Fatal Distractions!/fataldistractions.bin/chap01/ccr/general.doc

Text File | 1993-07-10 | 17KB | 431 lines

            General TADS Game Instructions

            Written by  Michael J. Roberts
      (Edited slightly by David Baggett for ADVENTIONS)



PLAYING THE GAME

In an adventure game, you play by typing commands that describe what
you want to do.  Unfortunately, the game isn't as smart as you are,
so it can't understand nearly as many sentences as a person could.
In this section, we'll describe most of the types of commands that
you will need to use while playing the game.

Each time you see the prompt, ">", you type a command.  Your command
should be a simple imperative sentence, or a series of imperatives
separated by periods.  Press the RETURN (or ENTER) key when you are
done typing your command; the game doesn't start interpreting the
command until you press RETURN.

You can use capital or small letters in any mixture.  You can use
words such as THE and AN when they're appropriate, but you can omit
them if you prefer.  You can abbreviate any word to six or more
letters, but the game will pay attention to all of the letters you
type.  For example, you could refer to a FLASHLIGHT with the words
FLASHL, FLASHLIG, and so forth, but not with FLASHSDF.


TRAVEL

At any time during the game, you are in a location.  The game
desribes your location when you first enter, and again any time you
type LOOK.  In a given location, you can reach anything described, so
you don't need to type commands to move about within a location.

You move from place to place in the game by typing the direction you
want to go.  The game will always tell you the directions that you
can go from a location, although it usually doesn't tell you what you
will find when you go there.  You will probably find it helpful to
make a map as you explore the game.  The directions the game
recognizes are NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, NORTHEAST, SOUTHEAST, UP,
and DOWN.  You can abbreviate these to N, S, E, W, NE, SE, NW, SW, U,
and D.  In some locations you can also use IN and OUT.

Generally, backtracking will take you back to where you started.  For
example, if you start off in the kitchen, go north into the living
room, then go south, you will be back in the kitchen.

Most of the time, when the game describes a door or doorway, you
don't need to open the door to go through the passage; the game will
do this for you.  Only when the game explicitly describes a closed
door (or other impediment to travel) will you need to type a command
to open the door.


OBJECTS

In the game, you will find many objects that you can carry or
otherwise manipulate.  When you want to do something with an object,
type a simple command that tells the game what you want to do; be
explicit.  For example, you could type READ THE BOOK or OPEN THE
DRAWER.  Most of the objects in the game have fairly obvious uses;
you shouldn't have to think of any obscure or unrelated words to
manipulate the objects.

You generally don't have to specify exactly where you want to put an
object that you wish to carry; you can just type TAKE (followed by
the object's name) to carry an object.  We didn't think it was
particularly interesting to force you to specify which object you
wish to put in your left pocket, which you wish to carry in your
right hand, and so forth.  However, there is a limit to how many
objects you can carry at once, and to how much weight you can handle.
You can carry more objects (but not more weight, of course) by
putting some items inside containers (for example, you may be able to
put several objects into a box, and carry the box), since this
reduces the number of objects you actually have to juggle at once.

Some basic verbs that you will use frequently are TAKE (to pick up an
object), DROP (to drop an object), OPEN and CLOSE, and EXAMINE (which
you can abbreviate to X).  You can PUT an object IN or ON another
object when appropriate.  The game recognizes many other verbs as
well.  We tried to make all of the verbs obvious; if you find a knob,
you will be able to TURN it, and if you find a button, you will be
able to PUSH it.  By the same token, you probably won't need to turn
the button or push the knob.

Some examples of commands that the game recognizes are shown below.
These aren't necessarily commands that you'll ever type while playing
the game, but they illustrate some of the verbs and sentence formats
that you may use.

    GO NORTH
    NORTH
    N
    UP
    TAKE THE BOX
    PUT THE FLOPPY DISK INTO THE BOX
    CLOSE BOX
    LOOK AT DISK
    TAKE DISK OUT OF BOX
    LOOK IN BOX
    WEAR THE CONICAL HAT
    TAKE OFF HAT
    CLOSE BOX
    TURN ON THE LANTERN
    LIGHT MATCH
    LIGHT CANDLE WITH MATCH
    RING BELL
    POUR WATER INTO BUCKET
    PUSH BUTTON
    TURN KNOB
    EAT COOKIE
    DRINK MILK
    THROW KNIFE AT THIEF
    KILL TROLL WITH SWORD
    READ NEWSPAPER
    LOOK THROUGH WINDOW
    UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY
    TIE THE ROPE TO THE HOOK
    CLIMB UP THE LADDER
    TURN THE KNOB
    JUMP
    TYPE "HELLO" ON THE KEYBOARD
    TYPE 1234 ON THE KEYPAD
    GET IN THE CAR
    GET OUT OF THE CAR
    GET ON THE HORSE
    GIVE WAND TO WIZARD
    ASK WIZARD ABOUT WAND


OTHER CHARACTERS

You may encounter other characters in the game.  You can interact in
certain ways with these characters.  For example, you can GIVE things
to them, and you could try to attack them.  In addition, you can ask
characters about things:

    ASK WIZARD ABOUT WAND

Some characters will tell you quite a bit in response to such
queries, while others will be more taciturn.

TIME

Time in the game passes only in response to commands you type.
Nothing happens while the game is waiting for you to type something.
Each turn takes about the same amount of time.  If you want to let
some game time pass, because you think something is about to happen,
you can type WAIT (or just Z).


SCORE

The game assigns you a score while you play, indicating how close you
are to finishing it.  At certain points in the game, you will be
awarded points when you solve some puzzle or obtain some item.  The
score is intended to provide you with a measure of your progress in
the game, and increases as you get further in the game; you never
lose points once they are earned.


REFERRING TO MULTIPLE OBJECTS

You can usually use multiple objects in your sentences.  You separate
the objects by the word AND or a comma.  For example:

    TAKE THE BOX, THE FLOPPY DISK, AND THE ROPE
    PUT DISK AND ROPE IN BOX
    DROP BOX AND BALL

You can use the word ALL to refer to everything that is applicable to
your command, and you can use EXCEPT (right after the word ALL) to
exclude certain objects.

    TAKE ALL
    PUT ALL EXCEPT DISK AND ROPE INTO BOX
    TAKE EVERYTHING OUT OF THE BOX
    TAKE ALL OFF SHELF

The word ALL refers to everything that makes sense for your command,
excluding things inside containers that are used in the command.  For
example, if you are carrying a box and a rope, and the box contains a
floppy disk, typing DROP ALL will drop only the box and the rope; the
floppy disk will remain in the box.


"IT" AND "THEM"

You an use IT and THEM to refer to the last object or objects that
you used in a command.  Some examples:

    TAKE THE BOX
    OPEN IT
    TAKE THE DISK AND THE ROPE
    PUT THEM IN THE BOX


MULTIPLE COMMANDS ON A LINE

You can put multiple commands on a single input line by separating
the commands with periods or the word THEN, or with a comma or the
word AND.  Each command still counts as a separate turn.  For example:

    TAKE THE DISK AND PUT IT IN THE BOX
    TAKE BOX. OPEN IT.
    UNLOCK THE DOOR WITH THE KEY. OPEN IT, AND THEN GO NORTH

If the game doesn't understand one of the commands on the input line,
it will tell you what it couldn't understand, and it will ignore the
rest of the commands on the line.


AMBIGUOUS COMMANDS

If you type a command that leaves out some important information, the
game will try to figure out what you mean anyway.  When the game can
be reasonably sure about what you mean, because only one object would
make sense with the command, the game will make an assumption about
the missing information and act as though you had supplied it.  For
example,

    >TIE THE ROPE
    (to the hook)
    The rope is now tied to the hook.  The end of the
    rope nearly reaches the floor of the pit below.

If your command is ambiguous enough that the game doesn't feel safe
making assumptions about what you meant, the game will ask you for
more information.  You can answer these questions by typing the
missing information.  If you decide you didn't want to bother with
the command after all, you can just type a new command; the game will
ignore the question it asked.  For example:

    >UNLOCK THE DOOR
    What do you want to unlock the door with?

    >THE KEY
    Which key do you mean, the gold key, or the silver key?

    >GOLD
    The door is now unlocked.


UNKNOWN WORDS

The game will sometimes use words in its descriptions that it doesn't
understand in your commands.  For example, you may see a description
such as, "The planet's rings are visible as a thin arc high overhead,
glimmering in the sunlight."  If the game doesn't know words such as
"rings," you can assume that they're not needed to play the game;
they're in the descriptions simply to make the story more
interesting.  For those objects that are important, the game
recognizes many synonyms; if the game doesn't understand a word you
use, or any of its common synonyms, you are probably trying something
that is not necessary to continue.


SAVING AND RESTORING

You can store a snapshot of the game's state in a disk file at any
time.  Later, if your character is killed or you find that it has
become impossible to finish the game (due to a lost or broken object,
for example), you can restore the state of the game exactly as it was
when you saved it to the disk file.  You can save your position as
many times as you like, using different disk files for each position.
Saving the game also allows you to play the game over the course of
many days, without having to start over from scratch each time you
come back to the game.

To save the game, type SAVE at any prompt.  The game will ask you for
the name of a disk file to use to store the game state.  (You will
have to specify a filename suitable for your computer system, and the
disk must have enough space to store the game state.  The game will
tell you if the game was not saved properly for some reason.)  You
should give the file a name that does not exist on your disk.  If you
save the game into a file that already exists, the data previously in
that file will be destroyed.

When you wish to restore a game, type RESTORE at the command prompt.
The game will ask you for the name of a disk file that you specified
with a previous SAVE command.  After reading the disk file, the game
state will be restored to exactly the position when you saved it.


SPECIAL COMMANDS

The game understands several special commands that you can use to
control it.  You can use these commands at any prompt.

AGAIN or G: Repeats your last command.  If your last input line was
composed of several commands, only the last command on the line is
repeated.

INDENT: Controls paragraph indentation.  By default the game will
indent paragraphs.  The INDENT command toggles this feature on and
off.

INVENTORY or I: Shows the list of items you are carrying.

LOOK or L: Shows the full description of your location.

OOPS: Allows you to correct the spelling of a word in the last
command.  You can use OOPS when the game displays this complaint: "I
don't know the word <word>."  Immediately after this message, you can
type OOPS followed by the corrected spelling of the misspelled word.
You can only type one word after OOPS, so this command doesn't allow
you to correct certain types of errors, such as when you run two
words together without a spce.

QUIT: Stops the game, and returns you to your operating system.

RESTART: Starts the game over from the beginning.

RESTORE: Restores a position previously saved with the SAVE command.

SAVE: Stores the current state of the game in a disk file, so that
you can come back to the same place later (with the RESTORE command).

SCORE: Shows you your current score, the maximum possible score, and
the number of turns you have taken so far.

SCRIPT: Starts writing everything you see on the screen (your
commands and the game's responses) to a disk file.  The game will ask
you for a filename to be used for the transcript; you should select a
filename that does not yet exist on your disk, because if you use an
existing filename, data in the file will be destroyed.  Use the
UNSCRIPT command to stop making the transcript.

SPACE: Controls spacing between paragraphs of text.  By default the
game will put a blank line after each paragraph.  The SPACE command
toggles this feature on and off.

TERSE: Tells the game that you wish to see only short descriptions of
locations you have already seen when you enter them.  This is the
default mode.  See also the VERBOSE command.

UNDO: Tells the game you want to take back your last command.  The
game state will be restored to the way it was before the undone
command, as though the command were never issued at all.  You can do
this more than once in a row.

UNSCRIPT: Turns off the transcript being made with the SCRIPT command.

VERBOSE: Tells the game to show you the full description of every
location you enter, whether or not you have seen the description
before.  By default, the game will show you the full description of a
location only when you first enter it, and will show you the short
description each time you enter the location thereafter.  Of course,
you can get a full description at any time by typing LOOK.  See also
the TERSE command.

VERSION: Shows you the current version of the game.

WAIT or Z: Causes game time to pass.  When the game is waiting for
you to type command, no game time passes; you can use this command to
wait for something to happen.


COMMAND EDITING AND RECALL

On most computer systems, the game has a special feature that allows
you to use your keyboard's editing keys to modify an input line as
you are typing it, and to recall commands that you have previously
typed for editing and re-entry.  The specific keys you use vary
depending on your system, and some systems don't support this feature
at all; see the system-specific documentation for more information.

While you are typing a command, the game allows you to go back and
change part of the line without "backspacing" over the rest of the
line to get there.  Simply use your left and right cursor-arrow keys
to move the cursor to any point in the command line.  The BACKSPACE
key deletes a character to the left of the cursor, and the DELETE key
deletes the character at which the cursor is located.

You can insert new text at the cursor simply by typing the text.  You
can press the RETURN (or ENTER) key with the cursor at any point in
the line (the cursor need not be at the end of the command line).

You can recall the previous command that you entered by pressing the
up cursor-arrow key; pressing the up-arrow key again recalls the
command before that, and so forth.  Using the down cursor-arrow key
reverses this process, until you get back to the original command
that you were typing before you started pressing the up-arrow key.

Once you have recalled a prior command, you can re-enter it by
pressing the RETURN key.  In addition, you can edit the command, as
described above, before entering the command.

The exact number of commands the game retains depends on the lengths
of the commands, but more than a hundred of the most recent commands
are generally retained at any given time.


REVIEW MODE

Another special feature that the game supports on many computer
systems is called "review mode."  The game remembers text as it
"scrolls" off the screen; by invoking recall mode, you can go back
and look at text that is no longer visible on the screen.  On most
systems, review mode is activated by pressing the function key F1.

Once in review mode, the status line that is normally at the top of
the screen will be replaced by the review mode help line.  This line
shows the keystrokes you use to view previous screenfuls of text, and
also shows you the key that exits review mode and resumes normal game
play (this is generally the game key that you used to activate review
mode).

While in review mode, your screen becomes a window onto the text that
the game has stored away.  When you first activate review mode, you
are looking at the very bottom of this text, which is the screenful
of text that was just displayed.  Use the up and down cursor-arrow
keys to move the window up and down.  Pressing the up cursor-arrow
key moves the window up one line, showing you one line of text that
has scrolled off the screen.  Most systems also provide keys to move
up and down by a full screenful (also called a "page.")

To resume game play, press the same key that you used to activate
review mode.

The number of screenfuls of text that the game stores away for review
depends on how much text is actually on each screen, since the game
has a limit on the number of characters it can store, not on the
number of lines.  Normally, more than twenty of the most recent
screens of text are saved and available for review at any given time.