TAXINAUT MANUAL Version 0.6 By Jasper Pol This manual, the game TAXINAUT and all of it's content are copyrighted: Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Jasper Pol. All rights reserved. PLAYING THIS GAME MEANS YOU AGREE TO IT'S END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT. SEE EULA.TXT IN THE INSTALLATION-DIRECTORY FOR DETAILS. WARNINGS: THIS GAME MIGHT CONTAIN STRONG LANGUAGE, DRUG REFERENCES, VIOLENCE AND NUDITY. NO EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO ACCOMMODATE PEOPLE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE. PHOTO SENSITIVITY/EPILEPSY SEIZURES: THIS GAME MIGHT SHOW FLASHING OR OTHERWISE DISORIENTING IMAGES OR COLOR PATTERNS, ETC. THESE MIGHT TRIGGER A SEIZURE OR BLACKOUT IN SOME INDIVIDUALS. IF THIS MIGHT APPLY TO YOU OR YOU HAVE ANY DOUBT WHETHER THIS APPLIES TO YOU THEN YOU SHOULD CONSULT A PHYSICIAN BEFORE PLAYING THIS GAME. #CONTENTS system-requirements introduction user-interface statusbar information-panel item-panel context-panel bulletin-board HUD main-menu controlling-your-cab landing departing-and-descending Leaving-a-system-and-warping-to-another Transporters-and-liners navigation saving-and-quitting reviving-at-a-checkpoint save-game loading-save-games-and-starting-new-games unrecoverable-items notes topics-and-conversation action-sequences injuries common-services banks problems-crashes-troubleshooting common-problems important-files-and-directories user-directory configuration-file configuration display-settings explanation-of-each-configuration-setting #SYSTEM-REQUIREMENTS - Windows 10 - Multi-core processor - 8Gig of RAM (At least 2Gig RAM must be available to the application which often isn't the case on a 4Gig Windows system) - A display capable of 1920x1080 at 32bit. - Keyboard and Mouse with left & right button and a scroll-wheel (an actual separate mouse, not a touchpad like on a laptop. Although TAXINAUT can be played with a touchpad, it will be very uncomfortable). - Gamepads and joysticks are NOT supported (as in: There's nothing in TAXINAUT to make that work). #INTRODUCTION Welcome to TAXINAUT! Thank you for your interest in this game, I hope you enjoy it. TAXINAUT is a open-world exploration game without a set ending or goal besides discovering more about the galaxy it is set in. It attempts to offer a relaxing diversion you can pop in and out of at your leisure as opposed to a competitive game that you are meant to beat. Having said that, the game is not entirely without challenge and requires a fair amount of concentration at times. You are a cabbie shuttling passengers from planet to planet in a nebula known as the Borneo Nebula. The Borneo Nebula is a largely settled nebula in which most races have lived together for over a hundred millennia. It is by no means a peaceful place, corruption and crime rule most of society, but most large scale conflicts have been played out. The nebula is officially ruled by the Galactic Senate but the size of the nebula and the huge number of different civilizations involved makes it virtually impossible for any decisive action to take place. The senate is at a permanent impasse, if you will, and it's rule is mostly symbolic. The real thing that ties galactic society together is the common currency called 'vudu'. Vudu comes from "Vital Unified Decay". Vudu is an energy that spontaneously forms in most sentient beings and is necessary for their survival. It occurs as a product of the decay of the Vital Unified Stochastic Field. The discovery of this energy field is mostly attributed to the Cynex many millennia ago, before the galaxy was at peace. The Cynex and other civilizations around the same time perfected a way of transferring this energy between individuals and later to transfer it to devices and use it as a regular energy source. Because of its ready availability it quickly became the number one source of energy. With the advent of particle replicators more and more things were starting to loose their intrinsic value. But because of it's ever changing nature, vudu has remained one of the few things that can't be created by particle replication. These factors ultimately led to vudu being adopted as the common currency across most of the galaxy. It therefore probably comes as no surprise that your main concern as a cabbie is with your vudu. Most transactions you do will involve you giving or receiving vudu: Food, repairs, a place to sleep, information, and in fact most conversation, will cost you vudu. When people pay you their fare they pay in vudu. You can use as much of your vudu to pay for things as you want but you always need at least one unit of vudu to stay alive. If your vudu reaches zero, you die. #USER-INTERFACE The screen is divided into two areas: 1. The main-view, which shows your cab and everything around it like other traffic and buildings. 2. The control-panel which is the mostly black panel showing your portrait and name, a map of the planet you're on or system you are in, a lot of buttons, messages and other things. The control-panel covers either the left or right-side of your screen; It depends on the 'controlpaneright' setting (see 'controlpaneright' under 'EXPLANATION-OF-EACH-CONFIGURATION-SETTING'). When you want to turn or accelerate your cab the mouse must be in the main-view. All other interaction is done through the elements on the control-panel. What follows are descriptions of the elements of the control-panel starting from the top. #Statusbar The top of the control-panel shows your cabbie's portrait, name and generation. Underneath it will show your current vudu in blue. Clicking the portrait will pause the game and allow you to do things like change your cabbie's portrait, load a save-game, change settings or quit the game (see 'Main-menu' below). #Information-panel The information-panel shows the planet's name (when on a planet) or the system's name (when in the system-view) is shown in white at the top center. Underneath it will show an overview-map of the planet you're on or the star-system you are in. Your cabs position will show as a yellow flashing triangle. Your destination (if any) will show as a green upside-down flashing triangle. On developed planets with an expressway-network the expressway-network is shown in white. The white dots are the junctions and the lines are the expressways that connect them. When in the system-view the star is shown as a white disc in the center of the overview-map. The locations of other planets are shown as little colored discs. Planet orbits are shown as grey circles centered around the star. Some items, like scanners, can at times cause other symbols to show on the overview-map. When on a planet, next to its name it will show the star-rating that you have given it (if any). To give a planet a star-rating or change its existing rating: Click slightly to the right of the planet's name or on one of the yellow stars if editing an existing rating. Grey stars will appear and by moving the mouse over them you can increase or decrease the number of yellow stars. Click the stars again when the desired number of stars are shown to fix the rating. The rating you give to planets will also show on a system's information panel in the galaxy-map. #Item-panel Underneath the planet or system overview-map sits the Item-panel. The item-panel consists of rows of icons that represent effects, abilities and items you have. Some of these can be clicked to activate or toggle certain things. Others only represent a certain effect being active, for example that you're hungry. If there are more items than can be shown on the item-panel then you can page through the item-panel by rolling your mouse-wheel while hovering over the item-panel. Each item also shows a popup with a description of it when you hover you mouse over it. Items often indicate whether they are disabled, inactive or active by varying how bright they are. What follows below is a description of the first row of items, which are always there and are most commonly used: 1. Land: The first button, the one with a down-arrow on it, is the land button. Clicking this will land you in places on a planet-surface where there is no clear interactive site (like a diner or motel for example). It will blink when you are landed somewhere. When landed you can click it to take-off again. You can also use it to take-off from normal interactive sites instead of clicking 'adios'. The land button can also be used on the galaxy-map to reenter a system that you have just exited. 2. Galaxy-map: This toggles the galaxy-map. Which is the same as the one you use for traveling at warp. (You can only travel at warp when outside of any system. When you are outside of any system you will automatically be shown the galaxy map) . For more information about warping to another system see "Leaving-a-system-and-warping-to-another" below under "CONTROLLING-YOUR-CAB". Note that opening the galaxy map will pause the game. If you are on the galaxy map because you are outside of any system (e.g. during warp destination selection or warp travel) the game is NOT paused. 3. Landing system: The seventh button has a shortened 'L' in it with an arrow over it and toggles automatic landing. When toggled on you will land automatically at any site, place or pickup you fly into with speed = 1. When toggled off you will not land anywhere. The only exception to this is your destination. When you fly into your destination at speed = 1 the state of the landing button is irrelevant: You always land. Pressing the 'Land' button (second item) will also always land you. 4. Radio: This is your radio. You can use it to toggle showing the bulletin-board (see below under 'Bulletin-board'). 5. HUD: This toggles the little mini information HUD under you cab that shows you speed, vudu and destination. 6. Sightseeing: This toggles between the normal view and sightseeing-mode where the control-panel is hidden and you have a slightly bigger view of your surroundings. Moving the mouse over the control-panel-toggle at the right-edge of the screen will show the control-panel and it will remain shown until you move your mouse outside of the control-panel. 7. Sleep: When landed (not at a site) you can use this to start sleeping 'rough' in your cab. You will sleep for half a day during which you can be interrupted by anything that you would normally see flying around the planet. You can only sleep like this while on a planet's surface (not in stations or underground systems). It is advisable to sleep at a motel or home when possible. #Context-panel The context-panel shows relevant information depending on what you have clicked on the item-panel (e.g. clicking a bookmark-item shows bookmark information). It also shows the fare-panel when you have a passenger (which you can toggle by clicking the little passenger portrait item in the item-panel). If there is nothing to show in the context-panel then the bulletin-board (see below) will stretch over it instead. #Bulletin-board The bulletin-board is at the bottom of the control-panel. It displays all kinds of messages and notifications. Some of these can be clicked. For example: Call-out notification can be clicked to open up their details in the context- panel. The bulletin-board will stretch automatically to cover the context-panel if there is nothing showing in the context-panel. #HUD Your cab is shown in the center or slightly above the center of the screen. Underneath it is a little information bar that shows (from left to right): Your speed, your vudu (in abreviated form) and the distance to your destination. If your speed is such that it burns extra vudu (e.g. when hovering or going at speed five on a planet) then the speed will show red. When departing the speed will show 'L' for "launch". When on an expressway it will show 'X'. When at warp it will show 'W'. When your vudu goes below a certain number it will start flashing "LOW" over your vudu amount. A repeating alert will sound. You can change the amount at which this happens or you can turn it off. See the section "scorewarningthreshold" under "EXPLANATION OF EACH CONFIGURATION SETTING". Your destination will show as "NO DEST" when you have no destination set. When you don't know the location of your destination it will show "???". If the distance to your destination shown is red it means that you cannot reach it with the vudu you have left. Note that when hovering this therefore always shows red. As soon as you start moving it should show white again. #Main-menu Pressing 'Escape' or clicking your cabbie's portrait will pause your game and show the main-menu. The main-menu has the following options: 1. CONTINUE If you are currently in a game this will simply close the main-menu, unpause and resume the game. When starting TAXINAUT and not yet in a game it will continue where you last quit. You should always use "CONTINUE" instead of "LOAD" to continue your game because some items are NOT recovered when using "LOAD" but ARE recovered when continuing your game through "CONTINUE". (See also: "unrecoverable-items"). 2. CHARACTER This option will only show during a game. It shows your cabbie's name and portrait and the ship you're currently flying. You can change both the portrait and the ship by clicking on them. You will be shown the portraits or ships you have currently unlocked and you can click one to change your portrait or ship to it. You unlock portraits by talking to people in the game. When you talk to a person it's portrait will unlock for you to pick as your cabbie's portrait. Similarly, you can unlock ships by interacting with other ships in the game. 3. TOPICS This option will only show during a game. It shows a list of all topics you have discovered on the left side of the screen. Clicking on a topic will show conversations you have had about this topic. Only the first time you have had a particular conversation will be shown. If you have the same conversation (perhaps with somebody else) at a later point it will not show here. (See also the "TOPICS" section below). 4. LOG This option will only show during a game. It shows a history of game events like discovering a planet, purchasing a topic, etc. When you open the log, the last page (the one with the most recent event) will show. You can use the mouse-wheel to scroll through the pages of your cabbie's history. 5. LOAD From here you can load one of your save-games (see 'SAVING-AND-QUITTING' below). 6. NEW GAME This starts a new game. 7. SETTINGS Here you can change general game settings. For now you can only change sound volume here. 8. HELP Shows this manual. 9. QUIT Closes the TAXINAUT application. If you are currently in a game, your progress will be automatically saved and you will be able to continue exactly from where you left off next time your start TAXINAUT by choosing "CONTINUE" (see 'SAVING AND QUITTING' below). #CONTROLLING-YOUR-CAB To control your cab your mouse must be over the main-view. Provided that the game is not paused, your cab will fly in the direction of your mouse-pointer. To change direction: Do not click the mouse; Simply move the mouse and your cab will gradually turn towards it. To change the speed of your cab roll the mouse-wheel up one tick at a time. Each tick increases your speed by one. Your speed is the first number shown on the HUD (the little bar underneath your cab). To decrease speed roll the mouse-wheel down one tick at a time. If at any time you move your mouse out of the main-view, your mouse will stop controlling your cab and your cab will continue straight ahead in the direction it was facing when the mouse exited the main-view. To resume control of your cab move the mouse back into the main-view. To pause the game press the left mouse-button. While the game is paused you can freely move your mouse around without affecting your cab. To unpause the game press the left mouse-button anywhere inside the main-view. Some items and actions will also automatically unpause the game when you use them. Opening the main-menu also always pauses the game. The mouse-control described above is the recommended way to play TAXINAUT but you can also control your cab with the WASD or arrow-keys on your keyboard. The down-side of this is that you will have to switch to your mouse to control dialogs and menus. I don't have a solution for this at the moment. #Landing You can mostly land at any site, place or pickup on any planet. Most sites are marked by a white light square with a symbol in it indicating what the site is. Places, when undiscovered, show as a white circle with a little blue vudu symbol in it's center. Pickups have different shapes but they usually flash and are often in the shape of a person raising one arm. The yellow ones are of most interest to you because these are usually people looking for a cab. To land at a site, place or pickup fly into it at speed one. You have to fly into it quite precisely with the center of your cab very close to the center of the marker. There is a way to switch off landing which can come in handy when you're in an area with lots of traffic and lots of places to land. See the section "Item-panel" under "USER INTERFACE" below. You can also land anywhere on a planet that is not a site, place or pickup: Simply press the land-button in the item-panel. #Departing-and-descending To depart from a planet you can fly to a Spaceport (if the planet you are on has one) or you can use an anti-grav compressor. If a planet has a Spaceport it is usually located at the center of the planet-map and is also likely to be automatically listed in the planet's directory as soon as you've discovered the planet. Using "assisted planetary-departure" at a Spaceport normally costs around 1000 VUDU. To start departure with an anti-grav compressor: Make sure the compressor isn't still charging (you can see this by hovering over the anti-grav compressor item) and click the item to start departure. If you are landed somewhere you will normally automatically leave. During the ascension sequence all controls and buttons will be temporarily disabled. To descend onto a planet simply fly into it at speed = 1 like you would when landing at a site. During the descent sequence all controls and buttons will be temporarily disabled. Note that you cannot descend onto all planets. For example you cannot descend onto gas-giants and stars. #Leaving-a-system-and-warping-to-another To leave a star-system fly your cab away from the white star at the center of the map, out passed the edge of the system map. To get a better idea of what direction to fly in, look at the overview-map. The star is shown at the center as a big white disc. Your cab is shown as a flashing yellow triangle. Simply fly the yellow triangle passed the edge of the overview-map. Once you fly passed the edge you will automatically enter the galaxy-map. To warp to another star-system you need a warp-core that is loaded with a warp-crystal. Every time you use your warp-core the crystal deteriorates. Eventually the crystal will break and you will have to load a new crystal. Different warp-cores are able to cover different distances at different speeds and are able to use crystals a different number of times. The description on your warp-core item will tell you these things along with the chance of the currently loaded crystal breaking. To load a warp-crystal into your warp-core simply click the warp-crystal item in your item-panel. The warp-core will show in it's description that a crystal is loaded and what the chance is of it breaking. The chance normally starts at 0 and stays like that for a number of uses. This minimum or guaranteed number of uses is also mentioned in the warp-core's description. After the minimum number of uses is reach the chance of the crystal breaking will slowly increase with each use. When you load a crystal into your warp-core any crystal that was already in there is destroyed. To start warp: Select the destination star-system by clicking on it. If the route to the destination star-system is red it means that your warp-core doesn't have the range to travel that distance or that there is no warp-crystal loaded. If the route is green or yellow you can initiate warp by clicking the warp-core item. During warp most controls are disabled. #Transporters-and-liners An alternative way to travel between star-systems is by using transporters and galactic-liners. These don't require you to have a warp-core or warp-crystal. You can book a trip on a transporter at a travel-agent. Travel-agents will sell tickets for transport to neighboring star-systems. After buying a ticket, clicking the ticket will set your destination to where you can board the transporter (this is normally somewhere in space, in the same star-system where you booked the ticket). Transporters leave at a certain set time. If you board early you will automatically wait (in accelerated time) until the transport leaves. If you arrive late the transporter simply won't be there because it has already left. The description on the ticket item as well as information given before you buy the ticket will tell you when the transport will leave. Transport generally costs around the same as the surcharge you charge passengers for inter- stellar travel of the same distance. Because there often is quite a waiting period between boarding and departure, transporters are generally unsuitable for use with passengers that are on the meter. The passenger will probably get very annoyed and leave before the transport has even departed. Fixed fare passengers however can be used with transporters. Potential passengers sometimes will suggest a fixed fare arrangement if they notice that you don't have an operational warp-core. Galactic-liners are faster, cheaper, cover larger distances and leave immediately but are only available at certain star-systems that have stations with starports. Travel-agents will list destination systems that have a starport with a pentagonal purple icon. Often you won't be able to find a transport or liner that goes directly to your destination and will have to make multiple trips. Usually this means booking a transporter to the nearest system with a starport. Then from that starport take galactic-liners from starport to starport until you are as close as you can get with liners to your destination. Then take one or more transports to get to your final destination. #Navigation You can set your destination by clicking on a bookmark-item in the item-panel and clicking 'set destination' or in the fare-panel by clicking 'set destination' or through the galaxy-map (See the 'galaxy-map' section under 'Item- panel'). Also, taking a passenger automatically sets your destination to the passenger's destination. If your destination site is 'known' to you, you will see directions to it in the form of an arrow close to your cab or a yellow 'depart' notification above the information-panel. Depending on where you are, you might also see a green triangle on the mini-map indicating your destination and/or if you're close enough to your destination, a jumping green triangle in the main-view over the destination site or planet or entrance leading to your destination. The arrow simply points in the direction of your destination or the planet or entrance leading to your destination. The flashing, yellow 'depart' notification means your destination is on another planet or in another system and you should leave your current planet or system if you want to go to your destination. Sites become 'known' to you by flying over them, landing at them, through interaction with people or through information bulletins. If you take a passenger that knows it's destination it will also automatically become known to you. #SAVING-AND-QUITTING You can always quit TAXINAUT whenever you want. The next time you start the application and click "CONTINUE" you will be right where and how you were when you quit. However when you die and find yourself at the "Game Over" screen you will revive at your last checkpoint. When you start a new game a first checkpoint is set automatically at the starting location. To update your checkpoint you must sleep at a proper place like a home or a motel. #reviving-at-a-checkpoint When you revive your VUDU is set to 1 and you automatically teleport back to your checkpoint. 1000 VUDU will be taken out of your bank-account. Any amount short will be taken out as a loan up to the maximum loan amount of 100000. Any passenger you had will be gone. The rest will be more or less the same. Some fares or story-lines may impose their own penalties upon dying and some items are always lost when you die. Items that are lost upon death usually state this in their description. It is possible that when you revive at your checkpoint that your situation is so dire that you will need a save-game or start over. For example your cab maybe damaged so severely that it's basically inoperable. #save-game To save your progress totally and permanently (like in other games) you need a save-game. To create a save-game you must sleep at a home (a residence you own) or use an Astral-Star. You can load any previously created save-game at any time by going into the main-menu and clicking "LOAD". All your save-games will be listed there. You can click one to load it. #loading-save-games-and-starting-new-games In TAXINAUT you can only use "quit and continue" for one character at a time. So, when you load a save-game or start a new game all progress on any other character that is not saved in a save-game (e.g. by sleeping at a home) will be lost. For example: If you were playing a character that has never slept at a home and you start a new game or load a save-game (from a different character) then the character you were playing and all it's progress will be permanently gone. #unrecoverable-items Save-games are just like save-games in other games, except that there are a few special items that ARE kept when using "quit and continue" (that is, between quitting the application, restarting it and clicking "CONTINUE") but that ARE NOT recovered when loading a save-game. These "unrecoverable" items are usually things that mark a special attainment of the Player that is only kept while not dying or reloading from a save-game. Unrecoverable items always state this in their description. Whenever you load a save-game, all unrecoverable items on all your characters are always lost. The only way to keep unrecoverable items is by using "CONTINUE". Mostly everything else is recovered with some notable exceptions: - Call-outs are not saved. If there was a call-out available when you quit the game or saved this call-out will not be there when you reload. A taken call-out won't be there either unless you already made it to the pick-up and have the passenger in your cab. - Traffic, pick-ups and other such things won't be saved. If, for example, you quit the game with a pick-up flashing nearby, that pick-up won't be there when you load the game again. #quitting You can quit at any time by clicking "QUIT" in the main-menu and you will be able to continue where you left off the next time you start TAXINAUT by clicking "CONTINUE". However there are some game situations during which "quit and continue" is not available (for example: in the middle of a conversation with people or while being chased by security). If you attempt to quit at such times, TAXINAUT will warn you that all your progress since the start of that session will be lost. (If you created a save-game during that time it will of course still be available). This is mostly done to discourage cheating or because it would be technically very awkward to save at that point. #notes If you are looking for a way to backup your progress: You can backup the files under the 'sav' directory which is in the user-directory (see "user-directory" under "IMPORTANT-FILES-AND-DIRECTORIES" below). You can have multiple games (that is characters) at the same time but you can only switch between these by loading save-games. This effectively means that when you switch to another character all progress not saved in a save-game and all the unrecoverable items of your current character will be lost. #TOPICS-AND-CONVERSATION When you click on someone's portrait a list of topics is shown. Clicking on a topic will start a conversation about that topic; this will usually cost VUDU; the amount is shown to the right in blue. The topics you see listed depend on the topics you have previously discovered. Topics are discovered during conversation or other interactions or just automatically when you meet someone. Once you have discovered a topic other topics will often become visible. You can see the list of topics you have discovered from the "TOPICS" option of the main-menu (see the "main-menu" section under "USER-INTERFACE"). Some topics unlock other topics, some give you directions. Different types of topics have different colors: - Blue topics are conversational topics that you haven't discovered yet. - Yellow topics are conversational topics that you have already discovered. - Cyan topics are directions to a star-system. - Red topics are directions to planets or stations. - Green topics are directions to places. - White topics are directions to traders and other interactive sites. Sometimes people just immediately start talking about something when you click on their portrait or just randomly when you have them as a passenger. This never costs you VUDU. They can however lead to further options that will cost VUDU. These kinds of spontaneous conversations often lead to a topic discovery. The more VUDU you carry on you the more likely people will start a conversation with you. (VUDU you have in the bank doesn't count). Some topics can only be discovered through these spontaneous conversations; they never show up in someone's list of topics. #ACTION-SEQUENCES While interacting with people around the nebula either you or them can start an action-sequence. An action-sequence is started for example when you click on a weapon item in the item-panel while talking to somebody; this will start an attack with the clicked weapon on the person you're talking to. In a similar way, people can start an attack on you while you're talking to them or trading with them. An action-sequence is made up of two parts: the start-action followed by the response-action chosen by the other party. Each is shown in turn by a round icon indicating what the action is. The icons will show in the same place where dialogs are normally shown. After both the start- and response-actions are shown each will be replaced with an effect-icon in a star-like shape, indicating the effect of the action. If the action has no effect a grey cross will be shown instead. The effect of an action usually comes in the form of an item that is added to the player (e.g. an injury in case of an attack) or an attribute that is added to the non-player character. After the effects of the start- and response-actions are shown, the action-sequence ends. When an action-sequence ends four things can happen: 1. You return to whatever dialog or trade-panel you were at when the action-sequence started. It can also be that these are now not accessible (because of your actions) and you will be faced with a blank panel with the option to leave (e.g. "ADIOS"). This is common, for example, after attacking somebody because they do not want to talk to you or trade with you after you have attacked them. It can also be that the dialog you come back to is now different. If you want you can start an action-sequence again at this point by clicking on an action-item in the item-panel. 2. The other party immediately decides to start an action-sequence again. 3. You died as a result of the actions and will revive at your last checkpoint (See "reviving-at-a-checkpoint"). 4. The other party died, in which case you will often be able to pick one of each item they had on offer against no cost. The above covers the basic flow of an action-sequence. Below are some extra explanations to help you understand action-sequences. Actions by the player that affect the non-player character are always shown on a white circle. For example: the player hitting a non-player character with a hammer will show a black hammer on a white circle. Actions taken by a non-player character that affect the player will show on a red circle. For example: a non-player character hitting the player with a hatchet will show a black hatchet on a red circle. In the case that a non-player character starts the action-sequence and the response-action must come from the player, a flashing circle saying, "CHOOSE ACTION" will be shown where the response-action icon would normally show. The player can then click an action-item on the item-panel to choose an action. The item-panel will at this point only show items that the player can actually use in this situation. A white on green flag is always shown as the first item and it can be used to choose to do nothing. After the player chooses their action it will show in place of the flashing "CHOOSE ACTION" icon. Sometimes right after an action-icon appears, a smaller icon appears at the top of it. Icons like this indicate something that the party subject to the action has that might change the outcome of the action. For example: An attack with a club might have it's effect reduced by the defender's body-armor. Each action will always only suffer one of these automatic counter-effects. If the responding party chooses not to take any action (shown by a white on green flag) then no effect-icon will be shown for it (it won't even show a grey cross). Be careful when carrying a passenger: If while carrying a passenger you are interacting with somebody else (e.g. you are landed somewhere or have bumped into another ship) then clicking a weapon item will start an attack on that other person, not the passenger. But if you are not interacting with another person, clicking a weapon will start an attack on your passenger (if you have one). #Injuries One of the most common effects of an action is an injury. There are many different injuries that one can suffer but they all fall in one of four levels of severity: minor, major, critical and fatal. Each level has a maximum number of injuries that one can have of that level. When that number is reached any subsequent injury of the same level will be aggravated and become an injury of one level higher. When a critical-injury is aggravated the sufferer dies. Suffering a fatal injury also results in immediate death. The maximum count for each injury-level is as follows: 1. Minor-injury: maximum of 3 (the 4th and subsequent minor-injuries will turn into a major-injury). 2. Major-injury: maximum of 2 (the 3th and subsequent major-injuries will turn into a critical-injury). 3. Critical-injury: maximum of 1 (the 2nd will result in death). 4. Fatal-injury: maximum of 0 (the 1st will result in death). For example if one has three cuts (which are minor-injuries) and suffers another cut, the cut will be aggravated and one will suffer lacerations (which is a major-injury) instead. If an injury is aggravated and the next level of injury is also at it's maximum then the injury will simply be aggravated again into the next level (until a level is reached that is not at it's maximum or death occurs). Injuries can have all kinds of side-effects, most commonly: bleeding VUDU. #COMMON-SERVICES #banks At a bank you can transfer VUDU from your pocket to your account and vice versa. You will have access to the same account at all banks. VUDU in your bank is safe from everybody including security. When you take out more VUDU then is in the bank and the amount shown is negative then you have borrowed it. Each time you borrow you pay a 10% fee that's added automatically to the owed amount. So if you borrow 1000, you will actually owe 1100 but only 1000 is transfered to your pocket. You can have multiple loans at the same time. All VUDU taken out beyond 0 during a single visit to a bank will count as one loan. Each loan has to be paid back in full within 100 days of taking it out. You can pay back loans by transferring VUDU from your pocket into your account. You can pay back loans in bits as long as the full amount is paid within 100 days. If you fail to pay back a loan within 100 days, what's still owed plus a fine of 10% of what's owed is added to a charge. A charge on your account must be paid immediately. If there is a charge on your account and you own homes then these are sold off, cheapest first, until the charge is fully paid. Any difference is put into your account. If there is still a charge then debt-collectors are send after you. While you have a charge on your account you cannot borrow any more money. If you fail to pay off a loan in time and already have a charge then the new amount and fine are added to the existing charge. You cannot borrow more than 100000 in total over all your loans. #PROBLEMS-CRASHES-TROUBLESHOOTING If you think there's something wrong with the display of the game read the section "Display-Settings" under "CONFIGURATION" below. If it's stuttering a lot you might want to read "The game stutters abnormally" under "COMMON-PROBLEMS" below. If the game crashes an "OOPS!" message will appear on a black screen and the application will close. A file called something like: taxi1231231231231.crash Will appear in your user-directory (see the section "user-directory" under "IMPORTANT-FILES-AND-DIRECTORIES" in this manual). Please send this file together with a description of what your were doing leading up to the crash to: bugs@mosgrom.net If you think that something is not working as intended you can similarly send a description of the problem to the above email address. A common reason for TAXINAUT suddenly crashing is running out of memory. TAXINAUT requires 2Gigs of RAM to be available to it. Systems with just the standard 4Gigs often don't have this available for applications. TAXINAUT therefore requires 8Gigs of RAM installed on the system. #COMMON-PROBLEMS What follows are a couple of common problems and suggestions to resolving them. The game stutters abnormally. There is always bound to be some stutter in this game. The exact amount I can't predict and will vary from system to system. This is partly because the game is written in Java and the Garbage Collector can occasionally pause all threads. Another reason is that the game uses a scrolling overhead view with constant speed movement over often sharply delineated images; This will accentuate any tiny delay that occurs. If you are experiencing abnormal constant stutter there might be some things you can do to make it better: 1. Close all other unecessary programs. Stutter has occurred for me with for example Firefox open. Especially when the page showing is running some kind of animation. In one case I could reliably make Taxinaut stutter by having Twitter showing in Firefox with a post that had an animation on it. Closing Firefox would make the stutter go away opening it again and showing the Twitter post with the animation made the stutter reappear. 2. Don't use a frame-rate limiter (Like fixing your frame-rate to 30FPS with some NVIDIA tool). When I do this the stutter is terrible. 3. Don't use overlays (like Steam overlay). 4. Don't use software that affects your whole screen tint or things like that (I'm particularly thinking of an otherwise very nice piece of software that I use to make my screen more night-time friendly called "f.lux" even when this is not darkening my screen during the day TAXINAUT will stutter if I have this program enabled. For some reason if I had this software enabled at any point I have to actually restart my computer for the stutter to disappear. Simply closing it won't do. 5. Unplug all unecessary USB devices, especially some hard drives. I have quite a few external hard drives and some cause my system to hang on startup and/or stutter in TAXINAUT when plugged in. Also, drawing tablets (Intuos etc.), I have experienced stutter in TAXINAUT with one of these plugged in that went away the moment I unplugged it. 6. Try switching from DirectX to OpenGL (see opengl section under "EXPLANATION-OF-EACH-CONFIGURATION-SETTING"). There seems be no sure setting for Linux. Some GPUs do better with opengl=true others with opengl=auto or opengl=false. 7. Make sure that some other process isn't using a lot of CPU time. You can see this in Task Manager. In my experience activity from things like "Antimalware Service Executable" and "Microsoft Indexing Service" (I think it is called) can sometimes for a while coincide with stuttering in TAXINAUT. (Even if they appear to be using only a modest bit of CPU resources. 8. Restart your system. (Especially if you were using some FPS limiting software or something like that. Simply turning it off sometimes won't do the trick in my experience.) 9. Try different display settings. See "Display Settings" under "CONFIGURATION" below. 10. I have a feeling that if your system is showing it needs a NVIDIA driver update or a Java update it can cause Stutter. This seems unlikely but on a good few occasions I was noticing stutter and also that Java and/or NVIDIA was showing an update notification in my system tray. After updating them the stutter would be gone. Coincidence? Probably, but it's worth a try. By the way: TAXINAUT does not depend on the version of Java installed on your system (if any) it comes with it's own bundled version of Java that's automatically used (like a library) whenever you run TAXINAUT. It does not affect the Java version you have installed on your system. The game stutters every time I turn my cab. From time to time (once very couple of weeks) this seems to come back. I have no idea why this is. Once this starts occurring it doesn't seem to go away. The only thing that has made it go for me mostly is to close all applications (including the game) and restart the game. If that doesn't work restarting my computer has always solved it. The game stutters a lot more when I try to record/stream it and/or the resulting footage shows a lot more stutter. Regrettably I have noticed this myself and I only realized it after I was deep in development of TAXINAUT. I never thought of recording it while I was working on it for probably more than 2 years. I think it is because this is Java and a lot of the rendering (like scaling, rotating, etc.) of objects still has to be done on the CPU. Something like OBS will probably also use a lot of CPU to do the encoding etc. So I guess the recording application and TAXINAUT end up fighting a bit for CPU time. If you find a way around this let me know. Otherwise I'm sorry: all I can say is that it will probably hurt my sales more than it will hurt your enjoyment of the game because few will be able to show off a decently running TAXINAUT. The game freezes suddenly (and doesn't continue within about 10 seconds). Well this is obviously a bug and I would appreciate it if you report it. What I'de like you to do though is leave the game running in it's frozen state for about 20 seconds. It should automatically crash within about 20 seconds. This crash should generate a crash-file as detailed above under "PROBLEMS-CRASHES-TROUBLESHOOTING" which should give me a lot more information to work with. Without this file the chances of me being able to fix the issue are pretty slim. Especially because this kind of issue is often impossible for me to reproduce on my system. The game crashes. This is obviously a bug (See "PROBLEMS-CRASHES-TROUBLESHOOTING" on how to report it). What follows are known crashes that I haven't been able to solve: - When changing audio devices while the game is running, the game can crash next time it attempts to play sound. This can happen for example when turning off your speakers and plugging in headphones instead. - Under Linux when the game is using the operating system's Java runtime instead of the packaged runtime it might crash if /etc/your-java-installation/accessibility.properties has the line: assistive_technologies=org.GNOME.Accessibility.AtkWrapper A work-around is to comment this line out by putting a '#' in front of it. Engine or space sound suddenly stops. This is a known issue for TAXINAUT on Linux. Linux Java has a limit to the number of sounds that can be kept alive. There's no work-around at the moment. Changing your speed or re-entering space should make the sound start again. My save-game shows as corrupt or the game immediately crashes upon loading a save-game or clicking continue. If this occurs right or soon after an update for TAXINAUT was released or new content was added then this is of course likely to be due to a bug in the new version/content. All you can do is report it and wait for a patch. It is likely that after the patch you will have to delete those save-files that were created with the bugged version of the game from the 'sav' folder. After you've deleted these you should be able to continue as normal or load an old save-game from the "LOAD" option in the main-menu. I strongly advise to backup your 'sav' folder before manually deleting files from it. #IMPORTANT-FILES-AND-DIRECTORIES #user-directory On windows it should be: C:\Users\Username\appData\Roaming\taxinaut If that isn't it it should be the directory where TAXINAUT was installed (where you also find 'taxinaut.exe'). #configuration-file The configuration file is found directly in the user-directory. It's called 'config.txt'. #CONFIGURATION Game settings can be changed by editing config.txt. I recommend only changing config.txt if you run into problems. The file is located in the user-directory (see "configuration-file" under "IMPORTANT-FILES-AND-DIRECTORIES" above). You can simply open it, change it and save it like a normal text file. The next time you start TAXINAUT it will use these settings. When editing your configuration file do not introduce spaces, enters, tabs or other extra characters. Simply change the value after the '=' sign to what is desired and save the file. Everything should be in small-caps. If you feel you've messed up your configuration file (maybe because the game now crashes upon start) you can simply delete the file and a new default one will be generated for you the next time you start the game. If you are looking to fix graphical problems I suggest you read the section "Display Settings" below first. For an explanation of each of the available settings read "EXPLANATION OF EACH CONFIGURATION SETTING". #Display-Settings TAXINAUT uses a fixed 1920x1080 area centered on your screen. If your screen resolution is not 1920x1080 then TAXINAUT will automatically scale and center itself to fit on your screen while keeping TAXINAUT's 16:9 aspect-ratio. This means that if your screen's aspect-ratio is not 16:9 then TAXINAUT will either have black borders at the top & bottom or at the left & right of your screen. If the display is not to your liking there are different configurations you can try. Consult the section "EXPLANATION-OF-EACH-CONFIGURATION-SETTING" below. #EXPLANATION-OF-EACH-CONFIGURATION-SETTING Below an explanation of each of the configuration settings in config.txt Each setting with it's default and recommended value as it appears in the default configuration file is shown followed by an explanation of the setting. When editing your configuration file do not introduce spaces, enters, tabs or other extra characters. Simply change the value after the '=' sign to what is desired and save the file. Everything is in small-caps. If you feel you've messed up your configuration file (maybe because the game now crashes upon start) you can simply delete the file and a new default one will be generated for you the next time you start the game. actionpause=1000 During an action-sequence (e.g. a fight between the Player and an NPC) this determines the time in milliseconds an effect is shown before the sequence moves on. If these action-sequences seem to run to quickly to make sense setting this to a larger number will make them run slower. alwaysblinkitemwhenitcausesscoreconsumption=true If true then things like injuries will blink continuously while in your item-pane if they cause VUDU-bleeding. If that annoys you, you can set this to false. asktoreceiveenigmas=true When reviving after dead and your dead has raised an Enigma, a popup can ask you if you want to receive it or not. Setting this to true will show the popup. false will just add the Enigma without asking. See also the "receiveenigmas" setting below. bilinearinterpolationonplanets=true Switch on (true) or off (false) bilinear-interpolation on planets. Bilinear-interpolation can make movement appear smoother and reduce planetary-features appearing to 'tremble'. In case of low framerates or significant constant stutter one can try setting this to false and live with slightly less smooth movement but perhaps less large stutter over all. Setting this to false can also reduce memory consumption and thus reduce pauses due to garbage- collection, but this seems to be highly dependent on the platform and/or system. The default setting is on (true). cleardisplayoneachupdate=true If true then clear the Display on each update before all other drawing by filling the background with black. False means the background of the Display is not cleared. This was introduced because without clearing the background an occasional glitch seems to occur on my system (1920x1200, Windows 10, DirectX PipeLine, GTX 1660 Ti) where drawing occurs outside of the main window (only visibly if your display is larger than 1920x1080). If it wasn't for the glitch clearing would have been an unnecessary step so if you think it will improve rendering speed you can try turning this off. I didn't see any difference (in fact I felt it slightly improved rendering speed). The default setting is on (true). confirmquit=true Switch on (true) or off (false) the quit nag. The default setting is on (true). controlpanelright=true Place the control-panel on the right (true) or on the left (false) of the screen. You can set this to whatever feels most comfortable to you. I find for right-handed to have the control-panel on the right to be most comfortable and I imagine that for left-handed people having the control-panel on the left would be more comfortable. The default is for the control-panel to be on the right (true). decorativesitedensity=1.0 Scale the density of non-interactive features on planets (e.g. buildings & plants). In case of low framerates or crashes because the game runs out of memory you can try and set this lower (e.g. 0.5 for half the default density) to reduce memory consumption and the tax on the GPU. The default setting is 1.0 (higher settings work but are not supported). descentgenerationphaseduration=12000 The duration (in milliseconds) of the first phase of a planetary descent during which the planet is generated. If the generation of a planet takes longer than this setting, the descent animation will pause and a "ONE MOMENT..." message will show until the planet has finished generating. If this seems to happen a lot to you and it annoys you then you can set to a larger value (e.g. 20000). This will mean that the descent to each planet will take longer but there will be less chance of the generation of a planet taking longer than the descent and showing the "ONE MOMENT..." message. This setting will also affect game-mechanics in that it makes each of your trips that involves a descent to a Planet, longer or shorter depending on the setting. Passenger and other things use estimates of the duration of a trip to inform their behavior. These estimates will also be adjusted accordingly by changing this setting. Setting this to a lower value than the default of 12000 is not supported. drawtrafficgridindicators=false Set to true to show a bright green indicator on each crossing point of a traffic-grid. fastrendering=false Switch on (true) or off (false) fast-rendering. Fast-rendering will attempt to make rendering faster by turning off things like anti-aliasing, bilinear-interpolation (see bilinearinterpolationonplanet option) and possibly take other shortcuts during drawing that reduce the quality of what is shown but should increase the speed. In case of low framerates one can try and set this to on (true). The default setting is off (false). forceddisplaymode=no The resolution the game will change your native screen resolution to when it starts. This can only be used with fullscreen=true otherwise TAXINAUT will not start. The game only supports resolutions from 1920x1080 upwards and always displays it self in a 1920x1080 part of the screen. Setting this to 'no' will leave your screen resolution as is. This is NOT meant to be set to your current native resolution but rather to force the display to TAXINAUT's resolution of 1920x1080. The default is 'no'. ATTENTION: This can only be used with fullscreen=true otherwise TAXINAUT will not start. ATTENTION: As of 01/22/2018 fullscreen mode doesn't work under DirectX in Windows 10. So because this setting requires fullscreen mode, there is effectively no way to use this setting under DirectX. It should work with opengl=true set. forcedgc=1 Dictates when memory-cleanup is forcefully called (garbage-collection). Calling garbage-collection more often can reduce crashing because of running out of memory and can also result in longer periods of uninterrupted smooth movement. When set to 2 it will try and force garbage-collection every time the player leaves a location (e.g. a diner). This will result in a small pause at such a moment. Although it is likely to reduce the number of pauses when flying around it can also make those pauses that do occur much more pronounced. The default setting is 1. fullscreen=auto Run game in fullscreen-exclusive mode (true) or windowed-mode (false) or attempt to automatically determine the best setting (auto). As of this writing the 'auto' setting will use 'true' on Linux and 'false' on Windows. The default setting is 'auto'. ATTENTION: As of 01/22/2018 fullscreen-exclusive mode doesn't seem to be working anymore in Windows 10 using the default DirectX (opengl=false) pipeline. It should work using opengl=true. gamelooptargettime=5 To draw the screen, update positions and calculate collisions TAXINAUT uses an update-loop. Each time the game goes through the loop everything is redrawn and recalculated. If the time such an update takes is less than the time given here then this setting makes the update-loop pause until the time given here is reached (the time is in milliseconds). For example if this is set to 4 milliseconds and the update-loop takes 3 milliseconds then the update-loop pauses for 1 millisecond. But if, for example, the update takes 5 milliseconds then there is no pause. Setting this low will cause more memory to be used faster because there are more updates per second, each using a bit of memory. This causes the garbage-collector to be called more often and can thus actually make the game appear to run less smooth. The default is 5. gridtrafficheightadjust=false When traffic on planets that have a traffic-grid flies right over the grid-lanes it looks a bit silly as if they are flying too low (because of the perspective). You can make them fly higher so they appear to be flying more above the grid-lanes, where you would expect them. However this makes it harder to see whether you are actually flying on the grid (which makes it easier to make a mistake and get a ticket for speeding off-grid). In my opinion the ease of use that comes with flying over the visual lanes corresponding to flying on the grid is more important than the look of it so the default is false. If this bothers you, you can set this to true. You can turn on green indicators on each crossing that do correspond to where you are supposed to fly (see "drawtrafficgridindicators" setting above). jukebox=true Switch on (true) or off (false) the playing of music tracks that come with the game. musicvolume=0.75 Volume of the jukebox music. Values from 0.0 (off) to 1.0 are supported. The default setting is 0.75 opengl=auto Use OpenGL (true) or not (false) or attempt to automatically determine a setting (auto) to run this game. Of course this depends on whether OpenGL is available on your system. As of this writing the (auto) setting will set this to 'false' on both Windows and Linux. If you are using opengl=true on Windows and experience stutter or flicker then I recommend the following settings: opengl=true fullscreen=false forcedisplaymode=no uiscale=auto volatileimagebaseddisplay=true The default setting is automatic (auto). pauseonhunteractivation=true Automatically pause the game when a mob attacks or tries to intercept you (doesn't work for all mobs). playintro=true Switch on (true) or off (false) the bit at the start of the game where you zoom from a galactic overview down to your location on the planet. Hey I worked hard to get that to work and you are going to switch it off!? Boy, do I hate you ;-) The default is on (true). receiveenigmas=1 When you die the thing that killed you might raise an Enigma which upon reviving you can choose to receive or not. This setting determines the maximum number of times you can receive the same Enigma. 0 means never receiving Enigmas. Anything larger than 99 means unlimited. runtutorial=true Switch on (true) or off (false) the tutorial when you start a new game. The bit where you pick your name, portrait and cab will still run but after that you will be immediately set free to do your own thing. The default is on (true). scorewarningthreshold=1000 The vudu amount at which you are alerted that your vudu is low. A repeating warning will sound and "LOW" will flash red over you vudu amount in your HUD (underneath your cab in the center of the screen). Set to -1 to turn completely off. The default is 1000. senduserdata=true If, the first time you started TAXINAUT, you agreed to TAXINAUT collecting usage-information (see doc/usageinfosendagreement.txt for details) then this setting can be used to turn that off. To turn usage- information collecting off set this to 'false'. If you did not agree to this (when this was asked the first time you started TAXINAUT) then usage-information will never be send regardless of this setting. This setting in that case effectively does nothing. showmosgrom=true Switch on (true) or off (false) the mosgrom logo when the game starts. Don't you dare! The default is on (true). showpausedstatus=false Show "PAUSED" underneath your cab when the game is paused. soundsystem=2 The sound-system to use: 0 - Completely disable any use of sound. No clips will be loaded and the sound API will never be accessed. This is not a mute function. It's for use with platforms/systems that have no sound or where it is incompatible with the game or Java. 1 - Use Java Clip but no caching. 2 - Use Java Clip with caching. timerlagcompensationreport=false See below under 'timerlagcompensationthreshold' for more about what 'timer lag compensation' is. Setting this to true will write a message to the log each time lag is detected and also whether compensation was applied. Leave it on false unless I ask you to set it to true to help me try and solve an issue. The default is false. timerlagcompensationthreshold=20000000 When for some reason (e.g. garbage-collection) the application temporarily freezes, time actually continues. Because all movement in the game is based on time it can happen that when the game continues after a freeze that your cab jumps forward a little bit. This setting controls a mechanism that attempts to detect freezes and if they happen adjust the game time accordingly. This way the cab doesn't "jump forward" after the freeze but continues from where it was before the freeze (which is arguably less irritating). A loop continuously checks whether the game didn't freeze by checking the time between it's last pass and the current one. If this time is larger than the time (in nanoseconds) set here then it concludes a freeze has taken place and it adjusts the time accordingly. I can imagine that this on some systems or to some people can be more irritating or doesn't quite work right. They can change the setting here and see whether it improves or simply turn it off by setting it to 0. Setting this too low (say less than 15000000 nanoseconds) will freeze your game because it will constantly compensate for a perceived freeze of the application. If the game runs with low FPS on your system (e.g. < 50FPS) you probably want to turn this off (set it to 0). The default is 20000000 nanoseconds. uiscale=auto Scale TAXINAUT's display by the specified amount, where: 'no' means no scaling. 'auto' means automatic scaling which will automatically scale and center the dispay on the screen if the screen isn't set to 1920x1080 resolution. (If forcedisplaymode is set then this is applied first before this auto-scaling and the scaling will be based on the resolution that results from the forcedisplaymode setting). A number larger than 0 will scale and center the display on the screen according to the set value. For example 0.5 will display the game in a 960x540 area centered on the screen. The default is 'auto' (automatic). volatileimagebaseddisplay=false Set to true to use a different method of drawing the game. If working properly it will render the game at maximum speed and won't sync to the screen refresh rate. This might require you to also set opengl=true and/or fullscreen=false if you just get a blank screen. On my system it requires me to set fullscreen=false and also opengl=false. Otherwise the screen update will still sync to the screen refresh-rate or I just get a blank screen. The default is false. volume=0.75 Volume of UI sounds, engine sounds and other sound effects. Values from 0.0 to 1.0 are supported. The default is 0.75