• Discuss This Page?
• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Bootloader

The Boot Loaders are the animated (and sometimes interactive) introductions that you see after launching the game, but before choosing a level from the Global Map?.

The first time you play the game, you get to see the 'firsttime' bootloader. Each time the game is loaded after the first time, the Boot Loader randomly rotates between several different selections.

If you want to view the 'firsttime' Boot Loader again the next time you launch the game, you can select it in-game. Hit ESC to bring up the menu, go to 'Options', 'Other Options', and change the 'Boot Loaders' drop-down box from 'Enabled' to 'Show First Time Intro'.

If you want to skip viewing Boot Loaders and just dive right into the game when it's launched, you can set it in-game. Hit ESC to bring up the menu, go to 'Options', 'Other Options', and change the 'Boot Loaders' drop-down box from 'Enabled' to 'Disabled'.

If you want to change the Boot Loader to anything else, you'll have to manually edit preferences.txt.

Open the file, and you'll see this line with it:

"BootLoader = random"

Change 'random' to the name of any of the bootloaders you'd like to see the next time the game launches. You can also change it to 'none' to disable seeing Boot Loaders on game launch.

• firsttime
  • This is the Boot Loader displayed the first time the game is run.
• credits
  • This displays the credits of the game.
• matrix
  • Darwinians fall down the screen, and spell Darwinia, Matrix-style.
• soul
  • Souls floating on the screen, accompanied by soft music.
• spectrum
  • Mimics an old Spectrum computer game loading screen.
• fodder
  • Displays a satirical 'endorsement' from Sensible Software, makers of Cannon Fodder
• raytrace
  • Displays an interactive 3D environment that can be manipulated.
• gameoflife
  • A version of John Conway's famous artificial life simulation.
• gameoflife_glow
  • As above, but with more diffused lighting
• amiga [v1.2 and up]
  • Displays a satirical 'game loader' like those used by Amiga software pirates years ago
• none
  • No Boot Loader, just launch the game already!

Some of the Boot Loaders are interactive. See the Interface page for keyboard controls.

• Note: If you have the North American boxed release, you'll also get a 'mini-bootloader' in the form of a Cinemaware Marquee logo display every time you start the game, even if you have bootloaders set to 'none' (since technically, it's not really a bootloader). To disable it, delete or rename cinemaware.avi in your Darwinia directory, and your game will bypass it.
• Useless trivia - cinemaware.avi is 116 MB in size. The game itself is about 30 MB in total.

Discuss This Page?