Etherlords II SP Demo file

ETHERLORDS II.
Single Player Public Demo

US/English version

August 2003

Etherlords 2 © 2003 Nival Interactive. All rights reserved. Etherlords is a
trademark of Nival Interactive. Published in North America by Strategy First
Inc.

Contents of Readme
==================

1. Description
2. System requirements
3. Installation
4. The Story
5. Tutorial and tool tips
6. Hints about game settings
6.1 Game Options in the Options application
6.2 In-Game "Options" Which Affect Frame Rate
6.3 Windows swap-file parameters

7. Controls and hot keys
8. Known technical issues
9. Developers feedback and support
10. Legal Information

1. Description
==============

This is the Single Player Public Demo of Etherlords II. It provides a
relatively small glimpse of the single player campaign's gameplay.
Nevertheless, both Adventure and Combat experiences with all essential gameplay
features are present in the Demo. While two missions are available in the Demo,
the complete game will contain as many as 20 different missions in five
campaigns for five different races of heroes. Furthermore, the Demo does not
include any of the numerous multiplayer modes available in the complete game.
To assist the player in learning to play Etherlords II, the Combat Tutorial is
included in the Demo. We strongly recommend that you start with the tutorial
first to make the learning curve smoother.

Good luck!

2. System Requirements
======================

Minimum
-------

- OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (Windows 95/NT not supported), DirectX 8.1 or
higher
- CPU: 600 MHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
- RAM: 128 MB
- Video: 16 MB AGP video card using the Nvidia Riva TNT2, GeForce; ATI Radeon
7500; 3dfx Voodoo 4 or more recent chipset with DirectX 8.1 compatible driver

- CD/DVD-ROM speed: 8x
- Hard Drive Space: 400 MB free hard disk space (for the demo) plus space for
saved games and Windows swap-file
- Sound: DirectX compatible PCI 16-bit sound card

Recommended
-----------

- OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (Windows 95/NT not supported), DirectX 8.1 or
higher
- CPU: 1.0 GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
- RAM: 256 MB or more
- Video: 32 MB AGP video card using Nvidia GeForce 2 or ATI Radeon 8500, or
more recent chip sets
- Hard Drive Space: 400 MB of free hard disk space (for the demo)

Note: Some PCs equipped with video cards based on ATI Radeon 9700 and 9700Pro
chipset might encounter problems with EtherlordsII (see section 8 "Known
technical issues" below for more details).

3. Installation
===============

Upon downloading the Etherlords2SPDemo self-extracting archive, run it and
follow the installation wizard's prompts. By default, the demo will be
installed into C:/Program Files/Etherlords II Single Player Demo directory.
Upon installation, you can run it either from Windows Start menu, or from the
demo installation directory (file EtherlordsII_demo.exe).

The installed Demo occupies as much as about 400MB of hard drive space.

4. The Story
============

In this game, you are cast as one of the four mighty heroes of the Etherworld.

Your ultimate goal is to defend your race from an ongoing enemy invasion and
uncover the hidden causes of the mysterious events happening in the Etherworld.

Victory won't come easy - you must be prepared to fight.

In the game you must complete a number of missions, each in a new territory and
each more difficult than the last, in order to reach your goal. Each mission
has a major objective; you will be briefed on this objective at the beginning
of each mission. Generally, missions involve exploring territory, accumulating
resources, developing magic, and destroying your enemies.

5. Tutorial and tool tips
=========================

It is important for you to follow and understand the Combat tutorial actions to
understand
what your hero can do in combat and what the game has to offer.

Right-clicking your mouse on most interface elements or game objects will
display a “tooltip” describing that element or object. For heroes, tooltips
include their name and portrait, and their basic parameters: Level and Life.

To call up a spell's tooltip in combat, right-click on a spell; the tip will
include the name of the spell, the price in ether quanta, and its function or
effect.

6. Hints about game settings
============================

For most users, the default settings will work fine. However, if you
experience problems with poor graphics performance or display errors, we
have provided a variety of options for you to tailor the graphics to
best suit your preferences and hardware configuration.

There are two places to set options: the Options program's Options menu, and
the Game Options menu in the game itself.

6.1 Game options in the Options Menu
---------------------------------------------

The Options Menu shows up when you've run a separate Options application
provided with the Demo. You may run Options application either from the Start
menu or from the root directory of the game. The following options are
available:

a) Resolution
-------------
This option allows you to choose between the two video resolutions supported in
the game.
Lower screen resolution may increase performance on computers with limited
on-board video memory.

b) Full screen
--------------
This option allows you to choose between full-screen and windowed display
modes. In general,
it doesn't considerably affect the performance.

c) Stretch video
----------------
This option stretches in-game video sequences to take up the full
screen. With some video adapters, enabling this option, especially in 32-bit
color depth mode, will cause movies to play slowly or erratically.

d) Trilinear filtering
----------------------
Provides very good picture quality, but frame rate may drop by up to 30%.

e) Animated tiles
-----------------
This option allows you to switch on/off terrain tile animation (water, lava).
May lead to a
drop in frame rate when switched on.

f) Shadows
----------
This option allows you to choose between modes showing object shadows: full,
limited, or none. Switching on Full shadows may lead to a drop in frame rate.

g) Colors
---------
This parameter significantly affects performance.

16 bit - good speed and acceptable quality
32 bit - with almost all video adapters, frame rate may drop dramatically
(as much as 50%), but picture quality improves significantly.

h) Texture quality
------------------
Low - poor quality, minimum video memory usage.

Medium - medium texture quality, higher video memory usage. Suitable for video
adapters with 8 to 16 MB of RAM.

High - best possible texture quality, highest video memory usage. Recommended
for video adapters with 16 MB RAM or more
(preferably 32 MB or more).

If you have a video card with a lot of memory, this setting has
little impact on performance, since all textures will fit into video
memory. However, if this setting is too high for your system,
performance will drop drastically because textures will be swapped
in and out of video RAM.

i) System information
---------------------
This part of the Options dialog provides your computer's system information
that may help you in choosing appropriate options for the game.

6.2 In-Game "Options" Which Affect Frame Rate
---------------------------------------------
You may find the "Animated Objects" option in the General in-game Options.
This option may affect the frame rate slightly on some video-boards.

6.3 Windows swap-file parameters
--------------------------------
To ensure that the game runs smoothly, we do not recommend setting
the Windows Swapfile manually. Ideally, you should have at least 500MB
of free disk space available when launching the game.

Defragmenting your hard disk can also have a significant impact on
game performance; the game runs much better when the computer is
well-maintained.

Finally, we do not recommend installing the game on a compressed
drive. This can have a significant impact on performance.

7. Controls and hot keys
========================

Controls
--------
Adventure mode

Left/Right arrows - camera rotation
Up/Down arrows - camera zoom-in/zoom-out

Pressing and holding right mouse button - camera rotation
Mouse wheel rolling - camera zoom-in/zoom-out

Left-clicking on desired point on terrain - move a hero to that point
Left-clicking on the minimap - global map display

Pressing and holding right mouse button when a mouse cursor
passes over an object - an object's tooltip display

Combat mode (free camera mode)

Up/Down - camera pitching
Left/Right - camera rotation around combat arena's center
PgUp/PgDown - camera zoom-in/zoom-out

Hotkeys
-------
Adventure mode

“I” Inventory
“N” Notebook
“Esc” Esc Menu (Exit to Windows, Options, etc.)
F5 Quick Save
F8 Quick Load

Combat mode

“Enter” Show chat line/send chat message
“Alt-A” Attack with all creatures
“Tab” End of turn
“G” Show Graveyard
“E” Show Enchantments
“H” Show Hand
“A” Show Artifacts
“Esc” Esc Menu (Exit to Windows, Options, etc.)

Global Map / Campaign Info

“I” Campaign Description/Mission Briefing

8. Known technical issues
=========================

8.1 Background applications
---------------------------
We recommend against switching to other applications (by using
Alt+Tab) while the game is running in windowed mode. In addition, before
launching the game, we recommend closing all other applications (especially
Microsoft Outlook), to maximize system free resources.

The game doesn't support switching to other applications when running in
full-screen mode.

8.2 Known video cards issues
----------------------------
The game has problems with some accelerators based on ATI Radeon 9700 and
9700Pro chip sets from certain manufacturers while working with some video
drivers from ATI Catalyst series.

It is definitely known that Sapphire Atlantis RADEON 9700PRO 128MB doesn't
work with Catalyst video drivers higher than version 3.0. However, this video
card set does work with Catalyst 3.0.

9. Developers feedback and support
==================================

Nival Interactive and Strategy First Inc. companies do not guarantee full
operability of this game on all hardware. However, experience has shown that
most computers that meet the minimum system requirements will be capable of
running the game. We greatly appreciate all notes and bug reports.

If you have problems with the program, and the information in the manual and
Readme file are insufficient, consult the support area on the Etherlords
website at Etherlords.com.
Our website contains up-to-date information on the most common difficulties
with our products and is kept current with the most up-to-date information and

patches.

Strategy First Inc. offers technical support through the Etherlords web site,
e-mail, and via phone.

If you have a problem and need to contact technical support:
- Go to Start menu and click .
- Type in the message box and press Enter to run Microsoft DirectX
Diagnostic Tool.
- Go through all tests.
- Once all tests are complete, click on .
- Send the diagnostic text file created by dxdiag and a complete description
of your problem to EL2support@nival.com

Please be sure to include the following information:

Title of Game
Version of Game (patch)
Operating System
DirectX version
Type of CPU, and speed in MHz
Amount of RAM
Sound card type
Video Card
Video Card's driver version
CD-ROM
Mouse type and driver version (if available)

...and a detailed description of the problem you are having.

If you need to speak with someone immediately you may contact the Strategy
First Inc. Technical Support department at (514) 844-2433. Please have the
above information ready when you call. This will help us answer your question
in the shortest possible time. Customer Service at this number is available
from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern time. Note
that no hints or codes are available from this line.

Our web sites
=============
Etherlords.com
Strategyfirst.com
Nival.com

ENJOY THE GAME DEMO!

==============================================================
10. Legal Information
=====================

Copyright Information
---------------------
This software product and the manual are copyrighted and all rights are
reserved
by Strategy First Inc. and Nival Interactive and are protected by the
copyright laws that pertain to computer software. You may copy this software
for back-up and casual distribution. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you may not

modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works, decompile, disassemble, or
otherwise reverse engineer or derive source code from all or any portion of the

software or anything incorporated therein, permit, or encourage any third party

to do so.

Etherlords is a registered trademark of Nival Interactive. Pentium,
Microsoft Windows, Athlon, 3dfx Voodoo, Matrox, nVidia, Radeon, SoundBlaster
are
trademarks of their respective owners.

Limitations of Warranty
-----------------------
Nival Interactive and Strategy First Inc. expressly disclaims any
warranty for the Demo Program and Readme file. The program and Readme file are

provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. The
entire risk arising out of use or performance of the Program and Readme file
remains with the User.

Limitations of Liability
------------------------
Neither Nival Interactive nor Strategy First Inc., or its parent,
subsidiaries or affiliates shall be liable in any way for loss or damage of any

kind resulting from the use of the program.