ABOUT THIS RELEASE
==================

Another alpha release. Changes in short (see ChangeLog for details):
- Moved to OGRE 1.2 and CEGUI 0.4.0
- Added one new vehicle and two new weapons
- Improved HUD a bit

Most of the changes aim at making team play easier. I think describing them all in detail here would be a waste of time and space - simply try it.

An important note regarding a
STRANGE ANIMATION PROBLEM WITH LINUX:
For reasons I can't explain, the linux version of Ogre 1.2 doesn't like my .skleleton files. Loading them results either directly in a segfault or the models show weird vertex coordinates for a while before the game crashes. Maybe it's because the skeletons don't have a dedicated root bone as Ogre demands - but they have been working this way for ages.
Because I don't have a debug setup ready for linux to look into it (I'm on windows normally) and I'll be busy with other things the next weeks, I'm going to release 0.0.8 anyway. However, I have included a little shell script called 'hide_skeletons.sh' in the 'data' directory that will hide all .skeleton files. If problems with the skeletons occur, you can run this script. It will disable all animations (and will make the mech look really stupid), but at least you'll be able to play the game...

Other important notes:

IN-GAME HELP:
You can bring up a little help menu explaining the default keys by pressing F1.

LAN PLAYERS:
The "Join Game" menu only lists servers, that are registered on the master server. If you want to directly connect to a server (e.g. in a LAN), you can use the 'game.join <host> <port>' console command. <port> is only needed if the server's port differs from FWP's default port (27680).
So to connect to a server running on 192.168.178.20:12345 you would type 'game.join 192.168.178.20 12345' (note that the colon is replaced by a space).
You can also use hostnames, e.g. 'game.join someserver.localdomain'.

GAMEPLAY:
The game can be played with 16 players... theoretically. At the moment FWP's performance scales very poorly with the number of players and you need a very fast computer to run a server with many clients.
As for the game modes:
'edit': Currently the same as 'deathmatch'
'deathmatch': Should work
'team deatchmatch': Should work as well, although there is only a very simple scoring scheme (e.g. there is no team-kill penalty and scores aren't reset when a player changes teams).
'conquest': There are areas to capture, but they are only handled locally, i.e. their status is not synchronized over the network. Scoring is the same as for 'team deathmatch'.

CHEATING:
Cheating in fwp is very easy: You can edit the source code, the arena files, the vehicle files, the weapon files, ...
A checksum mechanism is planned for future releases to avoid the simplest forms of cheating, but at the moment I can only trust that the open source community plays fair ;).
BTW: This is also a chance for players with slower computers that aren't afraid of editing some .particle files. By removing the emitters from some of the particle systems you can achieve a serious performance improvement. For example you can remove the signals in 'snowvalley'.

SOUND:
Sound is included, but disabled by default. I had some crashes with sound and this release has only 4 sound effects included, so you won't miss much. If you want to try fwp with sound, you can set 'sound.enabled' to '1' in fwp.cfg.

NETWORK:
The network code is basically the same old crap I used in <=0.0.6. I have only tested it rudimentary in a LAN and never used it over the internet. So it may get serious problems when it has to cope with packet loss and high pings (e.g. the physics stuff may behave strangely).
The master server stuff hasn't been tested a lot, either.



KNOWN PROBLEMS
==============

In addition to the things mentioned above, the following problems are known:

There is a bug in collision detection that sometimes leads to a wrong splash damage (this one can be quite annoying...).

FWP currently sends connect packets only once. This is a problem for udp packets get lost sometimes. You have to try it again manually when you don't 'get through' the first time (or the second, or the third, ...).

FWP tries to match the network traffic to a connection speed value that can be set in the option menu. Unfortunatly, the throtteling algorithm doesn't really work yet, so you may get problems with too high (or too low) network traffic.
To see your network traffic, hit F5 and then F6 until you get to network tab. If you have too much traffic, you can try lowering the server's connection speed setting in the options menu.

FWP currently loads media (models, textures, etc.) when it needs them (i.e. in-game). This may cause lags on slower computers.

The input system is a total mess. I first used Ogre's input interface, then switched to SDL, then tried OpenInput, and finally switched back to Ogre again. As a result, there are some issues related to input:
- key names: Some key names aren't set correctly, but unless you want to place your own bindings in the fwp.cfg file that should not be a problem.
- camera movement: Movement of the free camera is a bit unsmooth.

The simulation within fwp partly suffers from 'jittering', meaning that some opbjects never fully settle. This is especially an issue when walking with the mech on rough terrain at rather low frame rates (<30).

There's only friction when you're lying on the ground (terrain), so you'll slip over the level geometry.

There's a little shadowing failure in the main menu background scene. That's a problem with the mesh, not Ogre or your graphics card.



CREDITS
=======

The FWP-Team:
Karsten Schwenk (programming, art that looks ugly)
Thorsten Anthes (art that looks good)

People who helped and supported us:
Katja and Christoph Einsfeld
Phillip Wagner

Programs used by FWP:
OpenGameChache, (c) Steffen Pohle (http://opengamecache.sourceforge.net)

Libraries used by FWP:
OGRE, (c) The OGRE team (http://www.ogre3d.org) 
CEGUI, (c) The CEGUI team (http://www.cegui.org.uk)
ODE, (c) Russell L. Smith (http://ode.org/)
TinyXML, (c) Lee Thomason (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/tinyxml)
SDL, (c) Sam Lantinga (http://www.libsdl.org)
SDL_net, (c) Sam Lantinga and others (http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_net)
SDL_mixer, (c) Sam Lantinga and others (http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer)

External media used by FWP:
The font ProFont is (c) Tobias Jung (http://www.tobias-jung.net/profont/)
The font AstronBoy is (c) Larabie Fonts (http://www.larabiefonts.com)
The stevecube skybox and some textures were taken from the Ogre examples. 
Some textures were taken from 3DCAFE (http://www.3dcafe.com/).

Tools used in the creation of FWP:
Blender (http://www.blender.org)
MilkShape3d (http://www.milkshape3d.com)
The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)
Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen)
KDevelop (http://www.kdevelop.org)
GNU autotools + gcc (http://www.gnu.org)
Code::Blocks (http://codeblocks.org)
MS Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/)
NullSoft Install System (http://nsis.sourceforge.net)



COPYRIGHT
=========

FWP Copyright 2004-2006 The FWP-Team 

FWP is free software. Basically you may use it for any purpose as long as you don't blame us for any damages incurred, and you may freely distribute it UNMODIFIED on any media. See file COPYING for details.



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FWP Homepage: fightwinprevail.sourceforge.net
Email: macnihilist@users.sourceforge.net
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