Syraphage - Tech Notes
(C) 1998 Alphx Software. All rights reserved.

The following technical notes are designed to help optimized the playing
experience of Syraphage. See the bottom of this document for info regarding
E-Mail/Troubleshooting. Make sure you read this entire document before
attempting any of the procedures!

Note 1 - The VSync Option

According to the History.TXT file, you can reduce (and in some cases entirely
remove) flicker from the scrolling engine by enabling Vertical Retrace
(VSync). This is true, but since the Options screen isn't programmed yet,
There's really no way to enable this feature, unless you take the following
steps (Don't attempt this unless you're running Syraphage on a fast system,
as VSync tends to slow down scrolling considerably-- basically any Pentium
machine is capable of running the game fast enough with this option):

1 Open "SPrefs.DAT" which is found in the Data folder.

There should be a number of entries, with a digit (usually -1 or 0) following.
Go to the second entry (if VSync is disabled, which it should be for now)
you'll see this:

0002:0

Change the last 0 to a -1. It should now look like this:

0002:-1

Save your changes to SPrefs.DAT and run Syraphage with the following command
line parameter:

Syraph -DSCRN

This keeps the Data Initialization (DI) Screen visible until you press a key.
If the process worked, your DI Screen should look a little something like
This:

Sample DI Screen With VSync Enabled:

  Free Array Space: 419080
  Available Unused Stack Space: 1256

  VGA Card Identified
  Processor Identified
  SoundBlaster Identified
  XMS Identified

  Number of Free XMS Handles: 43
  Total Ammount of Free XMS: 2048 Kilobytes

  Allocating XMS Handles... done.
  Initializing Program Data... done.
  Initializing Item Data... done.
  Loading Map <Town1.MAP>... done.

  Pixel Skip: 1
- VSync Enabled  
  KeyBuffer Clearing Enabled
  Audio Enabled

Syraphage should now run with virtually no flicker. An added side-effect of
enabling the VSync feature is that on machines that scroll very very quickly
(Usually a Pentium 166 and above), the character animation is not visible.
Enabling VSync makes it easily noticable. 

Note 2 - Altering the Pixel Skip

When the Syraphage scrolling engine scrolls the screen, it does so by pixel
by pixel, which can be slow on lower-end machines (namely 486's). If you feel
that you're system just isn't cut out for running Syraph at the maximum level
of smoothness, it might be a good idea to alter the number of pixels that
the engine skips when it scrolls the screen. Since there is no options screen
yet, you'll have to take the following steps:

1 Open "SPrefs.DAT" which is found in the Data folder.

There should be a number of entries, with a digit (usually -1 or 0) following.
Go to the first entry (if the pixel skip is set to 1, which it should be for
now) you'll see this:

0001:1

For example's sake, let's change it from scrolling every pixel to ever 4th
pixel. This should make the game run 5 times faster (20 / 4 = 5):

0001:4

Save your changes to SPrefs.DAT and run Syraphage with the following command
line parameter:

Syraph -DSCRN

This keeps the Data Initialization (DI) Screen visible until you press a key.
If the process worked, your DI Screen should look a little something like
This:

Sample DI Screen With Pixel Skip set to 4:

  Free Array Space: 419080
  Available Unused Stack Space: 1256

  VGA Card Identified
  Processor Identified
  SoundBlaster Identified
  XMS Identified

  Number of Free XMS Handles: 43
  Total Ammount of Free XMS: 2048 Kilobytes

  Allocating XMS Handles... done.
  Initializing Program Data... done.
  Initializing Item Data... done.
  Loading Map <Town1.MAP>... done.

- Pixel Skip: 4
  VSync Disabled
  KeyBuffer Clearing Enabled
  Audio Enabled

E-Mail Information/Troubleshooting Info:

If, by altering SPrefs.DAT, Syraph doesn't run properly (which is very
unlikely), simply reinstall the game. Running improperly does not include
the Caulyn walking around in an odd fashion. That's most likely due to your
pixel skip setting. If you've set the pixel skip for a setting that Syraphage
doesn't work well with, that's the problem. The following settins work best
with the game:

 1 - Default, smoothest setting, albeit somewhat flickery
 4 - Somewhat smooth, faster and less flickery
 5 - Nearly identical to 4
10 - Not too smooth, fast and almost no flicker

Anything else causes weird errors so don't try it. Future versions of
Syraphage will be able to handle obscure settings, but for now it's not a big
priority.

Questions? Comments? Having trouble with any of the above tech notes?
E-Mail us! We're always glad to help:

LordQBASIC@aol.com
JubeiX3@HotMail.com







