UNIVERSAL COMBAT - A WORLD APART DEMO TUTORIAL
©3000AD Inc - 2005 All Rights Reserved

Welcome to the first of three planned demos for our new game. This preview #1 demo consists of four scenarios and primarily features space and planetary air combat. The second and third demos due out by the time the game is released this May, will feature other aspects of the game, including first person and vehicular combat on planets.

This demo is primarily for gamers who are familiar with our games as this tutorial will not teach you every facet of the game and its features. If you have played the previous Universal Combat title, then everything should be immediately familiar. Being a sequel, very little - by way of features - has changed. If you have not yet played the previous game in the series, now would be a good time to go pick up a copy. We have however included (look in the DOCS folder) the full tutorial for UC. While the scenarios in it are not indicative of these demo scenarios, reading that tutorial will teach almost everything about the game and provide a lot more info about all of the things you will encounter in the demo and which are not mentioned in this tutorial.

Though the demo is based on final Beta code, with three months left to the final release, you may find issues here and there; however, we hope that you have as much playing it as we have had developing the game this past year.

Thanks for your support, without which we probably would not have been around this long nor been able to develop six games (with more to come!) so far in our long running series.

Derek Smart, Ph.D.
President - 3000AD Inc
Designer/Lead Developer - The Battlecruiser/Universal Combat series

INTRODUCTION

While you are waiting for the demo to download or install, please give this tutorial a quick run through and print it if at all possible.

After the demo is installed, run it using the shortcut located on your desktop or use the one located in your Start / Program Files group.

If the demo fails to start, please read the included troubleshooting FAQ. Most common startup problems are related to either video drivers, video AVI codes (for playing the intro splash screen) or failure of the target system to meet the game's requirements. Please read the relevant sections located in the FAQ if you have startup problems. The requirements for the game and this demo are located on the product info page on our website. However the MINIMUM requirements are as follows:

WIN 98SE/ME/2K/XP (with all service packs)
DirectX 9.0c or higher runtime
Pentium IV 2.0 Ghz or Athlon XP 2000 CPU
256MB RAM
64MB AGP graphics card with pixel shader 1.1 and vertex shader 1.1
nVidia chipsets: GeForce 3Ti, 4Ti, 4200 GO series
ATI chipsets: Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200 series
DirectSound compatible sound card
16X CDROM or DVD-ROM
Mouse

If you do not know if your video card supports a pixel and vertex shader, please check with your video card manufacturer. Unless your video card supports vertex shader 1.1 and pixel shader 1.1, the demo will not run. No, there is no workaround for this. No, a shader is not something you can download and install. Yes, the full game will also have the same shader requirements.

After the demo has loaded, you can go click on the OPTIONS screen to tweak some of the settings. For more information about the various options and to restore the default settings, please refer to the configuration options PDF file located in the DOCS folder where this demo is installed.

NOTE: Once the game has started and you are in the game world, you can pause the demo at any time by using the PAUSE key on your keyboard. Press any key to resume the game.