------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PARSEC SELF-RUNNING DEMO (build 0182) February 29, 2000. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:parsec@parsec.org http://www.parsec.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. INTRODUCTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is the Parsec self-running demo. It shows the current state of Parsec, a 3D space-combat game currently in development. In this demo you can view a movie of in-game action rendered with the Parsec game engine, and you can also get a first glimpse of Parsec's look and feel. This is not a demo of an upcoming commercial product, Parsec will be a free Internet game for non-commercial purposes. Please see http://www.parsec.org for more details. This release is mostly intended to serve a testing purpose, and can be considered to be of alpha quality (i.e. not finished, optimized, or fully debugged yet). Problems and limitations that may be evident will be addressed during the further development of the game. Please keep this in mind when watching the demo and when submitting bug reports or comments. You should expect to see several minor updates to this demo release that fix bugs or other issues, over the next few weeks. Therefore it is recommended that you frequently check our webpage at http://www.parsec.org for updates. These updates will most likely not require full downloads, but be released in the form of small patches. We will create a public mailing list for announcements and general discussion on the topic of Parsec in the near future. If you think that you have discovered a bug and can reproduce it, we would be glad to receive your bug report. However, please don't send your reports via e-mail. Instead, to report a bug go to http://www.parsec.org/bugs/ Bug reports that we receive via e-mail will most likely not be processed. Parsec generates a log file called "parsec.log", which should be included in any bug reports. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Please note that the RESTRICTION TO NOT ALLOW DISTRIBUTION ON MAGAZINE COVER CD-ROM'S OR OTHER NON-ELECTRONIC MEDIA will be lifted in a couple of weeks after all major reported bugs have been fixed. Thank you for your patience. -- The Parsec demo program, artwork, music, sound effects, and associated documentation (the "software") are the copyrighted work of Markus Hadwiger, Andreas Varga, Clemens Beer, Michael Woegerbauer, Alex Mastny, Stefan Poiss, and Karin Baier. It is protected by copyright law and international treaty provisions. You are authorized to make and use copies of this software as long as these copies are only distributed electronically. Physical media (e.g. CD-ROM's, floppies, etc) redistribution of this software is prohibited. So long as this document accompanies each copy you make of this software, and as long as you fully comply at all times with this agreement, the authors grant you the non-exclusive and limited right to copy this software and to distribute such copies of this software free of charge for non-commercial purposes. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED TO YOU "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE APPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. YOU ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE ACCURACY AND THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE AND ALL OTHER RISK ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION. THE AFOREMENTIONED AUTHORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF THEY HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS 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 THE AUTHORS HAVE 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. This software contains the "amp MPEG audio decoder version 0.7.6", Copyright (c) Tomislav Uzelac 1996, 1997. The Windows version of this software uses the QMDX.DLL library by QSound Labs, Inc. The included QMDX.DLL may only be used for running the Parsec demo and not for any other purpose, as specified by the QMDX End-User License Agreement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please note that the current system requirements are higher than what will be required for the full game, since there are a lot of optimizations missing in this release. This is especially true for the OpenGL rendering subsystem, as well as the amount of RAM required. As a general rule of thumb, the OpenGL rendering subsystem uses considerably more system resources than the Glide (3dfx) renderer. That is, if you want to use the OpenGL renderer we recommend at least 128MB of RAM and a third-generation graphics accelerator, combined with a CPU of at least 300MHz. PC/Win32 (95/98/NT/2K) ---------------------- CPU: minimum: Pentium 200MHz recommended: Pentium II 300MHz or higher Memory: minimum: 64MB for Glide/3dfx, 128MB for OpenGL recommended: 128MB or more Harddisk space: About 50MB disk space are required. Please note that the demo will use about 15MB more disk space after you have started it for the first time, compared to immediately after installation. Graphics card: * 3dfx Voodoo Graphics hardware accelerator (recommended Voodoo 2 or 3), or * OpenGL compatible hardware accelerator (recommended Matrox G400, NVIDIA TNT family, NVIDIA GeForce) Additional requirements: DirectX 3 or higher (will be used for input only). Optionally, a DirectInput-compatible joystick is supported. PC/Linux (x86) -------------- CPU: minimum: Pentium 200MHz recommended: Pentium II 300MHz or higher Memory: minimum: 64MB recommended: 128MB or more Harddisk space: About 50MB disk space are required. Please note that the demo will use about 15MB more disk space after you have started it for the first time, compared to immediately after installation. Graphics card: * 3dfx Voodoo Graphics hardware accelerator (recommended Voodoo 2 or 3). * Please note that OpenGL support under Linux (GLX) will be available in the near future. However, this release requires a Voodoo Graphics accelerator with Glide 2.x installed. Additional requirements: Linux Kernel 2.2, glibc 2.1, X or svgalib Mac (MacOS 8.5 or later) ------------------------ CPU: minimum: PowerPC 604e 200MHz recommended: PowerPC G3 350MHz Memory: minimum: 64MB for Glide/3dfx, 128MB for OpenGL recommended: 128MB or more Harddisk space: About 50MB disk space are required. Please note that the demo will use about 15MB more disk space after you have started it for the first time, compared to immediately after installation. Graphics card: * 3dfx Voodoo Graphics hardware accelerator (recommended Voodoo 2 or 3), or * OpenGL compatible hardware accelerator with at least 8MB of VRAM (e.g. ATI Rage128) Additional requirements: Apple GameSprockets Optionally, a InputSprocket-compatible joystick is recommended. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. THE LAUNCHER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Win32 and MacOS versions feature a launcher application that allows you to select the video subsystem, resolution, color depth, and other options prior to starting the actual Parsec demo. On Win32, the launcher is a separate executable. Therefore, you should start LAUNCHER.EXE instead of PARSEC.EXE. On MacOS, the launcher will start automatically the first time you start Parsec. On Linux, you have to use command line options if you wish to override the default settings (the most important of which will be saved on program exit and restored automatically on restart). See section 9 for a description of the most important command line options. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. THE MENU ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ By selecting "play demo" in Parsec's main menu the cursor will enter the demo list window. Select a demo to play by navigating using the cursor keys and to start playback of the highlighted demo. Demo playback can always be stopped with . Alternatively, you can also use the mouse to select a demo from the list. The most important demo is called "START PARSEC DEMO", which is a 11:40 movie showing lots of network game action and the capabilities of the engine. It also features great background music. A special demo called "FREE FLIGHT MODE" is actually not a real demo, but can be used to enter the game. This mode is very similar to the actual game mode, although there are no opponents, since the networking code is disabled in this release. Still, you can steer your ship and fly around, to get a feeling for the controls. The key brings up the online help window, listing the most important (default) keys for spacecraft navigation. You can select one of six spacecraft in Parsec's spacecraft viewer (config/spacecraft) by using the left/right arrow keys and pressing . You can also use the mouse by clicking on the little arrows. Select a ship by clicking on it. By pressing the up/down arrow keys you can switch from the spacecraft viewer to the power-up viewer, where you can take a look at most of Parsec's power-ups with short descriptions. You can use the options menu (config/options) to configure your display resolution and color depth, rendering subsystem (OpenGL/Glide), and various detail settings. Here you can also toggle sound and joystick support on and off. You can use the mouse and/or the arrow keys and to navigate and select items in the options menu. Please note that all networking options are disabled in this demo. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. THE CONSOLE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Parsec's command console can be opened at any time by pressing the tilde (~) key. The console is a transparent window that can be used to enter console commands and display various information. Console input is enabled if the console is visible and the cursor is blinking. If the cursor is not blinking it can be enabled by pressing the caps lock key. Parsec's command console features tab completion which is able to complete a partially supplied command. If multiple commands start with the entered string a list of valid commands will be displayed. Please note that the console exposes many features of Parsec's game engine, even low-level functionality that can cause unexpected behavior if not used properly. If you have altered the settings beyond repair, simply exit, delete the PARSECRC.CON file and restart Parsec. Use at your own risk! Some interesting things to try: build listcommands listintcommands cockpit.scale ++1 cockpit.scale --1 con.winx con.winy con.width con.height panelback paneltext listbindings listgamefunckeys bind summon class firebird summon class hurricane aux_enable_trilinear_filtering 1 aux_enable_elite_radar 1 aux_enable_free_camera 1 aux_draw_wireframe 1 aux_draw_normals 1 We will document all major console commands in a future release. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. TIMEDEMO ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Use "timedemo 1" in the console to enable the benchmarking function for demo playback. After demo playback has completed the console will contain the obtained performance statistics. Return to normal demo playback mode with "timedemo 0". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. PARSECRC.CON ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Parsec saves configuration information into a file called "parsecrc.con" on program exit. If you want to start with the default settings, simply delete this file. If this file cannot be created, is write protected, etc. the current settings will not be saved on exit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. COMMAND LINE OPTIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some important command line options are: --vidmode : override startup vidmode. syntax like "640x480x32". --windowed : start in windowed mode. --fullscreen : start in fullscreen mode. --nojoystick : disable joystick code. --nosound : disable sound code. --log : enable log window --vidsys : select video subsystem. use like --vidsys