Release Notes:

bleem! version 1.4 full release -- 7/26/99

What's Changed :

* Significant Direct3D Speed Optimizations 
* Significant Direct3D Texture Improvements 
* Improved Direct3D support for Background Graphics 
* Improved Direct3D Clipping (FF8's Popup Menus, etc.) 
* Corrected Minor Software Graphics Errors (Vertical Lines in FF7) 
* Overall Speed Improvements (Tekken3, Crash3, etc.) 
* Significantly Improved MemoryCard Support (MGS, GT, MediEvil, Parasite Eve,
	Street Fighter EX + a, Xenogears, and MORE)
* Improved Emulation (Gex, Gex3:Deep Cover Gecko, Warcraft 2, Vigilante8,
	Tempest X3, Arkinoid Returns, and more) 
* Added Mouse Support 
* Corrected Weird Polygon Clipping Issues with TNT/TNT2 Chipsets 
* Insert Disc Message doesn't lock out Configuration Menus 
* Added "FrameSkip Disable" Option (FF7 Battle Menus) 
* Fixed UnInstall Crash 
* Corrected Internal Game Compatibility Database 
* Improved Sound Effects and Music 
* Improved CDXA Sound 
* Improved CD-ROM Support for Multi-Disc games 
* Improved "Best Screen Mode" Logic for 24bpp/32bpp (FF7, FF8) 
* Improved MDEC Support (Xenogears, MicroMachines, and MORE) 
* Improved Overall Compatibility 
* Added AutoConfig for Gravis Xterminator 
* Miscellaneous Bug Fixes 
* ...and believe it or not, MORE! 

Important Notes :
None at this time, Enjoy.

Non-Important Notes :
Hmmm, Spork...

---

bleem! version 1.3b1 beta release -- 7/14/99

What's Changed :

* Significant Direct3D Speed Optimizations 
* Significant Direct3D Texture Improvements 
* Improved Direct3D support for Background Graphics 
* Improved Direct3D Clipping (FF8's Popup Menus, etc.) 
* Corrected Minor Software Graphics Errors (Vertical Lines in FF7) 
* Improved Sound Effects and Music 
* Improved CDXA Sound 
* Improved CD-ROM Support for Multi-Disc games 
* Fixed Xenogears Saving/Loading 
* Added AutoConfig for Gravis Xterminator 
* Overall Speed Improvements (Tekken3, Crash3, etc.) 
* Insert Disc Message doesn't lock out Configuration Menus 

Important Notes :

DragonYen's Birthday! (the importance of this can be debated ;>)
New website coming soon!
No other notes at this time, enjoy!

---

bleem! version 1.2 b2 beta release  --  6/20/99

What's Changed :

* Gran Turismo stopping at the Notice Screen on some Win95 machines (Fixed)
* Final Fantasy 8 Support
* ALT + F1 will toggle between Software and Hardware modes
* Speed limiter improvements
* Paletted Texture Improvements (including fix for V2/V3 Crash)

Important Notes :

None this time, have fun!

---

bleem! version 1.2 b1 beta release  --  6/16/99

What's Changed :

* GRAPHICS : D3D clipping, Black Boxes, Transparency, Translucency,
	"Update Bug" as seen in Tekken 3

* MEMCARDS : Ability to Disable MemoryCards, Fixed Crashes in MK4
	& HotShotsGolf, Fixed Loaders in Castlevania & Ogre Battle.

* SOUND : General Improvements (much less scratchiness and noise)

* SPEED : General Improvements, speed limiter worked on

Important Notes :

Please use fresh, clean memorycards with this new build -- Bugs in the
earlier memorycard logic may have affected your memorycards and could
result in saved games not loading properly.


bleem! version 1.1 b2 beta release  --  6/8/99

With the overall success of the first beta, it really cleared the decks and
allowed us to see what remained to be done - This beta fixes one BIG problem
for a SMALL number of users, and one SMALL glitch for a LARGE number of
users.

1. CD-ROM access - Grrr. A number of users - maybe 3-5% told us they were
having a heck of a time reading the bleem! Key CD. They'd insert it and it
would just spin and spin, or it would take forever to get to the "Welcome to
bleem!" screen. We were able to identify and fix the problem for a number of
users with more info:

a. DVD-ROM drives: we were told that a number of DVD drives did NOT
completely support the CD-ROM standard with their retail drivers. Updates
and, according to reports from Microsoft beta testers, the 98SE update
helped for many people, and we passed that along.

b. CD-R drives: There appeared to be a problem with some CD-burning software
wherein it removed a file your system needs to properly read bleem! By
reinstalling the file, many users fixed the problem.

By eliminating those issues, we were able to focus on any remaining reports.
Since the bleem! Key CD works perfectly on our systems, our beta testers'
systems, and for most customers, we had to look for patterns in the reports
we'd received and make a couple of educated guesses. Then we sent the test
build out to a number of people who'd been having problems...

And whaddaya know, we nailed it, first time out. This build should allow
your drive to successfully read the key CD if you were having problems, and
substantially speed up the process for everyone else. If you're wondering
what the problem was -- without getting technical -- we were given advice by
the CD-mastering hardware developer and guaranteed 100% compatibility for
the CD format. Apparently, it's more like 98%. So we worked around it and it
should be fixed for EVERYONE now.


2. "Bounding Box" glitch - in some games, certain 3d elements were not
staying within the boundaries assigned to them - the graphics would "bleed
out" into areas they're not supposed to be. (you'd see the effect in Gran
Tourismo's rear-view mirror and 2-player mode) Fixed. Not much more to say.
This will fix this minor defect in a number of games, many of which we're
probably not aware of. Let us know what you see!

That's about it for this beta. Issues we're continuing work on include
memory cards and the "black box" rendering problem. Look for another update
soon, then we can get on to the fun stuff - MORE GAMES!

Since this beta is a small change to the previous, the prior release notes
are included below:

PREVIOUS BETA NOTES - 1.1 b1
This release addresses a couple of snafus that made it into our first full
release on 5/15/99. Once the full release made it out to the public, there
were several days of "settling out" while people found proper Direct-X 6
compatible drivers for their hardware, after which we were able to get
concrete information and address a few issues:

1. Speed - We had previous identified a bug with Direct 3D and texture
management on video cards with multiple texture-processors. As a temporary
fix while we waited for new driver releases, we had included a "Use Managed
Textures" option to off-load this process to Direct 3D, instead of relying
on the hardware. While this allowed textures to be shown, it resulted in
serious speed hits on cards as the huge amount of data traveled back and
forth through the bus.

For this build, we have re-written substantial portions of our rendering
code to work around the driver issue without having to use Direct3D's
software management. This should result in better overall speed , but you
may notice some textures "dropping out" as you max out the VRAM of your
particular card. This is usually evidenced as "grey" areas where textures
should be - they often appear on the outer edges of backgrounds as you
change views,  or in constantly-updated areas of action. Should this happen,
you can often minimize or eliminate the effect by reducing the resolution
you're playing at or using "paletted textures" on cards that support this
feature.

This change should also affect sound quality - the side-effect of moving so
much information through the system bus and increasing hard-drive traffic
was interruptions in processed CD sound and "crackling". Eliminating all
this throughput should clean up sound substantially.


2. AGP Support - In the first full build, AGP support was removed because of
a known incompatibility between K62 machines and certain video cards and
drivers. This was NOT a bleem! issue, and to avoid the crashes associated
with the problem, we disabled bleem!'s using AGP memory overall. However,
with the changes to the texture management, we re-enabled the feature to
give back more VRAM to other users. If your use a K62 system and are
experiencing problems, disable AGP support in your monitor setup. For other
user, try enabling AGP memory for more textures. Because it increases
traffic through the bus, you may see slower speed or a degradation of sound
quality - try it, and choose the happy medium that best suits you.


These changes should make the biggest difference to most users. We're sorry
they made it into the final build and thank you for your reports and help in
identifying the problems. Other issues that we're looking into include
memory cards and reports of some users having difficulty reading the bleem!
Key CD on their drives, as well as our continued work to make PC 3D hardware
think like PlayStation 3D hardware - the "black boxes" in certain games.

With this release and your reports on its effectiveness, it will help to
narrow our focus and effectively identify remaining problems. We will
continue to work on them and release updates as quickly as we can.

Please submit bug reports via SUPPORT on the web page and participate in the
message baord discussions under BETA - it will help us to make bleem!
better!

Thanks for your support.

---

UPDATE -- 6/7/99
Some users have reported problems when switching in and out of "paletted
textures", depending on their display mode and drivers. on certain cards.
After talking to several users, here's what we're hearing and what to do
about it:

"When "Paletted textures" is ON, switching to the PRIMARY VIDEO DRIVER
results in a crash or freeze."  OR  "When the PRIMARY VIDEO DRIVER is
selected, turning on "Paletted textures" results in a crash."

Here's the thing: while many advanced 3D cards handle paletted textures,
many of your legacy cards WILL not. So when you change video options to a
driver that does not support palettes and then tell  bleem! to use them,
it's not too happy. Now, bleem! is supposed to be "oops"-proof about this
sort of thing and ignore the setting change if your card doesn't handle
palettes. Since it's not catching it, it could mean that the primary driver
is saying it DOES have paletting abilities, but does not, or that bleem!
isn't seeing that the driver DOESN'T have paletting and keeps trying to use
them. Either way, for the time being, ONLY use paletted textures with your
secondary card, if you're having problems. In fact, we generally recommend
that you not change your drivers at ALL once you have a happy setup. There's
really no reason to change this setting to tweak individual game
performance. You'll get the most results from changing filtering and
resolution settings.

-When using the SECONDARY DRIVER and switching to WINDOWED PLAY sometimes
shows only a BLACK WINDOW.
This usually happens when you try to switch to windowed mode with cards that
only support FULL SCREEN 3D, like the Voodoo 2. If you try to use window, it
just doesn't work. Similarly, you might find that some cards that DO support
3D in windows have this problem - it's usually because your 3D card setting
are at 16 but and your desktop is at 32. Only use windowed mode when your
bit-depth is set the same in bleem! and on your system.

There may be some other stuff at work here, but try these first and see if
there are still any problems. That'll help us to identify if there IS an
actual problem in bleem!, or if we just need to work on usablility stuff
that will prevent users from making changes that won't work well together.

Hope this helps. Thanks!

---

UPDATE -- 6/7/99
Some users have reported problems when switching in and out of "paletted
textures", depending on their display mode and drivers. on certain cards.
After talking to several users, here's what we're hearing and what to do
about it:

"When "Paletted textures" is ON, switching to the PRIMARY VIDEO DRIVER
results in a crash or freeze."  OR  "When the PRIMARY VIDEO DRIVER is
selected, turning on "Paletted textures" results in a crash."

Here's the thing: while many advanced 3D cards handle paletted textures,
many of your legacy cards WILL not. So when you change video options to a
driver that does not support palettes and then tell  bleem! to use them,
it's not too happy. Now, bleem! is supposed to be "oops"-proof about this
sort of thing and ignore the setting change if your card doesn't handle
palettes. Since it's not catching it, it could mean that the primary driver
is saying it DOES have paletting abilities, but does not, or that bleem!
isn't seeing that the driver DOESN'T have paletting and keeps trying to use
them. Either way, for the time being, ONLY use paletted textures with your
secondary card, if you're having problems. In fact, we generally recommend
that you not change your drivers at ALL once you have a happy setup. There's
really no reason to change this setting to tweak individual game
performance. You'll get the most results from changing filtering and
resolution settings.

-When using the SECONDARY DRIVER and switching to WINDOWED PLAY sometimes
shows only a BLACK WINDOW.
This usually happens when you try to switch to windowed mode with cards that
only support FULL SCREEN 3D, like the Voodoo 2. If you try to use window, it
just doesn't work. Similarly, you might find that some cards that DO support
3D in windows have this problem - it's usually because your 3D card setting
are at 16 but and your desktop is at 32. Only use windowed mode when your
bit-depth is set the same in bleem! and on your system.

There may be some other stuff at work here, but try these first and see if
there are still any problems. That'll help us to identify if there IS an
actual problem in bleem!, or if we just need to work on usablility stuff
that will prevent users from making changes that won't work well together.

Hope this helps. Thanks!

---

bleem! version 1.1 b1 beta release  --  6/02/99

This release addresses a couple of snafus that made it into our first full
release on 5/15/99. Once the full release made it out to the public, there
were several days of "settling out" while people found proper Direct-X 6
compatible drivers for their hardware, after which we were able to get
concrete information and address a few issues:

1. Speed - We had previous identified a bug with Direct 3D and texture
management on video cards with multiple texture-processors. As a temporary
fix while we waited for new driver releases, we had included a "Use Managed
Textures" option to off-load this process to Direct 3D, instead of relying
on the hardware. While this allowed textures to be shown, it resulted in
serious speed hits on cards as the huge amount of data traveled back and
forth through the bus.

For this build, we have re-written substantial portions of our rendering
code to work around the driver issue without having to use Direct3D's
software management. This should result in better overall speed , but you
may notice some textures "dropping out" as you max out the VRAM of your
particular card. This is usually evidenced as "grey" areas where textures
should be - they often appear on the outer edges of backgrounds as you
change views,  or in constantly-updated areas of action. Should this happen,
you can often minimize or eliminate the effect by reducing the resolution
you're playing at or using "paletted textures" on cards that support this
feature.

This change should also affect sound quality - the side-effect of moving so
much information through the system bus and increasing hard-drive traffic
was interruptions in processed CD sound and "crackling". Eliminating all
this throughput should clean up sound substantially.


2. AGP Support - In the first full build, AGP support was removed because of
a known incompatibility between K62 machines and certain video cards and
drivers. This was NOT a bleem! issue, and to avoid the crashes associated
with the problem, we disabled bleem!'s using AGP memory overall. However,
with the changes to the texture management, we re-enabled the feature to
give back more VRAM to other users. If your use a K62 system and are
experiencing problems, disable AGP support in your monitor setup. For other
user, try enabling AGP memory for more textures. Because it increases
traffic through the bus, you may see slower speed or a degradation of sound
quality - try it, and choose the happy medium that best suits you.


These changes should make the biggest difference to most users. We're sorry
they made it into the final build and thank you for your reports and help in
identifying the problems. Other issues that we're looking into include
memory cards and reports of some users having difficulty reading the bleem!
Key CD on their drives, as well as our continued work to make PC 3D hardware
think like PlayStation 3D hardware - the "black boxes" in certain games.

With this release and your reports on its effectiveness, it will help to
narrow our focus and effectively identify remaining problems. We will
continue to work on them and release updates as quickly as we can.

Please submit bug reports via SUPPORT on the web page and participate in the
message baord discussions under BETA - it will help us to make bleem!
better!

Thanks for your support.