
    ************* Welcome to DAC, the DooM-Access-Center! *************

1. What is DAC?
   DAC is a small and handy shell for all the fans of iD-SOFTWAREs powergames.
   So DAC now supports DooM V1.9, DooM2 V1.9, Ultimate DooM, DooM-Gold, 
   Heretic V1.3 and Hexen V1.1.

2. DAC-Features
   - zipped PWAD-Archives
   - separately saved games for each PWAD (not for Hexen in the DAC-Demo
     yet)
   - analyse of PWADS, which levels are patched and automatically warp
     to the first patched level for starting the game
   - supports single-player- and (IPX-) network-player-mode
   - several start-parameters (-loadgame, -skill, -nomonsters)
   - view/edit/create description-file for each PWAD (using MS-DOS-EDIT)
   - automatically zipping/unzipping of new PWADS and their TXT-files
   - automatically information of date-last-played, existing TXT-file and 
     saved games in PWAD-database

3. Installation
   - create a directory for DAC (like C:\>MD DAC10D)
   - create a subdirectory named "NEW-WAD" to every game-directory you have
   - copy your PWADS (zipped or unzipped) into the subdirectory "NEW-WAD" of
     the related games
   - copy DAC10D.ZIP into your DAC-directory 
   - copy PKZIP.EXE and PKUNZIP.EXE into your DAC-directory
   - unzip DAC10D.ZIP into your DAC-directory  
   - BEFORE you start DAC first time, open file PRG.DAT using EDIT-command 
   - what you see are these default-entries:
:DAC
C:\DAC10D\
:DOOM1
C:\ID-GAMES\DOOM1\
C:\ID-GAMES\DOOM1\PWADS\                     !!!! ATTENTION !!!!
:DOOM2                             - don't change structure of this file!
C:\ID-GAMES\DOOM2\                 - don't forget the backslash (\) ending
C:\ID-GAMES\DOOM2\PWADS\             every path-entry!
:ULTIMATE-DOOM                     - don't add or delete lines!
C:\ID-GAMES\ULT-DOOM\
C:\ID-GAMES\ULT-DOOM\PWADS\
:DOOM-GOLD
C:\ID-GAMES\DOOMGOLD\
C:\ID-GAMES\DOOMGOLD\PWADS\
:HERETIC
C:\ID-GAMES\HERETIC\
C:\ID-GAMES\HERETIC\PWADS\
:HEXEN
C:\ID-GAMES\HEXEN\
C:\ID-GAMES\HEXEN\PWADS\

   - now you can change these defaults with your game-paths
   - after saving your new prg.dat you can start DAC by typing DAC10D <ENTER>
     but read first the following chapter...

4. Getting started
   - if you have saved games in your game-directories of PWAD-sessions you 
     should delete them
   - you should start with unpatched game-versions
   - DAC will work properly only with registered games
   - before you can start with DAC you have to select one of your games (re-
     member that DAC only can access games you had installed before :-))
   - if everything was done correctly, you will see the current game-settings
     on DAC's mainscreen
   - to build your PWAD-database for the selected game, open the TOOLS-menu 
     and use the entry "Look for new PWADs"; DAC will now automatically 
     examine your PWADS (zipped or unzipped) and take over only WAD- and
     TXT-files with matching names into your PWAD-directory as new ZIP-
     archives and create database-entries in alphabetic order
   - if you have more than 40 PWADS, the DAC-demo will only take the first 
     39 PWADS; the registered version will be unlimited!
   - when DAC returned to it's mainscreen, you can open your PWAD-database
     by pressing the <P>WAD-key and select any PWAD you want to play
   - when you open the <L>evel-box, you see patched level blinking (first
     modified level is as "Warp to Level:" automatically displayed)
   - from the mainscreen you can launch your game (and PWAD) using the 
     <F5>-key
   - six hours later, when you are returning from your session, you see a
     dialogbox asking you how to classify the played PWAD by a three-charac-
     ter-string (default: _*_); you can do it anyway, but maybe you like my
     way: I'm using the first character as "S" for singleplay, "M" for multi-
     play, "D" for deathmatch, the second as "-" and the third character as 
     quality-byte from "1" to "6"

5. Problems and Bugs
   During the DAC-betaphase there were all bugs cleared (... I hope so!). 
   DAC was tested on several MS-DOS-based systems. All systems were running  
   under MS-DOS 6.x quiet well. You should not use earlier DOS-versions.
   DAC is an character-orientated shell, so may be there are some codepage-
   based problems on drawing graphic-characters for menu-boxes. In this case
   please report me your problems and the codepage you use. Thank you!

6. How to register DAC
   To register DAC is easy! Send me the printed register-formular (don't 
   forget to fill in your eMail-adress!!!). You'll find my adress at the end
   of this document.

   To register DAC is not expensive! Please put for registration your DAC
   US-$ 15 or DM 20,- into your letter and you get your unlimited DAC as soon
   as possible per eMail! It's really easy ...

7. Thanks
   Many thanks to iD-Software for creating those phantastic Games! Even much
   thanks to Hank Leukart and Matthew S. Fell for their DooM-Specs that make
   it much easier understanding the princip of these WAD-based games!

8. Copyrights
   Copyright of DooM, DooM2, Ultimate DooM, DooM-Gold by iD-SOFTWARE,
   Copyright of Heretic and Hexen by RAVEN-SOFTWARE 
   Copyright of Pktools by PKWARE
   Copyright of MS-DOS by MICROSOFT

By the way ... I can't give any warrenty for damages or lost data while using
DAC - but I spent about 12 weeks for testing DAC without any error or crash
on different systems.
 

Hannover, August 8th 1996

Hans-Michael Pieper
Klaus-Groth-Str. 3
30655 Hannover
Germany

eMail: hmp_ger@t-online.de



