Maxtris:
Maximum Tetris
December 12th, 1996

[This document is formated for an 80 column display using a monospaced font.]

WHAT IS MAXTRIS?
	Maxtris is the best Tetris clone available for IBM-PC compatible computers.


WHAT MAKES MAXTRIS THE BEST?
		There are many Tetris clones available, but most suffer from serious
	shortcomings. Many were written years ago and show their age with poor
	graphics and little or no sound. Others are more up to date but lack
	certain features that drastically hurt their gameplay. For example,
	many clones do not permit the player to rotate pieces in either
	direction. In addition, many of these games will allow the player to
	only drop a piece completely to the bottom of the column. Maxtris
	provides full control over piece movement and combines this with
	raytraced SVGA graphics and high-quality MOD music.


WHAT DOES MAXTRIS COST?
		It costs nothing to play Maxtris; You are not required to pay for the
	program. However, if you feel that Maxtris is the best Tetris clone
	available, and you'd like to send me some money, that's fine too.
	Contact me via e-mail and I'll give you an address to send the money to.
** Even if you choose not to pay for Maxtris, I would like to hear from you.
	Please e-mail me and tell me what you think of the game.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
* Intel 386 or 100% Compatible CPU (i486 or higher recommended) 
* Approximately 580k free conventional memory
* 1MB free XMS memory
* SVGA card with 512k video memory (1MB reccomended) 
* Music requires one of the following sound cards:
	 SoundBlaster, Pro, 16 or compatible
	 Ensonic SoundScape
	 Gravis UltraSound 
* Approximately 2.2MB free hard drive space


INSTALLATION:
		Presumably if you're reading this, you've already managed to unzip the
	distribution file. However, in order for Maxtris to run properly,
	you MUST unzip using the '-d' option. For example:
			pkunzip -d mtris???.zip c:\games\maxtris
			[Of course, replace ??? with the version number you have!]
	This will create the proper directory structure for the game to run
	correctly. If you do not do this, the game will not run.
		There is no setup needed to play Maxtris other than the above. The game
	will automatically detect the type of soundcard that you have. However, you
	may want to edit the MAXTRIS.INI file, as described later on in this
	document, for best performance.


GAMEPLAY:
		It is assumed that you are familiar with the game of Tetris. This
	section will only explain the controls used in Maxtris.

		Maxtris uses the numeric keypad for control. It does not matter if
	NUM LOCK is on or off.

	+----------+----------+----------+
	|7         |8 Rotate  |9         |
	|          | Piece    |          |
	|          | Counter  |          |
	|          | Clockwise|          |
	+----------+----------+----------+
	|4         |5         |6         |
	| Move     | Rotate   | Move     |
	| Piece    | Piece    | Piece    |
	| Left     | Clockwise| Right    |
	+----------+----------+----------+
	|1         |2         |3         |
	|          | Drop     |          |
	|          | Piece    |          |
	|          | Faster   |          |
	+----------+----------+----------+

	ENTER - Drop piece completely
	ESC   - Bring up menu
	P   - Pause
	F1-F4 - Change music (see section on Music)
	


THE MENU:
		When at the game screen, you can press ESC to bring up the menu. The
	game will automatically be paused. Pressing ESC again will dismiss the
	menu, but you will need to press 'P' in order to un-pause the game.
	While in the menu, the numeric keypad arrows will move the highlight
	and ENTER selects a menu choice.

Game Menu:
	NEW GAME:
		Starts a new game immediately.
	ABORT GAME:
		Ends the current game and allows for name entry if you've made a new
		high score.
	EXIT:
		Exits the game immediately.

Options Menu:
	DISPLAY NEXT PIECE:
		Toggles the display of the next piece. NOTE: When you select this
		option, you will immediately be returned to your game.
	ADJUST VOLUME:
		When you select this, another dialog will appear allowing you to adjust
		the volume of the music and the sound effects. Controls for this dialog
		are as follows:  (again, using the Numeric Keypad)
			7 - Lower music volume
			9 - Raise music volume

			4 - Lower sound effects volume
			6 - Raise sound effects volume

		Press ESC to dismiss this dialog.

	DISPLAY HIGH SCORES:
		This is only available when a game is not in progress. Not
		surprisingly, it displays the high scores.

Help Menu:
	ABOUT:
		This displays some information about the program, including the
		version number. NOTE: For more specific version number information,
		watch the scrolling text on the title screen.


MUSIC:
		Maxtris uses MOD format music. The game comes with six MOD files; one
	for the title screen, one for the high-score screen, and four for the game
	itself. You can change the music played during the game by pressing F1,
	F2, F3 or F4. Alternatively, by editing the .INI file (mentioned later
	in this document), you can have Maxtris cycle through the four in-game
	music arrangements every time you advance to the next level of the game.
		For more customization, Maxtris is capable of playing your
	own favorite MOD files. Maxtris can play any 4-channel ProTracker format
	MOD. (These are usually files with a .MOD extension, as opposed to other
	formats such as .S3M) To configure Maxtris to play your own MODs, you need
	to edit MAXTRIS.INI (described later in this document) to tell the game
	what files it should use instead.
		MODs use a lot of memory. The maximum MOD size that you can use is
	determined by the amount of free conventional memory you have. Not
	including music, Maxtris requires approximately 390k of memory. With
	the required 580k free, you can play a MOD file of about 190k. (The
	default game music file, music01.mod, takes up about 185k.) If you
	can increase the amount of free conventional memory you have, you
	can play larger MOD files. This may be difficult to do under Windows,
	but it is definitely possible under DOS.
		Anyway, if you try to load a MOD file that is too large, strange
	things will happen. In most cases, a message will be displayed and the
	program will continue normally. However, because an unsuccessful attempt
	to load too large of a file may overwrite important areas of memory, it
	could cause Maxtris to crash, and it could also possibly cause DOS to
	crash. Just use some caution in using your own MOD files. One last
	note: If you change music during the game and Maxtris cannot load
	your new file, it will attempt to load the default music file. If you
	have changed the default music file, and it cannot be loaded, Maxtris
	will crash. For this reason, it is suggested you experiment with the
	alternate music files (selected by F2, F3 and F4) before changing the
	default file.


MAXTRIS.INI:
		As mentioned above, you can customize Maxtris's music by editing this 
	INI file. There are also some other advanced options that can be changed
	through this file. The included INI file is commented and explains most
	of the available options, but some of the more important ones are
	discussed below.

	SOUND CARD SELECTION:
			Maxtris can automatically detect your sound card. However, it is
		possible that on some systems, this autodetection may cause the
		game to crash. If this is the case, you can explictly specify the
		type of soundcard that you are using by changing the "device="
		parameter in the INI file.

	MIXING RATE, HIGH QUALITY AND STEREO MUSIC OPTIONS:
			There are three parameters that can be changed to affect the sound
		quality of the music played in Maxtris. Keep in mind that quality
		and performance are inversely related. If you increase the music
		playback quality, the game will require more processing power to
		play smoothly.

		MIXING RATE:
			Without getting too technical, suffice it to say that the higher
		the mixing rate, the better (i.e. clearer) the music sounds. The
		default for this parameter is 22050. It can go as high as 44100, and
		theoretically as low as 0, but realistically, the minimum is about 
		6000. Above 22050, the gains in clarity are minimal with most sound
		files.

		HIGH QUALITY:
			If this parameter is set to TRUE, 16 bit mixing is enabled. This
		will reduce (or eliminate) many of the clicks or pops that can be
		heard with 8 bit mixing. 

		STEREO:
			With this set to true, sound will be mixed independantly for
		the left and right channel.
			
		The Sound Quality vs. Performance Tradeoff:   
			On a Pentium or a fast 486, you should be able to leave the default
		music settings as is and have the game run smoothly. On slower systems,
		you will likely need to change some settings for smooth gameplay. The
		first thing you should change to improve performance is to disable
		16 bit mixing (HIGHQUALITY=FALSE) since this does not generally have
		a particuarly noticeable effect on music quality. If this is not
		enough to make the game play smoothly, try reducing the mixing rate
		to 16000 or 11000. The last thing I would reccomend changing is
		the stereo setting: most MODs make extensive use of panning and to 
		disable stereo loses these effects.
			Note that if you are using SoundBlaster sound, but you do not have
		a true SB16/32/AWE32, you will not get 16 bit stereo sound. There are
		essentially three levels of SB performance:
			1. SB compatible:  22050 khz, 8 bit, mono
			2. SB Pro compat.: 22050 khz, 8 bit, stereo OR 44100 khz, 8 bit, mono
			3. SB 16:          44100 khz, 16 bit, stereo
		To my knowledge, there are no cards that are SB 16 compatible. If it's
		not a genuine SoundBlaster, it can't do 16 bit stereo sound. Anyway, the 
		bottom line is that if your sound card can't do stereo sound or a mix
		rate higher than 22050, don't bother enabling stero or trying a higher
		mixing rate.
			To provide some guidance to the appropriate settings for some
		systems, here are the settings that were found to work best on
		a few different computers:

		CPU               Sound Card     Mix Rate    HIGHQUALITY    STEREO
		486-DX266         SB 16          22050       TRUE           TRUE
		(fast motherboard)     
		486-DX280         SB AWE32       16000       FALSE          TRUE
		(slow motherboard)
		P90               SB 16          30000       TRUE           TRUE
		P120              SB compatible  44100       FALSE          FALSE
								(mono only)

			Finally, if you change any of these settings, it's worth enabling
		system info mode (SYSINFO=TRUE) so that you can make sure your settings
		are actually being used. The system info screen that comes up when
		running in system info mode will show the mix rate, mix frequency and
		stereo setting. Once you verify that your settings are correct, you
		can disable system info mode in the INI file.

TROUBLESHOOTING:
		In most cases, Maxtris should work without any problems. However, as
	with all programs, things can go wrong. If you have any trouble running
	Maxtris, do not hesitate to contact the author at <jfp3@stern.nyu.edu>,
	but please also check the following section to see if your question
	has already been answered. This is certainly not a Maxtris FAQ, just
	some additional information that may help you get the game running.

	Q. Maxtris doesn't do anything! All I get is a blank screen.
	A. Most likely, this is caused by a failure to unzip the distribution
		file properly. As stated early on in this document, you MUST use
		the -d option to recreate the directory structure stored in the .ZIP
		archive. If you are using a zip shell program such as WinZip, consult
		the program's documentation for how to enable this option. Otherwise,
		unzip the archive using the pkunzip command shown on line 47 of this
		file. By not unzipping the archive properly, Maxtris cannot find any of
		its files. That's why it won't work!

	Q. I hear music but there's no title screen. The game plays properly
		but the high score screen doesn't show up.
	A. This happens on some strange SVGA cards, notably the Diamond Viper.   
		If your video card has 1MB of memory or more, Maxtris will assume
		it can use page flipping. Certain cards SHOULD support page flipping
		but don't. There is no way for Maxtris to test if paging works on your 
		particular card. Anyway, if this happens on your system, try adding
		the following line to the MAXTRIS.INI file:
			paging_enabled=FALSE
		This will disable page flipping and should make things run fine. The
		only difference in the game will be that you will see the screen get
		cleared and draw at certain points. It will not affect game play 
		in any way.

	Q. The title screen appears & music plays, but when I press a key to
		start the game, my system freezes.
	A. This is most likely a result of you not having enough free memory.
		Maxtris requires 580k of conventional memory to run properly. Consult
		your DOS or Windows manual (or a computer guru) if you need help
		freeing up additional memory.

	Q. The spacing for this documentation is all screwed up.
	A. Try reading the file using DOS EDIT or a program such as LIST. Windows'
		Notepad will not display the spacing correctly for some unknown
		reason. Actually, it's because it handles end of line and spacing
		in an unusual manner. Anyone want to explain why MS is completely
		incapable of writing a decent Windows text editor? One would think
		that by now, Notepad would be capable of reading a file larger than
		64k...OK, I'll get off my soapbox now...
			
CREDITS, COPYRIGHTS, ETC...
	Credits:
		Coding, Graphics, -  James Prudente 
		 everything else  
		Support Code      -  Fabrizio Lissandrello
		Music             -  Various Sources

		Maxtris makes use of Zephyr Software's SVGACC Library and the
		MikMod Sound Library. Additional code was taken from various
		public domain sources.

All of the MOD files included with Maxtris were found in the public domain.
They are unmodified although their file names have been changed for
simplicity. The name of these MODs as shown in their header information is
shown below:

FILENAME       MOD NAME
title.mod      Cosmoliner
music01.mod    Tetris Mania
music02.mod    Amelioration
music03.mod    Mod.Melotech
music04.mod    PRL
hiscore.mod    a.hiscore

	There are no copyright notices in any of these files. If you are the
	author of one of these files and object to its being distributed with
	Maxtris, please notify me and I will remove it from the distribution
	package immediately.

Maxtris is Copyright 1996, James Prudente.
Maxtris is distributed by EnterpleX Software.

All other properties are copyright by their respective owners. 

REDISTRIBUTION:
	You are encouraged to re-distribute the ENTIRE distribution package
	including all files. Please do not re-distribute this program in any
	other form. If you would like to include Maxtris in a collection of
	games which will be sold, YOU MUST NOTIFY JAMES PRUDENTE at
	<jfp3@stern.nyu.edu>. Any charge for Maxtris except for a small
	duplication fee is illegal. If you have any concerns that your
	re-distribution is inappropriate, please discuss the matter with me.


DISCLAIMER:
	Neither James Prudente nor EnterpleX Software makes any claims
	concerning this program's suitability for any particular purpose.
	USE OF THIS PROGRAM IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Under no circumstances
	will James Prudente or EnterpleX Software be held responsible for
	any damages of any type resulting from the use of this program.

OTHER STUFF:
	Have any suggestions for the game? Let me know...
	Things under consideration for future versions:
		Joystick support
		Two-player head to head mode
	If you enjoy Maxtris, please let me know! Otherwise, I'm not going
	to work on this game anymore!

CONTACTING US:
	James Prudente may be contacted at <jfp3@stern.nyu.edu>

	Please send any reports of bugs, questions, comments, or other game
	related questions to this address.

	Maxtris' home page on the World Wide Web is:
		http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~jfp3/maxtris.html

	EnterpleX Software may be contacted at <enterplex@aol.com>

Document Contents Copyright 1996, James Prudente
