                      G R A N D   P R I X   II
                      ========================
                       (American version 1.0)

Introduction
============
Thank you for purchasing Grand Prix II. This file contains last-
minute instructions and troubleshooting tips. Please read it
carefully before continuing with the installation process.

Windows 95
==========
Because Grand Prix II was designed and developed to run under
MS-DOS, you may experience problems running under Windows 95. To
achieve optimal frame rate and performance levels, it is strongly
recommended that you reboot your system in MS-DOS mode.

Note: It is important to make sure all necessary CD-ROM and sound
card drivers are loaded before attempting to run Grand Prix II;
failure to do so may result in the game failing to load. If you are
unsure as to how to do this or if your machine came with Windows 95
pre-installed, please consult the technical documents contained in
the UTILS directory on this CD-ROM or get help from your hardware
manufacturer.

Windows 95 - AutoPlay
---------------------
Some Windows 95 machines do not support AutoPlay. In this case,
you will need to double-click on the icon for your CD-ROM drive
(usually D:) to install the game. 

Windows 95 Keyboards
--------------------
On certain video cards, Windows 95 is unable to restore certain DOS
based graphical applications such as Grand Prix II. This is
particularly a problem with the new Windows 95 keyboards containing
the new 'Start' and 'Windows' keys. If you press these keys,
Windows suspends Grand Prix II to bring up a menu but is then
unable to restore it. The only solution to this problem is to run
the simulation in MS-DOS mode.

Windows 95 Floppy Disk Drives
-----------------------------
When running under Windows 95, the game assumes that the floppy disk
drive will always be drive A. Windows 95 users wishing to save
game files to a floppy disk must make that their floppy drive is
logged on as A: and not B:.

Microsoft Plus
--------------
To prevent problems while running Grand Prix II, the System Agent
should be disabled.

Auto-Detect
===========
If you experience problems with the auto-detect program, please
follow the steps listed below:

1. Manually select your sound card and then enter the correct Port,
   DMA and IRQ settings. If you are unsure as to what these are, try
   typing "SET" from the DOS prompt or consult your hardware manuals.

2. Run the detection/sound process in MS-DOS mode.

Sound Galaxy Pro
================
The auto-detect program can sometimes wrongly identify this card as
a Sound Blaster 16. Users must manually select Sound Blaster and
then enter the correct Port, IRQ and DMA settings.

Gravis Ultrasound
=================
The playback quality of the sound test sample may sound garbled.
This should not affect playback quality during the game.

ATI Stereo F/X
==============
Grand Prix II is not compatible with this sound card. Please select
"No Sound."

Background Sound
================
In order to improve the quality of the link, background sound is
disabled when connected.

Joystick Control
================
You can switch joystick control in the menus on and off with
Control+J. This is particularly useful if you change the make
of joystick connected to the machine as the calibration
information will then be put out of step with the actual
joystick. Typical symptoms of this are the red highlight
sticking at the top of bottom bar in a menu.

Hard Drive Swap File Option
===========================
Grand Prix II will always try to keep all data it needs in RAM.
If there is not enough RAM available, the program will move some
data into a temporary file on your hard drive (F1GPTEMP.TMP).
When this happens, you may notice a very slight pause, as the
car crosses the start/finish line. 

If the hard drive swap file option is set to "No," then this file
will not be created and so when all available RAM has been used,
you will lose the ability to store further performance
information or hot laps.

Note: For any changes in this option to take effect, you must save
the game state and rerun the program.

Note that exiting the pitlane will flush available RAM for
re-use but be sure that you have saved any hot lap or
performance data that you wish to keep before doing this. 

Data Logging
============
Data logged laps are completed either when you cross the
start/finish line or when you enter the pit lane. If you use the
"Q" shortcut key to Return to Pits, press "Q" only after crossing
one of these two points if you wish to keep the last lap.

Multiplayer Mode
================
In multi-player mode, the program automatically tries to ensure
that every player gets a good turn at racing. But in extreme
situations, such as if a large number of players try to take part
in too short a race; players may not get the number of turns they
selected in the menus. This is because there is a minimum possible
length for individual turns. If players choose a turn number which
would result in turns shorter than this minimum length, the program
will automatically adjust the number of turns to match the minimum
interval. If you return to the drive options menu after entering
the 3D then the setting will have automatically changed to what was
achievable. Note that if the turns per player was reduced by the
program to 1 then this could indicate that there was not enough
time for everyone to have a go.

Utils
=====
To help solve any potential problems, a directory called UTILS has
been placed on the Grand Prix II CD-ROM. This contains a Microsoft
mouse driver (V8.02), Comsetup and various other technical/customer
service notes.

GPFiles
=======
Default game files for drivers names, track records, car setups and
sample controller files can be found in a directory called GPFILES
on this CD. 

Command Line Options
====================
If you are running the game under MS-DOS, you can use the following
command line options for Grand Prix II. 

If you are running under Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, you will need to
edit the properties to add the command line text after the program
name. 

Below is a list of all the command line options. These can be in any
order and are accepted in any combination of upper and lower case.

Help
----
Displays a help screen with a brief outline of all the command
line options. (You can also use /? or /help.)

Video
-----
Normally the program will search for a VESA driver which supports
mode 101h (640x480 pixels in 256 colors).

If this fails, the program will disable SVGA mode and run the menus
in VGA mode 12h (640x480 in 16 colors).

Video:vga
---------
Disables the programs use of SVGA 640x480 mode in 256 colors.
The menus will use 640x480 in 16 colors and the 3-D display will
only be available in 320x200.

Video:vesa
----------
Forces the program to use 640x480 256-color mode (the default). 
If SVGA is not found, the program will not fall back to 640x480
in 16 colors, but will exit to DOS.

Nostateload
-----------
Stops the program loading the gamestate file "f1gstate.sav."
This will restore all menu settings to their default. You can
abbreviate this to "nsl."

Log
---
The program can create a log of its actions on startup
(initialization, claiming memory, etc.). This info is written
to a file called GP2LOG.TXT which contains technical
information which may be of help to technical support.

Log:Off
-------
Disables the program's boot log facility.

Log:On
------
Enables the bootlog facility (the default).

Log:Safe
--------
Use this if the program fails during booting (this forces the
program to open and close the file every write).

CD cd:<driveletter>        
-------------------
Normally the installation will detect your CD-ROM drive. If you
have a machine with several CD-ROM drives, you can override
this and tell the program which drive to look for. For example,
"CD:E" would tell the program to look for its data on drive
E (which must be a CD-ROM drive).

Noenvironment
-------------
Normally the program will search the environment strings for a
string of the form "GP2=<command list>" and will process this as
an extension of the command list. This means that you can store
commonly used command line options using SET (this is most
useful under DOS).

  For example, SET GP2=NOINTRO NOSTATELOAD VIDEO:VGA

"Noenvironment" disables this and means that the program will
only respond to commands placed on the command line. You can
abbreviate this to "ne."

Nortscts
--------
Stops the program from using the rts/cts line for modem linking.
If your modem doesn't support rts/cts (very unlikely unless
it's a very old model), then this might get your modem to
communicate.

Menu Keys
--------- 
The menu system responds to the normal driving keys ("az,." on
English keyboards) as well as the arrow keys. For international
versions, the program should use the corresponding keys (position
wise). For example, the French version would use "qw,." If you
are using a nonstandard keyboard, you can force the menus to
respond to the correct key cluster by listing the four keys left,
right, up and down here. For example, menu keys "az,." would allow
the French version of the game to respond correctly on an English
keyboard.

Nosound
-------
Disables the program's use of sound (see Troubleshooting below).

Nointro
-------
Disables the short intro animation on loading.

Setmanualdetail
---------------
Normally on loading, the program configures the graphics and frame
rate for the simulation, based on the speed of your machine and
video card. These optimum settings are stored in the automatic
section of the graphics detail menu. If you have not saved a
gamestate file with any different preferences, then these
settings are also copied to the manual section to form the basis
of any changes you might wish to make. However, if you have
created a gamestate file, the manual settings are preserved.

"Setmanualdetail" overrides this behaviour and forces the
program to reinitialize the manual settings with copies of
the automatic ones, even if a gamestate file with different
selections is loaded. This means that any previous settings for
graphics detail are lost.

Linkonmouseport
---------------
If the program detects a serial mouse on communications port 1 or
2, it will normally gray out the pair of ports that use that
interrupt vector in the linkup menu. You will see that in this
case either ports 1&3 (using vector 0ch) or ports 2&4 (using
vector 0bh) are grayed out. This is because any attempt to link
machines using that port would grab the corresponding vector and
lose the use of the mouse. "Linkonmouseport" overrides this behavior 
and allows you to choose any port.
                           
Use16550
--------
On PCs, serial communications, whether direct link or via a modem,
are handled by a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter)
chip. Older machines support a type of chip called an 8240, but most
newer machines are fitted with a 16550 chip which is more reliable
under Windows. By default Grand Prix II will only use the features
found on the 8240 (since the 16550 is backwards compatible).

If the program finds that the communications port used for linking
has a 16550 uart, then this command will tell the software to use
the 16550 mode which is more reliable. If you experience link
'stutters' under Windows, try this option.

Nomouse
-------
Disable the mouse in the menus (the menus can still be used with
keys or joystick).

Minimumram
----------
The software will claim as small an amount of extra RAM as it can
in order to run. This may degrade program performance slightly. 

Echo
----
Echoes the command line typed.

Troubleshooting
===============
1. The program hangs or crashes on loading.

   a. Try the "nosound" command line option. If you have selected
      an incorrect sound card in the installer, attempting to
      initialize the card can cause the program to fail. If the
      program runs with the "nosound" option, you should rerun
      the install program and select the correct sound card.

   b. If that fails, you may not have enough RAM. The program
      will run under DOS in 8MB, but will need more RAM under
      Windows 95. Try the command line options "nosound
      minimumram video:vga" to minimize the program's memory
      requirements.

   c. If this still fails, try running the program in MS-DOS
      mode rather than Windows 95. Because the software needs to
      take full control of the machine for maximum speed, it will
      always run better under DOS than Windows 95. Note: if you
      have a new machine with Windows 95 only installed, you may
      need to obtain 16-bit DOS-based drivers for the CD-ROM,
      mouse and sound card.

2. The program loads VERY slowly. This is mostly a Windows 95
   problem. If you are running the game with your own BATCH file,
   you need to go to the Memory page of the properties sheet and
   set the following options for the BATCH file (the .exe should
   already have these or similar properties set). 

      Conventional Memory             120k
      NOT protected

      EMS Memory                      None

      XMS Memory                      None

      DPMI Memory                     8192    

      Initial Environment             Auto

Hard Drive Swap File
====================
If the program is unable to find all the RAM it requires, it
will try to create a buffer file on your hard drive (called
f1temp.tmp). This file has a maximum size of 4,608,000 bytes
and if your hard drive has less than this amount free, you
may find a small performance degradation or loss of the
Performance Analysis feature. In fact, we recommend you leave
considerably more than this free on the hard drive as other
programs such as Windows 95 may need to store data on it.

Thanks
======
InterActive Racing Ltd
Steve Merryweather
Catherine Summers
Jo James

Customer Support Information
============================
If you have any questions about this game that cannot be
answered either in this file or in the manual, please contact
MicroProse Customer Support at:

   MicroProse                         
   2490 Mariner Square Loop           
   Alameda, CA 94501                  
   Attn: Customer Support             

   (510)522-1164
   9 am to 5 pm Pacific Time
   Monday through Friday

   Fax
   (510)522-9357

   Automated Tech Support and Fax Back
   (800)TECH958

   World Wide Web
   http://www.microprose.com

   FTP 
   ftp.microprose.com

   America Online: MPS1
   CompuServe: 76004,2223
   GEnie: MICROPROSE
   Internet: gp2@microprose.com
   Customer Support BBS: (510)522-8909
