into a game that matches their map/game type preferences. This is necessary because map/game type preference is just one of three factors that affect matchmaking (connection quality and player skill are the other two) and tradeoffs need to be made between these three factors. Picking the next map/game type. After a match has ended, Shadowrun reads every player's preferences, and then picks the next map/game type according to what the majority of players like the most. The one exception to this is that map/game types that have been played recently (within the last 3 matches) are less likely to be picked. This is necessary to avoid playing the same map/game type repeatedly even if it happens to be the most popular. Controls Only one input device can be used while playing the game: either a controller or mouse/keyboard. To specify which input device you want, go to SETTINGS, and select GAMEPAD. Using the Controls in game spin box, select either Default PC or Gamepad. F. Graphics Issues Gamma Display When the display is not in full screen mode, you cannot adjust the gamma display, even though you can change the gamma slider. No resolution exists for this issue. Screen Resolutions Resolutions that are not supported include: • 1152 x 648 pixels • 1440 x 900 pixels Using Multiple Monitors Multiple monitors are not supported in Shadowrun. Graphics Cards and Video Drivers Your graphics card or its drivers may not be recognized until you update the drivers to the latest version. Use the DirectX Diagnostic Tool to determine the version number of the video driver installed on your computer. To install the latest video driver for your graphics card 1. On the Windows taskbar, click Start, and then click Run. 2. In the Open box, type dxdiag, and then click OK. 3. Click the Display or Display 1 tab. 4. Under Device, note the Name, Manufacturer, and Chip Type and, under Drivers, note the version number of your driver on the Version line. 5. If multiple graphics cards are installed on your computer, repeat steps 3 and 4 to determine the version number of the video driver for each additional graphics card installed on your computer. 6. When you have noted the version numbers for all of the video drivers installed on your computer, click Exit. 7. With this information at hand, contact the manufacturer of your graphics card to inquire about how to obtain and install the latest driver for your graphics card. Graphics Card Drivers and Manufacturers Make sure that you have the latest drivers from the manufacturer of your graphics card. Many video issues will be resolved if you install your graphics card's latest drivers. Shadowrun may not properly detect some older graphics cards because their video drivers are not DirectX 9.0-compliant. Contact your graphics card manufacturer for updated drivers, or install the latest reference drivers for your graphics card chipset. Note that many reference drivers are not supported by the chipset manufacturer. Listed below are some common graphics card manufacturer Web sites. Graphics Card Manufacturer’s Web sites 3Dlabs—http://www.3dlabs.com/ AOPEN—http://www.aopen.com/ Asus—http://www.asus.com/ ATI—http://www.ati.com/ Canopus—http://www.canopus.com/ Creative Labs—http://www.creative.com/ Gainward—http://www.gainward.com/ Gateway 2000—http://www.gw2k.com/ Guillemot/Hercules—http://www.guillemot.com/ I/O Magic—http://www.iomagic.com/ Jaton—http://www.jaton.com/ Leadtek—http://www.leadtek.com/ Matrox—http://www.matrox.com/ Micro-Star International (MSI)—http://www.msicomputer.com/ NVIDIA—http://www.nvidia.com/ PNY—http://www.pny.com/ Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation (SiS)—http://www.sis.com/ VIA Technologies—http://www.via.com/ VideoLogic—http://www.videologic.com/ VisionTek—http://www.visiontek.com/ XGI—http://www.xgitech.com/ Supported Graphics Cards Most graphics features are only disabled based on compatibility, though character self-shadows are not rendered for Shader 2.x targets. Supported Video Card requirements: 256 MB Video RAM or higher Vertex Shader Model 2.a, 3.0, or higher Pixel Shader Model 2.b, 3.0, or higher DirectX 9.0c Compatible Supported Cards (High Detail Defaults): ATI Radeon X1650 ATI Radeon X1800 ATI Radeon X1900 ATI Radeon X1950 nVidia GeForce 7600 nVidia GeForce 7800 nVidia GeForce 7900 nVidia GeForce 7950 Supported Cards (Low Detail Defaults): ATI Radeon X1600 ATI Radeon X1300 ATI Radeon X850 (no character self-shadows) ATI Radeon X800 (no character self-shadows) nVidia GeForce 7300 nVidia GeForce 6800 nVidia GeForce 6600 Intel 965G Unsupported Graphics Cards ATI Rage Series ATI Radeon 7000 Series ATI Radeon 8000 Series ATI Radeon 9000 Series ATI Radeon X300 ATI Radeon X550 ATI Radeon X600 ATI Radeon X700 ATI Radeon X1050 nVidia GeForce 3 Series nVidia GeForce 4 Series nVidia GeForce FX Series nVidia GeForce 6100 nVidia GeForce 6150 nVidia GeForce 6200 nVidia GeForce 6500