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Earthsiege

Games RoundTable
Category 22, Topic 17
Message 198 Wed Nov 02, 1994
D.SELLE [Rude Boy] at 20:11 EST

I am pleased to see that Earthsiege is (generally) being well-recieved.
Since Sierra is pulling off of genie, I will try to give you guys what help I
can. But realize that I am doing this on my own time and money and that I am
not a tech support expert. I have heard rumors that Sierra may resume some
kind of a link with Genie when the internet connection is complete in January,
but I don't know the details or how certain this is. I will check in here
about once a week.

Some notes

1) Responsiveness of the game
Earthsiege is memory and CPU intensive. The recommended setup for
the game is a 486 33MhZ with 8 meg of RAM. This was mentioned in
the manual. If you play on a machine slower than this you should
lower the detail settings to improve performance. If you have enough
memory for it, a 1 meg smartdrive is also adviseable.

2) Thrustmaster support
WCS MARK I
This device is not supported unless you have an upgrade chip.
Contact Thrustmaster for more information.

WCS MARK II
We provide a "default" setting for the WCS mark II that
works with the V1.39 version of Thrustmasters "Command
& Control Center" software.

Rudder Pedals
They don't work like the rudders for a plane, but function
as they do in MPBT. (Moving the right pedal forward rotates your
turret to the left or turns you to the left). If you don't
like this setup, the programmers tell me you MIGHT be able to
calibrate them backwards and get it to work. I haven't tried
this so I don't know if it works.

F-16 FLCS
Well, I kinda messed up here. Thrustmaster wrote us B50 and
M50 files for this sucker but I changed the names of the files before
we made the final burn. You can do one of 2 things to fix this:
Change the names of the B50 and M50 files from ES.B50 and ES.M50
to EARTH.B50 and EARTH.M50 *OR* change the Mdef line in the ES.B50
file to read "Mdef ES" instead of "Mdef Earth." Also, Thrustmaster
did NOT include a provision to use the WCS II with the F-16 FLCS
files they wrote for us.

In general, if you have problems with TM support, it is better to
call them than us. They were part of the Beta test for Earthsiege
and are familiar with most aspects of the game. They also know
far more about thier hardware than we do. The tech support number
for thrustmaster is listed in the README file for earthsiege.

3) Getting Started
We have had several people complain that the game is difficult
to get started with. Earthsiege is as complex as many flight sims,
and has a similar kind of learning curve. It rewards the persistent
and skillful player. If you are having difficulty with the game,
try practicing the single missions in "invulnerable" mode.

4) CD Info:
We finalled the CD the same time as the floppy version, but CD
duplication is done out of house so it takes longer. CD's should
be in the store any day now. The CD version has the speech pack
included with it and contains a couple short movies. You also
have the options for minimum, medium, and full install with
the CD. I personally would have set the speech pack at a lower
price point, but I don't make those decisions.

5) Some HINTS
-Build a new Herc every chance you get. The lager ones take
more time to complete than the smaller ones. Construction
time and salvage can become critical in later missions.

-Try to shoot the weapons off the enemy hercs
You have a chance to recover new weapons this way, even
if you don't have the technology to build it yet. (Your
armory won't build any new ones until you get the tech
release, however).

-Target legs and the waist. If you take out a Cybrid Herc's engine
or blow off its legs you will get a lot more salvage for it
than if you just blow away the center torso. The down side is
he can shoot at you the whole time you are doing this .
Note: this strategy is not the best one for survival in mult-herc
combat.

-You can't "kill the base" in every mission, and it is not
necessary to do so to win. Sometimes just getting in
and out can be hard enough. Read your mission objectives.

-Some people here are giving autocannons a bum rap. I think
they are the BEST weapon of all. You just haven't learned
to shoot straight apparently .

I may post more hints later if response warrants.

--DaveS
------------
Games RoundTable
Category 22, Topic 17
Message 278 Wed Nov 09, 1994
D.SELLE [Rude Boy] at 21:33 EST

Hello again everyone!

Here are some answers to questions that have been asked:

But first a note on the nomenclature:

Mirrimac
Pitbull

Are the names of the Herc's some people have been referring to.

Notes about auto-tracking:

This has been intended more as "training wheels" than a feature that a skilled
player will rely on. It works best with lasers and can be helpful shooting
down flyers. Most of the time I play with neither my targetting system nor the
auto-tracking feature activated.

Turret control:
There is an undocumented feature that will allow you to traverse the turret
at high speed. Holding down the "alt" key while pressing the I,J,K,M will
cause it to traverse rapidly. I believe these key combinations will work in an
.adv file but I have not tried it personally.

CD Installation sizes:
These are incorrectly stated in the manual. The readme file contains the
correct information.

Rudder patch:
Since there seems to be demand for a patch to flip the rudder axies, I will
find out what it will take to make one available here. Rudders will control
either turret rotation OR herc movement (turning). I have tested this setup
both ways myself and I am 100% sure it works either way.

Joystick issues
Joystick button 2 toggling between movement and turret control is NOT a bug,
it is works (more or less) as designed, so blame me. I *like* this feature
and use it all the time. If we WERE to do a patch on the joystick, what is it
that people would want to see changed? Please be specific. It is not clear to
me that the "turning" problem people have experienced is due to a true
inefficency in the product, unrealistic expectations regarding the
maneuverability of an 80 ton Herc, or if people don't understand how the
interface is SUPPOSED to work.

Out of environment space error:
This is not our fault (really). You need to increase your DOS environment
size in your config.sys. It should fix all the CD problems mentioned in this
regard.

Facing/Heading information:
This information is available on the HUD (Heads up display). Two yellow bars
at the top and left sides of the HUD indicate turret rotation and elevation
respectively. There is a compass which numerically indicates your heading
(facing) above the "turret rotation" bar. We may add an iconic orientation
display in future versions since people seem to be confused by this.

Deleting saved games:
You can delete a career from the "career" menu. You cannot delete individual
saved games or rename them. Saving the same mission twice will overite the
previous save in that "slot." I realize that this is a bit clunky, but for a
long time we intended to drastically limit the number of saved games and it
was added at the end. The idea behind limiting saves was so people might
actually end up on the alternate campaign paths (I bet most of you didn't even
know there were any). Our Beta testers and QA people STRONGLY requested
unlimited saves which we agreed was the right way to go. The upshot of this is
the same thing that happened in the original wing commander: there are a lot
of missions out there that no one will ever see because they just play the
same mission over and over until they win . You don't HAVE to win to go on
to the next mission. You may regret it later --but you can still continue.
Oh well. Live and learn.

Enemy Preview/Database:
I love surprises, which is why there is no enemy vehicle preview. The
potential for a database of known technology and enemies was eliminated when
the "Barracks" screen was cut. With it also went a lot of the story elements I
intended to include in the game. What can I say? It would have delayed
shipping. Certain non-essential game elements were sacrificed so we could
concentrate on other "vital" features. Look for more frosting on future
cakes. I have some backstory written for the game as well as the complete
text of Gierling's log (excerpted and edited in the manual intro) that I could
upload if people are interested in that kind of thing.

Technology Releases:
These depend on how well you do on the campaigns. Since everyone is replaying
the missions until they win, the tech releases will probably be all hitting in
the same place. Generally you have the chance to get a tech release on certain
special missions (no, I am not going to say which ones). If you achieve the
mission objective you will get the tech release, if you fail the mission you
will get another chance at a later date. Each new weapon and Herc type works
this way. If a mission has a chance for tech release on it, generally this
information will be spelled out for you in the briefing. Your technology
development paralells Cybrids, but they always get the new goodies first .
You will see the Cybrids using EMP's well before you have a chance to make
them, for instance.

Walkable terrain:
I wish we had it too. Put it in the "future products" file. I consider
this feature a must for a major sequel.

Modem play:
We are considering it in a future ES product. FYI Battledrome will be
shipping in a few weeks with modem and network support. Battledrome is a
robotic combat arcade game set in cyberspace--for those who didn't know.

Low detail on weapons:
Someone mentioned that they were only getting polygons on the weapons. If you
have enough memory you should get texture mapping on the weapons at MAX shape
detail. If you are "Low" on memory the game automtacilly throws away the
highest detail level on the shapes and you will never see it (the second
highest detail becomes the highest in the prefs). You will almost certainly be
running the "low" memory version of the game on a 4meg machine, even if you
run from a boot disk. NOTE: Shape detail has the greatest impact on your frame-
rate, so if you set it to MAX it will slow gameplay on all but the most
powerful CPU's.

Rolling motion with turret movment:
You only "roll" when your herc turns in place. You should experence no
rolling motion when you traverse the turret right or left. There is a slight
up and down motion if your herc is running or walking, which can "jiggle" your
turret a bit, but that's all.

Joystick problems:
Someone mentioned a problem with the FCS choosing the wrong buttons. I really
am not very familiar with hardware in general, but it sounds like you might
have your WCS configured with an .adv file from another game? If not then you
could have a problem with your game card or joystick port (this is especially
suspect if you use multi-function card with a joystick port). We sent the game
to PC test, who does our compatability testing, but it is possible that some
hardware/joystick configurations were missed. If this is the case then the
best I can suggest for now is to call sierra tech support and give them a
description of your hardware so it gets into the database. Tech support has
forwarded a couple of minor issues to us, but so far we have not heard of any
joystick calibaration problems. Sorry I can't help you more.

Note: The game DOES support CH Flightstick PRO.

Skipping the intro:
This is made up of 3 seperate parts, press ESC 3 times to skip them all.

VCR function: please see my notes in the previous message. As I said before,
if we had a shippable version of the VCR we would have included it. This was