H E A D A C H E
(the  intermission)
Copyright (c)1996 Psychic Link / Statix
Released 22 March 1996

This file accompanies HEADACHE by Psychic Link.

Psychic Link accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any form of loss or
damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of this demo
existing.  The user executes it at his/her own risk.
However,  if anything cool happens because of this demo,  then it's
definitely due to us... :-)

Hello people, this little file accompanies my latest demo, Headache. This is
a "one man production" and consequently has quite a different style to the
usual PL offerings. As Tran would say, "I just wanted to try some things".
So, all you PL fans, don't worry: we'll be back together this summer...

A few more words of warning:

- This is a Pentium demo. It only looks nice on pentiums. Sorry, mate.
- It needs about 8 megs. I haven't tested it in less, and I'm not promising
anything.
- It should run in a Windows 95 dosbox, but why would you want to do that??
- It needs a 1 Meg GUS for sound, or a 2 Meg AWE32. It runs the AWE32 in
native MIDI mode, but the AWE doesn't support 8 bit samples... hence the
2 meg requirement. See below if you don't have enough soundcard RAM.
Oh, and BTW I don't have an AWE32 so the AWE32 player is probably buggy
as hell.... if you get random squeeks, well, tough. Buy a GUS.

Headache is just for fun. It ISN'T meant to redefine the meaning of demos,
nor to blow you away with awesome optimized code [you can wait for our next
big demo for that O:-)] so don't email telling me how slow my code is.
I know, and I don't really care.

Being in my last year at school, I haven't had much time for coding and
Headache has been a gradual process, slowly filling up the unused clusters
on my hard-drive. So, the ego-bolstering credits:

All Code, Design, Music, Gfx + samples : Statix
Original "Flo" picture : Jo
Expressions of hatred and general unhelpfulness : S-Cubed  <grin>

Thanks also to Tran for PMode/W; Judge Dredd for AWE32 info; Skywalker for
some samples and the use of his speakers; Optix, Oggie, James and Mohan for
generally (un)helpful comments. Sample credits also to Dune, Skaven, and PM.

The music was written in DisorderTracker 2 and any old algae-for-brains will
be able to rip it, although it won't play correctly in the released version
of DT2 O:-).

Hardware Requirements + Problem Solving

The demo requires the following hardware to run:

_ A VGA or compatible graphics system.
_ A 486/Pentium processor
_ 8MB RAM

If you have problems getting the demo to run,  then you could try taking
the following steps:

_ Remove all memory-resident software (e.g. Keyboard buffer extensions, Mouse
drivers) from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files,  and then reset the
system (a cold boot).

Headache detects sound cards from your enviroment settings. To get no sound,
simply remove any BLASTER or ULTRASND settings. If you do not have enough
sample RAM on your card, it is possible to resample all the instruments with
a /q command line option. This takes a number from 10 to 256 which specifies
quality (256=normal, 10=what was that clicking noise?). The demo will suggest
a value if needs be. For a standard AWE32 with 512k, /q70 is needed. Anything
below about 150 sounds REALLY SHITTY, so don't blame me if you've got a crap
soundcard.

If the demo crashes (particularly in Win95) on startup, it may be due to
syncing problems. If so, add a /v parameter to the command line.

If the demo crashes half way through, you are probably out of memory. Buy
some more SIMMs and plug them into your motherboard.

If none of it works at all,  then I am sorry,  but there is nothing you
can do - short of taking the program to a friend who has a faster computer or
one with more memory...

If the program does not run properly on your machine,  there is little we
can do about it.  Please don't write to us just to complain,  or to seek
advice in the event of the program seeming faulty,  as it will have no effect
except to make us very depressed.

How to Contact us

Well I can't be bothered to write all THAT out again. Go take a look in
PL96.NFO for more info. Just in case you lost that, my email until october
is statix@sv.span.com

Statix greets some people:

Greets to everybody who deserves them. The names below don't represent a
complete list, because my brain was never very good at remembering stuff ;-)
Firstly special greetings to all people who snail mailed me. I'm really sorry
for not replying to you all, but I just can't afford to reply to all the
mail I get. If you send me email you have a 99% chance of response; with snail
mail you have a <1% chance...

General greets:

moebius / subnormals - thanks for the food / car journey from wired!
optix / valhalla - keep up the good work... music in 4ks at last!
bigjim / valhalla - thanks for putting up with me in belgium ;-)
jari karppinen and myopic fish/bdb - dt3 will come out one day...
also hi: vic, alpha, pitbull, gimle, saracen, jmagic (purile humour?), ian
glenn, mark, paul, russell and all at bullfrog (see you in the summer!), rob
bath (nice bbs...), the people at cambridge who let me in, the a-men, all the
people I met at wired but had too big a hangover to remember the names of,
and all my school friends such as david(x2), laura, ben and paul. hello.
all my love to jo.

S-Cubed complains:

When asked for a list of greets for Headache,  S-Cubed said:

"A list of greets?  But,  like,  it's your production dude,  although I
suppose it would help to affirm the unity of the group as a whole,  but then
I haven't got anyone new to greet anyway,  and if I just put the same list of
greets as I had in Juice then everyone would just think "Hey,  this is just
some boring guy who gives the same list of greets over and over again,  and I
don't think that would help to enhance my image,  you know?"

Gee thanks.

Skywalker and O'Neill...

...were not available for comment.

PL 96