

		Serious Sam Test - Public Test 1 (v0.06 build 95)
		-------------------------------------------------

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Hardware requirements
3. Menus
4. In-game controls
5. Using NETRICSA
6. Console
7. Hardware compatibility issues
8. Reporting Bugs and Problems
9. Legal Information

1. Introduction
---------------

First of all: THIS IS NOT A DEMO VERSION, THIS IS A COMPATIBILITY TEST! Our primary intention is to test hardware compatibility and gameplay problems, not to show up. Though we will welcome any kind of comments. Please see the last section on the feedback policy.

IF YOU ARE EAGER TO START PLAYING RIGHT NOW, we recommend that you read through the sections 4 and 5 that will introduce you to the game's interface. Make sure you don't miss out on how to use the NETRICSA!

For those who like to read the game background before they jump into the gameplay, we recommend to pay a visit to:

http://www.croteam.com

and take a look at loads of materials we have prepared there for you.


2. Hardware requirements
------------------------

Minimum:
Celeron 233MHz
64MB RAM
full OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator
Windows 95/98/NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 5), or Windows 2000 operating system
100MB free hard disk space

Recommended:
Pentium II 400MHz range processor
96MB RAM
full OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator with 16MB RAM
100% Windows 95/98/NT4/W2K compatibile sound card

For full experience:
Pentium III 500MHz range processor
128MB RAM
third generation full OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator with 32MB RAM

GENERAL TIPS:

a) On Windows 95 and some 3D accelerators, you may experience problems starting the game if your desktop color depth set to 8, 15 or 24 bit. Try setting your display settings to 16 bit (or 32 bit for accelerator that supports true color in OpenGL).

b) Unless you have a very fast 3D accelerator, your system may not be capable of running Serious Sam at 32 bit and at high resolutions.
If you feel that the game runs slow on your machine, try reducing the resolution to 640x480 and color depth to 16 bit. 
If that still doesn't help, try setting the rendering preferences to 'Speed'.


3. Menus
--------

You can call the menus during game by pressing the Escape key. To navigate the menus use arrow keys. Press the Enter key to go to a submenu, or change an option. On some buttons you can use the Backspace key and the Enter key to circle forward-backward among different settings.

Press the Escape key to go one level up in the menus. When at the top level, pressing Escape will return to game if any is started.

Following sub-menus are available in this test version:

SINGLE PLAYER

NEW GAME - Starts a new single player game with player and controls currently shown on the bottom of the menu. You may choose between:
  Easy mode (for people without experience in first-person-shooters),
  Normal mode (for real FPS players),
  Hard mode (for real Serious Sam players), and 
  Serious mode (for his meanness, Mr. Sam 'Serious' Stone himself).
LOAD - This will offer you a choice of previously saved games to load. Note that each of the eight players have his/hers own saved games. If it seems that all your saved games have mysteriously disappeared, perhaps you have changed the player.
SAVE - Here you can save current game.
PLAYERS AND CONTROLS - Switches to 'Players and Controls' and controls menu. There you can change current player and controls.
VIEW HIGH SCORES - Shows high score table.

TECHNOLOGY TEST

This will start a special game level prepared for testing compliance of your OpenGL 3D accelerator with the Serious Sam engine.

DEMO

Offers you choice to view any of recorded demos, or record a new one. 
When you start recording a demo, a 'Recording' indicator will show on the screen. To stop recording, either go to the Demo menu and choose Stop Recording, or press F8.

OPTIONS

VIDEO OPTIONS - Here you can choose to use default OpenGL driver, or 3DFX stand-alone driver (for users of older 3dfx chipsets). 
Under preferences you can choose:
  Normal (optimal settings for you card), 
  Speed (for lower rendering quality and higher speed) or 
  Quality (for higher rendering quality and lower speed). 
All the settings are relative to your card capabilities, as detected by the game. See section 'Hardware Compatibility Issues' for more information.
You can also choose a resolution, bit depth and whether to run the game in full screen or in window.

AUDIO OPTIONS - You can set the sound playback quality at 11kHz, 22kHz or 44kHz, or turn the sound off. Music volume and sound effects volume is adjustable separately.

PLAYERS AND CONTROLS - This same menu can be invoked from the Single Player menu. Press Enter/Backspace on the player name (initially Serious Sam) to choose one of the eight players. Select Rename to change name of current player.
Press Enter/Backspace on the name of controls to change current controls. Select Rename to change name of the controls. Select Buttons to change key-bindings. Select Axes to customize mouse or jostick control axes. Note that the axis settings are separate for each axis. I.e. you can have different sentisitivity for up/down, than for left/right.


4. In-game controls
-------------------

Default controls in game are following:

Moving:

  Move forward       W or Arrow Up	
  Move backward      S or Arrow Down	
  Turn left          Arrow Left	
  Turn right         Arrow Right	
  Strafe left        Q or A
  Strafe right       E or D
  Jump/Swim up       Space or R	
  Dodge/Swim down    F	

Combat:
  Fire               Left Mouse Button or Ctrl
  Manual reload      Alt (works for colt)
  Next/Prev Weapon   [/] or Mouse Wheel Up/Dn
  Flip Weapon        \ (Backslash) or Third (Middle) Mouse Button
  1    knife (second keystroke will spin knife in hand)
  2    colt/two colts
  3    single shotgun/double shotgun
  4    minigun
  5    rocket launcher
	- rest of the weapons are not available in the test version.

Operation:
  Use/Call NETRICSA  Right Mouse Button or Return
    - NOTE: Same button is used for USE or ANALYSE and NETRICSA is invoking
    see section about NETRICSA for more info

You can rebind controls in the 'Players and Controls' menu, or by manually editing '.ctl' files in 'Controls\' directory of the installation.

NOTE: Serious Sam supports up to 8 different players and controls. You can adjust different controls sets for different people playing on a same computer.

Besides the in-game controls, there are following general keyboard shortcuts that cannot be rebound in menu, but only by manually editing the file 'Controls\System\Common.ctl':

  Menu Save        F2
  Menu Load        F3
  Menu Controls    F4
  Quick Save       F6
  Quick Load       F9
  Screenshot       F11

  StartDemoRec     F7
  StopDemoRec      F8

Following shortcuts are hard-wired and cannot be changed at all: 

  Activate menu          Escape
  Activate console       F1 or `~' (Tilde)
  Pause game             Pause
  Toggle fullscreen      Alt-Enter


5. Using NETRICSA
-----------------

NETRICSA (NEuroTRonically Implanted Combat Situation Analyzer) is a small computer implanted inside Sam's skull. Sam's NETRICSA is the best available of the wide range of such devices, common among modern head-to-head fighters. It is a neurotronical computer connected to the perceptual cortexes in his brain. The computer has all the access to his audio-visual experiences and can provide him with feedback. It is used to provide fast and simple access to all the necessary data and analysis for a skilled combatant, so that he/she can keep up to date with the situation and know what to do next. It translates texts, offers simple head-up-display directly to the visual cortex, tracks targets and gives other kinds of help in fight and in general tactics.

In game, NETRICSA appears on your screen in two different ways: as an head-up-display and as a full screen computer interface.

Head-up-display is active normally while you explore the area or fight. In the lower left corner, it shows your current HEALTH and ARMOR state. Next to it, your CURRENT WEAPON and currently carried ammount of AMMUNITION for it is displayed. On the far right is an icon for each type of ammo you have and a small bar showing how much of that type do you have.

In the upper left corner is ACCOUNT DISPLAY, showing the sum of reward money you have collected by eliminating your enemies and by completing other tasks. When a NETRICSA has a new message for you, you will hear a notification sound and MESSAGE COUNTER with number of pending messages will appear below the account display. Then you can invoke NETRICSA full screen to examine the message.

On the center of the screen is NETRICSA's target detection display. A CROSSHAIR shows exactly where your weapon will hit, and it changes colors according to the state of your target. While you have no live target, it is WHITE. When you aim at a new enemy, it will become GREEN, and as you damage the enemy, the color will turn RED.

If you target an item that can be used or operated (e.g. a switch), a USE indicator will appear above the crosshair. Press USE BUTTON to operate the item. If you target an item that can be analyzed, an ANALYZE indicator will appear. Press use button to analyze the item. After analyzing it, a new message will appear with description of the results of NETRICSA's research.

To read any of the NETRICSA's messages, you can invoke NETRICSA fullscreen at any time by DOUBLE CLICKING the USE BUTTON button.

In fullscreen mode, NETRICSA shows four windows:
CATEGORY SELECTION in the upper left has five buttons allowing you to select one of the message categories: Tactical Data, Strategic Data, Weapons, Enemies and Statistics.
MESSAGE LIST in the upper right shows list of messages in currently selected category. Click on any message title to view the message.
MESSAGE TEXT in the lower right shows the message text, while MESSAGE IMAGE at the lower left shows eventual visual information attached to the message. You can scroll both the message list and the message text with their accompanied sliders.

You can exit the fullscreen NETRICSA by either clicking on the EXIT button in the upper right corner, or by pressing ESCAPE or RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON.

For optimal interface, Use/Call NETRICSA function is bound to the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. So with just that one button, you access Use and Analyze by single clicking it, call NETRICSA by double clicking it and also exit the NETRICSA by pressing that same button.


6. Console
----------

You can invoke game console by pressing the F1 key during the game or in menu. Tilde key ('~') will also function if you have an English keyboard locale, but may cause problems if your keyboard locale interprets that key as a dead-key. It is recommended that you use F1.

In the game console you can examine or change console variables and call console functions. Using this advanced option, you can hand-tune lots of engine and game options that are not available through the menus. To obtain a list of those variables and functions enter 'ListSymbols()' at the console prompt.

Use the Tab key for command line completion, arrows up/down for history or pageup/pagedown to scroll output.

If you want to view a value of a variable just enter the variable name. To change a value, assign it to a variable using equality sign like this: 'var_name=1'. To call a function, append brackets to the function name like this: 'function()'. 

When the game is loaded, a script file saved under 'Scripts\Game_startup.scr' is executed by the console. You may add some lines there to be executed each time you start the game.

If you write commands in scripts or in keyboard bindings, you need keep in mind that:

1) Command separator is semicolon (';'). Always finish each command with with a semicolon, or a syntax error will be reported. Newline is not a separator in console's grammar. That is, you can write more than one command in one line, or write one command across more than one line.

2) Comments are completely C++-like. Two slashes ('//') start a one-line comment, and slash-asterisks pairs ('/*' and '*/'), embed multi-line comments.

3) You may use mathematical expressions in commands, like 'var1=var2+2' and similar. Currently supported operators are: 
  addition (+),
  substraction (-),
  multiplication (*),
  division (/),
  integer modulo (%),
  unary minus (-),
  unary plus (+),
  logical negation (!),
  array access([])
and brackets.
These are usefull for writing keyboard bindings like 'ctl_bWalk = !ctl_bWalk;', or 'hud_iStats=(hud_iStats+1)%3'.

4) You can declare your own variables like 'extern FLOAT myVar;'. Only scalar variables can be declared this way. Arrays cannot be declared from command line.


7. Hardware compatibility issues
--------------------------------

Serious Sam has been tested on many different 3D cards and drivers. The game will try to recognize your card and adjust best settings for it. If you have any problems with your card, please first make sure you have the correct driver. If it still doesn't work, please read the section 'Reporting Bugs and Problems' in this ReadMe file on information about how to report your problem.

Here is the list of tested hardware:

o nVidia RivaTNT, RivaTNT2 and GeForce256
  - driver version: Detonator 3.72 and 5.13
  - multitexturing is disabled by default because of bug in driver prior to 5.xx version
  - GF256 might have problems when rendering to front buffer (sign at the top left corner when refreshing textures or changing video mode)

o ATI Rage 128
  - driver version: 4.12.6269
  - bump mapping doesn't work
  - compiled vertex arrays disabled because of triangle artefacts and occasional crashes
  - important note: lens flares crash in full screen if you have 4.12.6277 driver

o 3Dfx Voodoo1
  - driver version: 3.01.00
  - compiled vertex arrays disabled due to slowdowns in large scenes
  - no vertical lines (in computer screen and loading information window)
  - additional support for this card will not be possible in the future

o 3Dfx Voodoo2
  - driver version: 3.02.02
  - compiled vertex arrays disabled due to slowdowns in large scenes

o 3Dfx Voodoo3
  - driver version: 1.04.00
  - compiled vertex arrays disabled
  - to get better performance smaller effect textures and dynamic shadows are recommended due to slow uploading
  - important note: for reasons not know at the time being, this card runs very slowly with Serious Sam. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and we're working closely with 3Dfx to solve this problem (expect a patch soon).

o Matrox G400
  - driver version: 5.52.015
  - to get better performance smaller effect textures and dynamic shadows are recommended due to slow uploading
  - clipped lines on computer screen might work wrong

o Matrox G200
  - driver version: 5.52.015
  - some textures and shadow maps are inaccurate due to unsupported texture clamping mode
  - alpha keying does not work properly (leaves on palms, for example)
  - bump mapping doesn't work
  - clipped lines on computer screen might work wrong
  - mirrors and portals don't work
  - to get better performance smaller effect textures and dynamic shadows are recommended due to slow uploading
  - some features disabled to get better performance
  - additional support for this card might not be possible in the future

o S3 Savage4 and Savage2000
  - driver version: 8.20.18
  - bump mapping doesn't work
  - mirrors and portals don't work
  - to get better performance smaller effect textures and dynamic shadows are recommended due to slow uploading

o Intel i740
  - driver version: 4.0
  - bump mapping doesn't work
  - clippend polygons in mirrors and portals don't work
  - some features disabled to get better performance
  - might not be supported in the future

o 3DLabs Permedia2
  - some of required blending modes are not supported
  - too low fill rate
  - discontinued

o nVidia Riva 128
  - some of required blending modes are not supported
  - several compatibility problems
  - discontinued

o ATI Rage Pro
  - several serious problems occured (Z-buffering, mip-mapping, fill rate)
  - not operational at the time being


Following 3D accelerators have not been tested with Serious Sam at the time being, but are know to have some kind of OpenGL
hardware acceleration:

	3dfx Banshee              - will be tested as soon as possible
	ATI Rage II and older     - will not be supported
	S3 Savage3D and Trio3D    - probably will not be supported
	Intel i752 (i810 chipset) - will be tested as soon as possible
	Rendition Verite          - older chips will not be supported, newer will be tested
	Trident                   - only latest chipset might be supported
	SiS                       - only latest chipset might be supported



8. Reporting Bugs and Problems
------------------------------

As your feedback from this test, we expect both your subjective personal opinions (feedback), and objective bug reports (bugs). 

a) Feedback

If you find any likes/dislikes in the game, if you feel something missing or annoying, we consider it your subjective opinion. Feel free to mail us about it at:

  feedback@croteam.com

Please do not send any file attachments to that address, just plain text mails with short description of your opinion(s).

Note, as it is a matter of personal preference, that although we will certainly take each your opinion in consideration, we will, on the other side, not feel obligated to do anything about it. Perhaps we do something with the thing you mention, perhaps we don't.

b) Bugs

If you have any problem like game crashing or not functioning properly in any way, graphics looking weird with your 3D card, sound being choppy...., we consider it a bug. Things like getting stuck in a hole, being able to pass through a wall or statue..., also fall in the category of bugs.

You can report any such problem	to:

  bugs@croteam.com

Please give each mail a subject line with general type of the problem, like 'Not working on card xyz', 'Sound choppy on card xyz', 'Getting stuck in a hole', etc.

In the body of the message give us a short description of the problem and please list any relevant information like exact hardware configuration and driver versions (in case of hardware problems), and try to explain how to reproduce the problem if possible.

Relevant information:
  Operating system (Win95, Win95 OSR2, Win98, WinNT, Win2000) and service pack number
  CPU type and speed in MHz
  Amount of RAM
  Video card and driver version
  Sound card

Make sure to mention the version number of the game that you report the bug for (see top of this ReadMe file).

If the game crashes, or reports a 'FatalError' message box, please try to look for possibly generated log files in the installation directory of the game. There should be at least one of the following:

  'SeriousSam.log' (in the installation root)
  'FatalError.log' (in the installation root)
  'Bin\SeriousSam.rpt' (in the 'Bin\' directory)

If you find any, please attach them to your mail message, those files can help us greatly in hunting the bugs down.

Take care to preserve the file dates (do not edit them!) and, if possible, write down approximate time (date and hour) when the game crashed and send it along in the mail, so we can match it to the log files.

Please DO NOT send any file attachments other than the aforementioned log files. Please no screenshots and no savegames. If we feel that we need a screenshot or savegame to track the bug down, we will let you know.

It is best that you give us a valid reply address for your mail, so we can ask for any further information if needed.

9. Legal Information
--------------------

Copyright © 1999-2000 Croteam LLC. Croteam and the Croteam logo are trademarks of Croteam LLC. Serious Sam and the Serious Sam logo are trademarks of Croteam LLC. Serious Engine is a trademark of Croteam LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Serious Sam uses Amp11Lib library. Amp11Lib is an Audio-MPEG decoder and player library distributed under 
the GNU Library General Public License Version 2. See files COPYING and README in the Bin\Amp11Lib subdirectory of the installation for more information.

PHYSICAL MEDIA REDISTRIBUTION OF THIS TEST IS PROHIBITED! YOU MAY ONLY DISTRIBUTE IT ELECTRONICALLY! READ THE LICENCE.TXT FILE FOR MORE DETAILS.
