date and time created 88/12/14 15:30:08 by sklower

[unix-history] / usr / src / contrib / dungeon / dungeon.6

.TH DUNGEON 6 "February 9, 1987"
.SH NAME
dungeon\ -\ Adventures in the Dungeons of Doom
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B dungeon
.br
.B dungeon
[-r [savefile]]\ \ \ --\ pdp-11 version only
.SH DESCRIPTION
Dungeon is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning.  In it
you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortal
man.  Hardened adventurers have run screaming from the terrors contained
within.
.LP
In Dungeon, the intrepid explorer delves into the forgotten secrets
of a lost labyrinth deep in the bowels of the earth, searching for
vast treasures long hidden from prying eyes, treasures guarded by
fearsome monsters and diabolical traps!
.LP
Dungeon was created at the Programming Technology Division of the MIT
Laboratory for Computer Science by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce
Daniels, and Dave Lebling.  It was inspired by the Adventure game of
Crowther and Woods, and the Dungeons and Dragons game of Gygax
and Arneson.  The original version was written in MDL (alias MUDDLE).
The current version was translated from MDL into FORTRAN IV by
a somewhat paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous.
.LP
On-line information may be obtained with the commands HELP and INFO.
.SH OPTIONS
In the pdp-11 version, the
.B -r
flag allows restarting a saved game.  The default savefile is
.I dungeon.sav
which may be overriden on the command line.  In the Vax version,
the game is restored by using the
.B restore
command.
.SH DETAILS
Following, is the summary produced by the
.B info
command:
.RS
.LP
Welcome to Dungeon!
.PP
You are near a large dungeon, which is reputed to contain vast
quantities of treasure.   Naturally, you wish to acquire some of it.
In order to do so, you must of course remove it from the dungeon.  To
receive full credit for it, you must deposit it safely in the trophy
case in the living room of the house.
.PP
In addition to valuables, the dungeon contains various objects
which may or may not be useful in your attempt to get rich.  You may
need sources of light, since dungeons are often dark, and weapons,
since dungeons often have unfriendly things wandering about.  Reading
material is scattered around the dungeon as well;  some of it
is rumored to be useful.
.PP
To determine how successful you have been, a score is kept.
When you find a valuable object and pick it up, you receive a
certain number of points, which depends on the difficulty of finding
the object.  You receive extra points for transporting the treasure
safely to the living room and placing it in the trophy case.  In
addition, some particularly interesting rooms have a value associated
with visiting them.  The only penalty is for getting yourself killed,
which you may do only twice.
.PP
Of special note is a thief (always carrying a large bag) who
likes to wander around in the dungeon (he has never been seen by the
light of day).  He likes to take things.  Since he steals for pleasure
rather than profit and is somewhat sadistic, he only takes things which
you have seen.  Although he prefers valuables, sometimes in his haste
he may take something which is worthless.  From time to time, he examines
his take and discards objects which he doesn't like.  He may occasionally 
stop in a room you are visiting, but more often he just wanders
through and rips you off (he is a skilled pickpocket).
.RE
.SH COMMANDS
.LP
.TP 15
.B brief
suppresses printing of long room descriptions
for rooms which have been visited.
.TP
.B superbrief
suppresses
printing of long room descriptions for all rooms.
.TP
.B verbose
restores long descriptions.
.TP
.B info
prints information which might give some idea
of what the game is about.
.TP
.B quit
prints your score and asks whether you wish
to continue playing.
.TP
.B save
saves the state of the game for later continuation.
.TP
.B restore
restores a saved game.
.TP
.B inventory
lists the objects in your possession.
.TP
.B look
prints a description of your surroundings.
.TP
.B score
prints your current score and ranking.
.TP
.B time
tells you how long you have been playing.
.TP
.B diagnose
reports on your injuries, if any.
.LP
The
.B inventory
command may be abbreviated
.BR i ;
the
.B look
command may be abbreviated
.BR l ;
the
.B quit
command may be abbreviated
.BR q .
.LP
A command that begins with '!' as the first character is taken to
be a shell command and is passed unchanged to the shell via
.I system(3).
.SH CONTAINMENT
.LP
Some objects can contain other objects.  Many such containers can
be opened and closed.  The rest are always open.   They may or may
not be transparent.  For you to access (e.g., take) an object
which is in a container, the container must be open.  For you
to see such an object, the container must be either open or
transparent.  Containers have a capacity, and objects have sizes;
the number of objects which will fit therefore depends on their
sizes.  You may put any object you have access to (it need not be
in your hands) into any other object.  At some point, the program
will attempt to pick it up if you don't already have it, which
process may fail if you're carrying too much.  Although containers
can contain other containers, the program doesn't access more than
one level down.
.SH FIGHTING
.LP
Occupants of the dungeon will, as a rule, fight back when
attacked.  In some cases, they may attack even if unprovoked.
Useful verbs here are 
.I attack
<villain>
.I with
<weapon>,
.IR kill ,
etc.  Knife-throwing may or may not be useful.  You have a
fighting strength which varies with time.  Being in a fight,
getting killed, and being injured all lower this strength.
Strength is regained with time.  Thus, it is not a good idea to
fight someone immediately after being killed.  Other details
should become apparent after a few melees or deaths.
.SH COMMAND\ PARSER
.LP
A command is one line of text terminated by a carriage return.
For reasons of simplicity, all words are distinguished by their
first six letters.  All others are ignored.  For example, typing
.I disassemble the encyclopedia
is not only meaningless, it also
creates excess effort for your fingers.  Note that this truncation
may produce ambiguities in the intepretation of longer words.
[Also note that upper and lower case are equivalent.]
.LP
You are dealing with a fairly stupid parser, which understands
the following types of things:
.RS
.TP 5
.B Actions:
Among the more obvious of these, such as
.I take, put, drop,
etc.
Fairly general forms of these may be used, such as
.I pick up, put down,
etc.
.TP
.B Directions:
.I north, south, up, down,
etc. and their various abbreviations.
Other more obscure directions
.RI ( land,
.IR cross )
are appropriate in only certain situations.
.TP
.B Objects:
Most objects have names and can be referenced by them.
.TP
.B Adjectives:
Some adjectives are understood and required when there are
two objects which can be referenced with the same 'name' (e.g.,
.I doors,
.IR buttons ).
.TP
.B Prepositions:
It may be necessary in some cases to include prepositions, but
the parser attempts to handle cases which aren't ambiguous
without.  Thus
.I give car to demon
will work, as will
.I give demon
.IR car .
.I give car demon
probably won't do anything interesting.
When a preposition is used, it should be appropriate;
.I give car with demon
won't parse.
.TP
.B Sentences:
The parser understands a reasonable number of syntactic construc-
tions.  In particular, multiple commands (separated by commas)
can be placed on the same line.
.TP
.B Ambiguity:
The parser tries to be clever about what to do in the case of
actions which require objects that are not explicitly specified.
If there is only one possible object, the parser will assume
that it should be used.  Otherwise, the parser will ask.
Most questions asked by the parser can be answered.
.RE
.SH FILES
dindx.dat	- game initialization info
.br
dtext.dat		- encoded messages
.br
rindx.dat		- index into message file for pdp version
.br
dungeon.sav	- default save file for pdp version
.br
dsave.dat	- default save file for non-pdp versions
.br
listen, speak	- co-process routines for pdp version
.SH BUGS
For those familiar with the MDL version of the game on the ARPAnet,
the following is a list of the major incompatabilties:
.RS
-The first six letters of a word are considered
significant, instead of the first five.
.br
-The syntax for
.I tell, answer,
and
.I incant
is different.
.br
-Compound objects are not recognized.
.br
-Compound commands can be delimited with comma as well
as period.
.RE
.LP
Also, the palantir, brochure, and dead man problems are not
implemented.
.LP
The pdp version is slightly stripped down to fit within the memory
contraints.
An overlayed pdp version might be made that would allow the
complete game to be compiled and loaded, but I don't have the
inclination (or machine) to do it.
.SH AUTHORS
.LP
Many people have had a hand in this version.  See the "History" and
"README" files for credits.  Send bug reports to billr@tekred.TEK.COM
(or ...!tektronix!tekred!billr).