-= Hornet's NAID 1996 Report =-

This is the documentation for Hornet's NAID 1996 report.  It's divided into
the following sections:

- Introduction
- Requirements
- Usage
- Frequently-Asked Questions
- Quick Credits
- Greets
- Sign-off

You can use your text viewer's "search" ability to jump to different
sections by searching for the text listed above.  I'd prefer if you read
the whole thing all the way through, though.  :)

_____Introduction:

Welcome to Hornet's NAID 1996 report--five months late, but we think you'll
agree that it's the best party report you've ever downloaded.  Here's a list
of some of the stuff in the NAID report that you won't find in any other
report:

- Over 80 full-screen, high quality, true-color pictures--in only 2 MB.

- Support for 15/16/24/32-bit color with any VESA card (also supports
UNIVBE 5.x for faster display times)

- Support for four different standard VGA modes from grayscale to "18-bit"
color if VESA is not present on the video card.  You *will* see these
pictures.

- A couple of hidden command-line switches to provide fun for the
feeble-minded.

- A cutesy little intro sequence.

- Optimized for speed with very low memory usage.

Needless to say, this report is worth the wait.

_____Requirements:

Hornet's NAID report requires a 386 or higher with 512K free RAM and a
VGA card.  A Gravis Ultrasound or compatible is supported for music
(need 550K free RAM for music).  Hornet's NAID report also runs under
Windows 95 (and, with a few restrictions, Windows NT.)

_____Usage:

This program runs best under pure DOS 5.0 or later, although it should work
fine on DOS 3.2 and later.  If you have Windows 95, then try to run this
program in "MS-DOS mode".  (It will run okay without it, albeit a bit slower.)

Hornet's NAID report is really simple--just run it and pick video mode #7 for
VESA.  If that doesn't work, then choose #6 or #5, since they seem to be more
popular anyway in demos (hi Orange!  ;).  Follow the instructions that you see
on the screen for testing the video mode.

You can advance the pictures with the SPACEBAR, but you can use more
than just the SPACEBAR to advance; the arrow keys work for forward and
backward, and you can use HOME/END and PGUP/PGDN to skip
forward/backward by 10 pictures.  (I only recommend doing this if you've
already seen the report all the way through, however, since if you view
the pictures out of order, you're going to miss a lot.)

_____Frequently-Asked Questions:

Q: The report locks up my computer when I run it.  What gives?

A: Good question.  I tested the report under DOS 6.2, DOS 5.0, Windows
95, and Windows NT (without VESA), and it ran just fine.  Check your
machine; are you shelling out from Windows 3.1?  (If so, EXIT Windows
before you run the report).  Do you have 512K free RAM, or 550K free
RAM if you have a GUS?  Is it a 386?

Q: I don't own a Gravis Ultrasound.  How can I listen to the music?

A: You can't.  Mellow-D's music was composed in .XM, and I've only
bothered to support GUS with .XM because I have little to no time
left in my life.  Ask Jakko for the original .XM file.

Q: I own a GUS, but I still can't hear the music.  What gives?

A: Make sure that your ULTRASND settings are correct and that the card
is initialized (run ultrinit.exe).

Q: I've got a 386 and this report is really slow.  What can I do to
speed it up?

A: Here's a couple of things you can do to speed up the report:

- If you're not running under Windows 95, install a disk cache,
like SMARTDRV.  The report uses free disk space to speed itself
up, so a disk cache will help a great deal.  If the cache
supports write caching, then enable write caching as well.

- Free up some disk space.  The report will use up to 16 MB of disk
space for it's cache; if you have less than 8 MB of free space
when you run the report, freeing up some files will speed it up.

- Use video mode 3 (MCGA grayscale).  It's the fastest mode.

Q: Video mode X doesn't work for me... why?

A: Video modes 3 (MCGA gray) and 4 (MCGA color) should work fine.  5 and
6 (the tweaked modes) might not work if your monitor can't support
800x600 (the video mode is a hardware tweaked 320x600).

As for VESA, I did everything I could to make VESA work.  If you're
having problems with VESA, try loading UNIVBE (now called the Scitech
Display Doctor) and try it again.  If you still have VESA problems,
use the "-16" command-line option to force 16-bit color.  If that
fails, try "-15".  If *that* fails, then use another mode.

Q: None of the video modes work!  What can I do?

A: Buy a VGA card.  :)

Q: How the hell did you fit 87 full-screen true-color high-quality
pictures into 1.8 megabytes?!?

A: A modified JPEG compressor that supports adaptive compression based
on content.  No, you can't have it.

Q: Why doesn't this report fit on a single disk?

A: All Hornet members (except me) voted for high-quality pictures over
small size.  It's probably all for the best, since the 1.44 MB
version of the report wasn't quite that nice to look at.

Q: What are some of the "hidden" command-line options?

A: Hey, I'm not that stupid--find them yourself!  ;)

_____Quick Credits:

Trixter/Hornet wrote the code, retouched and rendered all the graphics
(including the opening Hornet logo), and wrote all the text.

Mellow-D/Hornet/FM provided the cool soundtrack.

Phoenix/Hornet and GD/Hornet provided additional background information
on some of the pictures and corrections for some of the text.

For more info on Hornet, either as a demogroup or as the world's largest PC
demoscene archive, check out cdrom.com, included in this .zip file.
(cdrom.com also has all of our email addresses in it.)

_____Trixter's NAID Report Greets:

- Phoenix, for motivating me to support truecolor, and checking my descriptions
- Daredevil, for the registration ;-)
- Higher Being, for lending us a few of his pictures
- Ms. Saigon, for uploading the HB pictures to me, the wonderful baby blanket,
and DUCKIES!
- Snowman, for providing an odd sense of motivation all these years ;)
- Stony and Tek, for being so patient--now that this is out, I'll send you some more shirts...
- Phred, for patience, some 3D help, and always fascinating email conversations
- Lionel Cordesses, for the fast bankswitching information

_____Sign-off:

(Trixter speaking:)  This is probably the last demoscene-related thing I'll do
for a while, since my wife and I are about to give birth to a baby boy (due
date:  January 25th, 1997) and as Daredevil put it so well, "real life tends
to get in the way".  So, I'd like to take this opportunity to greet a few
people before I lose the chance to do so:

(Groups)
Acme
Nostalgia
Nuclear Meltdown
Ren'96
EMF
Ultraforce
Twilight Zone (Good luck with Interpose!)
Dubius
Future Crew
Camorra
Orange
Halcyon
COMA
Kefrens
Arise
And, of course, all past and present Hornet members

(People)
The REW (Rivendell is still really good!)
The Counsellor / Spirit New Style (You learn way too quickly!  :)
Airon Jayder (Thanks for taking the time and the wonderful conversations)
Jussi L. (Your coding help has helped me more than you know.)
Necros (Stay cool, my friend.  Keep coding; it will open up a whole new
world for you)
Basehead
Struk
MEd
Mr. Khan
Akin. T. (What a nice card!)
Markus Maki (Good luck with Remedy!  Death Rally is AWESOME!)
Peter Habja (I will write you back, I promise!  I'm so sorry!  :-(
Rex Deathstar (Pipelining!  Woohoo!)
Houman
Pyromaniac, Russ, Kosh, and all other Arise members
Dizzy (The greatest.  I doubt you'll see this greet, but email me if you do)
Maelcum (What happened to you?)
Dan Wright and Pascal Pochol of Toxic Zombies (Keep the faith!)
Laserlore (Your NAID'95 tune was good, are you still composing?)
Catwoman and little Trixter Jr. ;)
Everyone who tried to help me support Grind... I might rewrite it at
some point, but don't hold your breath... But your assistance was
wonderful, thank you all for wanting to help out
Everyone who tried to support Chromatiks as well... The PC Scene killed
the musicdisk, but I promise not to let Skaven's artwork go to
waste... someday...

And everyone else that I forgot--you know that I would have greeted you if I
could think straight, so email me at trixter@mcs.com...  The demo scene has
given my love of computers a constructive outlet throughout my life, and I
just want to thank everyone who tried (and succeeded) to move the scene
forward.

Signing off...

Trixter / Hornet (Jim Leonard, trixter@mcs.com)
November 17th, 1996