THE KEY
=======
v1.72 (4/22/04)

Part I: Flight from Arcadia

	To install this game, simply unzip the .ZIP file to the folder of your choice. The program makes no modifications to the Windows registry and does not send files hither and yon: all of its resources are kept in one directory. Once you have the game placed in the folder of your choice, simply double-click on the file theKey.exe and the game will begin!
	If the game claims that it needs some sort of DLL to run, this means that your computer does not have the Visual Basic 6 runtimes. These can be downloaded here: 

http://download.microsoft.com/download/vb60pro/Redist/sp5/WIN98Me/EN-US/VBRun60sp5.exe

	Just download the above file and run the install; the game should then work properly.
	This game also requires that certain fonts be installed. If these fonts are not installed, the game will run but it will look awful. The necessary fonts are in the \FONTS subfolder of the folder in which The Key resides. To install these fonts, simply copy them to your Windows\Fonts folder.

	I hope you enjoy the game! I didn't really know what I was doing (I'm no programmer or graphic artist), but I had a lot of fun and did the best I could. There were many things that I simply couldn't put into the game for various reasons. If anyone could help me with these things I would greatly appreciate it! A few of these things are:

* Not many animations are in the game because my PII 266mhz computer was simply too slow to render them. In Part I, two door animations are missing on the Level 2 walkway because each one would have taken my computer around a week to render. Likewise an animated introduction would have been great, but the rendering time for an animation that large would have been atrocious.

* I would have liked to have created an install file for this program, but the only installation program I have is the "Package and Deployment Wizard" from Visual Studio 6. To create an install file, I was faced with manually adding, one at a time, all 700+ files in Part I and then manually, one at a time, setting each path -- and there was no guarantee that it would work. I didn't have that much time so I was forced to skip the install. Still, having an install would be great!

	If you would like to e-mail me, my address is:

jonathan@starmanseries.com

	Feel free to send bug reports (I'm sure there are mountains of those!), help, and so forth!



Bug Fix History
===============

v1.1: Put in some vital information missing from the game; without that information the game couldn't be beaten. Also fixed various bugs. Altered the way the hidden text adventure Soggy Coffee was accessed: it can now be accessed simply by getting the first letter of the debug code correct.

v1.11: Fixed the save/load game code so that games could actually be loaded and saved.

v1.11a: I discovered that, if the fonts the game required were missing, an error message would show whenever a panel was loaded. I altered that error message to make it more clear what was happening.

v1.2: I added a menu option allowing people to see the hotspots in the game (I HATE pixel-hunting games and am determined never to make one). Once I built that option, I went through the game and used it to fix hotspot problems (e.g. sometimes hotspots appeared in the wrong place or at the wrong time). In the full download of this game, the images in the Arcadia Comm Tower were fixed (the door looked silly -- it wasn't embedded into the wall) and the last missing frame in the Valley of Stars animation was added.

v1.3: In version 1.2, when a game is loaded right at the very beginning (while the 'splash screen' is still showing), certain labels will not disappear. This bug fix corrects that. I also corrected a bug on the fusion reactor that displayed the incorrect value for the ignition number.

v1.33: This version has in it the final code for Part II, and fixes one or two minor bugs in Part I. It fixed the bug that allowed the player to zip to locations that had no air or power supply.

v1.35: Removed the stop statement that was causing the error "Stop Statement Encountered".

v1.36: Fixed the overload error that happened if Atomeron was reacted.

v1.37: Fixed various bugs involved with loading saved games.

v1.38: Fixed many more saved game bugs. Fixed the Arcadia fusion room panel bug that showed the incorrect power type as well as the bug that showed that strange label under power settings. Also made it so that once a right combination was entered, it was still there next time. Plus, fixed a bug that let people enter the wrong settings into the receiver after entering the right settings.

v1.39: Hint system added.

v1.40: Adi Mare sent me a list of bugs 2 pages long after I released v1.39. This version has those bugs fixed.

v1.41: Adi Mare sent me yet another bug report. This bug fix has -most- of them repaired.

v1.43: Previously, if you were looking at a panel and loaded a saved game, the text would stay on the screen. That bug is now fixed. Also, I added a menu item that allows the user to wipe everything off the screen at any time.

v1.5: Fixed The Key so that the movies play on the form instead of in a separate popup box. The intro itself still plays in a popup box, but when I redo the intro to become a movie instead of a slideshow I will fix that.

v1.51: I fixed a number of important bugs: saved games would not load, and no power was transmitted from Iceland to DMount. Plus, DMount was misnamed in a number of places, and there were a few other typos. These are fixed.

v1.52: I finally created a generic font version of The Key. If you don't have the font LcdD installed, the game will still work by using Times New Roman instead.

v1.53: Fixed the game to remember what folder you last saved a game in. Also added code to support the Arcadia Flyby.

v1.53a: Revised the winning dialog box to let players know that Part II is much larger than Part I, and that Part III is much larger than Part II. Also fixed it so that if a movie file was missing the game would not crash and burn.

v1.53b: Fixed the bug that gives the error "Error 55: file alreaady open" when a new game is started.

v1.53c: One page was missing from the World Status Report on the Canyon Rimworld Power Plant. That page is now back.

v1.54: Fixes the misspelling of the word circuitry. Took a stab at fixing the 'black screen' problem. Fixed the game so that when you go to a location via a hyperwave pillar in the Valley of Stars the running text at the bottom is properly updated.

v1.55: Fixed the game so that the "Load Game" box now shows all saved games. Also (finally!) included the file COMDLG32.OCX in the main download.

v1.56: Fixed a number of typos and repaired the runtime error that occurs when a certain part of the power grid on Arcadia is clicked. Also fixes the power display problem in the Arcadia Comm Tower.

v1.56a: Fixed a few minor panel display issues (e.g. the Desert Rimworld: World Status Report panel and the panel in Vault 1 should now display their headings and dates properly).

v1.57: Fixes a bug that causes the load saved game feature to crash if the directory the program is in has a comma in its name. Also incorporates a lot of Part III code.

v1.64b: Incorporates a myraid of changes, including new notes saying that Part III is now available for download and giving out links concerning where it can be downloaded.

v1.65: The zip-to menu did not restore itself after someone entered the Hangar Repository; this problem was fixed.

v1.66: Fixes the bug that adds an extra .thk to the end of saved games; fixes a load game problem that caused the game to throw an error if a game which was saved in the Arcadia Comm Tower was loaded.

v1.68: Fixes a number of small bugs, and adds a notice about the Starman Series.

v1.69: The reactor values for Atomeron seemed to be missing, so I added them to a panel in the Atmosphere Labs.

v1.71: Fixed the D20 / D2O confusion.

v1.72: Updated information on the sequel to The Key.


Known bugs:
-----------

Here is a list of bugs that I know about but haven't had the time to track down and fix:

* The label that displays the date (October 17, 2198) sometimes does odd things or doesn't display anything at all.

* When a panel is accessed, the first item on the menu list should be selected. Sometimes this is not the case.

* In the fusion reacor on Arcadia, for some reason one of the labels on the Settings panel will display a value greater than 0 even though the value it should be displaying ought to be 0. When people try to click the minus to get the number to go down, nothing happens because it is already at 0, but when the plus is clicked the number suddenly goes to 1.

* Occasionally, some labels will suddenly have the wrong font size, alignment, font, and so forth.

