ULTIMATE GOLF README ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GENERAL: When you put the CD in your drive for the first time, it should automatically start to install. If for any reason this fails to work, you can begin the installation process by double clicking on "setup.exe" in the CD root. For a first install of the game, you should select "Install Game Files and FMV Player" and "Install / Update Hardware Drivers". You only need to select "Install Ubisoft Game Service Client" if you want to play on the Internet. The install size should be approximately 130 Meg. This game has been designed to work on Windows 95 and 98 only. It has been tested with all versions of both of those operating systems (e.g. Windows 95 release 1, release 2, and Plus!, Windows 98 and Windows 98 Special Edition, etc). The game needs DirectX7, and installs it during setup if its not already there. The FMV player needs DirectMedia 6 (ActiveMovie) as support, and will install it during setup if its not already there, along with Microsoft's DXM6 bug patch. To run the game, please use the menu shortcuts (under Ubisoft Games \ Ultimate Golf by default). Note that the menus give you the option of running the game with and without intro FMV. Should the game for any reason fail to start when you use the "Run Ultimate Golf with FMV" shortcut, please try the "Run Ultimate Golf" shortcut. When you start the game through one of the menu shortcuts, the colour depth of your main display will be checked before the game starts. With some video cards (e.g. 3dfx Voodoo 1, 2, 3, Rush or Banshee) you will need to reset your Windows colour depth to 16 bit (65536 colours) before starting the game to get acceptable performance. On most modern video cards (e.g. the Riva TNT / TNT2 / TNT Ultra) you can run the game with Windows in any colour depth other than 16 or 256 colours. These last two colour depths (16 and 256 colours) will not work well on any hardware. Please note that there are some issues with running Ultimate Golf on a 3dfx Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush, Banshee, Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3 card using the normally recommended ("OpenGL drivers for your hardware") installation option. (The issues are described in more detail lower down in this document.) 3dfx are working to resolve these problems, but have not yet specified a time when a bug fixed version of their driver will become publically available. We therefore recommend using the Glide driver option in the installer rather than the standard "OpenGL drivers for your hardware" option if you want to use a 3dfx Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush, Banshee, Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3 card. Please note that this driver will only ever work on 3dfx cards, since it is a Glide based driver. Please note that Ultimate Golf cannot be played reliably on an ATI Rage Pro card using the normally recommended ("OpenGL Drivers for your hardware") installation option. Please note that this problem does not occur with the ATI Rage 128 or Fury MAXX boards. The issue appears to be due to a problem with the ATI Rage Pro OpenGL driver. ATI are working to resolve this, but have not yet specified a time when a bug fixed version of their driver will become publically available. We therefore recommend using the "D3D Driver" option in the installer if you have an ATI Rage Pro. This option has been thoroughly tested on an ATI Rage Pro and works reliably. Please note that although the "D3D Driver" installer option will work on a wide range of video cards, we do not normally recommend it, since visual quality and frame rate are likely to be lower than with the normally recommended ("OpenGL Drivers for your Hardware" or "Glide Driver") installation options. If you experience problems on some configuration which appear to due to hardware / driver issues (e.g. random crashes) while using the "OpenGL" or "Glide" options, we recommnend rerunning the installer in "Install / Update Hardware Drivers" mode (see paragraph below) and installing the "D3D driver" from the "OpenGL driver options" menu, even though it is not normally recommended. Frame rate and visual quality are liable to be lower with the D3D driver than with the OpenGL or Glide ones, but some hardware problems that appear on some PCs when using OpenGL or Glide may not appear with D3D (and vice versa). For example, if you are using an AGP Riva TNT2 and experience random hardware crashes, we recommend this course of action. If at any point you want to change your choice of installed driver options, e.g. to change from the "OpenGL drivers for your hardware" option to the "Glide driver" option if you have a 3dfx card, you can do this by replacing the game CD in the driver, double clicking on setup.exe and selecting "Install / Update drivers for your hardware" ONLY from the first menu. A full reinstall of the game is not required. The same advice applies if you change the installed hardware on a PC which already has an installed copy of the game. If at any point you want to install the Ubisoft Game Service Client (for Internet play), and you did not install it initially, you can do this simply by reinserting the CD and double clicking on "setup.exe" as above, but selecting "Install Ubisoft Game Service Client" ONLY from the first menu. There is no need to reinstall the game. If you want in game music, you must have the CD in your CD drive while playing the game. The game can be uninstalled using the "Ubisoft Games \ Ultimate Golf \ Uninstall Ultimate Golf" shortcut in your menus (not the "To Uninstall a Ubisoft Product" shortcut which may also be present). Note that this will not uninstall any OpenGL drivers you may have added, or the Ubisoft Game Service Client (if you installed that). To uninstall the Game Service Client, use the "Ubisoft Games \ To Uninstall a Ubisoft Product" shortcut. To go back to your previous graphics driver version after using the "OpenGL Drivers for your Hardware (Recommended)" option during installation, use the "OpenGL Driver Setup \ Uninstall OpenGL Drivers" shortcut. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RECOMMENDED BASE SYSTEM SPEC ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OS: Windows 95 or 98. Processor / motherboard: A Pentium II 300 MHz or better with 64 Meg of RAM will give the best performance if lots of advanced graphics options are turned on. Video Card: You should have a 3d accelerator card of roughly equivalent performance to the 3dfx Voodoo 1 or better if you want to play the game at good frame rates. See below for the list of supported cards. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MINIMUM BASE SYSTEM SPEC ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Processor / motherboard: Cyrix, AMD or Pentium CPU, P200MMX equivalent or better, 32 Meg RAM or better. Video Card: You should have a 3d accelerator card of roughly equivalent performance to the 3dfx Voodoo 1 or better if you want to play the game at good frame rates. See below for the list of supported cards. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FULLY SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS using the recommended ("OpenGL drivers for your hardware") installation option from the "OpenGL driver options" menu in installer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Please note that on some of these cards in some PC configurations, your Windows desktop may not always reset itself to its normal size when you exit the game. This is due to minor issues with Windows and some card drivers. Also, please note that not all of the "advanced graphic options" available from the menu screens will be enabled on all video cards, due to hardware or driver limitations.) NVidia: Riva 128, Riva TNT, TNT2 / TNT Ultra, GeForce 256. ATI: Rage 128. Intel: 740, 810. Matrox: G200, G400. 3DLabs: Permedia 2, Permedia 3. S3: Savage 4. Note that although Riva TNT2 / TNT Ultra cards are supported, there may be issues with AGP versions of these cards in some motherboards. See below. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FULLY SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS using the recommended for 3dfx cards ("Glide driver") installation option from the "OpenGL driver options" menu in installer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3dfx: Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush, Banshee, Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3. (Note that if you have a PC which contains both a Voodoo 1 or 2 and another 3d card, you will only be able to use the Voodoo 1 or 2 card if you install using this option. If you wish to select which card to use at runtime, you should use the "OpenGL Drivers for your Hardware" option in the installer.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FULLY SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS using the recommended for ATI Rage Pro card ("D3D driver") installation option from the "OpenGL driver options" menu in installer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ATI: Rage Pro (all versions). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS with known issues, using the recommended ("OpenGL drivers for your hardware") installation option from the "OpenGL driver options" menu in installer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3DFX Note that an alternative Glide based driver is available for 3dfx cards (see above), which we recommend using instead of the "OpenGL drivers for your hardware" option on 3dfx cards. Voodoo 1 (Voodoo Graphics), Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3, Voodoo Rush, Banshee - The trees will appear blocky. Tears may be visible in the sky. There may be occasional glitches where the wrong texture is used, e.g. on the side of a bunker. Voodoo 3500 TV (only) - When you run the "OpenGL Drivers for your Hardware" installation option (from the "OpenGL Driver Options" menu in the installer) for this card, you will be presented with a choice of two drivers: the Voodoo 3500 driver and the Voodoo 3500 TV driver. We recommend selecting the Voodoo 3500 driver, since if you use the Voodoo 3500 TV driver you may see graphical glitches in the game menus. This is the solution recommended by 3dfx if you "experience problems" with the Voodoo 3500 TV OpenGL driver on a Voodoo 3500 TV card. ATI Rage Pro - You should use the "D3D Driver" option from the installer for this card unless the technical support for your card tells you that your version of the ATI Rage Pro OpenGL driver will work with Ultimate Golf. This card is fully supported if the "D3D Driver" option is used. NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 / TNT Ultra - If you have an AGP (only) Riva TNT2 based card (only; this does not apply to a normal TNT), you may experience random crashes on some hardware configurations due to AGP conflicts. NVidia are investigating this issue and plan to resolve it. In the meantime, we recommend using the "D3D driver" option from the "OpenGL driver options" menu in the installer if you have this problem, which should work. RENDITION: V2100, V2200 - With some motherboards you may see texture glitches on the green with these cards. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNLISTED VIDEO CARDS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any card not explicitly described above can be expected to work with the game if it has a fully compliant OpenGL 1.1 driver and the "Install OpenGL Drivers for your Hardware" option is chosen from the installer. If the installer does not recognise your hardware, you should try visiting the GLSetup web site (http://www.glsetup.com), if possible. If you cannot obtain drivers for your card using GLSetup, you should use the drivers supplied by the card manufacturer, or contact their technical support. If for any reason you experience problems with running the game on an unlisted video card using the default ("OpenGL Drivers for your Hardware") installation option, you should rerun the installer, selecting "Install / Update Hardware Drivers" only (as described under the "general notes" above), and try installing the "D3D Driver" option. Also, please note: POWERVR PCX2 - This card is not fully supported, but can be used via the "D3D driver" from the "OpenGL driver options" panel in the installer (only). If you do this, you must turn off "optimised rendering" from the PowerVR control panel before running the game. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER ISSUES ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NETWORKING - Please note that networking on a LAN is configured to run using the IPX protocol. D3D DRIVER - Should work, but will be slower than the recommended (OpenGL or Glide) options on the same hardware, and may have minor visual problems which do not affect gameplay. It is therefore not recommended. SOFTWARE RENDERING DRIVER - Will not be terribly fast unless you have quite a high end PC. GLDIRECT - The commercial Scitech OpenGL / D3D wrapper (GLDirect) is supported by Ultimate Golf. However, if you have GLDirect installed and then run the game installer, the game installation process may overwrite one of GLDirect's dlls, since GLDirect itself overwrites a Microsoft system dll with an "unofficial" one. The installer should ask you before doing this, but unless you allow it to overwrite it will not install OpenGL drivers for you. However, this is a safe process. It will NOT disable GLDirect, but will reset GLDirect to "using default OpenGL" mode. If you want to use GLDirect's other modes, you must re-enter the GLDirect configuration panel after game installation is complete and set the mode you want. TRANSLUCENT SHADOWS - Translucent shadows are available on the following cards if you perform these actions 3DLABS Permedia 2 - turn on "stencil" and "shadows" from the "advanced graphics options" screen. NVIDIA TNT / TNT2: select 32 bit colour depth, either by launching from a 32 bit desktop or (under Windows 98) by selecting a 32 bit colour depth mode from the "graphics options" screen. Then select a 24 bit z buffer from the "graphics options" screen, and turn on "stencil" and "shadows" from the "advanced graphics options" screen. ATI Rage 128: select 32 bit colour depth, either by launching from a 32 bit desktop or (under Windows 98) by selecting a 32 bit colour depth mode from the "graphics options" screen. Then select a 24 bit z buffer from the "graphics options" screen, and turn on "stencil" and "shadows" from the "advanced graphics options" screen. They may be available on other machines as well - ask your card manufacturer which options to choose to make stencil buffering available, select them and then enable "stencil" and "shadows" from the "advanced graphics options" screen. NOTE: If you choose these options ("stencil" and "shadows") from the advanced graphics options screen, but have not set the appropriate colour and z buffer depths for your card from the options screen, or your card does not support hardware stencilling, the shadows will be rendered stippled if your card supports that. If your card supports neither stippling nor stencilling, the shadows will default to the normal (opaque) style.