Planescape: Torment Readme and Manual Addenda Developed By Black Isle Studios Built with the Bioware Infinity Engine Release Version 1.1.0 Contents 1. Getting Started a. System Requirements b. Installation c. Registering Planescape: Torment with Black Isle Studios d. Running Planescape: Torment e. Visit the Planescape: Torment Web Site 2. Trouble Shooting a. Tweaking Performance b. Known Problems c. Updates d. Tweaking the Torment.INI File e. Changes from Version 1.0 and Beta 1.1 3. Interplay Customer Service Information (North America) 4. European Information a. Customer Service Information b. Limited Warranty 5. Legal Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Getting Started 1a. System Requirements Required: Pentium (or compatible) 200 MHz with MMX 32 MB RAM Windows 95 with DirectX 5.0 or later 650 MB of Hard Drive Space 8X or faster CD-ROM DirectX Certified Video Card with at least 4 MB of video RAM DirectX Certified Sound Card Keyboard, Mouse Recommended: Pentium II (or compatible) 266 MHz with MMX 64 MB RAM 800 MB (or more) of Hard Drive Space 8X (or faster) CD-ROM DirectX certified Video Card with at least 8 MB of video RAM Notes on Video Cards: While you can still run Planescape: Torment with a 2MB video card, we highly recommend against it - performance may poor depending on the capabilities of the card. To check if your video card is 2MB, go to the Display folder in the Control Panel and choose Settings. If your video card can display 800x600 resolution at 24-bit color depth, then it is capable of running Planescape: Torment. We do recommend that you obtain the latest DirectX drivers for your video card, direct from the video card company that makes your card. WINDOWS NT 4.0: Although Windows NT 4.0 is not supported in an official capacity, Planescape: Torment can be run correctly under Windows NT 4.0 if the following conditions are met: You will need at least 32 MB of RAM and must have NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 installed. Slowdowns during gameplay have been reported under NT. These are due to the way that Direct Sound and the System Timers interact. This may be corrected in future version of NT. 1b. Installation Insert the CD-ROM labeled Planescape: Torment Disc 1 into your CD-ROM drive and follow the onscreen instructions. If your autorun is disabled, find the autorun.exe application in the root of Disc 1 and double click to launch the Installer. After installing Planescape: Torment, you will have options for installing DirectX 6.1. If you do not have DirectX installed, install DirectX 6.1 when prompted during the installation process. If you obtain a newer version of DirectX, it is recommended that you use that. Later versions of DirectX often have driver updates which will make Planescape: Torment run better on your system. However, Planescape: Torment only requires DirectX 6.1. You should regularly defragment your hard drive, as fragmentation can result in poor performance. 1c. Electronic Registration Please take a few moments to fill out the Electronic Registration for Planescape: Torment. Your feedback will make you eligible for special offers and promotions, and it also provides us with information we need in order to make better games. We'd appreciate your time. 1d. Running Planescape: Torment If you use the default installation settings for Planescape: Torment, it will be installed in a 'Black Isle' Program Group in your Start menu. 1e. Planescape: Torment Web Page If there is anything that are having problems with or cannot find in the manual, stop by the Planescape: Torment Web Page at http://www.planescape-torment.com Aside from cool game materials and errata, you may be able to find an answer for whatever question you might have. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. TroubleShooting 2a. Tweaking Performance Increasing Performance: 1. Audio processing. On the Options/Audio Options screen in the game, there are two buttons for controlling audio processing. Turning off Sound Processing will halt all sound effects in the game, increasing CPU time for other activities. The Music Processing button will do the same for all music in the game. 2. Virtual Memory. WE DO NOT RECOMMED ADJUSTING YOUR VIRTUAL MEMORY. Planescape: Torment will eagerly use up any Virtual Memory (hard drive) and non-Virtual Memory (RAM) you allocate to it. If you choose to add more memory to your system, or increase the size of your Windows swap file, the game speed MAY increase. However, as you increase your Virtual Memory, expect longer clearing times to remove this 'Virtual Memory' from the hard drive after the game is terminated. Things that will Decrease Performance: 1. Brightness/Contrast. Adjusting the default settings for these options (located in the options menu under 'Graphics') will result in a performance hit. If you find the game is too dark, we suggest adjusting your monitors brightness. 2. DirectX Hardware Calls. In the options menu under 'Graphics' there are three toggles for various 'BLTS'. Enabling these will result in a (sometimes drastic) performance hit. We recommend enabling these only if you have graphics glitches that you have been unable to resolve. 3. Running the game in Windowed Mode. Running the game in a Window on your desktop will decrease the overall game performance. 2b. Known Problems * Graphic Errors Some video cards may experience graphics glitches while playing the game. These problems are caused by DirectX Hardware Calls to your video card that are not functioning. We have written software renders for all of these calls to allow people to play even with drivers that are not 100% compatible with the DirectX standards. You can enable a software render for these calls if you have the most recent drivers for your video card and are still experiencing problems. Using the software render will probably fix the graphic glitches, but WILL result in a performance hit. IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING PROBLEMS WITH THE GRAPHICAL DISPLAY OF PLANESCAPE: TORMENT, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE LATEST VERSION OF YOUR VIDEO DRIVERS. DRIVER UPDATES ARE AVAILABLE AT MOST (if not all) HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS AND CHIPSET MANUFACTURERS SITES ON THE INTERNET. You may also try installing DirectX 6.0+ if you are experiencing graphical problems. If you have the most recent drivers for your video card, and you are still experiencing problems, you can enable software renders for these calls. The options are available in the options menu under 'Graphics'. The following list describes the known graphics glitches and which Call should be disabled to fix them. If in doubt, try different combinations and this may help. You can always turn off all software renders to return to the default settings. ------------------------------------------------------------ Glitch Disable ------------------------------------------------------------ -green boxes surrounding Software Transparent BLT any object in the game -box surrounding mouse cursor -animations appearing Software Mirror BLT 'reversed' -Fog-of-War appears in a 'semi-checkerboard' pattern -fog-of-War has edges that look 'spiky' -vertical lines down Software Standard BLT the main game screen -the game Cursor is leaving 'artifacts' of itself on the game screen -any other non-resolved graphics problem Specific Video Cards and Fixes ------------------------------------------------------------ Matrox Millenium (1) : Enable Software Mirror and Software Transparent BLTs. Permidia : Enable Software Standard BLT. * Minimizing Planescape: Torment If you minimize Planescape: Torment using Alt-Tab (and then bring it back up by left clicking on the minimized application), the sound effects for the game will stutter, loop, and skip. This is caused by a lack of resources available to Planescape: Torment after you go from full screen to a minimized screen, and it will correct itself after a short period of time. If you minimize Planescape: Torment and then bring it back up, the game may run more slowly for a time - this is caused by the game re-accessing resources that become tied up by minimization. Running the game in a window may result in lower performance overall. * The Ubiquitous Zombie This bug is believed to be fixed in all situations. If you have a conversation which requires a 3rd person who is not present, The Ubiquitous Zombie will appear and take the part of the other character. This keeps the conversation from crashing the game and ensures the player doesn't miss any critical game dialog. It is a bug, but at least it's fun! * NT 4.0: Screen-Saver While running under Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3, we have experienced intermittent problems with Screen Savers. We recommend disabling your Screen Saver while playing Planescape: Torment. * Taking a Long Time to Bring Up Save/Load Screen If you have created more than 20 Save Game files, then the Save/Load Screen will take an increasingly long time to come up when it is requested. This will not effect game play. The time can be reduced by deleting Save Game files that you no longer need. 2c. Updates If necessary, patches may become available for the product that add functionality or correct bugs. These updated versions will be made available at the Interplay site at http://www.interplay.com or you can connect directly to the Planescape: Torment Files directory by clicking on the 'Update' button in the Planescape: Torment AutoRun. 2d. Tweaking the Torment.INI file. The following items can be changed in the Torment.INI file. These options are not supported. Interplay's Customer Service will not provide information or assistance for these items. In the case of the product becoming unstable after editing this file, delete it. The program will generate a default .INI file. Maximum Frame Rate - This defaults to 30, however it can be increased to a maximum of 60. This will run Torment at a faster speed than it defaults to. As was stated above, this feature is not supported and the product may be- come unstable. It is possible that lowering this number to 24 or 20 will provide a slower but smoother gameplay experience for those people with lower end machines such as a Pentium 200Mhz. Path Search Nodes - This defaults to 4000, however it can be decreased to a minimum of 1000, and increased to a maximum of 32000. This represents how indepthly the product creates paths for characters and creatures. Descreasing the number may cause an increase in performance on slower systems, but will have characters and creatures move around the world in less "inteligent" ways. Increasing this number, could see the improvement in the manner by which creatures and characters walk between two points. Full Screen - This defaults to 1, which denotes the game playing full screen. This can be changed to 0, which will make Torment run in a window. This feature is not supported, because many of the graphical effects in Torment will not run correctly while the product is running in a window. The performance of the product will also be less while in windowed mode. Cache Size - This is the amount of Hard Drive space that Torment will use to store files from the game CD's on Hard Drive. This is why Torment will not always ask for CD's after you have returned to certain areas. It is highly suggested that this number is not reduced below 120, which is its default number. Increasing it will allow more of the game to be "cached" and therefore less CD swapping to occur. 2e. Changes from Version 1.0 and Beta 1.1 Below is a list of some of the major fixes made to Torment in this patch. Many other minor problems were fixed as well. PLEASE NOTE: There are some potential spoilers in this list. Read with caution. - A number of changes have been made in order to fix the slowdown problems that have been occurring. A broken resource servicing loop has been fixed. An optimization has been made to rectangle calculations for floater messages to avoid doing it more often than necessary. Finally, the capturing and releasing of resource shares in the AI thread have been optimized. - The disc swapping bug between CD2 and CD3 (and potentially others as well) has been fixed. You should not be asked to provide more than one CD during area transitions. - After level 20, fighter's Attacks Per Round will no longer drop to 1. - The bug where a blank dialog box would pop up when trying to advance levels has been fixed. - A cutscene firing problem when first entering the Dead Nations has been fixed. - Numerous items that were improperly being sold for 1cp have had their prices modified. - Numerous infinite experience and/or copper bugs were fixed. - Numerous spells have been fixed in their interactions with cutscenes as well as player death and resurrection. - A number of stats rolling over to 0 have been fixed. - Lockup when leaving Ravel's Maze through portal should be fixed. - Interactions between and number of spells and the Autopause function have been fixed. - Dakkon is no longer able to equip any weapons except for his Karach Blade. - Many spell tweaks have been made. - Numerous bugs concerning Lothar have been fixed. He should no longer kill the player inexplicably nor disappear. - A problem with equipping a faction-specific weapon while in multiple factions has been fixed. - A fix has been applied for the problem of AI turning off after application of the patch. - A problem with swapping portraits causing loss of tooltips has been fixed. - The problem with mulitple stat bonuses not being applied that was introduced in the beta patch has been fixed (the Charisma bug). *Possible Spoiler - You should be able to Raise Dead with the Divine Censer now. *Possible Spoiler - A problem with firing off the Fhjull betrayal cutscene has been fixed. *Possible Spoiler - Bringing Morte to the Fortress after keeping him out of your party for most of the game should now allow the endgame movie to play properly. *Possible Spoiler - Adahn's Dagger is no longer as fragile as it was. *Possible Spoiler - Mebbeth can now cast Remove Curse on the player. *Possible Spoiler - Training in axes with Marquez will no longer allow you to get past 5 in proficiency. *Possible Spoiler - Nordom's infinite dialog loop when helping Mourns-for-Trees is fixed. *Possible Spoiler - A number of problems with Morte's kidnapping cutscene have been fixed. *Possible Spoiler - It is now possible to get fake letters for Juliette even if the Print Shop is closed to you. *Possible Spoiler - Lenny can no longer repeatedly train you as a thief. *Possible Spoiler - The Transcendent One should no longer target your dead companions. *Possible Spoiler - Annah's infinite dialog loop when talking to the dead has been fixed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Interplay Customer Service Information This information is only valid in North America. TECHNICAL SUPPORT TROUBLESHOOTING DOCUMENTS ONLINE! Interplay Productions Technical Support now offers troubleshooting guides with complete installation and setup instructions as well as information that will help you overcome the most common difficulties. If you have access to the World Wide Web, you can find these at: www.interplay.com/support/ Here you will find troubleshooting information on as well as information on regular system maintenance and performance. DirectX www.interplay.com/support/directx/ Joysticks www.interplay.com/support/joystick/ Modems and Networks www.interplay.com/support/modem/ (For game-specific information and additional troubleshooting, visit our main page at www.interplay.com) If you have questions about the program, our Technical Support Department can help. Our web site contains up-to-date information on the most common difficulties with our products, and this information is the same as that used by our product support technicians. We keep the product support pages updated on a regular basis, so please check here first for no-wait solutions: www.interplay.com/support/ If you are unable to find the information you need on our web site, please feel free to contact Technical Support via e-mail, phone, fax, or letter. Please be sure to include the following information in your e-mail message, fax, or letter: Title of Game Computer manufacturer Operating system (Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 98, etc.) CPU type and speed in MHz Amount of RAM Sound card type and settings (address, IRQ, DMA) Video card CD-ROM Mouse driver and version Joystick and game card (if any) A copy of the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files from your hard drive A description of the problem you're having If you need to talk to someone immediately, call us at (949) 553-6678 Monday through Friday between 8:00AM-5: 45PM, Pacific Standard Time with 24 hours, 7 days a week support available through the use of our automated wizard. Please have the above information ready when you call. This will help us answer your question in the shortest possible time. When you call you will initially be connected with our automated wizard. For information pertaining to your specific title, press "1" on the main menu and listen carefully to all prompts. All titles are listed alphabetically. After you have selected your title, the most common difficulties will be listed. If the difficulty you are having is not listed or you need additional assistance, you may press "0" on your games main menu, and you will be transferred to a Technical Support Representative. No hints or codes are available from this line. You must call Interplay's HINT Line for hints, tips, or codes at 1-900-370-PLAY (1-900-451-6869 $1.25 in Canada only). You must be 18 years +, have a touch-tone phone, and the cost is $0.95 per minute. Interplay Productions Support Fax: (949) 252-2820 Interplay Productions Technical Support 16815 Von Karman Avenue Irvine, CA 92606 * HOW TO REACH US ONLINE INTERNET E-MAIL: support@interplay.com WORLD WIDE WEB: www.interplay.com FTP: ftp.interplay.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- 4. Technical Support information for UK Customers This information is not valid in North America. 5a. Write to: Customer Services Department Virgin Interactive 74a Charlotte Street London W1P 1LR tel: +44 (0) 207 551 4266 Fax: +44 (0) 207 551 4267 5b. Limited Warranty If within the first ninety days of purchase you have any problems with the product please return it to the retailer. After ninety days, you may return the software program to Interplay Productions, provided the fault is not due to normal wear and tear, and Interplay will mail a replacement to you. To receive a replacement, you should enclose the defective medium (including the original product label), in protective packaging, accompanied by: 1) A cheque or postal order for Ten (10) Pounds Sterling (to cover postage and packaging). Please make cheques payable to VIE Ltd. 2) A brief statement describing the defect. 3) The original receipt or address of the retailer. 4) Your return address. Registered mail is recommended for returns. Please send to: Virgin Interactive 74a Charlotte Street London W1P 1LR Do you need hints and tips for this game in the UK...? If so, then you can order the Planescape Torment strategy guide (Priced £14.99) from our Direct Sales line on *01373 453888. *Please call for overseas posting & packing rates. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- 6. Legal * SOFTWARE USE LIMITATIONS AND LIMITED LICENSE General Product License. This copy of Planescape: Torment (the Software) is intended solely for your personal noncommercial home entertainment use. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, or disassemble the Software, except as permitted by law. Interplay Productions and Bioware Corp. retain all right, title and interest in the Software including all intellectual property rights embodied therein and derivatives thereof. The Software, including, without limitation, all code, data structures, characters, images, sounds, text, screens, game play, derivative works and all other elements of the Software may not be copied, resold, rented, leased, distributed (electronically or otherwise), used on pay-per-play, coin-op or other for-charge basis, or for any commercial purpose. Any permissions granted herein are provided on a temporary basis and can be withdrawn by Interplay Productions at any time. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. * ACCEPTANCE OF LICENSE TERMS By acquiring and retaining this Software, you assent to the terms and restrictions of this limited license. If you do not accept the terms of this limited license, you must return the Software together with all packaging, manuals and other material contained therein to the store where you acquired the Software for a full refund. Planescape Torment & Design: (c) 1999 Interplay Productions. All Rights Reserved. Bioware Infinity Engine (c) 1999 Bioware Corp. Portions (c) 1999 TSR, Inc. Torment, Planescape, the Planescape logo, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the AD&D logo, and the TSR logo are trademarks of TSR, Inc., a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., and are used by Interplay under license. All Rights Reserved. Interplay, the Interplay logo, Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo and "By Gamers. For Gamers." are trademarks of Interplay Productions. All Rights Reserved. Bioware, the Bioware Infinity Engine, and the Bioware logo are trademarks of Bioware Corp. All Rights Reserved. Creative, Environmental Audio, and the Environmental Audio logo are trademarks of Creative Technology Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Windows (r) 95/98 are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners.