SPEEDBREAKER v0.2.1 FOR WINDOWS: BETA 4
=======================================

SpeedBreaker is an unofficial, native port of the Xbox 360 version of
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) for Windows. It's a static
recompilation, not an emulator. SpeedBreaker is made by project(u).

THIS IS A BETA. It's the same v0.2.1 as the Mac and SteamOS downloads,
but the Windows version has so far been tested on one laptop with Intel
UHD Graphics and a 60 Hz screen. NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards, 120 and
144 Hz monitors and recent Intel Arc graphics haven't been tested yet.
Expect rough edges, and please report what you find (REPORTING A BUG,
below).

The game runs at 60 frames per second, as it did on the Xbox 360, on any
monitor. That's by design.


WHAT YOU NEED
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, up to date.
- A graphics card with Vulkan 1.2 support, with a current driver.
- A CPU with AVX2: Intel from 2013 (Haswell) on, or any AMD Ryzen. If
  yours doesn't have it, the game says so and closes.
- Your own legally obtained backup of your own Xbox 360 disc of Need
  for Speed: Most Wanted: the USA (NTSC-U) disc or the European (PAL)
  Spanish one, as an .iso file or the extracted disc files (the folder
  with default.xex in it). Other regions (German and the other PAL
  discs) and re-releases are refused for now. No game files come with
  SpeedBreaker.
- About 7.5 GB of free space.
- An Xbox-style controller (recommended), or a keyboard.


GETTING STARTED
1. Right-click the zip, choose Extract All, and put the folder anywhere.
   Run the game from that folder, not from inside the zip.
2. Double-click SpeedBreaker.exe. SpeedBreaker isn't signed, so Windows
   may say "Windows protected your PC" (Microsoft Defender SmartScreen
   doesn't know the app yet). Click "More info", then "Run anyway".
   Microsoft Defender may also scan it for a few seconds the first time.
   If Windows blocks it with no "Run anyway" (Smart App Control does
   that), it can't be started on that PC for now. Before you run it, you
   can check the download: its SHA-256 is in the .sha256 file on the
   release page.


FIRST RUN: THE INSTALLER
SpeedBreaker looks for .iso files in your user folder, Downloads,
Desktop, Documents, a Games folder in your user folder, and the top
folder of your other drives (and one folder down in each). If it lists
yours as "Ready to install", pick it. It doesn't find extracted disc
folders by itself. Otherwise:
- "Browse for image..." picks an .iso file;
- "Browse for folder..." picks an extracted disc folder;
- or type the path under "Or type the path of an image or folder" and
  choose Use.
A file that OneDrive keeps only in the cloud is skipped: set it to
"Always keep on this device" first, or browse for it.

It checks that it's the right game and version, and says which disc it
is. If it refuses your image, it says why. The next page shows where the
game will go: "Internal storage" means %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpeedBreaker\game
(see WHERE YOUR STUFF IS), and the arrows beside it pick another drive,
or "Choose a folder..." for any folder (Windows' own folder dialog: an
empty or new folder is used as it is; any other gets a SpeedBreaker Game
folder inside it, and the top of a drive gets SpeedBreaker\game). Not in
OneDrive: it can keep files online only, and the game reads them as it
plays. Choose Install. It copies the game and verifies every file as it
goes (49 files, about 7 GB), which takes a few minutes. When it says Installed,
choose "Start the game". Afterwards you can delete the disc image.


CONTROLS
A controller works as an Xbox 360 pad, and you can plug it in at any
time. The game's own button prompts show Xbox buttons. On a PlayStation
pad, Cross is A, Circle is B, Square is X and Triangle is Y. Two
controllers: Quick Race > Split Screen.

Keyboard:  A / D steer       W gas            S brake
           Space = A         Backspace = B    Left Shift = X
           Left Ctrl = Y     Q / E = LB / RB  Arrow keys = D-pad
           Enter = Start     Esc = Back       C = right stick click
           O / L, K / ; = right stick         Z = left stick click
           (The Left and Right arrows steer too.)
Settings > Controls changes any of them.

Settings (the game pauses while they're open): F1 on the keyboard (Fn +
F1 on some keyboards), or Back + Start together on a controller (View +
Menu on newer Xbox pads). In the settings, the D-pad or the arrow keys
choose and change a row, LB / RB or Q / E turn the pages, and B or Esc
closes them. The mouse works too.

The game starts in a 1280x720 window. Settings > Display > Fullscreen
fills the screen, and decides how the game starts next time. Settings >
Game > Language has the game's ten languages (on the USA disc the movies
and the speech stay in English; the PAL Spanish disc starts in Spanish,
with its Spanish movies and police radio). The game doesn't pause by
itself when you switch to another window, so pause a race first. To
quit, choose Quit Game at the bottom of the settings (it asks first), or
close the window (Alt+F4 when it's fullscreen).


THE FIRST RACE
The first time a race loads, the game may sit still for a while as it
prepares its shaders: a few seconds on a fast PC, up to 20 on a slow
laptop. That's normal, and the shaders are kept for next time.


MONITORS ABOVE 60 HZ
At 120 Hz (and 240 Hz) each frame should stay on screen for exactly two
refreshes (four at 240): smooth. On a 144 or 165 Hz monitor 60 frames
can't be shared evenly, so motion has a small, regular jump; the game
says so once, with what to do (60 or 120 Hz, or variable refresh such as
G-SYNC or FreeSync). This needs your graphics driver to report when each
frame reaches the screen, and it hasn't been tried on a real 120 or 144
Hz monitor on Windows yet: a bug report from one would help a lot.


WHERE YOUR STUFF IS
Saves, settings, logs, the shader cache and the installed game are in
    %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpeedBreaker
(paste that into File Explorer's address bar). If you installed the game
on another drive, it's in SpeedBreaker\game on that drive. Installing the
other region's disc too keeps both: it goes beside the first, in
"game PAL-ES", each with its own saves.

Portable mode: an empty file named portable.txt next to SpeedBreaker.exe
makes the game keep all of that in data and cache folders beside it
instead, so the folder can move to a USB drive or another PC. It starts
from scratch there: the game needs installing again into that folder.

To update (from beta 3, for example), extract the new zip into a new
folder and run it from there: the installed game, your saves and your
settings in %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpeedBreaker carry over. Then delete the old
folder. (Settings > Advanced > Check for Updates isn't available on
Windows yet: watch the project's Releases page.)

To uninstall, delete the folder you extracted, %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpeedBreaker
and, if you installed the game on another drive, the SpeedBreaker folder
there. That deletes your saves too.


REPORTING A BUG
1. Open the settings, go to the Advanced page and choose Save Bug Report
   (the last row: press A or Enter on it, or click it).
2. A zip file whose name starts with speedbreaker-bug-report-v0.2.1
   appears on your Desktop, and a notice says where it went.
3. Open an issue on the project's GitHub page,
   https://github.com/SpeedBreakerProject/speedbreaker/issues
   with "Windows beta" in the title, what you were doing and what
   happened, your graphics card and monitor, and attach that zip.

If the picture freezes, wait half a minute before you close the game:
in that time it writes a hang report. If closing the window doesn't
work, open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), pick SpeedBreaker and choose
End task. Then start the game again and save a report: the crash or
hang report goes in too.

The zip holds recent logs, crash and hang reports, your settings, a
summary of your PC (Windows version, CPU, RAM, graphics card, display)
and a screenshot of the last game frame. It's an ordinary zip, so you
can look inside first. Your Windows user name is left out (folder paths
show %USERPROFILE% instead), but the logs do show the alias (player
name) you type in the game. Nothing is ever uploaded by the game.

If the game won't start at all, attach the newest files from
%LOCALAPPDATA%\SpeedBreaker\logs instead, and a screenshot of any
message you saw. Those files do show your Windows user name, in folder
paths. If Windows says vulkan-1.dll was not found, update your graphics
driver first.

Only this download is the official SpeedBreaker for Windows. Windows
builds made by others from the source code aren't supported here: if
you use one, report problems to whoever made it.


THE LEGAL BIT
SpeedBreaker is an unofficial, fan-made project by project(u). It is not
affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Electronic Arts Inc., the
Need for Speed brand or Valve Corporation. "Need for Speed" and "Most
Wanted" are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. All other trademarks,
including Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation, Windows, Microsoft Defender,
OneDrive, G-SYNC, FreeSync and Vulkan, belong to their respective owners
and are named here only to say what SpeedBreaker works with.

No game files are included: SpeedBreaker contains no game data or
assets. You play your own copy, installed from your own legally obtained
backup of your own disc. Never share game files or disc images.

SpeedBreaker is free software under the GNU GPL, version 3 or (at your
option) any later version, provided "as is", without warranty of any
kind. The license texts, and where the source code is, are in the
licenses folder.
