------------------------------ Black & White® 2 Readme File Lionhead Studios 2005 ------------------------------ BLACK & WHITE® 2 BY LIONHEAD STUDIOS. ----------------- Table Of Contents ----------------- A. Letter from Peter Molyneux B. Installation C. Playing Tips D. Minimum PC Configuration E. Uninstall F. Notes on video card chipsets G. Other Important Notices ----------------------------- A. Letter from Peter Molyneux ----------------------------- "Well here is Black & White® 2. It was started one month after Creature Isle on February 14th 2002. The premise was to make a game which exceeded players' expectations in every way. The first way we have tried to do this is by radically changing what you think of as a god game, and the second is to add real time strategy elements to Black & White® which are both original and familiar. To mix this with the ability to grow and nurture your own unique Creature, who could be anything from the cutest pet, to the ultimate destructive force, and be involved in any area of the game you wish. One of our first design goals was to make you feel like a god, to allow you to play the game in any way you wish but the game must build up to a climax which is truly epic. The line: "Are you the god of peace or the god of war?" was one of the mantras the game was built on. In other words are you playing a god game or an RTS game? Are you going to be kind or cruel, nurture or dominate, create or destroy? So after 1,254 days and 20,000+ take away meals here is your copy of Black & White® 2. Well I hope you enjoy this game; there is much passion and love in what we have built. Many people here have made a lot of sacrifices to make what we think is a great game. But at the end of the day that is for you to decide." PETER MOLYNEUX --------------- B. Installation --------------- Black & White® 2 will only install and run on machines installed with Windows 2000/XP. 1. Start your machine and wait for the Windows operating system to load. 2. Place the Black & White® 2 CD/DVD in the CD/DVD drive. 3. Windows will automatically detect the CD/DVD and begin the installation. Follow the on-screen instructions to install Black & White® 2. If you need to install DirectX 9c the installer will do so automatically. 4. The installation program creates a program group called Black & White® 2 and adds it to your Start->Programs menu. Left-click on the Start button on your Windows task bar. Under Programs->Black & White® 2, select and click "Black & White® 2" to play. Troubleshooting. If you find that Windows does not autorun the install program you can install the game by enabling the autorun feature (please refer to your Windows documentation on how to enable this feature on your drive). Alternatively if you do not have autorun enabled on this drive you can still run the install program manually. To do this open the Start menu, select 'Run…' and enter ‘d:\arun.exe’ (without quotes) where 'd:' is replaced by the drive letter of your CD/DVD drive. After this if Windows fails to recognise the CD/DVD and fails to run the installation program, run Setup.exe from the root directory of the CD/DVD drive. --------------- C. Playing tips --------------- Lionhead Studios provides up-to-date game tips, hints and other on-line help for playing the game at http://www.bwgame.com. Also check out our community forums for hints and tips from other players at http://allboards.lionhead.com --------------------------- D. Minimum PC Configuration --------------------------- Processor - Intel® Pentium 4 1.6 GHz or equivalent Memory - 512Mb RAM HDD Space - 3.5 Gb free hard disk space Operating System - Windows® 2000/XP DVD ROM Speed - Any Speed Videocard - DirectX 8+ based 64Mb video card which supports pixel shading (see Notes on video card chipsets below) Soundcard - DirectX 8 compliant sound card DirectX - DirectX 9c+ (supplied with install) ------------ E. Uninstall ------------ 1. To uninstall Black & White® 2 insert the Black & White® 2 disk, and run setup.exe 2. Left-click on Remove and click Next to uninstall Black & White® 2. 3. Should this fail to work, left-click on the Start menu, select Settings and then Control Panel. Now find Add/Remove Programs and left-click to run. Scroll down the list until you see Black & White® 2, select it and left-click on Add/Remove to uninstall. If the uninstaller fails to completely remove Black & White® 2 (it may not, for example, delete your Saved Games folder in "My Documents"), delete the folder to which you installed the game. Thus, if you have used the default directories, double left-click on My Computer, double left-click on the C: drive, double left-click on Program Files, left click on the Lionhead Studios folder, then right click and select Delete. Click Yes to confirm. This will send the remaining files to the Recycle Bin, which you will then need to empty. -------------------------------- F. Notes on video card chipsets -------------------------------- To run correctly, Black & White® 2 requires: DirectX 9.0c DirectX 8/9 based Video card which supports at least version 1.1 pixel shaders Video cards based on the following chipsets are supported: ATI Radeon 8500/9100/9200/9250/9500/9550/9600/9700/9800/X300/X600/X700/X800/X850 nVidia GeForce 6200/6600/6800/FX5200/FX5500/FX5600/FX5700/FX5800/FX5900/FX5950/PCX5300/PCX5900/Ti4200/Ti4600/Ti4800 If you are experiencing problems with your video card and Black & White® 2, try updating your video card driver by downloading the latest driver available from the video card manufacturer. If there is no improvement, try using the latest driver provided by the video chipset manufacturer. Your video card chipset is the video processing chip located on your video card. If there is no information in your video card manual or website, check the video card for an identifying chip with the chipset manufacturer's name on it. For AGP cards, you need to make sure your AGP Aperture is set correctly - For 64Mb video cards, you need at least 32mb of AGP. For cards with 128Mb+, you need at least 64 mb of AGP aperture. Check your AGP is working by selecting Start Menu->Run dxdiag. If AGP is working, the display tab should show AGP Texture Acceleration: Enabled 64mb-128mb video cards require 64 - 128 mb of AGP ram on AGP systems (256mb video cards or PCI express systems do not need this) If you experience performance issues then please use the command line modifier 'MINSPEC' from the start menu to downgrade the graphics shaders. If you are experiencing performance issues on video cards with less than 128Mb of RAM then we recommend using the command line modifier 'LOWMEM'. Some popular video chipset manufacturer's websites are listed below: NVidia http://www.nvidia.com/ ATI http://www.ati.com/ -------------------------- G. Other Important Notices -------------------------- Software © 2001-2005 Lionhead Studios Limited. All rights reserved. Lionhead, the Lionhead logo, Black & White and the Black & White Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lionhead Studios Limited in the US and/or other countries. Black & White ® is a Lionhead ® Studios brand. Electronic Arts, EA and the EA logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the US and/or other countries. Published and distributed by Electronic Arts. EA™ is an Electronic Arts™ brand The official Black & White game website can be found at http://www.bwgame.com Microsoft, DirectX and Direct3D are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, Inc. nVidia is a registered trademark of Nvidia Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Pentium, Intel, and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries ATI Technologies Inc. ATI and the ATI logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. RenderWare is a registered trademark of Criterion Software Limited. Parts of the software are Copyright 1998-2005 Criterion Software Limited. and its licensors Uses Bink Video. Copyright © 1997-2005 by RAD Game Tools, Inc ATI’s RADEON® X800 XL graphics card sets a new standard in graphics performance and visual realism with 16 pipelines, higher clock speeds, and break through image enhancement technology. ATI’s RADEON® X800 series ushered in a new category called High-Definition Gaming, putting capable gamers in complete control of even the most demanding game titles www.ati.com http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx800/index.html Certain USB headsets may cause issues if they are disconnected during gameplay. To avoid this, please save and quit the game before removing them.