Got any questions or problems to do with Chickens? Then let Doctor l'Oeuf solve all your problems.



GAMEPLAY:

Q: The pace of the gameplay is too slow.
A: The game can be speeded up and slowed down. Use the mousewheel or the up and down arrows or the buttons in the in-game user-interface to change the speed.

Q: The gameplay freezes for a couple of seconds.
A: This is beacuse the machine you are trying to run Chickens on is so slow that it cannot keep up with the movement. We recommend a Pentium or above processor for the DOS/Windows ports.

Q: The taps stop releasing chickens or ducks' eggs.
A: The number of sprites in circulation has an upper limit (known as the 'sprite pool'). When this limit is close to being reached, the taps dry up and stop releasing eggs until the number of sprites has decreased below a certain ammount. Level-designers should bear this in mind when designing levels and pick an approprate value for the 'sprite pool' level-paramater (although if it's too large, the level may not be playable on machines with a limited ammount of RAM).

Q: A fowl seems to be stuck in a lay-egg square when it should have layed an egg.
A: Again, this is because the number of sprites in circulation has reached an upper limit (sprite pool). Once the number of sprites in circulation has decreased, the fowl will then lay the egg and exit the lay-egg square.

Q: Object Controlled Interchanges (OCIs) and Nearby-Object controlled interchanges with object-controlled-control-pipes (NOCI-OCCPs) sometimes flash but do not change state.
A: This can sometimes be caused by two objects occupying the exact same place, or an object leaving a control-pipe when another enters. With OCIs, the two objects get separated, but with NOCI-OCCPs, the interchange changes state twice very rapidly.



CONSTRUCTION-SET (LEVEL EDITOR):

Q: I am trying to place an obstacle in a pipe and it cannot be placed.
A: Currently placing obstacles in pipes is only supported if the pipe is an ordinary pipe, it is straight, and is the topmost pipe in the square's stack of pipes.

Q: I am trying to place a duck or an arrow in a pipe, but it will not be placed in the pipe.
A: Ducks and arrows must be facing one of the two directions the pipe leads. Fortunately, they can easily be rotated using the mousewheel or by using the 'rotate' buttons.

Q: I cannot use the keypad to lay pipes when using the 'fast pipe-lay mode'.
A: Firstly, the 'fast pipe-lay mode' only works if you have just layed a pipe or modified an existing pipe. It does not work if you have just selected another square and not modified it. Secondly, the newly-layed pipe must either be an ordinary pipe (which can bend) or a pipe that has an exit in the direction you wish to build the new pipe in, and thirdly, it must be possible to lay a pipe from the current square to a free exit in the other square. Note that on laptops, 'Num-Lock' must be enabled for this to work.



GENERAL:

Q: What platforms is Chickens available for?
A: To find out which platforms Chickens is available for, check the website at http://software.wackonet.net/chickens/

Q: My mouse does not have a second (right) or third (middle) or fourth button. What should I do?
A: To emulate the second (right) mouse-button, press the first (left or only) mouse-button while holding down 'SHIFT'. To emulate the third (middle) mouse-button, press the first (left or only) mouse-button while holding down 'CTRL'. To emulate the fourth mouse-button, press the first (left or only) mouse-button while holding down 'SHIFT+CTRL'. During the game, an alternative to pressing the third (middle) mouse-button to restore the speed to its slowest value is to press the 'Z' key. Likewise, an alternative to the fourth button to increase the speed to the maximum is to press the 'X' key.

Q: My mouse does not have a mousewheel. What should I do?
A: During the game, in order to change the speed at which the level is running, press the 'DOWN ARROW' to increase the speed and the 'UP ARROW' to decrease the speed. To reverse the direction of the arrow-keys, set the INI setting 'invertmousewheelspeedchangedir' to 1. Hold down 'SHIFT' to quarduple the rate of change of the speed. In the level-editor, rotating the selected tile or obstacle can be accomplished using the 'PGUP'/'PGDN' keys (in the INI file, the setting 'invertmousewheelrotatedir' reverses the rotation direction).

Q: In windowed mode, if I move the mouse off the edge of the window, no scrolling occurs.
A: In windowed mode, there are currently a few outstanding issues with scrolling levels that are larger than the screen. The workaround is to try and position the mousecursor as close to the edge as you can, and then slowly move the mousecursor off the window. Either that or just run the game in full-screen mode. Or altertnatively, when playing the game, pressing the keys on the numeric keypad scrolls the screen horizontally, vertically or diagonally in the direction of the number-key relative to the position of the '5' key. Note that on laptops, 'Num-Lock' must be enabled for scrolling with the keyboard to work.

Q: The game sometimes freezes for no apparent reason.
A: Again, this is due to some outstanding issues in the mouse-code. This appears to occur on multi-processor machines more often than it does on single-processor machines. To solve this, try enabling (setting the value to '1') combinations of the following settings in the INI file: 'forcedisableacquire' and 'forcedisablemousescare'. Note that with these two enabled, you might see more graphical glitches occuring near the mouse-cursor. To solve these, please see the question below. Another thing that can be tried is to disable (set the value to '0') 'pageflip' and enable 'doublebuffer'. Also see if this question is listed in the 'Platform Specific' section for your platform for further advice.

Q: Sometimes, graphical glitches appear where the mouse-cursor is positioned, or it leaves behind a trail of glitches.
A: There are still some outstanding issues with the mouse-code. There are two possible ways to workaround this. Either play the game using the double-buffered screen-update method (to do this, change the INI-file setting 'doublebuffer' to 1), or play the game with the hardware mouse-cursor enabled (to do this, change the INI-file setting 'attempttousehardwarecursor' to 1). Sometimes, it might be necessary to do both.

Q: The mousecursor is invisible.
A: There are some issues with the hardware mouse-cursor. To solve this, turn it off. To do so, set the 'attempttousehardwarecursor' seting in the INI file to be equal to '0'.

Q: In some dialogs, the text becomes invisible.
A: Try disabling (setting the value to '0') 'pageflip' and enabling 'doublebuffer' in the INI file and see if that solves the problem.

Q: The aspect-ratio of the displayed image is stretched on a widescreen monitor.
A: Try tinkering with your operating-system's display-settings. If you still can't get an image at the correct aspect-ratio, try running the game in windowed mode.

Q: There are not enough levels.
A: Well make some then! That's what the construction-set (level editor) is for.

Q: After really getting into the game, I now have an urge to be nasty to ducks in real life. What should I do now.
A: Seek professional help ... now!

Q: Chickens runs slowly on my machine. The framerate is low and/or the animation is choppy. What can I do?
A: Try a combination of any of the following
+ Disable the shadow-translucency by using solid shadows. Set the INI setting 'levelbackgroundshadowsolid' to 1.
+ Disable the shadows altogether. Set the INI setting 'levelbackgroundshadowdraw' to 0.
+ Disable backgrounds altogether. Set the INI setting 'levelbackgrounddraw' to 0.
+ In windowed mode, do not make use of the 'windowedmodesizemultiplier' setting (set it to 1).
+ Disable sound-effects by setting the INI setting 'enablesoundeffects' to 0.
+ Disable music by setting the INI setting 'enablemusic' to 0.
+ Try tweaking the Allegro sound-engine using the INI settings in the '[sound]' section.
You can see what the current framerate is by holding down TAB to see the FPS-counter.


PLATFORM SPECIFIC:

GENERAL:

Q: What are the differences between platforms.
A: Currently, the only differences are just some little quirks. There's nothing that affects gameplay.

Q: Can I play a level created with the level-editor on a different platform?
A: Yes.


WINDOWS:

Q: Which machines are supported?
A: A PC with a Pentium or above is required.

Q: Which versions of Windows are supported?
A: Windows 95 and above (Although some Windows 95 users may need to install a few extra things).

Q: The game under windows sometimes freezes for no apparent reason.
A: Try running the game in windowed mode and setting the windowed graphics driver to GDIB. To do this, set the 'gfx_cardw' setting in the INI file to be equal to 'GDIB'.

Q: Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, the game crashes a lot but runs fine under Windows XP and below.
A: Make sure the 'vistacompatibilityworkarounds' INI setting is enabled (it should be dy default).


DOS:

Q: Which machines are supported?
A: A PC with an i486 or above. Also, an SVGA compatible graphics-card is required.

Q: The mouse does not work.
Q: Chickens exits with a "Could not setup the mouse." message.
A: This is because you are running in 'pure DOS mode' without a mouse-driver. A mouse-driver must be loaded before the game can begin. Alternatively, run the game from Windows, but then, I would recommend that you use the Windows version of Chickens instead if your version of Windows is Windows 95 or above.

Q: The sound does not work.
A: Either you are running in 'pure DOS mode' without a sound-driver, or sound for a particular sound-card is not supported (this is more likely to be the case with soundcards manufactured at least 3 years after the introduction of Windows 95, in which case you'd be advised to run the version of Chickens for a different platform).

Q: The colours are sometimes messed up.
A: Try setting the 'gfx_card' setting to VBE1 to see if that solves the problem.


LINUX:

Q: Which machines are supported?
A: Theoretically, any Linux-machine that uses the same processor architecture that the version of Chickens was compiled for.

Q: When I am playing a large level and I try and scroll off the edge of the screen, the screen cannot be scrolled.
A: This is a limitation of the hardware mouse-cursor in Linux. To solve this, turn it off. To do so, set the 'attempttousehardwarecursor' seting in the INI file to be equal to '0'. Alternatively, the screen can be scrolled in the game by using the arrow-keys.

