
				Valkin II Demo 1

			http://members.xoom.com/valkin2


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Table of Contents

  Legal
  Introduction
  Requirements
  Installation
  Execution
  Playing
  Frequently asked questions
  Credits
  Contact
  Closing


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Legal

Copyright (C) 1999,2000 Vincent Penquerc'h and Annie Testes
Use it at your own risk.

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Introduction

Valkin II is a fantasy Role Playing Game, taking place in its own world.
Technically, this game uses an isometric 3D engine featuring realtime
lighting in hicolor/truecolor SVGA, powerful scripting, and contextual
sound effects.
For the moment, only an early engine demo is available.


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Requirements

Technically, Valkin II can work with any 386 or higher. It wasn't tested with
such old computers though, and I guess anything less than a Pentium will be
far too slow to be playable.
The minumum memory requirements are around 16 MB. I don't know exactly
how much it will require, but you should be OK with this free. In Linux,
the resident set size when in the large demo map is a bit more than 10 MB.
Valkin II is designed to make use of SVGA. It is not picky about which
color depth to use though, and any hicolor or truecolor 640x480 mode will
do. If no such mode is available, Valkin II will use another one (you will
be prompted for which one to use), but this probably won't be as good as
it would be with the preferred mode, in particular if the resolution is
lower (text will be unreadable), or if the color depth is 8 bit (images
will be low quality and the overall speed will be far lower).
Soundcards are also supported, but not required. All SB compatible cards
should work, as well as some others. There are not many sound effects in this
first demo though.
A mouse is necessary for the demo, since moving is not handled by keyboard.


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Installation

The demo is distributed in a ZIP archive. Installation is done by simply
unzipping this archive, making sure to preserve directories. This means that
if you use PKUnzip, the -d switch has to be used, as in:
pkunzip -d v2demo1.zip
This will create a directory named v2demo1 in the current directory, where
the demo files will be stored.
The demo is now installed and ready to be played.

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Execution

Once the demo is installed, go to the installation directory (named v2demo1),
and type v2demo1. The demo should start.
Available command line parameters are:

-h              Show help
-q              Quiet (disable sound)
-c n            Set color depth to n (15, 16, 24, 32)
-v              Show version


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Playing

After starting a new game, the opening cut scene will be played. Once it is
finished, the mouse cursor will appear, allowing you to take control of the
character. This cursor is your main way of interaction with Valkin II.
You can move your character by clicking on the map, and perform actions by
clicking on the buttons on the lower left part of the screen. Some objects
in the map are usable. They will highlight themselves when the mouse passes
over them, and the cursor will change to a key. Click on these objects to use
them. Likewise, it is possible to talk to characters by clicking on them (the
mouse cursor changes to a balloon).

These are the available key commands for the demo:

Esc             Exits current menu, or cut scene
F10             Main menu
I               Inventory (or right click on the character slot)
S               Stop
Alt X           Exit
Space           Pause/resume
F12             Toggle framerate counter
Ctrl R          Refresh the entire screen

And the mouse commands:

Double clicking on the character slot centers the view on the character
Clicking on a map item uses it
Clicking on the map makes the character go there


In the inventory dialog, you can equip, take or drop items. The bottom list
shows which items are on the ground, the right list shows which items you have
in your inventory. Equipped items are shown in the slots by the body. Left
click on an item to move it, and left click again where you want to put it.
Right click on an item to look at it (you must have picked it up before).
The character will automatically pick up items when stepping on them.
Scrolling is achieved either by moving the mouse to the border of the screen
or by clicking on the map borders.

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Frequently Asked Questions

These are not really frequently asked questions, as this is the first release
of Valkin II, but rather questions that are likely to be asked. This list will
change with time to reflect feedback people give me.

Q: The game crashes
A: It would help me a lot to find the cause of this crash if you would send
   me the contents of the screen after the crash. All these arcane numbers
   show where the game crashed, and from these I should be able to have a
   clearer idea of why it did so.

Q: Options do not work
A: All available options are not implemented. The screen updating method is
   set to double buffering, and page flipping is not functional, and will fail
   at game startup, so the game will always use double buffering. The fog of
   war method was disabled as well. Gouraud was removed from the code, as it
   was far too slow. Sound categories are not in, nor music. Other options
   should work.

Q: How do I equip my torch ?
A: Press I, or right click on the character slot, at the top left corner of
   the screen to get to the inventory screen. There, the torch is in your
   carried items list (at the right). Click on it, then click on the body
   shape to equip it. To unequip it, click on it again and click on the
   carried items list.

Q: Why are there only two maps ?
A: This demo is not meant to be a full game by itself. There is no scenario
   and the game part is skimpy at best. Wait until the second demo, and you
   will see a more fleshed out world and scenario.

Q: Why is there only one player character ?
A: It is yet undecided whether Valkin II will allow the player to control a
   single player or a party. Valkin II supports a full party, and I usually
   run it with three characters, so it is very possible that the final version
   will feature a party.

Q: Why is the load/save feature disabled
A: This is a tricky part of a game to code, especially when the number of
   variables in the game is important. This code was only tested with a limited
   number of different configurations, and as such is not deemed stable enough
   to be included in this demo.

Q: The action buttons do not work
A: Indeed, several of them are not functional yet. It may be because the
   feature is not implemented, or just because it is not integrated yet.
   Again, this demo is not a game yet, it is just an engine under heavy
   development.

Q: This is slow!
A: The engine is meant to be general, and can handle a bunch of cool stuff,
   like dynamic lighting, alpha channel, animations, hicolor/truecolor output,
   arbitrarily connected maps, complex pathfinding, and more. All these do not
   come free in terms of speed. More optimizations will be done before the
   final game is released, of course, but more features are likely to be added
   too, so I doubt the final game will be much quicker.

Q: There are two mice in high resolution mode!
A: This is a known problem. Since those modes are only used when a 640x480
   mode can't be found, this should happen really seldom, and I have not yet
   decided which solution I will use.

Q: How can I help you make this game even better ?
A: First, I'd like to know how the game behaves on other systems. Sending me
   the sysinfo.txt file the game generates is the best way for me to know that.
   It contains your computer's hardware configuration, as well as in-game
   framerate timings. Second, tell me what you like and dislike. I can't say
   whether I will include or remove something if people suggest it, but it
   sure helps us see the game from other perspectives.


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Credits

Valkin II was designed and made by Vincent Penquerc'h and Annie Testes.
We would like to thank the following persons in particular:
Shawn Hargreaves: Allegro
Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, Roberto Ierusalimschy, Waldemar Celes: Lua
Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar: UPX
Linus Torvalds: Linux


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Contact

Your comments are welcome. Feel free to write us at:
valkin2 at xoommail.com
Replace the at with a @ (this is to fool spambots).
When released, next demo will be available from:
http://members.xoom.com/valkin2


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Closing

Thank you for playing Valkin II demo 1 ! We look forward to your feedback.
Enjoy!



