Got any questions or problems to do with Chickens? The let Dr. l'Oeuf solve your problems.



GAMEPLAY:

Q: The pace of the gameplay is too slow.
A: The game can be speeded up and slowed down. Use the mousewheel or the up and down arrows to change the speed.

Q: The gameplay freezes for a couple of seconds.
A: This is beacuse the machine you are trying to run Chickens on is so slow that it cannot keep up with the movement. We recommend a Pentium or above processor for the DOS/Windows ports.



CONSTRUCTION-SET (LEVEL EDITOR):

Q: I am trying to place an obstacle in a pipe.
A: Currently placing obstacles in pipes is only supported if the pipe is an ordinary pipe, it is straight, and is the topmost pipe in the square's stack of pipes.

Q: I am trying to place a duck or an arrow in a pipe, but it will not be placed in the pipe.
A: Ducks and arrows must be facing one of the two directions the pipe leads. Fortunately, they can easily be rotated using the mousewheel.

Q: I cannot use the keypad to lay pipes.
A: Firstly, this only works if you have just layed a pipe and have not selected another square. Secondly, the newly-layed pipe must either be an ordinary pipe (which can bend) or a pipe that has an exit in the direction you wish to move in, and thirdly, it must be possible to lay a pipe from the current square to a free exit in the other square. Note that on laptops, 'Num-Lock' must be enabled for this to work.



GENERAL:

Q: My mouse does not have a second or third button. What should I do?
A: To emulate the second mouse-button, press the first mouse-buttoon while holding down 'SHIFT'. To emulate the third mouse-button, press the first mouse-button while holding down 'CTRL'. 

Q: My mouse does not have a mousewheel. What should I do?
A: During the game, in order to change the speed at which the level is running, press the 'DOWN ARROW' to increase the speed and the 'UP ARROW' to decrease the speed. To reverse the direction of the arrow-keys, set the INI setting 'invertmousewheelspeedchangedir' to 1. Hold down 'SHIFT' to quarduple the rate of change of the speed. In the level-editor, rotating the selected tile or obstacle can be accomplished using the 'PGUP'/'PGDN' keys (in the INI file, the setting 'invertmousewheelrotatedir' reverses the rotation direction).

Q: In windowed mode, if I move the mouse off the edge of the window, no scrolling occurs.
A: In windowed mode, there are currently a few outstanding issues with scrolling levels that are larger than the screen. The workaround is to try and position the mousecursor as close to the edge as you can, and then slowly move the mousecursor off the window. Either that or just run the game in full-screen mode. Or altertnatively, when playing the game, pressing the keys on the numeric keypad now scrolls the screen in the direction of the number-key relative to the position of the '5' key. Note that on laptops, 'Num-Lock' must be enabled for scrolling with the keyboard to work.

Q: The game sometimes freezes for no apparent reason.
A: Again, this is due to some outstanding issues in the mouse-code. This appears to occur on multi-processor machines more often than it does on single-processor machines. To solve this, try enabling combinations of the following settings in the INI file: 'forcedisableacquire' and 'forcedisablemousescare'. Note that with these two enabled, you might see more graphical glitches occuring near the mouse-cursor. To solve these, please see the question below. Also see if this question is listed in the 'Platform Specific' section for your platform for further advice.

Q: Sometimes, graphical glitches appear where the mouse-cursor is positioned.
A: There are still some outstanding issues with the mouse-code. To workaround this, play the game using the double-buffered screen-update method. To do this, change the INI-file setting 'doublebuffer' to 1.

Q: There are not enough levels.
A: Well make some then! That's what the level editor's for.



PLATFORM SPECIFIC:

WINDOWS:

Q: The game under windows sometimes freezes for no apparent reason.
A: Try running the game in windowed mode and setting the windowed graphics driver to GDIB. To do this, set the 'gfx_cardw' setting in the INI file to be equal to 'GDIB'.


DOS:

Q: The mouse does not work.
A: This is because you are running in Pure-DOS mode without a mousedriver. A mousedriver must be loaded before the game can begin. Alternatively, run the game from Windows, but then, I would recommend that you use the Windows version of Chickens instead if your version of Windows is Windows 95 or above.

