readme.txt v2.0 11/27/98


Introduction
_______________________________________________________________________________

It all began in 1987 when we first played MechForce (by Ralph Reed)
on the Commodore Amiga Computer.
Those were the days when we hacked our own mech editor and played
tournaments for hours and hours.
After registration we build tons of Mechs and guided our teams
through dangerous encounters.
4 players could play hot seat without getting bored due to the 
unique and well designed turn system.
The Amiga era ended and still MechForce was the reason to switch
on our ancient computers.


NOW is the time to bring the fun to personal computers with 


TITANS of STEEL ( ToS )

by Vicious Byte :

Steffan Vosgerau - Grafixs
Email : Steffan.Vosgerau@kiel.netsurf.de

Kai Sausmikat    - Coding
Email : sauser@t-online.de

Henrik Schmidt   - Coding 
Email : hbs@ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de


Vicious Byte is a team of friends who work for different companies in
the computer business. We invested some thousand hours of our spare
time to create a game which we wanted to play. Hopefully it will also 
appeal to YOU ! 



Please note that ToS is a game which does need some time to get into.
It has an easy to use interface but much depth which has be explored
to fully appreciate our efforts. Check the text files if you want
detailled information on the modules.


To cut a long story short 
_______________________________________________________________________________

In the year of 2066 one of the main entertainement attractions 
are contests between titanic roboters piloted by short lived rookies
or notorious veterans, called jocks. These are assembled in teams
and deemed to success cause loosers end dead our without money to
maintain their expenses.
A jocks live is dangerous indeed, therefore most of them are
recruited directly from prison and offered pardon if they would live
long enough to become famous.

The battles are fought all over the world and watched by billions of
spectators ...........

( More of this in v2.0, available somewhere in time )

_______________________________________________________________________________



ToS v1.0 consist of 3 seperate modules which deal with the
construction of titans, the management of jocks and their teams and
the battles itself.
These modules are called FACTORY, HQ and BATTLE and are located in the
progs directory of your ToS distribution. 



What you can expect now :

The factory features 20 chassis types with 20 weapon systems and
numerous equipment from scanners to jump ports.
You can create small but quick recon titans as well as 200t heavy
behemoth armed with devasting weapons.
Choose between 4 types of armor, each with its pros and cons.
The factory is capable of designing new titans as well as modifying/ 
repairing titans which are already owned by teams. 

The hq can handle character creation/development and team setup.
Choose between humans, replicants, androids and cyborgs, each described 
by 7 attributes and 19 skills. Develop these characters by distributing
experience points gained during combat. Manage your teams money by
carefully buying/selling your titans.

The battle module is a turn based tactical game which simulates combat
between teams of titans.
Turns are divided into small individual time slices which will allow
fast alternating play as well as give you time to carefully consider
your actions.
Battle can be played solo, hotseat or in a local area network.
It includes 5 terrain types from swamps to hills, each affecting combat
and movement. Line of sight is calculated, even 1m can make the difference.




What you can expect later :

Be sure that we do support ToS v1.0, we will fix all bugs as soon as 
possible.
You can expect to pay a small shareware fee for v2.0 :
We do plan to port ToS to Win95/98 and to add modem and internet play.
Hopefully it will feature missions and new equipment.
Please gives us feedback if you liked to play v1.0, it will push us
in doing v2.0 !


What you can't expect : 

Realtime mouse clickfests and all that fancy stuff that takes time,
costs money and does not add to the game.



What you need at least

A 486 DX computer with 24 MB RAM and a graphic display adapter which 
is capable of 800x600x256 resolution and supports the VESA 1.2 or 2.0
standard. 
The game is a protected mode DOS application which can be run in 
DOS mode or in a DOS box under Win95/98.
Soundblaster compatible sound cards are supported if they do not use
unusual interrupts.
You should have about 15 MB of free space on your hard drive.
If you own an ethernet network card you can play with up to 4
players in a LAN via the IPX protocol ( ! that's the most fun ! ).



What you can do to help us improve the game ?

Try the game, do as you please.
If you encounter problems/bugs, report them with a short note what you did
before they occurred.
Report inconveniences with the interface and give your opinion on the
game mechanics.
Be honest, tell us your likes/dislikes.
Help us make a better game but don't expect total rewrites.




Installation
_______________________________________________________________________________

Decompress the archive file.
 
ToS comes compressed using PKZIP 2.04g compatible software.
The file name of the archive does indicate the version of the
software. tosv1.zip therefore includes Titans of Steel v1.0.  
You must decompress the archive file on your system.

The ToS library archive has the following directory structure:
tos\
          progs\
          sounds\
          images\
          data\
	  tools\

 
If you are using PKUNZIP to decompress the archive you have to
use the "-d" switch to recreate this directory structure.
Other PKZIP compatible programs expand directories by default.


I you have downloaded an update archive, you should copy it into your
tos directory and unzip there. Please overwrite any file if asked.
Updates also include the version in their name, btlv101.zip would
be an update of the battle module to v1.01.

The archive includes a copy of csdpmi4b.zip to satisfy the demands of
the author, Charles Sandman. We already copied the important DPMI host
file into the progs directory.



Quick Start
_______________________________________________________________________________

To start a quick game without bothering about titan/team creation launch
tos.bat from the main directoy.

1.  Select Battlefield, wait for battle.exe to load.
2.  Select Hot Seat Game
3.  Select Small Map
4.  Select Random Player Team
5.  Select Standard Quality
6.  Select Chose Next Team
7.  Select Random AI Team
8.  Select Standard Quality
9.  Select Start Game
10. Select Small Teams




Start of Single Modules
_______________________________________________________________________________

The progs directory includes the executables of the three modules
Titans of Steel consists of : battle.exe, factory.exe and hq.exe

We did include a small launch batch file called tos.bat which allows
starting these modules WITHOUT command line parameters by executing
tos.bat from the main directory. If you have to use command line 
parameters (to disable sound or start netgames) you have to do so directly
from the progs directory. All command line parameters of the modules can be
displayed by executing with -h parameter (battle.exe -h).



Legal Stuff
_______________________________________________________________________________

The v1.0 of ToS includes few sound files which are taken from
various sources and may be copyrighted. These files will be
substituted by totally legal files for the shareware version or as
soon as demanded by their owners.

We have not suffered any serious breakdowns of hard- or software during
our extensive playtesting. Nonetheless, we do not take any responsibilities
for damage done to your system resulting from usage of any of the game
modules.

We strongly recommend *NOT* to use the LAN version of the game
in your office or at any site where net safety is critical. It might be safe,
but as mentioned before, we are not responsible. You are.



Acknowledgements
_______________________________________________________________________________

Any worthwhile enterprise can be successful only as a result of the time
and effort invested by a number of people.
This chapter tries to give some credit where it is due.
The following people contributed (with or without their knowledge) to the
development of Titans of Steel :

Ralph Reed for starting this mania with MechForce. It's the all time 
greatest game on the Amiga.
Jonathan Griffith for his excellent portable graphic library Jlib.
Joel H. Hunter for the Sound-Blaster Library for DJGPP v2.
DJ Delorie and his team, for the DJGPP port of GCC.
Robert Hoehne for his integrated development environment for DJGPP.
John R. McCawley III for his basic IPX functions for DJGPP.
Charles Sandman for the DPMI host program.
Travis Alexander for his nice module launch program
Clark Verbrugge for his neat line of sight algorithms. 
Tim Frazer for his Matrox Millenium patch and input to debug the game.



Contacts
_______________________________________________________________________________

The ToS WWW Home Page is at 
http://www.ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~hbs/tos.html

This is place to look for patches, updates and information on ToS.

The members of Vicious Byte can be contacted by Email :

Henrik Schmidt   : hbs@ks.informatik.uni-kiel.de
Kai Sausmikat    : sauser@t-online.de
Steffan Vosgerau : Steffan.Vosgerau@kiel.netsurf.de

Don't be afraid to email us, we are all nice guys who like to
talk about Titans of Steel.


Henrik
Vicious Byte