SG Manual English.Pdf

Foreword Table of Contents

You have purchased Shadowgrounds – good choice! We, the Foreword ...... 2 developers of the game, wish to take a moment to thank you. Introduction ...... 4 Shadowgrounds is an adrenaline-packed alien battling game System requirements ...... 5 played from a top-down perspective and set in the year 2096. But it’s also the result of over four years of hard Installing the game ...... 5 work and dedication. It is the first commercial game for everybody who worked on it, and as such it is a tremendous Uninstalling the game ...... 6 achievement in today’s extremely competitive and profit- oriented games business. Shadowgrounds Launcher ...... 6

The development process was tough – but it’s in our Finnish Main Menu ...... 7 blood not to give up. In the end we are very proud that we Game Options ...... 8 stick to the game and ultimately delivered a fresh action experience. Saving the Game ...... 10 We hope you enjoy Shadowgrounds – let us know what you User Interface ...... 10 think at http://www.frozenbyte.com or Weapons, Map and Logs ...... 11 http://www.shadowgroundsgame.com. Co-op game ...... 12 Now, prepare to kick alien ass. Troubleshooting ...... 13 Thank you. Credits ...... 14

Sincerely, Shadowgrounds development team Frozenbyte

Introduction System requirements

Mankind’s longest dream – to reach out to the stars – Minimum specs: Recommended specs: started to become reality in the 2050s, when technology research reached a point where a planet could be terraformed Windows XP/2000 Windows XP/2000 into a suitable home for man. Nine unmanned spaceships were 1.5 GHz CPU 2.0 GHz CPU launched with the purpose of starting a chainreaction of 384 MB RAM 512 MB RAM life on Ganymede, the third moon of the Jupiter system. GeForce 4 Ti / Radeon 9000 GeForce FX 5900 Ultra / 1 GB Free Hard Drive Space Radeon 9500 Pro The Ganymede project was declared a success after three 1 GB Free Hard Drive Space decades of hard research work. Manned spaceships were sent Gamepad for co-op play to Ganymede – which was still cold, battered and dark, but also a new beginning, a new home for hundreds of men and women. The human colony grew over the years, and now in the Installing the game year 2096, over 8000 people live on Ganymede. To install the game, please insert the Shadowgrounds CD1 (Install) to your CD- or DVD-ROM drive. The Shadowgrounds Step into the shoes of Wesley Tyler. He’s an ordinary man installer program should launch automatically. If it does – if that’s what you call a senior mechanic at the IGTO’s not, please use the Windows Explorer to access the CD Repair Base on Ganymede. He once was a security expert on directory and double-click on Setup.exe. Ganymede. But then things went wrong, accidents happened, and Wesley Tyler asked the wrong questions. He got the The installer will ask you to read and accept the End-User blame - and a dropship ticket to the outskirts of the License Agreement and choose a directory where to install Ganymede colony. the game to. After this, the installation process will start and should take approximately 10 minutes, depending Now he works day in, day out at the IGTO Repair Base. Life on your computer system. At some point the installer will is dark, cold and frustrating. But all that is about to ask you to insert CD 2. Please insert the CD and click on change when the electricity system starts malfunctioning “OK”, and the installation will continue. once again and Tyler is sent to check out what’s wrong… Windows Media Codecs are installed if they are not already up to date on your computer. These codecs are required to play Shadowgrounds.

When the installation is finished, you will have the option to read the ReadMe file (for last minute documentation), start the game and install DirectX 9.0c. If you do not have DirectX 9.0c installed, please install it prior to playing Shadowgrounds.

Uninstalling the game Main Menu

To uninstall the game, simply go to the Shadowgrounds Continue program group and choose “Uninstall Shadowgrounds”. Loads the last mission where the current Profile is.

Uninstalling will leave your Profiles (and Screenshots if New Game you have taken any) on the harddisk. You can delete these Starts a new game. You can select the difficulty level files manually. (easy, medium, hard). If you want to start a co-operative game, select the Co-Operative mode instead of the Singleplayer mode (please refer to the Co-Operative section Shadowgrounds Launcher of this manual for more information). Load Game Shadowgrounds should be started from the Shadowgrounds Lets you choose from all the current Profile’s available Launcher. It allows you to change many technical options, savegame files. including resolution, graphics detail settings and other important options. Many of these options are under the Profiles Advanced menu, which you can access by clicking the You can set up multiple profiles – one for each player. Advanced button. This is especially useful if two or more people play Shadowgrounds singleplayer on the same computer. Each profile has its own savegame slots. Please make sure you always have your own profile selected when playing the game.

Profiles are also required for co-op play. See the co-op section for more details.

Game Options Screenshots can be taken by pressing the F11 button. They will be saved in .bmp format to \Screenshots in the Controls directory where Shadowgrounds was installed to. Sound Options Shadowgrounds has been designed for keyboard and mouse. Sound Options allows you to change the music, sound and However, you can also use a gamepad – in singleplayer and speech volume. in co-op. Please refer to the co-op section of the manual for instructions. Camera Mode In addition to the default camera, there is also a Free The default controls can be changed in the Options menu. Camera mode and a few settings related to that. You may Please note that the controls are separate for each Profile. want to experiment with them. However, other settings such as Sound options and Gamma settings are not separate. Free Camera (off by default) shows the character in a more isometric perspective, allowing you to see much more These are the default controls for Shadowgrounds: of your surroundings. The Free Camera mode also allows you to shoot in any direction, and rotate the camera by moving FIRE PRIMARY mouse button 1 your mouse cursor to the edge of the screen. FIRE SECONDARY mouse button 2 Camera Lock Y-Axis locks the camera angle, so when you RELOAD R use the CAMERA BUTTON (default: ALT) to modify the view, NEXT WEAPON mouse wheel down the angle does not change, the camera only rotates around PREVIOUS WEAPON mouse wheel up your character.

FLASHLIGHT F Rotate Speed means how fast the camera rotates when USE E you take the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen. If you FORWARD W don’t want the camera to rotate at all when the cursor is near the screen edges, set this setting to zero (empty). BACKWARD S Mouse Spring STRAFE LEFT A means how fast the mouse cursor is rebounded back towards the middle of the screen in the Free STRAFE RIGHT D Camera mode. This setting is used in conjunction with the ROLL SPACE Rotate Speed setting. MAP/OBJECTIVES TAB Graphics UPGRADE WEAPONS ENTER You can change the Gamma setting if the picture is too dark OPEN LOGS L or bright for your taste. Please note that Shadowgrounds CAMERA LEFT (none) has been designed to be somewhat dark. It is recommended that you play in dim conditions and leave the Gamma setting CAMERA RIGHT (none) at rather low. CAMERA BUTTON ALT Other graphics settings can be found in the Shadowgrounds You can reset the controls to these default settings by Launcher, not within the game itself. clicking “Reset to defaults”.

Saving the Game Motion Sensor You have a Motion Sensor (in the upper-right corner) that Shadowgrounds uses a savepoint system that keeps the shows you all the moving objects nearby at two second in- tension high. You have a number of lives at your disposal tervals. Moving objects will be displayed with a red cir- per each mission. If you die, you will be respawned in cle. But remember, just because the red contact has disap- someplace safe but one life is lost. If your respawns drop peared, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t out there… it’s just below zero, it’s game over and you have to reload the not moving. The motion sensor also has a blue circle that mission again. points to your next mission objective.

When you complete a mission, your game is saved to your Weapons, Map and Logs Profile. You can load any of the already completed missions from the Load Game menu. When you are in one of these three screens, you can access the others by clicking their respective button tabs in the User Interface top-right corner.

Health Weapons and Upgrades In the bottom-left corner is the Health bar that shows you Shadowgrounds has an extensive selection of weapons – and how much health you have left. When you are in desperate an even more exciting collection of weapon upgrades! Your need of a medikit, the Health bar is red. character picks up weapons, ammo and upgrades automatically Keycards in your possession are displayed near the Health during your journey. Weapon upgrades require a certain bar. amount of “upgrade parts” that are dropped by dead aliens – collect them all and make sure you have the most Flashlight devastating arsenal the aliens have ever known. The flashlight’s batteries are displayed right above the Health bar. When the flashlight batteries are empty, the To upgrade your weapons, simply go into the Weapons & icon is red and you can’t use the flashlight for a while. Upgrades menu, check how many upgrade parts you have, and But don’t worry – modern technology allows the flashlight choose one of the available upgrades. Pay extra attention to recharge its batteries in a short time when not in use. to Secondary Fire upgrades – they change the very nature Recharging is more efficient when the player is exposed to of the weapon and allow you to create some interesting surrounding lights – so try standing in a well-lit corner tactics. for a while. Map / Objectives Weapon and ammo The map helps you navigate and see your mission objectives Your currently selected weapon is shown in the bottom- (next to the map). To access this map, press the Map button right corner. Next to it is the ammo counter, and the total (default: Tab). The map works automatically and reveals remaining ammo counter. areas when you visit them. Your character is displayed as a green arrow, and your objective is displayed as a green Please note when selecting weapons with the mouse wheel, circle (note that it’s a blue circle in the Motion Sensor). weapons with no ammo are automatically skipped and not Remember that you can’t always take the most direct route. selected. If you want to select a weapon that doesn’t have any ammo, please use the keyboard shortcuts (numbers 0 to Logfiles 9). You can read logfiles left by other people. Most of the logfiles are on computers that you can access, or PDAs that you can pick up. The logfiles are also saved to your logbook.

10 11 Co-op game Special notes about co-op: • When one player picks up a new weapon, everybody else Shadowgrounds can be played in co-op mode on the same gets it too. However, ammo is not distributed among computer. Having more than one player in the game requires players - each player will have to find his own ammo. the use of gamepads. Other players will help Wesley Tyler • Weapon upgrade parts are share; same weapon upgrades in his alien-battling. are applied to all players • User Interface is much smaller in co-op mode Shadowgrounds works with any gamepad but it is recommended • 4 players is the maximum in co-op mode that the gamepad has two analog sticks and at least 8 • Camera mode cannot be changed in co-op mode configurable buttons. Different gamepads have different • When one of the players dies in co-op, all players are button configurations. Analog stick sensitivity may also respawned at a safe location. differ. Menus and other options are accessible with a • Respawns are shared gamepad but a mouse is recommended as a backup device at all times. Troubleshooting For a gamepad to work in Shadowgrounds, the operating system must recognize it first. To see if the gamepad is My game doesn’t start! recognized, go to Control Panel -> Game Controllers. If Please make sure you have DirectX 9.0c or later installed. the gamepad shows up in the list, then it will work in Also make sure you have the latest graphics card drivers Shadowgrounds. If the gamepad is not recognized, please and that you system meets the minimum system requirements. consult the operating system’s help files. The game runs really slow on my computer To connect a console gamepad to your PC, you need to use Try setting your graphics options to low settings. Also an adapter device that plugs into the USB port of your PC. note that “Disappearing corpses” (dead monsters will Shadowgrounds has been tested to work with adapters. disappear in 30 seconds after their death) improves the To start a co-op game, follow these steps: performance. Another such option is the “Distortion”, which means the beautiful Heat Distortion effect used with the • Check that your gamepads show up in your operating flamethrower and explosions – Distortion should definitely be system’s Game Controllers deselected on slow machines. • Launch Shadowgrounds • Go to Profiles and create a new player profile for each After playing for a while, my fps drops dramatically. gamepad/player, or modify an existing profile. This error may occur with certain graphics cards with • Select one of the newly created profiles and go to certain drivers. Try visiting the operating system desktop Options menu. once by pressing alt-tab (not by exiting the game). Then • Set up the button configuration and the X and Y axis go back to the game in similar manner, or click the (for aiming, usually mapped to the right analog stick). Shadowgrounds button in the Taskbar. This should fix the • Repeat the process for each player participating in poor fps. the game • When all players have configured their gamepads and/or When I try to start the game it says “Version mismatch”?! keyboard+mouse, select New Game (or Load Game if you This error is due to a copied executable file. If you have have a previously saved Co-op game). bought the game from a store, this error should not happen. • Select Co-Operative, then the difficulty level, and Please contact Support for more information. press Start. • That’s it! Have fun!

12 13 Credits Additional Contributors Frozenbyte thanks Niklas Collin SHADOWGROUNDS Risto Hyvärinen Sebastian Aaltonen by Frozenbyte Juha Ikonen Tero Antinkaapo Jussi Järvinen Kai-Peter Bäckman Game Design Anssi Penttilä Petteri Henttu Frozenbyte team Maritta Hyvärinen English voice-over management Jarno Kantelinen Jarno “Stakula” Sarkula / Mikko Lehtonen Business & Management Art Stakula Oy Jukka T. Paajanen Tatu Petersen-Jessen Casting/Directing Esko Piirainen Lauri Hyvärinen Timo Maaranen Santeri Pilli Project lead Lead Artist, animation, AudioGodz Inc / Lani Minella rendered cinematics Actors & actress Lordi Joel Kinnunen Tekes / Keith Bonnici Business contacts, Vesa Lepola Marc Biagi TE-keskus / Veli-Matti localization, marketing & PR Character art & design, Dan Castle Virrankari environment textures Brook Chalmers NBC Staff Petter Kinnunen Max McGill Neogames Business contacts, marketing Tero Rickström Lani Minella Level design / geometry Chris Wilcox Adage Bugbear Programming Samuli Snellman The angry guitar wizard Housemarque 2D art, GUI design, Jussi “Amen” Sydänmaa Remedy Juha Hiekkamäki promotional graphics 3D engine, editor, tools Music co-mixing Santtu Huotilainen Antti “Wilhelm” Paajanen Jukka Kokkonen Animation, models, textures Game engine, AI, scripting Matti Hämäläinen Ilkka Kuusela Particle effects, models, Ingame cinematics, scripting textures Special thanks to all our families and friends! And thanks to our fans! Petri Purho Kristian Vuorinen User interface Environmental artist

Ari Pulkkinen Joel Kinnunen FMOD Sound System, copyright (c) Firelight Technologies Pty, Ltd., 1994-2005.