The TI ADVENTURE COMPENDIUM is a joint copyrighted fundraising package of the Western New York 99ers (WNY99ER) [contact Harry Brashear, 2753 Main Street, Newfane, NY 14108] and the Massachusetts Users of the Ninety-nine Computer and Hobbyists (M.U.N.C.H.) [contact Jack Sughrue, Box 459, East Douglas, MA 01516]. This mutual effort is an attempt to provide users with a historical and, in many cases, remarkable collection of fascinating and fun adventure games and utilities (and some bonus games and utilities) that would not be readily available anywhere else. These disks are a collection of the *COMPLETE* Fairware and Public Domain adventure programs written for the TI-99/4A as of 1989. Over two years and the diligent efforts of many users have gone into the gathering of these items, and every attempt was made to secure the original versions. The authors of these adventures did wonderfully well and take us from the simple simulation type of all-text adventure of the early 80s to some recent heavy-duty graphic fare. Although some authors have remained anonymous, their work is as greatly appreciated as some of the more famous authors whose works are part of this collection. Without these ingenious and very creative authors, of course, there would be no adventures, none of the fun that only such puzzles and games can reward you with.
Mickey Schmitt (herself the author of the Adventure Module adventure "Oliver's Twist") is the person most responsible for this compilation. Two years ago she spoke to me of her vision to gather up every known adventure for the TI and to write a book which would be a source and reference guide to all users. Her book, THE ADVENTURE REFERENCE GUIDE (The Encyclopedia of TI-99/4A and Geneve Adventure Gaming), is - At Last! - completed. And, in the process, the gathering of these adventures has been made possible.
Mickey's book ($7.95 && $2 S/H from ASGARD Publishing, P.O.^Box 10697, Rockville, MD 20850), has already become the adventure afficianado's bible. This classic work is not only a multi-sorted bibliography of EVERY known Commercial, Fairware, and Public Domain adventure, but breaks the adventures into mode (TOD, BASIC, etc.) and type. Each adventure is rated against other adventures of kind. The names of all known authors and addresses are given as are the required hardware needs. Checklists for players are provided along with detailed descriptions. And much more. This book - one of a kind in the entire computer world - is an almost-essential companion to these disks and highly recommended by both user group compilers. About 200 adventures are analyzed. The Fairware and Public Domain items amount to a little less than half of these. All of THESE games (and some utilities and a few other items and a game) are contained on this TI ADVENTURE COMPENDIUM disk collection.
The nominal fundraiser cost for these packed-full disks (about 35OO *ARCHIVED!* sectors for over 5,000! extracted sectors of materials!) are $11.95 for the DSDD set (3 disks), $15.95 for the DSSD set (5 disks), and $19.95 for the SSSD set (10 disk sides) .
All of these programs were gathered from around the world on hundreds of disks. Mickey sorted through them all, checked for repeats with different names, hunted down the originals, hunted down the authors, tested them all out, and reduced them to about 30 disks which she released to our two groups for distribution and fundraising. These disks, in turn, were packed tightly onto disks and ARChived and, again, repacked tightly onto the present disk form on DSDD. They were then repacked onto DSSD and SSSD forms (which took up more space). To attempt to release this huge package in any other form would be too expensive and costly, and it would not get into the hands of the average user.
Besides the *READFIRST file you are now reading, the only other file on the disk which is not ARCHived is Barry Boone's v.3.02 ARCHIVER (with the XB Loader [ARC/LOAD] and docs), a most extraordinary Fairware program for which the author should be fairly rewarded ($20 is not unreasonable for such a fantastic program, as you will soon see if you do not own it already).
To use the ARCHIVER for this project, just load it through XB with ARC/LOAD or the program loader section of FUNNELWEB's Assembler, the E/A cartridge, or any other E/A version. Be sure you have about 25 disks initialized and ready (SSSD) or 15 (DSSD) or 10(DSDD). Then load ARCHIVER, have the first disk in your extra drive (or ready to swap if you have only one), choose CATALOG from the menu, get the Disk Name off the listing.
At this point you may want to get a hardcopy of this catalog. PIO is the printer default which you may change when you choose to print out at this time.
After you catalog the untouched disk, you would be wise to catalog the separate files to see if there are any duplicate names (such as LOAD) on the ARChived files. If so, they should be unloaded to separate disks. We've tried to avoid this doubling as much as possible.
Then return to the menu, choose EXTRACT. When it says ALL FILES, you choose Y (unless you are putting each program on a separate disk or want to avoid doubling filenames; then say N).
Then follow directions for configuration. The decompressing and unpacking of the ARCHIVER will automatically read from the old and write to the new disk (unless you have one drive; then it will tell you when to swap).
When all this is done, you will be able to leap into adventuring with both feet. There is enough here to satisfy the most jaded gamester and programmer, perhaps, for years! There are no age limitations to interactive fiction; no barriers of any kind to imagination. Enjoy thoroughly all these journeys into your own mind and the challenges that await you there.
Thank you very much for your support of our groups' efforts.
(NOTE: TI ADVENTURE COMPENDIUM is a copyrighted collection by JAHA and may not be distributed in any form except by user groups to their own members and not part of an outside revenue or "distribution cost" fundraiser for M.U.N.C.H. && WNY99ER groups as mentioned above. If you come into possession of this package other than ordering through our clubs, would you be kind enough to send just $6 donations to EACH of the groups above. If you received this through your user group would you be kind enough to take up a user-group collection and send half of that amount to each of our clubs. Please maintain the integrity of our work by keeping these disks in these original forms as you received them. Again, thank you.)
