Hello! Welcome to the Original Adventure!!

Introduction.

Somewhere nearby is colossal cave, where others have found fortunes in
treasure and gold, though it is rumoured that some who enter are never
seen again. Magic is said to work in the cave. This program will be your
eyes and hands.

This program was originally developed by Willie Crowther at Stanford
University Artificial Intelligence Lab, and derives from the roll playing
game "Dungeons and Dragons".  Most of the features of the current program
were added by Don Woods. The current version was done by Bob Supnik. This
version was implemented on the IBM-PC (and compatibles) by Kevin Black.

Command input.

The very rudimentary parser of this program will accept two word commands,
of the verb-nown variety, single words may be used where the meaning is
obvious, for example "NORTH" is sufficient to mean "GO NORTH". The parser
only examines the first four letters of each word you use, any more are
ignored. As with most text adventures commonly used commands can be
abbreviated :

      N  - NORTH       S  - SOUTH       E  - EAST        W  - WEST
      NE -NORTHEAST    NW - NORTHWEST   SE - SOUTHEAST   SW - SOUTHWEST
      U  - UP          D  - DOWN        L  - LOOK        I  - INVENTORY

Descriptions of locations and related commands

The command "LOOK" is useful should you forget where you are or require,
the long description of your location. You are normally only give the long
description of a location the first time, on further visits you are given
a short description which is usually enough to jog your memory as to
where you are. The command "BRIEF" will tell the program to always use
the short descriptions of a location, even on the first visit. The
opposite of "BRIEF" is "VERBOSE".

Game management commands.

Should you wish to quit the program (Control-C is disabled to prevent
'accidents') use the command "QUIT", on exit you will be given your
score and rating! If you wish to know your score during play use the
command "SCORE".

When you look at your watch at four in the morning and decide you would
like to go to bed it would be nice to save the game wouldn't it? Well
you can do this with the "SAVE" command which will prompt you for a file
name. A saved game may be restarted with the command "RESTORE" (or
"RESUME"), this command prompts for the file in which the game was
saved. The save and restore functions use a CRC to check file integrity.

Some online information is available with the commands "HELP" and "INFO".

Message encryption.

The file containing the location descriptions has been encrypted, this
prevents you from spoiling the game for your self by peeking at it! Just
thought I would mention that!

Running the game

The game requires the two files ADVENTUR.CTL and ADVENTUR.MTX to be in the
directory from which you run the game, which you do by entering ADV. If the
program does not find these files it will look for a database file, and
failing to find this will print an error message. Messing around with the
files will prevent the program from running properly.


                                                       Kevin B Black
                                                       December 1987
