Sylph Wind Assembly 2007 
gamedev compo revision 3 (07/29/07)

This compo version contains the first level of the game. More is coming later 
in the 2007.
There is no front end in this game. When you run SylphWind.exe, the game begins
immediately, though the level intro text stays for ~3 secs.

Changes from revision 2:

-Fixed compatibility issues with certain laptop video cards
-Added some spot sound effects
-Increased terrain draw distance a bit
-Improved the lightning effect
-Occlusion shadows are affected by fog too
-Improved fog blending
-Shadows are a bit smoother now
-Optimized shadow rendering
-Optimized visibility checking
-Optimized GPU memory usage, should run on a 64mb video mem card without 
 a gripe :)
-Some minor doodad & shadow improvements to the level
-Removed unused graphics assets from resource files to reduce the game size
-Fixed a bug where some of the doodads were flickering while partially
 obscured by fog
-Fixed a bug where the boss music was permanently cut off when pausing
-Fixed a bug where looping samples were annoyingly stuck on while pausing
 the game on some occasions

Changes from revision 1:

-Added sound
-Error messageboxes no longer obscured by game window
-Added 640x480 resolution
-Retouched some textures
-Added more doodads to the level
-Added Game-over text
-Reduced # of lives to 8
-Fixed a bug where the chain timer was running while paused
-Fixed a bug where the player ship was constantly spinning while pausing the
 game when 'X' was pressed
-Fixed a bug where the player ship didn't blink while pausing when
 having invulnerability window after a death
-Fixed some minor pause-related bugs.
-Fixed a bug where certain enemies where instakilled with the lightning
 if leveled up by ramming enemies
-Attempted to remove garbage on widescreen mode 
 black borders appearing with Omega ATI Drivers
-Added HTML-based manual

There's still probably too many DLLs with this file :)

--------------------------
Quick manual (deprecated):
--------------------------

There is a HTML-file called manual.html within the folder.
Please refer to it for detailed instructions.

If you're still confused how this game plays, go to 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-371257675741610104
to see the author of this game play through this level with a decent score and some
successful chain combos.

This version has 8 lives without a continue possibility. 
The final version of the game will have 3 lives per credit.
The game will stop after you have lost all of your lives. Press F9 to restart the game.
The game will exit when you defeat the boss.

--------------------
System Requirements:
--------------------

OS: Windows XP

System:
P3 or AMD equivalent
256mb RAM

Video card:
ATI Radeon 9600 or better
NVidia GeForce FX series or better.
Recommended: GeForce 6600 or better

NOTE:
Radeon 9600 & 9800 cards need quite up to date drivers.
If the game appears mostly plain gray with some afterburners & lens-flares
on top of it, update your drivers.

On GeForce FX 5700 with pre-stone-age drivers, the game crashed on startup,
but updating drivers fixed the problem. Although you might want to use
640x480 mode :)

DirectSound compatible sound card. This game uses software mixing for audio.

-----------------
Settings.txt file
-----------------

The settings.txt file contains all configuration stuff.
It looks like this:

[Settings]
{
	Resolution = <1024, 768>
	Glow = 1
	WaterReflection = 1

	Force_VSync = 1
	
	SoundVolume = 255
}

You can alter this file, but change only numerical values or the game might throw script
error on startup.

Supported resolutions:
640x480
800x600
1024x768
1280x960

and the widescreen resolution
1280x720.
This mode has black borders on both sides of the screen and the game running in 4:3 window
in the middle. It is not advisable to run Sylph Wind on this mode on 4:3 display devices,
because the game looks quite shrinked on this mode :)


Glow setting.
Set this 0 to disable or 1 to enable some bloom fx. Not very much of a performance boost anyway.

WaterReflection setting.
Deprecated not in use.

Force_VSync setting.
When set to 1, the game tries to enable vsync frame rate limitation for smooth motion.
When set to 0, the game uses timer-based frame rate limiter; this mode might show up
some mild tearing artefacts.
If you have disabled the vsync from the video card drivers, the game will always fallback
to the timer-based frame rate limiter.

SoundVolume.
Overall sound volume, from 0 to 255


-------
Contact
-------

Pauli Merilainen/Pieslice Productions
piesliceproductions@gmail.com
