0. Contents of This Document
----------------------------

    1. Introduction to Crystal Space V0.12
    2. Disclaimer
    3. Current Status
    4. Using Crystal Space For Your Project
    5. Reporting Bugs
    6. Where To Get Crystal Space...
    7. Mailing Lists
    8. The Texture Archive
    9. Other Documents
    10. The Author and Some History



1. Introduction to Crystal Space (V0.12)
----------------------------------------

Crystal Space is a 6DOF 3D engine (like Quake) with static colored
lighting (not like Quake) and many other features. See 'docs/document.txt'
for a complete list of features and some explanation about the algorithms
that are used.

Crystal Space is still very much in development. It has now
become a real Internet Project! Everyone who feels inclined can
contribute to the source. There are several things that still
need to be done. See the 'docs/todo.html' file for more information
about what is missing and a list of current known bugs.

Crystal Space is free and should remain free. Crystal Space
falls under the GNU copyleft license for libraries. To see what
this means read the COPYING file that should be included with
this archive. In short it means that you are allowed to use Crystal
Space in your products. You are even allowed to sell your product
using Crystal Space provided Crystal Space itself remains free.

Please read the 'docs/faq.html' file if you have a question. If you
don't find the answer there you can always E-Mail me (address
below in this readme).


2. Disclaimer
-------------

[LAWYER MODE ON]

DISCLAIMER! I'm not responsible in any way for any damage
this program may incur on you, your family or your computer.
I think nothing harmful will happen but if it does, the
author (Jorrit Tyberghein) is not responsible!

[LAWYER MODE OFF]


3. Current Status
-----------------

Important Note! Crystal Space is still in beta. This means that there
are many known and unknown bugs and that things in general may not work
as expected (or may not work at all). The known bugs are in docs/todo.html;
I'm currently still busy making the list of unknown bugs :-)

Crystal Space also lacks many essential feature which would make it
really useable as a game engine. Have a look at docs/todo.html to see
some of the stuff that is missing.

Crystal Space is also not fully optimized yet. Performance is adequate
provided you have a Pentium but things could certainly be better.

But aside from all these negative comments, Crystal Space currently has
an active developers team working to make it as useable as possible.
We are not there yet, but we are getting there.


4. Using Crystal Space For Your Project
---------------------------------------

But what if you still want to use Crystal Space in your project even
though you have read the previous section? Well this is possible. The
best approach at this point in time is to become a member of the
developers mailing list (more about this later) and listen how everything
develops. If you're really serious about things you can even join
discussions and develop stuff. I will gladly add contributed code
to Crystal Space (provided I can use the stuff, I will not add code
to format disks as I think that this is a little off topic :-)

Note that you also need to agree to the LGPL (read the COPYING file for
more details) but I don't think that this is a real problem.

I'm always interested in hearing what other people are doing with
Crystal Space. Even if it is only for small private projects I'd like
to hear about it (just out of curiosity).


5. Reporting Bugs
-----------------

If you find a bug in Crystal Space and it is not in docs/todo.html you
should contact me (Jorrit.Tyberghein@uz.kuleuven.ac.be).
Try to give as much information as possible:

    - The computer/OS (Windows, DOS, OS/2, Unix, Linux, ...)
    - Type of processor (Pentium, SPARC, 680x0, ...)
    - The display type (8-bit, 16-bit, 640x480, ...)
    - The exact output of Crystal Space (so that I can see where
      the crash happens).
    - How to reproduce the crash (if it is reproducable).
    - A fix for the bug :-)


6. Where To Get Crystal Space...
--------------------------------

The Crystal Space home page. This page contains the latest development
and official releases of Crystal Space. Here is a small note about the
difference between the official and the development (beta) releases:
both the official and development versions are actually beta. The difference
is that the official release should be more stable and will be easier
to get working as all documentation and makefiles are up-to-date. The
development release will probably have more features but it may not
work very well on your particular system, it may not work at all, or
you might not be able to compile it. But the development release may
also work very well. You never know.
My page also contains some documents, some links, a few screenshots
and levels for Crystal Space. Here is the URL:

  http://crystal.linuxgames.com/

An avid fan of mine (Nathaniel Saint Martin <noote@bigfoot.com>) also
created a page from which you can download the official and development
releases. In addition you can often download executables and drivers for
the latest version from there as well. Here is the URL:

  http://www.multimania.com/noote/CrystalSpace/


7. Mailing Lists
----------------

There are currently two mailing lists for Crystal Space. The first one
is just a list of E-mails that I maintain. Everyone who is just
interested in hearing from me whenever there is a new version of
Crystal Space can be put on this list. Just send a mail with something
like 'subscribe new version' to me (Jorrit.Tyberghein@uz.kuleuven.ac.be)
and I will put your E-mail address in this list.
On the Crystal Space home page there is also a little form that can be used
to subscribe (BUT DON'T FORGET TO FILL IN YOUR E-MAIL THERE!!!)
Note that if you make a mistake in your E-mail I will not be able to
contact you. So be very careful when you type that E-mail of yours :-)

For more general and in-depth discussion of Crystal Space and related
projects (I mean games and such using Crystal Space) there is a real
mailing list: crystal@lists.linux.it.
To subscribe on this list send a mail to crystal-request@lists.linux.it
containing as subject: 'subscribe your@email' (replace your@email with
your email :-)
Messages should be sent to crystal@lists.linux.it.
To unsubscribe send a mail to crystal-request@lists.linux.it (NOT to
crystal@lists.linux.it) with as subject: 'unsubscrube your@email'.


8. The Texture Archive
----------------------

The textures from Crystal Space have now been split of
into a seperate project at http://server.empathy.com/crystal
(the Crystal Space Texture Archive).


9. Other Documents
------------------

INSTALL contains instructions for compiling and running Crystal Space.
It also contains information about some of the most useful commandline
options.

COPYING contains the conditions by which you can use the Crystal Space
engine in your own products. These conditions are from LGPL.

FILES contains a list and description of the directory structure of
Crystal Space. It also explains what all documents are for.

CREDITS contains a list of all people who contributed in some way
to the Crystal Space project. Many thanks to them all.

The 'docs' directory contains a lot of useful documents about Crystal
Space.


10. The Author and Some History
-------------------------------

My name is Jorrit Tyberghein. I'm currently 29 (born 17-Oct-69) and I
have a lovely wife and a lovely daughter (she is born 1-Jan-98 :-)

I can be reached at: Jorrit.Tyberghein@uz.kuleuven.ac.be
My home page is: http://crystal.linuxgames.com/

I created this project by accident. I was always fascinated by games
like Doom, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D and later Quake and I wondered how one
would write such a game. My first effort was a Doom like engine. It had
some nice features (like static lighting with shadows and sectors above
other sectors) but it was VERY SLOW!!! I abandoned the project (it became
a bit clumsy) and forgot about 3D for a short while. But the urge was
still there. Every now and then I would think about 3D engines. But I
wasn't thinking about Doom anymore. I wanted something more. After months
of thinking I still wasn't planning to start writing code. But then
I read an article about portals. I wasn't sure what they were but from the
little explanation in that article things started to become clear. Portals
were the perfect way for me to write a 3D engine quickly. It was a very
easy technique with which I could achieve real 6DOF 3D!! At that point
the knowledge I gathered during the past few months had to get out of my
head. In a bit more than one month I wrote the first version of Crystal
Space (during my free time). At that point I had a portal engine with
6DOF, colored static lighting with shadows, primitive scripting,
mipmapping and moving objects. Since time became a precious resource
I decided to release Crystal Space to the general public and I put an
announcement in comp.graphics.algorithms. And this was the start of the
Crystal Space project.

I must say that I didn't expect the kind of response that I got (I received
mails from hundreds of people and all were very positive). Many thanks to
all of you.

