Monster Media 1994 #1

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The Lost Lands Fantasy Adventure Game GAME PRIMER Written By: David A. Cooke I. Introduction The Lost Lands is a user-interactive fantasy adventure game for use as a DOOR program with any Bulletin Board System. It is a real-time game set in a medieval fantasy world. The entire system was written in QuickBASIC 4.0b. The Lost Lands supports color ANSI graphics; it is recommended that you use ANSI if it is available on your system. The color ANSI graphics enhance the game play significantly. II. Object of the Game The Lost Lands was written for players to have fun. The object of this game is to become rich, powerful and experienced. Each player will be competing with and against the other players. Although this interaction is not direct, it is still very exciting in its own way. The Lost Lands is set in the fantasy world of Akrinia. This document only outlines the actual syntax of game play; for information relating directly to the world of Akrinia, consult the other documents shipped with this release. III. Game Basics The game is designed around a "text adventure" base. You have a prompt at which you can type "English" into the computer and it will respond to your commands. This will be explained in detail later. The game is also real-time. This means that the game will continue to send challenges forth at you while you may not be prepared to accept them. You will come to understand the term "real-time", if you do not already, through reading this brief introduction to the game. The way in which your character will traverse The Lost Lands is through a term known as a "room." Your character is always in a "room" of some sort. This "room" takes the shapes of many things; for instance, it could be a Weapon Shop, a part of a Street, the inside of a cave, the dining room in a mansion, or anything at all. The "room" that you are in has no fixed size. A "room" could be as small as a closet or as big as an entire meadow. This concept is at first difficult to understand, but once you play the game, you should become familiar with it. To demonstrate how you feel your way around the lands, and further explain what exactly a "room" looks like, we will use the following example. When you enter a room, you should see something similar to the room described below: [Please note that this room is just an example, most rooms will not have the same actual information as this one]. (1) Small Corridor (2) You are in a small dingy corridor. The smell of decaying flesh fills the whole corridor. To the south the corridor continues towards an unknown light source. To the north, the corridor continues into darkness. (3) You see exits North, South. (4) You see a Hatchet, Greathelm. (5) You see a Skeleton. (6) > Each room description may be broken down into six parts. We will go into each in detail now. 1. The Room Name: Each room has a name. The name is usually a brief description of the room you are in. Sometimes, room names may be kept extremely short to keep them from being distinguished from another room of the same name. The name is an easy way to navigate through The Lands if you are familiar with the territory. 2. The Room Description: Each room has a full blown description accompanying its Room Name. The description will usually tell you every minute detail about the room, including what you may see in the different directions leading from the current room. 3. The Obvious Exits: Each room also contains a set of obvious exits. These are the exits that are easily accessible by all players. You may traverse these rooms by simply typing the appropriate direction (see Part VI, Commands Summary). Secret or Hidden exits may be in each room. These must be searched for. 4. The Contents Listing: Each room also contains up to twenty (20) items. If any more than twenty items lay on the ground at any one time, the items will disappear. Sorry, but there are limits to everything. 5. The Monster Listing: Each room also contains up to ten (10) monsters. This listing changes many times since the game is real-time. This shows the monsters/creatures that are currently in the room. 6. The Command Prompt: When you receive this prompt on your screen, it is telling you that the game is ready for your command. There will be times when the command prompt will not be present on your screen. This does not mean that the game has frozen or stopped working, it simply means that you are doing some action that requires a bit more time than other, simpler actions. IV. Movement Movement in the game is quite simple. The directions that you may move from any room are listed in The Obvious Exits list of the Room Description. In previous example, the listing read: You see exits North, South. PLEASE NOTE: In our following examples, the notation <CR> means a Carriage Return, or pressing the Enter key. Also, the > is placed before all commands to represent the presence of the command prompt. To move our brave and fearless hero to the North into the darkness, we would type: >N <CR> If perhaps we wanted to go and explore the strange light to the south, we would type: >S <CR> As shown above, the commands for movement are the first letter of the direction you want to move. DIRECTION COMMAND --------- ------- North N South S East E West W Up U Down D There is one last "direction" that your character may travel. That direction is the "GO" direction. Some rooms, those with special doors or hidden passageways utilize this other "direction" command. If you are in a room that you know has a secret door, you may type GO DOOR, and your character will be moved to the correct "room". Please remember that this command may be utilized for rooms that do not contain "secret" doors. In some rooms, the description may say you see a Large Glowing Door. If the description points out to something that does not blend in with the fabric of the description, try the GO command to enter it. V. Combat 1. How Combat Works Combat proceeds in a real-time fashion. That is, it is defined as any other action; during combat you may do any other action that you could do if you were not in combat, such as movement. 2. How You Engage in Combat You may engage in combat in several ways. The most common for a fighter character is to attack them with a weapon; mages may cast offensive spells; or the creature may even attack you first! The command to attack a creature is KILL <target> or abbreviated K <target>. The targetted creature is either specified on the command line at the time or it is assumed you meant the last creature either attacked/cast a spell at/or LOOKed at. After you hit return, the results of your attack will be displayed. The creature will then react to your attack. Your prompt will disappear until you are once again ready to make a command entry. The prompt disappearing signifies the time that it takes you to do certain actions. Most non-combat actions can be done relatively quickly, yet some actions, especially combat ones, require more time than others to perform. When your prompt reappears you are free to attack the creature again, run, or do any other action. The way in which you slay a creature is to continuously attack them until the display informs you of their demise. While you attack the creatures, the creature will be attacking you also. Each weapon/attack form has a different speed at which it may be performed, so a creature attacking with a dagger will certainly strike faster than you attacking with a two-handed sword or vice-versa. A brief example follows: >LOOK AT MERCHANT You look at the merchant and see... He looks much tougher than you... He is using a two-handed sword. A Serf has entered the area. >KILL MERCHANT <CR> You swing at the merchant and miss. >K <CR> You thrust at the merchant and hit him in the left leg causing a little bleeding. The Merchant swings his two-handed sword and you, but you dodge aside with ease. >K <CR> You swing at the merchant and miss. The Serf has left the area. A Scholar has entered the area. >K <CR> You thrust at the merchant and strike him solidly in the abdomen. A Peasant has entered the area. The merchant swings his two-hander and strikes you in the head. You have -3 hit points left. Unfortunately, you have died! This example demonstrates several principles of combat. As can be seen, the merchant attacks much slower than our hero does, due to his large weapon. Secondly, the other things in the world around our hero proceed along a semi-normal course. Third, two-handed swords are very deadly. 3. Spell Combat Spell combat works on the exact same principle, things will continue to happen in the environment around you as you attack/defend. The only difference are the spell commands to do the attacking. The command to cast a spell is CAST <Spell> AT <Target>. So, instead of typing KILL MERCHANT. You would have typed CAST FIREBALL AT MERCHANT. The targeting system is the same way, once you attack or look at something, it will be the target of your attack. The abbreviation for the CAST command is C, so the command can be parsed down to C FIREBALL AT MERCHANT on the first casting, and then C FIREBALL on the ones following. The ONLY word that is NEEDED is the "AT" before the target of the spell. The command C FIREBALL MERCHANT will NOT work, it must be C FIREBALL AT MERCHANT. The Lost Lands will accept spell names that are abbreviated. This works exactly like the way object/creature names will be parsed down, so read section VI before using this feature. VI. The Command Summary 1. The Command Prompt The way in which you tell your character how to act is through the command prompt mentioned above. The command prompt recognizes a form of "english," that is, it will seem to understand things that you and I would say. For example, if you typed: >LOOK <CR> The Lost Lands would respond with a display of what exactly is in your room. 2. How Real-Time Affects You The real-time play should not affect the players that much. If you are typing while the computer does something, it will tell you what you see, and your prompt will return with what you had on it. This will not slow down your typing at all; The Lost Lands catches every letter you type. An example is noted below: >LOOK AT T A Priest enters the area. >LOOK AT THE NOBL A Guard exits the area. >LOOK AT THE NOBLEMAN <CR> During the whole example our user typed in "LOOK AT THE NOBLEMAN" only once; his input was not affected by the computer telling him what was going on around him. In this way, the computer contains a true real-time system where the player knows what is happening and more importantly, when it is happening. 3. Constructing TLL Commands The game takes a form of pseudo-english, as stated before. This pseudo-english is formed by using the VERB- NOUN combinations that are used in virtually all text- based adventure games. We will examine each part of the command sentence below: a) Verbs The verbs used in The Lost Lands are the key to manipulating your character. All verbs will be listed below; they are the bulk of the commands. All verbs will be parsed down to four characters by TLL. For you, the player, this means that you only have to type the first four letters of any command for it to take effect. For example: >CATALOG Is the exact same as: >CATA Some verbs have even shorter abbreviations due to the bulk of their usage. These abbreviations will be explained in the command summary. b) Nouns (Objects) Although the verbs tell your character "what" to do, the nouns tell you what to do it to. All nouns are read fully. This may sound like it will add time to your command entries. Actually, once learned correctly, this full-parsing will speed up your command entry quite a bit. The theory behind it is the game reads in as much as you give it. For example, if the room contained the following creatures: [Please Note: The numerals in parenthesis added after each noble is for example only, these numbers will NOT be displayed during the real game]. You see a Noble (1), Nobleman (2), Farmer (3), Noble (4). And you typed: >LOOK AT NOBLE Your command summary would show you the description of the Noble (1) listed on the display. If you had typed: >LOOK AT THE NOBLEM You would have seen Nobleman (2). This is because the Nobleman (2) is the first creature with the series of letters "NOBLEM." Since the Noble (1) was not a match, it moved on to the second creature and found a match. This feature can be exploited further. What if you typed: >LOOK AT THE N Your display would appear with the description of Noble (1)! This feature comes in extremely useful. How do you look at Noble (4)? The way in which you look at a creature that is the same, but not near the begining of the line is by using a number at the end to distinguish which one you are talking about. Same example; but if you typed: >LOOK AT THE N 2 You would have the description of Nobleman (2). If you typed: >LOOK AT THE N 3 You would have the description of Noble (4). Again, the game searches first for the THIRD OCCURRENCE of a creature with the letter series "N." NOTE: During all of the preceding examples, the objects being acted upon were creatures. Please understand that this naming convention works for both creatures and items. Also note, that when manipulating multiple worded objects, such as a "Wooden Shield", you must remember to type the object name beginning with the FIRST letter or word. For example, type: >GET WOOD Instead of: >GET SHIELD c) Adjectives Adjectives are thrown away by The Lost Lands. In the above noted examples, we used them to form better "english" sentences. In play, you probably will not want to type AT THE. For example, to The Lost Lands: >LOOK AT THE NOBLEMAN Is the exact same as: >LOOK NOBLEMAN 4. Brief Command Summary Below is a partial listing of commands you may use in The Lost Lands. This is just a VERY short listing. A complete reference to the numerous game commands is contained in the GAME COMMANDS document. These commands listed below will allow you to briefly explore the game. Again, for a description of the (over 50!) game commands, Please refer to the GAME COMMANDS document. Full Command Abbrev. Brief Description ------------ ------- ----------------- LOOK L Examine something INVENTORY INV Show your sack CHARACTER CHAR Show your character STATUS STAT Show your status STAMINA HP or STAM Show your hit points SPELLS Show your spells REST Rest your character GOLD Show your gold CAST C Cast a spell KILL K Attack another creature TAKE GET Pick something up DROP Drop something QUIT Quit the game TIME Show time left VI. Conclusion Remember, this document is only a primer, explaining the syntax of The Lost Lands. For character generation information, adventure secrets, maps and quest descriptions consult the other documents in this release. A printed hint book for players is also in the works (Ask your SysOp).