Network Fighter Duel 1.1.01 December 7,1996 Net Duel Demo (c)1996, Philips Media Games, Inc. Written by SPGS Software in association with Philips Media, Inc. Portions (c) 1993-1996 SciTech Software Portions (c) 1996 Miles Design Portions (c) 1996 HMI, Inc. This file contains any changes and last minute corrections to the Net Duel manual addendum. For a list of changes since release version, see the file, Changes.txt. ******************************************************************************* THIS UPDATE VERSION OF NET DUEL IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ANY EARLIER VERSION OF NET DUEL AND WILL NOT COMMUNICATE WITH IT. Please scan through this entire text file and the changes.txt file to review important new features and suggestions for best play over the Internet. ******************************************************************************* Net Duel is a free add-on for owners of Philips Media's Fighter Duel for the PC. This demo version of Net Duel, is limited to two players and cannot communicate with the full retail Fighter Duel SE Net Duel. You may fly the F4U Corsair or the A6M5 Zero. If you select any other allied aircraft, you will fly the Corsair. If you select any other Axis aircraft, you will fly the Zero. For the latest updates to Fighter Duel and Net Duel, check out the Philips Media website. http://www.philipsmedia.com/games Other cool Fighter Duel websites: Fighter Duel tournament information and ranking at The STUPID homepage. http://he.net/~stupid/ General FD info at RCPilot's Hanger. http://members.aol.com/rcpilots/rcpilots.html Net Duel(ND) is an extension to our product, Fighter Duel. It functions only in English. It allows up to 9 players to fly cooperatively or antagonistically over a local area network (LAN). Net Duel also has a new feature called Net View. Net View allows you to set any machine on the ND net to lock to any other machine currently flying and display what it is doing. It can show exterior views and or the wing and over the shoulder views from that aircraft. For example, with Net Duel's Net View ability, you could use 8 computers, have 2 pilots battling it out with their main control computers and each one could have 3 extra computers displaying their wing or external views. WHY NET DUEL******************************************************************* In December 1995, Philips Media released Fighter Duel for the PC. It has done very well and we are hard at work on Fighter Duel 2. As part of the Duel2 research and development we decided to add networking to Duel1. This would follow our philosophy of designing multi-player in from the ground up and allow us to work out the kinks of networking early in the design phase. Well, it soon became evident that it was a lot of fun and we wanted to share it with our loyal customers. Philips Media, who is all one could ask for in a publisher, agreed to release it as a free add-on for Duel1 customers. The next CD pressing of Fighter Duel will also have Net Duel as part of the complete package. Developing flying skill and competition is what Fighter Duel is all about. Net Duel allows you to try out your skills on up to 8 other real live pilots and see who is the best. Have fun, just wait till you see Fighter Duel 2. REQUIREMENTS******************************************************************* Installation and configuration of Fighter Duel version 1.092 or higher. Fighter Duel version 1.092 has 3 new aircraft and many new features. Be sure to read the README.TXT file in the Fighter Duel 1.092 archive. If you don't have 1.092 or greater, please see the Philips Media Web site at www.philipsmedia.com/games In case you don't own Fighter Duel, but this looks like fun, its available from most computer retailers or you can order it directly from StarPak at 1-800-883-3767. The CPU and memory requirements are the same as that for Fighter Duel with the exception that we recommend a Pentium machine for Net Duel, especially as the Host machine. Net Duel requires that you have the Fighter Duel CD for only the Host during flight. On any particular machine, to configure things such as joysticks and controller options, regular Fighter Duel must be run, using the CD. This does mean that you may play with up to 9 machines on a local network with just one copy of Fighter Duel. We would hope that you and your 8 cohorts would like to have their own copy of Fighter Duel :). This DOES NOT mean that it is ok to install Fighter Duel on any machines that are not local to you. This means on your local network within the same building. IPX networking is available from DOS if for example you have a Novell network setup. Windows 95 also provides IPX networking when running in a Windows 95 DOS Prompt Box. For information on playing Net Duel over the Internet, see the section Kali and Kahn with Net Duel. If ND reports no network found or you see interruption during flight, please see the Troubleshooting section, below. ND attempts to load all possible aircraft visual data at startup to make gameplay as smooth as possible when people enter in and out and change aircraft. This is not possible on an 8 meg machine. On an 8 meg machine, ND will load as many aircraft as possible and load new aircraft visual data as needed to display new aircraft. If memory runs very low, the bogeys will be displayed as the same aircraft as you fly. They will still perform as the aircraft they actually are. However, the label key, L, will show their aircraft as the same type as yours. Their callsign will show correctly. For best results, we recommend 12 or more megs of ram for best performance. Running Net Duel in a Win95 box will result in slower performance as well as requiring more RAM to prevent virtualization. Virtualization is where Win95 will give Net Duel the RAM it need by putting parts of Windows temporarily on the hard disk. This as you might expect will cause a delay as the hard disk is accessed. This may happen during the game as objects come into view that the memory for is currently swapped onto the hard disk. Usually on 24 meg and up systems, there is enough ram to allow Net Duel to run under Win95 with no virtualization. One of our test systems has 8 megs of RAM and we run ND in a Win 95 DOS box and although it virtualizes now and then, it works. INSTALLATION******************************************************************* This update works on minimal and full installations. The contents of this update should be placed into the FDUEL directory on your hard disk. Unzip it into the FDUEL directory installed by Fighter Duel. EXAMPLE: UNZIP NDUEL166.ZIP (enter) When asked, use the "a" option to allow it to overwrite files. All flight control, graphic settings, and sound must be configured by the regular Fighter Duel interface for Net Duel. Fighter Duel and Net Duel can coexist in the Fighter Duel FDUEL directory and not affect each other. USING NET DUEL***************************************************************** As Net Duel is a new mode of Fighter Duel. Type FD with a NET parameter to start Net Duel. EXAMPLE: FD NET (enter) Alternatively we have provided a batch file named ND.BAT that will run FD with the appropriate command line parameter. Therefore you can just ND (enter) to run Fighter Duel Net Duel. If you haven't installed the version 2 or higher update for Fighter Duel, version 1.092 or higher, you'll get normal Fighter Duel and not Net Duel when you use the ND.BAT file. Important! Before beginning Net Duel, be sure all your hardware is installed properly and that you have the appropriate network drivers installed on each computer. Net Duel supports Novell NetWare versions 3.11, 3.12 and 4.0 using IPX compliant network drivers. You may also use the IPX networking that comes with Windows 95 if you run Net Duel in a Windows 95 MS-DOS prompt box. Please see the README.TXT file for notes on using Fighter Duel with Windows 95. Since each network is designed and structured differently, routers, bridges and different hubs may not allow you to connect or may affect game play. Net Duel is designed for use on a local area network or LAN. Your results on flying Net Duel over Kali or Kahn will vary depending on your ISP connections. If you have a Pentium system, Kahn offers some slick data compression that improves Net Duel play over the Internet. Net Duel supports one game at a time. A Duel consists of a Host who sets up the Duel and clients that join in. KEYBOARD COMMANDS IN NET DUEL & NOT IN FIGHTER DUEL Keys are not shifted unless indicated. ********* NEW FOR THIS UPDATE ******************* R Display control readings and limit settings. ************************************************** Y Display keyboard command list while flying. L Label aircraft. When you press the L key, a label will appear below visible aircraft with the first 10 characters of the persons callsign and a short version of the aircraft name. The labeling will only work if the aircraft is within 20,000 feet. Beyond that, the word Bogey will appear. P Puts up the chatter screen that shows the last 30 messages as well as callsigns of who's in the game and the time since you last got data from them. See below. / Starts a message that is broadcast on the global radio frequency that all can hear. Hit ENTER when finished to send the message and leave typing mode. This is the only kind in non net FD. ' Starts a message that only your allies can hear. Hit ENTER when finished to send the message and leave typing mode. HOME NetViews you to the first available plane. See below. NET DUEL STARTUP SCREEN: Enter a callsign in the space provided. This name will identify you to others in the Duel. By default, the one you use for two player Fighter Duel is loaded. Your callsign may be up to 20 characters. OPTIONS********************************************************************** Game Site: Net Duel Game Sites are actually IPX socket numbers. The combo gadget allows you to select 9 default Game Site Arenas or to enter one yourself via the User Defined entry. The easiest thing to do is to agree with your buds to use one like Arena 5. Everyone who would like to fly together must use the same Arena. If you'd like to run two different games of Net Duel on the same network, each game must have an unique Arena number. Valid user defined numbers numbers are 1 - 65535. This is very critical when trying to fly Net Duel over the Internet via the Kali or Kahn servers. Having a unique Arena or number will also keep unwanted people out of your flight space :). For the curious and statistically minded we have provided three options to log data about your Net Duel play. For best performance, leave these turned off. Save network data trace: A line of text is written out with data for every packet of data received or sent detailing the network address as well the packet type and some of its data. This file is named PAKTRACE.TXT and will be large very quickly and fill your harddisk. Saving network data trace WILL severely affect game performance. Save network statistics: After every duel, statistics about the network traffic during the duel are saved out. It shows data about successfully sent packets, dropped packets, and rejected packets. Dropped packets are those which could have been sent, but due to machine performance or network limitations such as the Internet were not sent. This limiting is specific on a machine-to-machine basis and adjustable via the "Adjust data rate" slider on the Ready Room window. Rejected packets are those which were received from a machine which is not part of the same Net Duel game as this machine. Generally this should not happen and the values should be zero. If they are not then you likely had two separate machines which configured themselves as hosting the game on the same IPX socket. To prevent this, use an unique IPX socket for your duel. This file is named PAKTRACK.TXT and will not get very large. Save radio chatter: Turning this on will save all the messages about who is joining the game, how people died, who gets the kill, and comments from other players that are flashed on the screen. A header delineating the start of the duel and time of duel is also added. The file is named Chatter.txt. This file is appended to on every flight and therefore can get quite big, but is a lot fun to review and use as bragging material. Max players: You may limit how many others can join a duel you are hosting by adjusting this value. This is most useful for flying over the Internet to keep the game flying well by limiting the the game to a few players. See the section, KALI AND KAHN WITH NET DUEL. BUTTONS*********************************************************************** Host Game button: Hosting a game means that your machine will be the one that controls the game situation and realism settings. You are the only one that can start a synchronized startup for all aircraft and only you can pull everyone out of the game and back to the Ready Room. All flight data is sent to the Host and sent back out to individual clients. For the smoothest and best flight, use the fastest machine on the net for the Host. If contact is lost with the host during flight, you will be returned to the Ready Room with an error message. Join Game button: Pressing the Join Game button will start your machine looking for an existing game on the Arena you have set. If one is found, you will proceed immediately to the Net Duel Ready Room. You may stop the search process with the Abort button. If you know there is a game going on, check that your have the correct Arena number and try again. If you still can't connect, see the troubleshooting section. Hunt Game button: The Hunt Game button makes ND start scanning the Arenas for an existing game. It will spend approximately 10 seconds looking at each Arena. Press Abort to stop the process. Arenas 1 through 9 are scanned. Exit button: The Exit button will quit Net Duel. If you are the host, you will be asked whether you want to completely shut down the game. If you answer no, the Host duties will be handed off to another player. If you answer yes, everyone will stop flying and return to the setup window. NET DUEL READY ROOM SCREEN***************************************************** Most of the controls in the Ready Room are exactly the same as those in non-net Fighter Duel. Only those that are new are described below. All those in the Duel will appear listed in the Opponents area. Their callsign and aircraft will be listed and whether they are currently flying. After clicking on the text input string area above the Begin Duel button, you may type messages to your opponents. Hit return to send the message. Incoming messages and the status of the Duel will appear in the large text area near the bottom of the screen. While in the Ready Room, you aren't considered Allied or Axis and will see all radio traffic messages from flying aircraft. Any message you send will be seen by everyone in the game, flying or not. Only the Host has full control over the Duel environment. Any change he/she makes will appear on your computer. The Host may only make changes when no one is flying. The Data Rate slider is used to tune the rate at which your machine requests data from other machines. By default it is not enabled. When not enabled, Net Duel uses a rate we have defined that results in good performance over LANs. When you enable the Data Rate control, you may reduce the data rate from our pre-defined value. A slider value of 100% will set the data rate at the pre- defined value. You may adjust between 25% and 100 %. The addendum for Net Duel mistakenly states that the slider adjusts between 25-200%. Lower values decrease data requests and higher ones increase data requests. The smoothness of other aircraft's flight, especially during Net View is affected by the rate at which your machine requests data. If the rate is set to a data rate higher than it can accept, it will become what we call flooded and fall behind handling incoming data as its buffer will overrun. A general rule of thumb is to run the data rate at 100% for LANs (leaving the Adjust Data Rate off) and 25-50% over the Internet. Your results will vary. Net Duel has 6 startup situations. (including one new one for this update!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tournament: All aircraft are facing inward toward the center point of the FD world in a circle. The separation distance determines the radius of the circle or the distance from world center. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tournament (Same Aircraft): This mode is identical to the regular tournament mode except that all players are forced to fly the same aircraft and use the same fuel load as the Host. The aircraft selection and fuel load controls will not function on the client machines. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Big Bang: All aircraft are facing outward from the center point of the FD world in a circle. Therefore you cannot see anyone unless you maneuver your aircraft around after the start of flight. The separation distance determines the radius of the circle or the distance from world center. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to Back: The aircraft are arranged in a big line. Half of the aircraft are at a heading of 270, the other half, 90. Aircraft that are headed the same direction are spaced about 600 feet apart. The tail to tail starting distance is determined by the separation distance. This is called the Line-Abreast or Wall formation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Allied vs. Axis: The aircraft are arranged in a large V formation. This is also called Finger Four formation. If there are more than 4 aircraft starting at one time, they will be placed in a second formation 300 feet below the first. The separation distance is the distance nose to nose from the lead aircraft in the formations. The lineups are separated by your aircraft's alliance. Allied aircraft (American and British)on one side, Axis (German and Japanese) on the other. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Allied Perch: This situation is the same as the Allied vs. Axis except that the Allied side starts 6000 feet higher than the Axis side. Thus giving them an advantage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Axis Perch: This situation is the same as the Allied vs. Axis except that the Axis side starts 6000 feet higher than the Allied side. Thus giving them an advantage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Freefight: The Freefight situation is designed to allow continuous flying/fighting and unattended server operation for those of you lucky enough to have high speed connections to the Internet. Client flyers can join into a game and start flying immediately. Settings can only be set while no one is flying, so we suggest setting the environment up in a different situation mode and then switching to Freefight. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The start altitude is always controlled by the Host. When the Host is satisfied with the settings for the Duel, press the Begin Duel button. Except in Freefight mode, all machines will sync up and start simultaneously. If you join a game in progress, you be notified at the Ready Room that a duel is going on and you may set all allowed settings and press the Begin Duel button to enter the game. If you use the ESC key to quit flying, you will explode. This is due to the fact that we found that it became a favorite tactic to just wink out of existence by going back to the Ready Room if you had an aircraft on your tail tearing you up. You may exit with the ESC key without exploding only after a successful landing on the carrier or airstrip. Once you are Net Viewing, you cannot quit until the plane you Net Viewed to exits flight, the Duel is stopped, or you have been Net Viewing for 1 minute. Again, this is to prevent Net Viewing from becoming a painless way to jump in and out of flight. At the Ready Room, the Host may press Begin Duel to reenter back into the Duel or End Duel to stop the Duel and pull everyone back to the Ready Room. Clients will only return to the Ready Room if the Duel is stopped by the Host or they die, either by enemy fire or crashing. When a Host or client enters an existing Duel, they will be placed in the battle area at the average altitude of the other aircraft, but a couple of miles away from action. Once back at the Ready Room, if there is a Duel in progress, the client may press the Begin Duel button to reenter the Duel. There is no master score kept, however, when you die, a kill will be attributed if possible to another. A kill message will be broadcast to all aircraft and recorded on your chatter screen and will be saved to the harddisk if you have Save Radio Chatter on. The kill is determined by the machine of the dead guy. As with any singular one time packet on an IPX network, it may be lost. Think of this as an unconfirmed kill. If you are killed, it will always show on your own chatter board. A kill is attributed if an aircraft explodes or crashes within 5 minutes of last being hit. If less than 5 minutes have elapsed since hit, the aircraft with the largest amount of damage, not hits on you, gets the kill. Assists will also be awarded. The kill message will report the name or names of the culprits along with the number hits and a calculation of overall damage done. In the format Hits/Damage. CHATTER SCREEN*************************************************************** While flying, if you hold down the p key, you will see a screen that shows a who's in the game area and the last 30 messages received. In the who's in the game area, alongside the callsign, the amount of time in milleseconds since receiving new data from this person. If the person is the game Host, there will be a H at the right of the current time. The ms time is a sample taken every 1/4 seconds. If a person goes back to the Ready Room, their callsign will disappear. Conversely, when they reenter, it will appear. NET VIEWING******************************************************************** To use Net View, hit the HOME key. If there are other active flyers, you will Net View to the first available aircraft. If no others are active, nothing will happen. You may keep hitting the HOME key to cycle through all active aircraft. When Net View is activated on a machine, it will disappear from flight to all others in the game and it will show the F1 exterior view of the Net Viewed aircraft. To others you will wink out of existence and a message that you are Net Viewing will be displayed. You may then use any of the normal function keys or numeric keypad keys to see other views. Hitting Enter will show the Net Viewed Aircraft's forward view with no instrument panel. If you are Net Viewed to an aircraft and they stop flying or themselves Net View, you will be returned to the Ready Room. Once you are Net Viewing, you only the Host may exit back to the Ready room immediately. Otherwise you cannot return to normal flight until the aircraft you are Net Viewed to stops being active or you have Net Viewed or at least 1 minute. After you return to the Ready Room, you can renter as an active aircraft. ND CHAT MACROS**************************************************************** Like its brother, Fighter Duel, Net Duel lets you write up some comments in advance to send to others while flying. For Net Duel, edit the NDchat.txt file. It has instructions and or limitations on it. This file will pre-program you functions keys F1-F12 so that you can hit a / or ' depending on what kind of message you want to send and hit the function key with the comment of your choice. Screen Grabbing**************************************************************** Screen grabbing is allowed in Net Duel. As it causes a slight interruption in flight which potentially may give you a tactical advantage at times, it is limited such that you can only screen grab once every ten seconds. KALI AND KAHN WITH NET DUEL**************************************************** OK, you don't have a local area network, but you'd like to go up against other pilots with Net Duel. If you have a good Internet service provider, or ISP, you can use the Kali or Kahn software packages. Kali and Kahn provide an emulation of IPX networking through your Internet provider for both vanilla DOS and Windows 95. Its beyond the scope of the text file to go over the complete usage of Kali and Kahn. Please download the packages and read the documentation. Net Duel is designed for a local area network. We ourselves like to fly with people over the Internet and have done the best we can to make Net Duel work as well as possible within the constraints of the varied data flow and hiccups of the Internet. A 28.8/33.6 modem connection has a good enough connection for a Client, but only can move enough data for a nice flight as a Host for 2-4 people. You are free to try it with more, but the warping will get worse the more people you fly with. As a side note, if you can field a Host machine with a faster ISP connection such as a cable modem, ISDN modem, or T1-T3 line, 9 people can fly well. We suggest that if you are flying via a 28.8/33.6 modem, use the Adjust Data Rate slider to set the data rate to between 25-50% to keep from overloading the modem. If you are Hosting and have a faster Internet connection such as ISDN or T1-T3, set the Hosts rate at 100% to smooth gameplay. Originally we were going to include the shareware version of Kali and Kahn, but as these packages are constantly being updated, we thought it best to point you to latest and greatest versions. Kali is available from: http://www.axxis.com/kali/ Kahn is available from: http://www.teleport.com/~nbright/ CREDITS************************************************************************ SPGS is: Matt "HazMatt" Shaw, Ted "Bear" Jump, Drew "Ghost Rider" Dorman Keith "Montage" Lea, Wayne "TrackWalker" Shipp, "Dave "Speedbird" Paige, Project Manager for Philips Media: Jim "Buh Bye" Belcher Director of game development for Philips Media: Howard "Vomit King" Soroka Philips Beta group: Jake "Bishop" Hagopian, Kevin "Joker" Porter, Charles "Terror" Jordan Yervant "Vantee" Hagopian, Claude "C-Bird" Conkrite, Ellwyn "CowTipper" Kauffman SPGS Beta group: Jim "Hawkeye" Rathgeber, Larry "Fozzy" Foster, Mike "RCPilot" Duff Eric "Stupid" Penn, Victor "Duke" Zaveduke, Chris "Thanos" Richardson Norm "Kahn" Bright TROUBLESHOOTING**************************************************************** Trouble connecting: Net Duel allows up 9 players in one Arena. If you receive a message saying the game is full, 9 people are already in the game and you will have to Host or Join a new one on a different Arena number. For IPX networking to work, you must have the appropriate network drivers loaded when you boot your machine. Windows 95 users may setup IPX networking and fly Net Duel in a Win95 DOS box. See the section above about Net Duel and Windows 95. Hiccup or interruptions during flight: ND is real-time flight engine that uses real world physics and aerodynamics. It therefore works best if you get uninterrupted communication between machines. Some programs, such as Quick Mail poll the network continually looking for email which disrupts the ND data transmission and causes time-outs. Disable email and other polling software when running ND. To ensure correct configuration of clients, the Host may will pause momentarily when new aircraft join the game. As Net Duel loads, it reports how many aircraft data types it could load at once. If all 16 types are not loaded at startup, there will be a pause in flight as the hard disk is accessed if a plane enters flight that you do not have loaded.