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MCHE v0.06b Official Documentation
Copyright 1999/2000 Virtual Applications
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Virtual Applications, still in the 2nd millenium!

Authors
-------

	- Main Programmer: Jean-Philip Desjardins (aldesjardins@sympatico.ca)
	  Age: 16, teached C++ and assembler by himself, always been an emulation
	  fan since he has discovered it.

BETA Notes
----------

	This is an early BETA version of MCHE, I don't claim it to be
the "perfect" FINAL version that I promised some time ago so don't
complain about poor compatibility and/or speed. I've released this just
to see if it works on people's computer so I want feedback please!

Known BETA issues
-----------------

These are the things to know to be not working or to be broken:

	- Options dialog in the GUI is not there
	- Some file selection problems may occur if you scroll the list too far
	- You can't change the drive of the file list
	- The FPS counter is hard to activate
	- The GUI don't works on computers that have an old video card
	- The FDS emulation don't works
	- Probably more and more things...

Source Code
-----------

	The source code is avaliable on our website. Note that MCHE isn't
an open source project, so if you want to write something for MCHE, ask first!

DOs and DON'Ts
--------------

	- MCHE cannot be distribued along with ROM images;
	- MCHE cannot be sold in any ways;
	- MCHE authors do not condone the bad use of the ROM images;
	- MCHE must be distributed along with this README file.

What is MCHE?
-------------

	First thanks for using MCHE. It's an amount of long and tough work. 
What the MCHE letters stand for? Multiple Console and Handheld Emulator. It's
composed from 99,9% of original code from me. That's the reason why it is
buggy at certain places but I'm trying to make the code as stable as possible. 
You'll maybe think that it's somewhat similar to MAME. It's not false, MCHE is 
based on the MAME concept, but not on the source. Unlike MESS, MCHE will never 
emulate computers. MCHE work will be focused on more advanced systems (16-BITs).
This has been written in 100% C++. So it is portable. 

The goal of MCHE?
-----------------

	The goal of MCHE is to offer accurate and stable emulation for many
systems, to enhance the emulation the most possible (with some kind of effects) and
to offer all this in a "accesible for everybody" way.

What's new?
-----------

	Please read the WHATSNEW.TXT file for a complete list of changes.

Supported Systems
-----------------

	Please read the SYSLIST.TXT file for a complete list of the emulated
systems and of all the emulation specifications.

Requierments
------------

	- A standard computer
	  (though a 400MHz processor and a fast video card are strongly
	   recommended)
	- Micro$oft Disk Operating System /w CWSDPMI

How to use MCHE?
----------------

	The MCHE Starter is obselete but is still there in case you can't run
the Graphical User Interface. In the DOS prompt type:

	MCHE			- /w No command line arguments, runs MCHE using the GUI
	MCHE <ROM FILENAME>	- Type in the ROM you want to use, and it will run it
				  bypassing the GUI

How to control MCHE?
--------------------

	You can use either the keyboard or the joystick. Joystick is not very well 
supported and it's slower than the keyboard. Look in SYSLIST.TXT for button configuration
for each system. On the keyboard button 1 = Z, 2 = X, 3 = C, 4 = V. On the joystick, 
button 1 = button 1 on your joystick, 2 = 2, etc... Use the keyboard arrows or the joystick 
directional pad to control the directional pads on the systems.

	The general functions triggers are:

- F10		: Takes a screen shot and saves it to "SCRSHOT.BMP"
- F11		: Shows the FPS counter. Be careful, this makes the system unstable
- ESC		: Quits MCHE

Configuration
-------------

	You should have no problems running MCHE without changing configuration if you
have a recent computer. Anyways, if you have problems, check this quick listing of the
configuration possibilities. To access the configuration dialog, click on the Configure
button in the MCHE Starter.

	- Video Driver:
	  Selects the wanted video driver to use.
	  Change this if you have an old video card and if you don't have SciTech DD
	  installed with this card. In this case you should select VESA 1.2.
	- Video Mode:
	  Selects the wanted video mode to use.
	  Change this if your video card don't supports 16-BITs color in combination with
	  low resolution modes. If you select a 640X480 video mode, the output will
	  not be scretched to fit the resolution.

Bug Reporting
-------------

	You've found a bug! This is probable. If you have found something that is
good to be taken into consideration, just send me an E-MAIL with the description of
the bug. I don't want stupid stuff and I think that if you use this, you are enough
intelligent to send valuable reports to me.

Coming Soon
-----------

	These are predictions of the possible things that will be avaliable in
the next MCHE version (v0.20):

	- Colecovision, TG-16/PCE, Lynx drivers
	- PSG sound in NES, GB and Sega 8-BITs Consoles drivers

	Please note that new MCHE versions will take long to come because I must
write all these things myself (which takes a lot of time). I don't need help for
now so don't E-MAIL me about this.

Questions & Answers
-------------------
Q: I'm running MCHE and nothing is happening?
A: That's because your video card is old and is not supporting VESA 2. Get
   SciTech Display Doctor, or use the MCHE Starter to load an ROM.

Q: What can I do to speed up MCHE?
A: Don't use the joystick, use the "VESA 2.0 Linear" Video Driver and switch
   the video mode to an lower resolution.

Q: Does joystick support slows the emulation a lot?
A: Yes, You'll loose about 30% of the speed.

Q: My favorite game don't works, what I should do?
A: You should send me an e-mail telling me which game isn't working, and
   I'll do my best to fix the problem.

Q: "VESA 3.0" video driver don't works. Why?
A: I don't know. It's maybe an Allegro problem. Switch to the "VESA 2.0 Linear" driver.

Q: Why does MCHE is slow?
A: It's mainly because the GFX routines are not optimized, but it's also because
   MCHE uses double buffering to render the screen which takes a lot of time but is
   much better.

Special Thanks
--------------

- To _demo_ from zSNES for his help with the SNES stuff (that will come later).
- To the people on the VGN Programming Message Board for answering my questions!

If you want to contribute...
----------------------------

- Money and hardware is greatly appreciated ;-)

Grettings
---------

Yves Rioux - The Co-Founder of Virtual Applications and good friend of mine

Alternative Projects
--------------------

	There are the other multi-console emulator projects you may use as an alternative
to MCHE:

	- MESS:    The Multiple Emulator Super System, by the MESS team and based on the 
                   MAME source.
                   http://mess.emuverse.com
	- DarcNES: Multi-console emulator by Nyef
		   http://www.netway.com/~nyef/
	- Rew    : Multi-console emulator by a japanese guy
		   http://ryze.virtualave.net/rew/index.html
	
	I'm not listing those single system emulators since there's too much of them,
and it's beginning to be very confusing...

Contact
-------

- WWW:    http://vapps.emuforce.com
- E-MAIL: aldesjardins@sympatico.com

No stupid requests of any kind please (especially ROMs).
No flames or insults.
No binary attachements without asking first.

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Beware! The damocleis sword is over your head!