README FOR MONSTER TRUCK MADNESS BETA 2
February 1998
© Copyright 1998 Microsoft Corporation.

This document contains important information specific to Beta 2 of Monster Truck Madness 2 that is not included in the manual or online help.

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System requirements:

MTM2 requires at least a Pentium 133 (200 recommended) with 16 MB of memory (32 recommended). EDO or SynchDRAM memory is highly recommended. You must be running Windows 95 or NT 4 SR3. A 3D accelerator card is highly recommended. 

The game will run on Windows 98 but this is not yet a supported configuration.

Known issues:

Setup:

Setup currently does not auto-detect DirectX 5.2. If you do not have the correct version installed, MTM2 will not give you an error message. To install DX 5.2, start setup again and click on the Install DirectX button.

Compact install does not work. Typical and Complete are the same right now. 

Setup has not been thoroughly tested. If for any reason setup does not work on your computer, you can still run MTM2 by copying all the files manually to your harddrive. You will need to rename monster.ex_ to monster.exe. To install DX manually, click on the dxsetup icon in the DirectX folder on the beta CD.

Setup art is not complete for this beta.

Setup should correctly configure your computer without rebooting. If you find that the game would not work correctly until you rebooted, please
let us know.

CB Radio:

In order for CB radio to work, you must have a working microphone connected to your computer and you must have the MS RT24 codec correctly installed. Currently this installation should be handled by setup, if not, however, make sure that msvcrt.dll is in your \windows\system folder. You can find this file on the cd in the setup folder.

To verify that your microphone is correctly installed, use the sound recorder application found in the multimedia folder under accessories in the Windows Start Menu.

Performance: 

We are very interested in performance on different configurations. Please type "frame" during a race to see your framerate. The top number is the instaneous frame rate; the bottom number represents a moving average of 
the last several seconds. 

Things affecting performance:
- sound on or off
- sound card and driver
- sound quality
- all graphics options
- number of trucks in the race
- number of trucks visible
- view (cockpit visible or not)
- position overlay visible or not
- finder visible or not

About 3D accelerators:

If you have a 3D accelerator card in your computer, you should see significant improvements in both the quality and speed of graphics. Some 3D cards currently work better on MTM2 than others; we are currently working on some of these issues. 3D acceleration only works if you select it from the graphics menu and run in full screen (press F4 to toggle full screen mode).

Known problems:

1. Video config issues currently exist with the following cards:
- STB Velocity
- PowerVR (includes Video Logic and Matrox M3D cards)
- Diamond Stealth (includes S3 Virge and Verite 2100 chipsets)
- Hercules Stingray
- Matrox Millenium II and Matrox Mystique
- Canopus Total 3D card (Rendition v1000 chipset)
- 3D Labs Permedia 2
- NVidia Riva 128 chipsets
- ATI 3D rage
- Imagine 128

2. Sound problems occur with the following cards:
- Yamaha OPL3-SA
- Roland Rap 10
- Turtle Beach Malibu

3. Weather effects only work properly in 3D acceleration mode.

4. Not all hardware options work properly on all 3D cards.

5. Weather effects show up under water.

6. Instant replay: no sounds yet except for collisions.

7. The following conditions can cause MTM2 to crash:
- Changing renderers without restarting the game.
- Rejoining a multi-player race after the host has removed you.

8. If you have a lot of trucks in a race, you may get excessive commentary. If you have the Show Commentary option turned on, commentary may scroll
past too fast to read.

NT issues:
 

You should have Service Pack 3 installed before installing MTM2.

Direct Sound and Direct 3D are not available on NT. You may see an error message with regard to sounds not playing correctly, latency, etc. and you will be restricted to running the game in software mode only.

To run a multiplayer session on NT, you must first install Direct Play.  You can do this by running Dplay50a.exe, which is located on the CD in the Direct X folder.


Internet Gaming Zone Issues:

If you are having trouble connecting to the Internet Gaming Zone, take the file mtm.reg from the CD (it is in the Setup folder) and copy it to your hard drive.  

If you installed Monster Truck Madness 2 to a location other than c:\program files\microsoft games\monster truck madness 2, you will need to edit this file.  

Do this by right clicking on it and selecting Edit to open the file with notepad.  

You will see two entries, one called CurrentDirectory and one called Path.  

Edit these to point to the location where you installed Monster Truck Madness 2.  

Save the file to a local drive, close notepad and double click on the saved mtm.reg file to update your registry.

If you do not need to update the CurrentDirectory and Path entries, you can simply double click on mtm.reg to update your registry.
