* BGPA Missions : Liberation *

* Calibration
* Hints and Tips
* Background
* Further information
* Release Notes

* Calibration *
***************

The calibration map is provided from the start menu to help people
set up their system to play the levels the way they were intended.

The first few areas of the game are quite dark - intentionally - to
represent the fact that the real-life game took place at night time.
Don't worry, I'm not a fan of excessively dark levels and you have 
plenty of equipment to combat the darkness including a flashlight 
(on the alt-fire button), flares and night vision goggles.  
If you don't set the brightness properly on your system, these 
become redundant.

The levels have been set up to accurately reflect the timing of 
the real event.  You should ensure that sector lighting is set to 
"Doom" in the OpenGl options and check how thing look in the 
calibration map.

Settings that are too bright totally spoil the intended effect.
What's more, they let you see how crappy the levels are. :P

As the player progresses, the levels get brighter, representing 
the fact that by the time the real event was finished, the sun 
had come up.  (The event ran from about 9p.m. to around 6.30 a.m.

Dynamic lights must be enabled to get some important features 
(eg your flashlight).  Jumping is allowed, as is crouching. I don't 
think either are essential for completing the game, but they will 
be needed for some secrets etc.


* Hints and Tips *
******************

Please watch the briefing titlemap at least once.  It took me ages 
to set up and it actually does tell you what the mission is all 
about.

The "Ridiculous" difficulty setting is *not* nightmare.  It is a
slightly harder version of the hard setting.  Enemies are more 
aggressive and do you a little more damage.

There is no shortage of ammo on these maps - tailored to suit the 
people who the maps were originally made for (some mates of mine).
So feel free to use whichever weapons you want against whichever 
bad guys you like.

You are issued with portable night vision goggles.  These can be 
activated at any time, will last for a limited period and then expire.
They will take 30 seconds to recharge and then be available again.  Whilst
the goggles are active, your rate of movement will be slowed - these 
are clumsy old-fashioned goggles (just like the real ones that I own). :P

You will have flares.  You throw these and they break bathing an area in 
a pool of light for a limited period.

You have sonic grenades.  Throw one of these and they sit on the ground 
for a while emitting a disruptive sound.  Any enemies near the grenade
have a high chance of being immobilised whilst it is making its noise.
The grenades do not harm the enemies but they can be useful to delay
the advance of a large group.

You also have more tradtional frag grenades.  
Throw them and they blow up. :)

The road to Burghead is guarded by some powerful sentry guns.  These can 
be destroyed either by hitting the gun directly or by killing the operator
who will be stainding beside a control panel nearby.  In many cases, there 
will be a route or vantage point that allows you to get a shot at the 
operator without exposing yourself to the gun.

The local resistance have stashed equipment in little hideouts around the 
area.  Keep your eyes open for them.  The resistance use these hiding places
a lot and it might just be worth returning to them if anything significant 
about the level changes... ;)

Only major powerups count as items in this game.  Minor health and armour 
boosts do not count and you cannot pick them up when you are at max health 
and armour.  

Throughout the levels are computer terminals and pinboards. You can 
download or steal information from these to help the war effort.  These 
will not give you any advantage in game but you will be given a tally at
the end to tell you how successful you were at finding the information.

Similarly, there are some prisoners to rescue in the bunker level.  Just 
let them out of their cells and they will make their way to the exit.  At
the end, you will be given a tally of how many you managed to rescue.

It is also worth pointing out that 2 weapons are actually made up of 2 
individual weapons bound to the same key.  eg, when you pick up the grenade 
launcher you will be given 2 launchers - one with phosphorous grenades and 
one with hi-ex grenades.  The special weapon on button 8 is similar.


* Background *
**************

This mod is based on a real life "Live Action Adventure Game" that took 
place in the Summer of 2006 in the countryside around Elgin and Burghead,
Scotland.

The mod itself is part of a bigger project and the supporting resources
for it were extracted for this release.  To that end, there are a lot of
references in the control lumps for things that do not exist in this mod.
This does not affect how it plays, but does make the resource files look 
very untidy.  Sorry about that.

The mod was made quickly and to satisfy the tastes of those who took part
in the real event. To that end, some of the levels are very simplistic in
construction and things like ammo and health availability may be considered
excessive by seasoned Doomers.

* Further information *
***********************

Some of the levels make extensive use of open spaces, 3D floors and 3D models.
Unless you have a very fast machine, you will notice a hit to the frame rate
when playing these levels (the second level seems particularly hard on 
computer speed).

* Release Notes *
*****************

1.4 - 27 December 2009
Main reasons for update:
Fixes a bug with the sonic grenade that stopped it working 90% of the time.
This originally went unnoticed as Zdoom allowed me to get away with sloppy 
decorate coding that I hadn't spotted but a recent change to Zdoom fixed that.

Fixes a bug where one small line had the wrong tag making it possible 
(though unlikely) that some enemies on the railway line might not activate.

Defines a full screen SBARINFO HUD which was missed out of the original release 
by accident.  It's not very pretty, but at least its there.

Some full screen graphics (most importantly the gas mask) were altered to take 
account of widescreen aspect ratios.  I did not change them all because, quite 
frankly there are too many different screen combination possibilities and I 
found that when I fixed one, another one would mess up.

And whilst I was at it, I took the opportunity to do the following:
Most maps tweaked a bit.  Nothing too major but a fair bit of work in some areas.

Decorate for some actors tweaked (I hope I didn't miss anything out 
- this was all copy/paste stuff from the main Aspects mod.

A few sprite graphics altered.

A few other graphics meddled with.

A number of sounds altered and added: 
more Inca sounds 
explosions are often now more persussive
a few others added/changed.

Added brightmaps - these are just "rough and ready" straight copies from
the aspects mod.  They don't disable fullbright sprites or anything.  
The main reason for including them was to make things like cyborg eyes 
and LEDs on weapons glow, not to replace fullbright firing frames etc.

Many of the brightmaps have just been imported "wholesale" from Aspects.
Some map to Doom default textures etc and many of these may 
look a bit odd because in Aspects these textures have been altered.
However, it's irrelevant as they do not appear in Burghead and weeding out
the irrelevant ones was too big a job for too little gain.


1.3 - 5 Feb 2009
Minor modifications to the maps.  These were prompted by a change in
an SVN revision of GZdoom which made me improve (I hope) a few 
minor details in map110 and tweak a few other things whilst I was 
at it.

1.2 - 28 Sep 2009
Bugfix - DECORATE blood colours were incorrectly entered.
Bugfix - Mingun script incorrectly passed a map parameter 
to a secondary-script.

Minor tweaks to other areas of DECORATE including some weapons, enemies 
and special effects.

Additional enemy added.

Numerous minor changes to the maps including taking into account some 
player comments.

Added calibration map.

1.1 - 20 Feb 2008
Bugfix - the specification for SBARINFO changed in GZdoomSVN versions, 
new SBARINFO was added to take account of this.

1.0 - 27 Jan 2008
Initial release