Game Manual

[kselander]

Hello everyone,

I am sure this has probably been asked in the past but I didn't find an answer using the search.

How detailed is the printed game manual in the enhanced CD version? I think I saw one reference calling it a "Quick Start Guide". If its as detailed as some of the manuals from the 90's or as good as Dominion 3 I will most likely get the physical copy. If its just 10 pages or so I probably won't order it.

One other quick question if you don't mine. How do you deselect a unit? I couldn't figure that out but only spent 10 minutes in game. Not being able to alt-tab kind of killed it for me and I haven't played since the originals in the 90's.

Thanks

[Mobhack]

The printed manual in the CD edition is only a simple "get you started". The full up to date manual is the HTML one the game links to.

The CD version of the game comes in 2 flavours - with a boxed manual and physical CD, and a download-only of the CD game version. The latter is quicker, and avoids postage delays and costs etc, and possible customs dues (eg VAT).

You dont deselect units, some unit is always the current one. That's the way the game works. Use N and P to go to next and previous units, or use the HQ roster to go directly to another unit, if you dont want to click on it directly (and possibly mis-click). Go to the roster or HQ menu screen, click desired unit, exit roster and the selected unit is now the current unit.

By Alt-Tab, do you meant to alt-tab from the game in full screen mode to the windows desktop?. That works in all game modes, though if you are in the full-screen mode then with modern windows video drivers, they consider the 256 colour palette their property (because 256 mode is obsolete) and scramble the games palette on a task switch. In windows 7 and vista we also had to include a script to kill the windows explorer in order for it not to destroy the palette, as the "Aero" interface those had, assumes total control of the 256 colour mode. Windows 9 and later dont have aero desktop, so are less of a problem with full-screen 256 colour mode.

In windowed mode, the colour palette is a windows compatible one, so no palette scrambling occurs. When you have the full CD game, you have access to desktop resolution, whereby the game uses whatever resolution you have the windows desktop set up to. "Full screen" mode in its 256 colour palette is therefore no longer needed - but is provided for folks with old 4:3 CRT monitors. The free demo version only goes up to an 800x600 mode window size, but is adequate for evaluating the game.

cheers
Andy

[kselander]

Thanks Mobhack,

I ended up getting both games as a download. Assuming the PDF that came with that is the same as the "printed manual" then it isn't worth it. I miss the days of Combat Mission and the John Tiller games being over 200 pages and going in detail of the engine. Now its 20 pages. So sad.

By Alt-Tab, on the free version if I did that the graphics got all screwed up. I did see other threads about that issue so I decided to just buy them for the windowed mode so I could play at 2560 x 1440.

Unfortunately that resolution doesn't work great. The info at the bottom of the screen id bunched up to take up about 3 inches of the display even with large fonts enabled. All the text is rather small. Once you get past that the display of the battle field is fantastic. It just takes a bit more learning of the game first.

[Imp]

Never used it but does the window magnifier program not work? Only issue is it might just follow the mouse, so just googled top 10 freeware programs for a guick look.
Several of these look like they have the option to just define an area of the screen rather than follow the mouse