KINETIC WORM DIMENSION V1.10                             official ZDG help file
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[ contents ]

	copyright & distribution notice
	credits & acknowledgements
	the story, the play
	command line switches
	system requirements
	Windows considerations
	problems
	contacting ZDG

[ copyright & distribution notice ]

	The software product KINETIC WORM DIMENSION (further referred as KW)
	and all related data including music scores, sounds, artwork and text
	issues are

	(c) Nov 1999, dr.noise & bnbb / ZDG.

	ZDG claims no responsibility for any software/hardware damage,
	data loss or any other disasters arising from the use or misuse
	of KW. Use it at your own risk.
	
	ZDG grants you the right to freely copy & distribute KW,
	provided the following conditions:
		- no money is taken for copying/distributing, except
		  normal media and shipping/handling cost;
		- all files of the original package, including this text,
		  are remained and unchanged;
		- the original copyright is remained.

[ credits & acknowledgements ]

	- ZDM music player is partially based on the source code of the
	  "s3mod-v1.9" package, (C) 1994,1995 by Daniel Marks and David Jeske,
	  and S3M file format and mixing techniques provided by Future Crew.
	- music tracked in Scream Tracker v.3.21 [FC].
	- drum samples were sampled from Alesis D4 module.
	- particular noise samples were taken from Quake [id Software & NIN]
	  and "Chaos A.D." album [Sepultura].
	- sound effects synthesized in Cool Wave [David Johnston].
	- all artwork is handmade-created in AutoDesk Animator Pro
	  and converted using custom ZDG tools.
	- code written in assembly language and C.
	- compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0.
	- all texts and sources were edited in the FAR's [Eugene Roshal]
	  internal editor.

[ the story, the play ]

	KW is based on the well-known classic game called "Python" or "Snake"
	and is a 3D-extension of it. KW game space, also called a level, is
	a set of planes, specially oriented and connected with each other,
	so the worm can crawl from one plane to another, while moving in three
	independent dimensions. Player's goal is to control the worm and
	collect energetic charges appearing in different places on the level.
	Collecting charges, the worm increases its length. The worm cannot
	run into obstacles, into self, or out of level into the void.
	After the required number of charges is collected, a special token
	will appear - an exit, allowing the worm to pass to the next level.
	Player has some amount of time given to complete the level. When it's
	expired, the worm dies. If the worm hasn't reached charge for some
	time, the charge will disappear and respawn in different place.

	Controls

	Cursor keys (arrows up, down, left and right) are used to control
	the worm, and can be redefined via the KEYBOARD SETUP - REDEFINE KEYS
	menu item.
	"gray +" or "A" key is used to increase speed;
	"gray -" or "Z" key is used to decrease speed.
	"P" key pauses the game until any key is pressed.
	"shift" key, while pressed, increases speed at approx. 1.5 times.

	Training mode

	KW features training mode. Once it's enabled, the game will go as
	usual, except when the worm dies the lives will not be lost, and
	after reaching exit token the worm will stay on current level instead
	of passing to the next level. To enable training mode, press T key
	at the level start (when the worm hasn't started to move yet). In the
	upper-left corner of the screen, you should see yellow rectangle with
	black "T" letter. To disable training mode, just press T again at
	any time.

	Volume setup

	KW has three volume settings: MASTER VOLUME, MUSIC VOLUME and SOUND FX
	VOLUME (sound effects). Master volume in Windows is usually the analog
	output level of your sound card, whereas music and sfx volumes are set
	digitally by the software. Therefore, lowering software volume causes
	some sound quality loss due to integer truncation of the digital data.
	So we recommend you to set the desired MUSIC/SFX volume ratio to the
	highest possible values, then set the desired MASTER VOLUME level,
	since there's no quality loss on the analog output.

	Controls setup

	You can set the control type to ABSOLUTE or RELATIVE with the menu
	item CONTROL TYPE. Absolute type allows you to move in each 2D
	dimension (XY, YZ or XZ) using independent sets of 4 keys (relative
	"up", "down", "right" and "left"), but you of course may use the same
	set for all three planes. Relative method is more gracious yet more
	difficult: in any dimension you use only two keys, one of them turns
	worm's head always left (counterclockwise), and the other - always
	right (clockwise) relative to the worm's moving direction. That is,
	independently of worm's orientation, the controls are tied solely to
	its movement direction. This method requires advanced space thinking,
	but after some practice it can be learned (keys will be the same, but
	only "left-right" pair of them will be really used). "Up-down" pair
	will still work and will duplicate the "left-right" pair. This is
	useful for performing fast 180-degree turns. With absolute control
	type, this task is done easily by pressing two different keys at
	almost the same time. With relative control type, you will need to
	press the same key twice, which is very difficult to do fast, so the
	duplicate keys were added.

[ command line switches ]

	You can run KW with the following switches:
	-nosound	disables all sounds (use in the case of hangs, etc.)
	-file <filename>	specifies an external level file
				(see build_en.txt).

[ system requrements ]

	CPU:	486DX4-100 as a low limit. Pentium-133 will be just fine.
	Memory: approx. 1.5 Mb of free RAM.
	Video:	SVGA card with at least 1 Mb of video memory.
	Sound:  your default Windows soundcard (optional).
	Mouse:	not required.
	OS:	Windows 95 or higher (further referred simply as Windows),
		with DirectX 3 or higher installed.

[ Windows considerations ]

	No additional tunings required to launch KW under Windows. This version
	will successfully run on Windows 95/98/NT and probably Windows 2000.
	However, this version of KW will NOT have sound under Windows NT
	(unless the decent version of DirectSound for NT will appear).

[ problems ]

	If you feel sleepiness, dizziness, pursuant hearing hallucinations,
	partial or total loss of ability to navigate in space, then try to
	play KW a bit less :)

[ contacting ZDG ]

	we are Zoolook Design Group.
	home page (russian): http://members.tripod.com/ZDG
	home page (english): http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Chasm/4496
			aka: http://www.geocities.com/zdgzdgzdg
	mail: dr_noise@mail.ru, dr_noise@hotmail.com
