RACK v1.0 BETA Releases Important Notes
---------------------------------------

RACK only runs in 16-bit colour, it is best if you set this *before*
you run RACK. The bit-depth changing method of RACK requires a restart,
it ain't quickres y'know :)

German RA, it doesn't seem to work, as Westwood toned down the violence
in the graphics, meaning everything is different sizes, and therefore at
different offsets. (the infantry death scenes are robots I believe, so I've read)
Only workaround at present is to get an English/French copy of SNOW/TEMPERAT/
CONQUER.MIX files, and put them in the RACK directory.

French RA seems to work fine, no-one has complained.


VERSION HISTORY
---------------

Release 4 Changes (yes, this is March 2002) :)
-----------------
(wahey, this only took one hour to do... :))

Timeout fixed, no longer expires

50/100 object placing limit lifted

REDALERT.MIX bug fixed, works from any RA CD

Fixed a 'tooltips' bug I noticed straight away

Also works properly with XP now, the 'open' dialog didn't work before.

Also now officially FREEWARE


Release 3 Changes (August 1997)
-----------------

[Basic] section can be edited, no longer do you need to look at Notepad Again!!

Cell Number shown as mouse moves over viewport

Infantry, and Transport are now shown properly, (thanks to Brien Smith)

DLL is no longer a problem, faults fixed, and images are loaded into memory
when RACK starts, then blitted FROM memory when needed.

When ships (+ others) are deleted, 'fringes' are left, this has been fixed.

New splash screen, drawn by Johnathan Miller.

Snow terrain loads and places trees properly.

+ A Lot Of Minor Fixes (rebuild property, MapPack on a blank map, and more..)


Release 2 Changes
-----------------

Minimap now updates object colours when an object's country property
changes.

Loading problem with trigger/actions on various objects is fixed

Facing property now works, and load/saves, remember the visual representation
doesn't show the facing direction (yet).

**FOR TESTING ONLY** No longer do you get an arrow when 'painting' with your
object, you can see exactly where it'll go! (More chance of page fault in DLL 
though)

No Soviet Forward Command Centre, whoops!, it's in now though, just below the
civ buildings.







Wishlist
--------
Infantry has subcells, and all infantry graphics are included (improve graphic
decoder too, as in snow theater, some look terrible!)

Country properties can be edited

Waypoint/Celltrig placing

Comprehensive Help File


Near Future Wish List  (not in any order whatsoever)
---------------------

Walls are shown, once this is done, making the facing property visual is a
piece of cake.

Do away with MAPDEC.EXE, for speed, and to fix problems with some people having dodgy
Win95 DOS box settings. Should help chance of NT4 working 100% too.

'DirectX!!', yes!!, Looks like I can get a DirectDraw 8-bit mode to work properly
with RACK, so it'll work with anything as low as a 640x400x8, thats just a 256k 
video card y'know. Should speed up the main viewport refresh somewhat too.
I'll probably have a resolution menu if I use that though, with up to 1600x1200
supported.

German offsets added, or a program to convert German "CONQUER/REDALERT/TEMPERAT/
SNOW/INTERIOR" MIX files to their English counterparts by 'moving' images about inside
those files.

Primitive Trigger/Team Editor, not too sophisticated, but ample to add/edit triggers
knowing more of what was required for the first C&C (i.e. use of text) rather than the
numbers only method used with RA

Credits
-------

Brien Smith - Win32 Bitmaps, thanks for getting those infantry images looking right

Andrew Griffin - Thanks For The List Of Tile ID's and Tile locations

Len Goforth - For starting the new full help file, and for helping with ideas leading to
              RACK v1.0 coming out finally. GBRAedit is probably the best compliment to
              RACK at the moment.

Johnathan Miller - Thanks For Making That New Logo.

Rabies - The Old Logo, Still Useful For The Web Pages.



Other Information
-----------------
RACK was written in :

MS Visual C++ v4     (Graphics, and decoding algorithms)
MS Visual BASIC v4   (Basic Engine, Open/Save, and properties box)
MS Visual BASIC DOS  (MAPDEC.EXE)

