Shark Arcade Operators Manual
-----------------------------

This manual is provided for those who need a manual
for every application they keep. It is not necessary
or even recommended to read it before operating Shark,
but it might help the computafobiac feel better
about using the application.

You are however required to read shark.txt.

0. Minimum requirements
-----------------------
A decent pentium, a handful of RAM. Windows 95/98/NT
with DirectX 6 or later. (DirectX can be downloaded
from http://www.microsoft.com/directx)

1. Installation
---------------

Unzip shark.zip to where you wish to store the application.
You may want to put it in a directory of its own since you
will need to put other files there as well.

2. Execution
------------

Doubleclick the shark icon.

3. Roms
-------

You will need arcade machine software to run the actual
games. These may never be distributed in the same
archive or on the same media (CD-ROM, DVD, etc.) as
the Shark application unless you have bought or been
given the license to do so from the original copyright
holder. The Rom files usually come in a zip archive,
put the zip file in the same directory as shark. You
do not need to unzip the rom archive. If you are looking
for roms, you could look at www.emuviews.com for example.

4. Using shark
--------------

To do anything in Shark, press P on the keyboard to
enter the menu. Use up/down to navigate these menus
and any arcade joystick button (default is CTRL,
SHIFT or ALT) to make a selection or toggle an option.
Use left/right to cycle through multiple settings.

The first thing you may want to do is to select a
game. Go to the line "CHANGE GAME" and press a button
to see available games (for which you need the Roms for
the game, see chapter 3 above). When you have selected
a game, press P to exit the menu and the game will start.

There are several further options available from the
menu, these are:

INGAME OPTIONS: Arcade games generally have some switches
that an arcade operator can switch in order to make more
money out of the machine by adjusting pricing and difficulty
level. These options are available through this menu.

CHANGE GAME: Start a new game, or restart the current one.

SHARK! CREDITS: Displays the people behind this emulator
and some more stuff.

GENERAL OPTIONS: This is random stuff that didn't fit
elsewhere. TIMING is the refresh rate of the arcade
machine and can be decreased to make the games a bit
easier, OVERLAY is a feature on some graphics cards
that makes the arcade screen more smooth, try it if
you like, but it probably won't have any effect on
your card anyway.

SELECT CONTROLS: Shark supports both keyboard and joystick
controls, you can choose from a list of different setups
independantly for both players.

CHANGE RESOLUTION: Select the resolution of the PC monitor
you wish to play the games in. You can also select to play
in a Window on the desktop if you like.

OPEN ROTATED SCREENS OFF/ON: Some of the games originally
used rotated monitors (with the screen standing on the
side). If you want the games to play on a regular monitor
you will probably not want to switch this on, but if you
have a standup monitor you get the chance to play these
games the way they were supposed to be played.

SOUND ON/OFF: You can switch off sound here. It can help
if you experience problems with it, or just don't want to
listen to the sound of the eighties.

SOUND EMULATION ON/OFF: Some PC sound cards are equipped
with the very same sound chip used in many arcade games,
which makes it possible for the emulator to use this
feature directly. Most PC sound cards do however have
problems with this feature and more so under Windows,
and therefore these sounds are emulated in software by
default.

SAVE GAME: If you for some reason want to save the exact
place in the game to be restarted later, you can save the
game with this feature.

LOAD GAME: Loads the machine status back from a saved game
so you can continue play at the exact same location as you
saved it from.

Please note: Shark 3.0 and Shark 3.1 save files are not
compatible. This is due to an upgrade in one of the CPU
emulators used in Shark (Starscream 68000).

Additional features: There are further options available
but for reasons of my own they are not immediately
available or documented here. You will probably find more
about that on the internet.

5. Supported games
------------------

The file listinfo.txt (exported when you click shark.exe
the first time) contains all the info about which games
are supported and what the filenames are. The games are
mainly TOAPLAN arcade games up to 1992, plus a couple of
TAITO games from 1986. For frontend developers, this file
also contains all the options information for the
shark.ini file.

6. Default keys
---------------

Without selecting anything different, the following
keys control the games:

P - enter menu
UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT - arcade joystick / menu navigation
CTRL - shoot / menu select
SHIFT - bomb / menu select
SPACE - autofire (can be deactivated)

7. Legal issues
---------------

The Shark end user license is listed in shark.txt, Shark
itself contains no material copyrighted by others than
the members of the Dead Serious Clan except for specific
CPU and sound cores that are used by permission from
the original authors. Because of this, Shark can not
be said to conflict any law created to protect intellectual
property as long as it is not distributed together with
the Roms which is strictly forbidden in the Shark end
user license.
