Electron Soccer/W32 Early Preview Version 2

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Original game by EXeLENZ / FaerieFire

Win32 porting by Yoletir / FaerieFire







Finally... after months of waiting, it's ready. A lot of thanks to

EXeLENZ for his kicking. Anyway, it's just an early alpha, so a lot of

things remain to be done.





What do you need to run Electron Soccer:

----------------------------------------



The DOS version needs:

 * 4 megs of memory

 * A video card supporting 320x200x16bpp video mode. (You are likely to

   need UniVBE if you have an older video card).

 * A sound card supported by MIDAS (any SB or GUS will do just fine).



The Win32 version needs:

 * Windows 95, 98 or NT.

 * Enough megs of memory to have it running. :-)

 * DirectX 3. (Maybe DirectX 2 will work, too.)

 * A DirectX certified video card supporting 320x200x16 or 640x480x16.

   2 megs of video memory are highly desirable.

 * A DirectX certified sound card (if you want to hear any sound).





Both DOS and Win32 versions of the game compile from the same source

code, and the main source file doesn't have a single #ifdef _WIN32. :-)

DirectDraw support looks stable, and it will probably work fine in all

configurations, though a lot of testing is to be done.





Known problems and things to be done:

-------------------------------------



 * The intro and logo graphics should be repainted. It's no longer

   version 1.0. :-)

 * A lot of testing is needed, under different hardware configurations

   and operating systems.

 * I wonder if I could do something to reduce the sound latency under

   Windows NT. It works just fine under Windows 95, but the latency

   under NT is _too_ noticeable...

 * The game will benefit from a large number of small improvements.

   Nevertheless I doubt I will ever start implementing these - it's much

   more interesting to write an entirely new game. :-)





Command line switches supported by the DOS version:

---------------------------------------------------



 * -help       - displays command line help

 * -nosound    - disables all sound effects and music

 * -noplasma   - disables background plasma

 * -setup      - runs MIDAS configuration





What's new in Release Candidate 2

---------------------------------

[*] Added a 1.5 second delay after the "GOAL!".	

[-] When running in fullscreen mode, primary and back surfaces are cleared

    at startup. That prevents flicker and screen corruption.

[-] Once again seemingly fixed the annoying plasma flicker bug.

[-] When unmixing the .NFO files, the destination file was not closed

    after completion, and the wrong resource handle was unloaded. This

    probably fixes the resource zero-out bug reported by EXeLENZ.

[-] It was impossible to interrupt the very beginning of the intro by

    a keypress.

[-] ElSocc window can no longer be minimized or resized.

[-] Fixed control sizing problems in ElSetup in small fonts mode.



What's new in Release Candidate 1

---------------------------------



[*] New graphics from EXeLENZ. (And some _major_ bugfixes to the

    FaerieFire Image Converter.)

[*] Updated documentation.

[-] The Win32 version now refuses to run in a windowed 8bpp or 24bpp mode,

    instead of hanging silently.



What's new in Early Preview 2

-----------------------------



[+] External setup program for the Win32 version

[+] Correct timing (using Zen Timer from MGL). The speed of the game no

    longer depends on window size. However, many things (intro,

    rotating score balls and background plasma among them) are not yet

    connected to the timer.

[*] Improved wall bouncing algorithm.

[-] Fixed initial ball position.

[-] Fixed problems with moving the mouse across the inactive window of

    ElSocc/W32.

[-] Fixed the "Time over" message not disappearing in -noplasma mode.

    (That was THE known bug of Early Preview 1).

[-] Other minor fixes and code cleanup.



/Yoletir

 24.05.99 00:51