                      P L E A S E    R E A D    T H I S !
                      -----------------------------------


1. Opening Words
----------------

                           TO MAKE IT CLEAR :

            The name has nothing to do with the drug Ecstasy!

          We are clean (we even never used it), so please follow us!



2. Introduction
---------------

Hello and welcome to the brand new version of XTC-PLAY.

This version was unlike all  other versions not released in a hurry, but tested
for a couple  of months.  A lot of bugs  within the  player and concerning some
module types have been fixed, AMD interwave support has been improved a lot and
which is the most important fact of all :

All users of Sound Blaster(tm)  compatible cards are now also able to enjoy all
the advantages of the cute player.

Soundblaster support  means support for  ALL Cards, which  are able  to emulate
either SB16, SBPRO or SB-MONO.

Support for WSS, ESS and AWE-32  will follow in the  future, if we  are able to
get the right information and to  test it with the right soundcards. AWE-32 and
64 support will come the first (Now I've got one!!!).

Beside this, all nice screens which were included in the early 0.70 release are
now  improved, i.e.  that   you  are  now  able  to  choose  between  different
resolutions in the plasma screen or different colors in water or or or...

Also new screens like an oscilloscope, a magic circle and a FFT are included...

Loading UNIVBE 5x will increase the number of resolutions and also dramatically
improves the speed of all screens if a linear framebuffer is enabled.


3. Important Updates
--------------------

- Vesa 2.0 support

- Soundblaster support

- DMF support

- IT support

- MMCMP support

- MPEG 1/2 layer 1,2,3 support

- Diskwriter


For a detailed description of all updates, you'll have to take
a look inside whatsnew.txt


4. Known bugs
-------------

Matrox Millenium  VESA error,  if you have it, send  me a message  and describe
what happens.


5. Distribution-Sites
---------------------

This part has  been taken out  of this document,  because it  got too long,  so
please take a look into the file named SITES.XTC.

If  you have an InterNet account you can always get the latest version at:

                           << ftp.cdrom.com >>

6. Credits
----------

Real Credits:

- coding : Kilroy

- code for tunnel : Cohnen (no, he wasn't on drugs)

- minor proposals, beta testing and fixes : Bee-Man

- Ansi-design : Blacknight, Metal & Matrix


Greetings and thanx are flying to our BETA testers:

             o Vamp
             o Tammo Hinrichs
             o Maz
             o Moritz Grimm
             o Sanders van Leuwen
             o Nyphton
             o Holger Mense
             o Manuel Hartl
             o Heiko Helmle
             o Speedy/Funk!

Special thanx go to :

             o   Daredevil for his good support on PMode and other coding
                 questions

             o   Tony Romero (AMD) for giving the interwave manual

             o   Cohnen^Sanction for the beautiful tunnel screen

             o   MikMak for the first idea to write a player

             o   Michael Hipp/Oliver Fromme for basic MPEG routines

             +   All other guys who supported us by sending along bug-reports
                 or modules and I did forget, sorry :-I


X3M thanx fly to :

             o   Sipiyou/NortherPain who supported  us with lots of information
                 on  the Interwave,  difficult  coding  problems,  most  of the
                 bug  reports  and many  inventions. Without  him, some  things
                 would have been impossible.

             o   TMB/Daze who helped us extensively to improve the soundblaster
                 mixingroutines during all 4 days of Mekka97.

             o   Cohnen/Sanction which finally gave me the best mixing routines
                 for the SB support...


7. Final Words
--------------

Disclaimer:

We're not responsible for any  possible damage to  your soft- and hardware. The
only  thing  we guarantee is that  XTC-Play  will take some of your disk-space,
nothing more - nothing less.

XTC-Play  is  distributed as  moduleware, this  means if you  think this little
piece  of art is  useful and  if you're connected  to the  FIDO-NET,  send some
of  your  best  modules  to  Mautschi's  Castle (2:2454/524 / +49-2632-949119).
Either via fileattach or simply upload them :-)


                        That's all for now, folks!

                            And don't forget:

                   <--- Drugs are only for losers! --->

         ----> There are better ways to have A LOT OF phun ! <----
