F A I R L I G H T P R E S E N T S ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Championship Manager 2 from Eidos Interactive - Hard Drive version ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Originally cracked by Galahad of Fairlight ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This HD installer will work for the cracked and original versions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **************************************************************************** IF YOU LIKE THIS GAME... DO THE AMIGA A FAVOUR.... GO BUY IT!!! I WOULD LIKE TO SEE EIDOS STICK AROUND WITH THE AMIGA FOR A WHILE.... THEY HAVE DONE WONDERS FOR THE PLAYSTATION (TOMB RAIDER 1 & 2)!!!! **************************************************************************** System Requirements for CM2 HD: A1200/A4000 with 2.5 Megabytes of free Hard drive space ;----- 4 Meg of Fast Ram ;-------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES: I had BIG problems getting this game to work properly from Hard drive. I managed to get it so that it would load from Hard drive, and it would have meant you would only need 1 Meg of Fast ram to run it, but not matter what I did, the save routines would not save properly, invariably involving an invalidated hard drive! This would not be a problem for people with hard drives with a capacity of 100Meg or less, as it takes no time at all to validate the files, but on a 500Meg Hard drive, it takes AGES!!!!!! Because of the validation problems and not being able to use a loader that accesses the IDE Bus directly (The A4000 is SCSI not IDE!), I had to come up with another solution....... which I did! This system is Foolproof, and as long as you read this document properly, you will have many enjoyable hours playing this game, at a much faster speed! The disk version takes 5 mins from start to actually playing the game.... this version will take roughly 14 seconds! Also to come maybe an updated version of CM2 by Fairlight. ;------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to Setup CM2 to work on your system --------------------------------------- In this archive are the following files: FLT_CM2DISK1.BIN Disk 1 CM2_HD Boot code to run game CMREAD Utility to convert save game disks CMSAVE Utility to save RAD: files to HD CM2 Mountlist entry CM2.info Mounlist icon so you can click to mount the CM2: drive MOUNTLIST To Get AmigaDOS to setup RAD dir. RAMDRIVE.DEVICE Handles all calls to CM2: Follow these easy steps ----------------------- 1) Copy ALL of these files into your chosen directory, it can be anything you like as this game uses AmigaDOS to load and save everything, but DO NOT CALL YOUR DIRECTORY 'CM2'!!! This is reserved for the RAD disk. 2) Attach the included MOUNTLIST to your own Mountlist, which you will find in your DEVS directory. DO NOT COPY OVER YOUR MOUNTLIST!!!!! YOU SIMPLY NEED TO ADD THIS MOUNTLIST TO THE END OF YOURS!! Copy the RAMDRIVE.DEVICE file into your DEVS directory. If you already have it, dont bother! Copy the CM2 and CM2.info files to your DEVS/DOSDRIVERS/ directory. 3) Edit your startup-sequence in your SYS:S/ directory and put in a line something like this. CMSAVE SYS:GAMES/FOOTBALL/CHAMP2/ This tells the CMSAVE program that you have installed CM2 to a directory on your SYS: drive, in those directorys. Obviously, if you have installed it into something completely different (the above is an example), write that information INSTEAD of the above, making sure there is a space between CMSAVE and the path to Championship Manager 2. 4) If you already have savedisks from the disk version, you can now convert them to files with the included CMREAD utility. Simply boot up Shell/CLI and type CMREAD. This utility will give you instructions on what to do. You will need to have Disks 3 and 4 ready. FLT_CM2DISK3.SAV and FLT_CM2DISK4.SAV will be saved to your SYS: directory. You then need to transfer them to the directory that you installed CM2 into. These files are over a Megabyte each, so once you have copied them, delete the original files from your SYS: directory. 5) CM2 is now properly installed on your hard drive. How to get Championship Manager 2 to load and play -------------------------------------------------- 1) You now need to 'mount' the RAD disk. Simply type: MOUNT CM2: This will setup a custom 2meg recoverable partition in RAM:, and make a seperate 'disk' within RAM: This is needed for saving the game data to. 2) Type 'CM2_HD' and press RETURN, and after a while, the game should load and run. You are now playing Championship Manager 2 at a much greater speed!!! How to Save your games ---------------------- 1) Select the normal save option. You will notice that the screen goes black, and occasionally flashes the graphics on the screen. This is NORMAL. The game is saved when it tells you to 'Quit game' or 'continue'. THE GAME AT THIS POINT HAS N O T BEEN SAVED TO HARD DRIVE!!!! 2) If you have finished your game and want to save everything and stop playing CM2 completely, make your save as usual. When it asks you to 'Quite game', RESET your Amiga using RIGHT AMIGA KEY, LEFT AMIGA KEY and CTRL. DO NOT SWITCH THE MACHINE OFF!!! 3) The line that you put in the startup-sequence 'CMSAVE SYS:GAMES/FOOTBALL/CHAMP2/' is what actually saves the game to hard drive. Championship Manager 2 uses a RECOVERABLE RAM DISK (RAD), which means that even after a soft reset, all of the files CM2 needs to save, are still intact in the CM2 RAD: directory. There will be a long pause whilst the utility transfers data around and then finally saves to your hard drive. Once all hard drive disk activity has ceased, (should only take a max of ten seconds), you are now free to switch off your Amiga safe in the knowlege that you can resume your game where you left off. Troubleshooting / Problem Solving --------------------------------- Q. CM2 seems to take a long time to do anything and sometimes looks like it has crashed! A. Its a slow game, be patient, its unlikely the game has crashed. If you dont have enough Fast ram to start off with, the game wont execute. ;----- Q. A requester pops up asking me to insert volume CM2 everytime I switch on my Amiga. A. This is the CMSAVE util. This is just its code checking to see if you mounted CM2:, because this is how it detects if it needs to make a save to hard drive. Just cancel the requester, or alternatively setup an Icon in Workbench so you can activate it when you want. ;----- Q. When I play CM2, it gets stuck in a 'insert disk 4' loop. A. If you have made a save to hard drive, the code assumes that you will no longer be playing the game, so therefore there are some memory problems if you try to play CM2. Simply switch your machine off and it will work fine. But like I said, if you made a save to hard drive, the chances are you wanted to stop playing anyway. ;----- Q. The 'NEW GAME' feature of CM2 is missing from the HD version. A. Yes it is. To save on memory I cut this out. And a very wise choice it was too. You can use the disk version to make any new game disks, hence the utility called CMREAD is included. This installer comes a week after the original FLT_CM2.DMS release, so a lot of people will have gotten quite far. Would be a shame for them not to be able to use those save disks and carry on, so that is why I have done it this way. Also, when the game gets updated, the disk version will appear first, but CMREAD doesnt care what version you have, it will read any updated disks, meaning you can play them straight away on your HD. ;----- Q. I want more than 1 save game! A. Easy. Simply rename the FLT_CM2DISKx.SAV files to something else, and use other save files instead. If you want to go back to the original files, simply rename them back again. ;----- Q. Why Fast mem only? A. Would have been impossible without it, unless I had used a hardware Hard drive loader, but these loaders are useless. They directly access the IDE registers to get the information from the hard drive. This would stop A4000 owners from being able to play the game as their hard drive system is SCSI. Why arent you playing this game without fast ram anyway? Its too slow from disk!! ;----- Q. After I have finished playing CM2, I dont get all my ram back. A. You do get it all back, but the CM2: RAD partition in RAM is still there. You still have ALL of your memory but RAM is taken up by 2 Megs of the CM2: RAD partition, its still there but under a different name. If you need it all back, switch off your machine for a few seconds and it will be removed (If Anyone can tell me how to remove a Mounted Device I can include it in an update..... I dont know if there is a way!) ;---- Q. The game never loads up! A. You have to create the save files first! You must run the CMREAD program. ;---- Q. The Backup disk feature fucks up the game! A. Yeah, only a dumb ass would try to use it as well!! Use it and you will fuck up your save files.... so IGNORE IT!! ;---- END NOTES --------- That is a list of the most common problems that can occur! If you still cant get it working after this, ask other people you know if they have been successful, they might be able to offer you a solution. Problems dont get solved by bitching and whining.... they get solved by talking to people! Some people I know had to disable some of their caches when playing the disk version of CM2 on 030/50Mhz+ processors etc. I have deliberately not disabled ANY caches. If it doesnt work on your system, try disabling some of the caches. On my system the game runs fine without disabling them, so I will leave them untouched. I could have released this version in two days, but this game HAD to be playtested as much as I could. This should be it in its entirety. I would have liked to have done the usual Quit to AmigaDOS stuff, but this game just wouldnt have it! It was easier to do it the way I did. I am not a god and I am not perfect, so I am prone to mistakes like everyone else, so if you have tried EVERYTHING and the game still doesnt work properly, leave me mail on any MAJOR UK BBS or contact me through either JBM/HAWKEYE/HOGSTER of Fairlight or ZOLTRIX. Please dont tell me that you hate the way I have done this..... if you can do better..... go for it! I have no problems with someone changing what I have done to do a better job, the Amiga scene will be a better place with some competition going on between everyone. Thats it for the moment. Everyone in Fairlight would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a cool New Year. And hey.... stick in there... 1998 could see the Amiga getting big again. You waited this long, you suck if you drop the Amiga now! Signed Galahad of Fairlight - Peace to you all in 1997 END.