22/April/2008. Tranzam. Neil Walker.
Updated 06/July/2008

Updates
-------
- New graphics
- High score available as soon as you collect 1 cup

Issues
------
Tests show mac may cause problems with fullscreen and/or triple buffering and also high-cpu usage. Change to 
video paging and windowed mode.

First Up
--------
The game features some online content:
- upload and download of highscores
- download of U.S state information supplied by players in a 'tickertape' style
- download of retrospec forum members for display in the credits page

When the game first starts you may be asked by your firewall to accept/deny. All the program is 
doing at startup is checking it has access so you have chance to accept it before the graphics
mode is changed. Please accept it, it will do no harm :)

Please read this document as it also contains a list of bugs and things to beware of!

Copyright
---------
See Licence.txt

Your Help
---------
- If you live in America, or have done, why not get in touch (email at the bottom) and 
  have you details on the ticker tape for everyone to see

- If you fancy doing some maps, feel free to supply some as they can be uploaded to the website
  (information at the bottom of this document)

Game Help
---------
- All help is available from the Help menu. Except the stuff in this document that is extra
- When you are running out of fuel, it will beep. You must find fuel quicky
- When you drive too fast you may overheat and the car will shutdown until it reaches normal temperature
- you may travel faster than the speedometer speed when on a fast road
- the radar does help, you just have to figure it out (or read the Help within the game)

Control
-------
Select your joypad or keyboard keys from the Setup menu. Additionally press ESCape to pause the
game (and then Q to quit afterwards). You can also press M in-game to toggle the music on/off

The car has a simple movement of accelerate/brake/turn. Additionally you can hand-brake to pull
off some extra cool (well, not really) moves when you're bored.


Editor
------
You can create your own mini-games (race, survivor, cup hunt) by using the supplied editor. Consult the 
levels\designer folder readme file.

Main Game
---------
Collect 8 cups and win the race. Avoid the enemy 'black turbo cars'. Except in this game they're
green because Graham liked it better that way, and who am I to argue.

Easy mode shows you where the enemy cars are. Normal mode, doesn't and also has more cars. Hard 
mode is just a bit harder. You can only upload your highscore when not in easy mode.

Mini-Games
----------
Race: various race type games that are either against the computer, time trials or beat the clock
Quiz: can you navigate to a U.S. state given the state's name? or perhaps given just it's capital?
Survivor: stay alive as long as possible. You cannot brake in this game and always move
Cup Hunt: Find the cup(s) in the map

Graphics
--------
The default mode is fullscreen with triple buffering. If you are experiencing problems, see below
for how to configure it. This is the smoothest mode, but also the most likely to fail on some
video cards. 

Within the game you can change between windowed and fullscreen, video paging, triple buffering and
standard memory bitmaps (triple being best, memory the worst)

Configuration
-------------
Most configurations are made within the game, however if you need to make them outside, either because
of a bug (e.g. you cannot get the game to start with triple buffering) or there is a setting not
available in the game, you can do so as follows.

1. Edit the file config.xml and save

The config.xml file entries are all stored as 'xml' elements and are quoted. Simply replace the content
with a valid entry. For all flags set the value to 1 for on and 0 for off:

tickertape : if you don't want the tickertape, set it to 0

skipintro : skip the retrospec logo and go straight to the game if set to 1

playedcount : set to 0 to force a new download of website information

proxy : if you are behind a proxy then enter it here for the online stuff to work

enablefmod : permanently disable sound and music if set to 0

enablemouse : set this to 0 if you are experiencing mouse problems (the mouse is not required but can
be used in the menu options to save tabbing

vsync : set this to 1 or 0 to perform a vsync. May benefit non-video modes

graphicsmode : if experiencing problems then change this to 2, 1, or 0 (video paging, system bitmaps, memory bitmaps respectively) from the default 3 (triple buffering)

depthpreferred : if things are slow you 'may' get an increase by changing to 16. This is the bpp

width/height: change this within the game, but can be 800x600 or 640x480. Other modes may work, but are not guaranteed, though may be quite funky ;)

autodetect: set the windowing mode, either windowed or fullscreen

sound element: only if you know what you are doing

do not modify the animation.xml file as you probably don't know what it does!

you can also rename config.xml.lowgfx if you are experiencing problems then gradually add more detail.
you config.xml.original is the original config file in case of difficulties

Known Bugs
----------
1. If you switch out of windows and are both in fullscreen and either video paging or triple 
buffering then unfortunately the video graphics will become corrupted and the game will be 
restarted. This is largely due to laziness on my behalf.

2. Goes very slow when there are lots of cars on screen, and in survivor mode

3. Sometimes turning will result in the car spinning very fast

4. In quiz you may start at the U.S. state being searched for! sorry. On the plus side you get a good highscore

Credits
-------
Please see these in the game by visiting the Help menu.


Contact
-------
clubhouse4@retrospec.sgn.net
neil@retrospec.sgn.net
neil@retrographer.com

Website
-------
Visit us at http:\\retrospec.sgn.net\
