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WOMBAT.MAN
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1988-11-03
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Wombat Manual Page: 1
THE GOLDEN WOMBAT OF DESTINY
by
Huw Collingbourne
* * * IMPORTANT * * *
... a brief guide to starting the game ...
FILES NEEDED ON THE DISK:
<< NECESSARY FILES >>
Your copy of the game disk MUST include all of the following
files. If any of them are missing, the game won't work!
WOMBAT.EXE ( the main game file )
R.DAT
O.DAT
T.DAT
REC.DAT ( Data files )
<< OPTIONAL FILES >>
There are several optional files which you may wish to use such
'Setup.Com' and 'Read.Exe'. None of these is essential to the
game but you should read the file 'Read.txt' before deleting any
file from your game disk. To do this, simply enter the word READ
at the Dos prompt. You should make a complete backup of the disk
BEFORE altering or deleting any files from the disk.
STARTING THE GAME:
"The Golden Wombat of Destiny" is an all text adventure game. It
is recommended that you make a special self-booting disk when
playing it ( see section headed "Creating A Game Disk" later in
this documentation ). However, it may be copied onto any floppy
or hard disk and started by typing:
Wombat
at the Dos prompt. Thereafter, you are on your own!
NOTES ON THIS MANUAL:
You are not expected to wade through this lot if you don't want
to. You may find it handy to refer to the accepted vocabulary and
the editing commands which you may use. The rest is for reference
only ( e.g. if you want to change the colours ). However, you
should at least read the notes on SAVING A GAME and also the
notes about MEMORY RESIDENT PROGRAMS.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Wombat Manual Page: 2
VOCABULARY:
THE WORDS YOU CAN USE:
The parser is not one of the most sophisticated the world has
ever known ( I'm working on that one at the moment! ). But to be
truthful, neither is it one of the least sophisticated the
computer adventure game has ever known either!
It understands a fairly rigidly fixed grammar and doesn't have a
lot of time for unnecessary adjectives. It rarely accepts
plurals. Although 'trees' would be OK, 'wombats' and 'mice' most
definitely are not!
You may only use one complete command at a time. "Put the small
bottle on the ground" is fine, but "Put the small bottle on the
ground and open it." isn't. This goes for taking and dropping
things too. Get everything one at a time and don't try the old
trick "take all" (often used by sneaky adventurers to fool a game
into generating a list of significant objects - 'You can't take
the axe, you can't take the sword' etc.), because this game
doesn't let you get away with that!
If you don't care for all these restrictions, there are,
nevertheless, some positive points too. Unlike many other games,
The Golden Wombat will rarely reject an input command simply
because there are one or two words that it does not understand.
If possible, it will always try to make some sense of input
although this may mean that it has to check that you really did
mean to say what it thinks you meant. For example, you might type
in:
"Listen to the acrobatic little wombat."
The game will politely(ish) inform you that it didn't understand
all the words you used, but:
"Do you want to listen to the wombat? ...Y/N"
If you type 'Y', then the noises the wombat is making will be
revealed in all their wonderment. If you type 'N', then you will
be free to go on and do something more boring. If you type in "I
wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vale and
hill," you are likely to generate a less sympathetic response!
Wombat Manual Page: 3
This is a list of some of the verbs which The Golden Wombat of
Destiny currently understands:
break, drink, drop, eat, examine, feed, feel, get,
give, go, hit, kick, kill, listen, look, open, pick
up, press, pull, push, put, read, shout, shut, smash,
smell, take, throw, touch, wake, yell.
These commands may be used in various forms. All of the following
examples would be quite acceptable (though few of them would
actually be useful!):
"Throw the lamp at the door."
"Put the mud in the keyhole."
"Give the vegetation to the mouse."
"Look inside the box"
"Listen to the tree."
"Kill the wombat with the sign."
Some of the words mentioned in the text may not be understood
when you type them in. In particular, the room names and various
locations are not in the usable vocabulary. Thus, although you
may be told that there is a 'turret' or a 'tower' near the
'Ruined Area', none of these descriptions will be understood. Any
semblance of intelligence in this game (artificial or otherwise)
is purely accidental!
You may type commands in upper or lower case. Punctuation is
ignored, as are all numerals and extra spaces between words.
"PUt the Mo2USe Into the Box!", although inelegant and also
rather silly, would be OK.
Wombat Manual Page: 4
ABBREVIATED COMMANDS:
Abbreviations which the game understands are all outlined in the
Instruction window which you should view at the start of the game
(Type 'Y' when asked if you want instructions). Here is a brief
summary of the most important ones:
'Q' : quit the game.
'L' : look.
'I' : Print an inventory (the things you are carrying).
'N','S','E','W','U','D' :
Compass directions, plus 'U' for 'Go Up' and 'D' for
'Go Down'. They get you around the game.
'Save', 'Restore' :
saves a game or returns to the point at which you
saved it. ( see notes which follow ).
SAVING or RESTORING A GAME:
You may Save a game at any time by typing the word 'save'. You
will then be prompted for a save file name. You may restore a
previously saved game by typing 'restore'.
The game is saved on the default save drive. This will be the
same drive that your game disk is in unless you specify another
drive when you first load the game. This may be done in the 'Help
Window' which may be entered by typing 'Y' when asked if you'd
like to read the Help notes or change the save drive in the
opening screen.
Alternatively, it is possible to specify the save drive when
first loading the game. This is done with a single parameter
which must be a letter between A and D. For example, 'Wombat b'
will set 'B' as the save drive. The opening screen will be
bypassed when the game is loaded in this way.
The extension '.Sav' is automatically added to the file name
which you specify when saving. If you experience any problems
with the save/restore feature, you should carefully read the
notes on Memory Resident Programs and on 'What To Do In case Of
Problems' in this manual.
Wombat Manual Page: 5
INPUT FOR LAZY TYPISTS:
In addition to the abbreviated commands, there are several other
ways in which you may reduce the amount of typing you have to do
in The Golden Wombat.
^F: To repeat your last command, type Control-F. (hold down
the control button and the F). The entire command is
repeated and may then be edited in the usual way.
^D: You may also repeat (and edit) a command by typing
Control-D. In this case, your previous command will be
brought up one letter at a time, which allows you to
alter it. For example, you say "Take the wombat". You
are told "The wombat isn't here." You hold down
Control-D. One letter a time "Take the " appears on
screen once more. At this point you stop holding
Control-D and enter some other word in place of
"wombat".
EDITING COMMANDS:
To edit a command that you've typed in ( or retrieved with ^D or
^F ), use the delete-backspace key |<--| rather than the cursor
movement arrows.
SCORE:
Much as in life, there is no scoring in The Golden Wombat.
However, for those of you who may be impatient for the day of
judgment, a summary of your progress is provided in the closing
screen of the game.
THE POINT:
The point of The Golden Wombat is Destiny itself. Obviously.
You'll know when you've found it. Possibly.
Wombat Manual Page: 6
SCREEN COLOURS:
I wrote and tested this game on an Olivetti M-24 and a Compaq
III, each of which has a colour graphics adaptor and a monochrome
screen. The default colours look OK on a mono screen such as the
Olivetti's (or AT&T) with colour graphics card. Since the default
colours may look pretty yuck! on other computer systems, I have
allowed the colours to be configured to your own tastes. Please
note, that (contrary to what has been said in Public Domain
journals) the ability to change the colours of the game does NOT
mean that a colour monitor is required!
THE SETUP PROGRAM:
This is where you alter the Wombat's colours.
To start this program, enter:
SetUp
at the Dos prompt. SetUp shows you just what all the chosen
colours will look like as you actually choose them. When you are
satisfied, it writes a special Colour definition file called
'Colours.txt' which will re-define all the colours in the game
itself. You may quit Setup at any time by pressing Control-C or
Control-Break.
COLOURS.TXT:
Colours.txt is a purely optional file. If it's not there the game
will work anyway but it will use the default colours.
TEXT-MODE WOMBAT
The Setup program also allows you to play the Wombat in pure text
mode. This means that you won't be shown a separate window at the
top of the screen containing details of location and moves. I
have added this option since some computers may have no graphics
card or a display which is unable to use the windowing feature.
In general, I suggest that you select text mode ONLY if you have
already tried playing the game and found that you have problems
with the display.
PROBLEMS WITH ALTERING COLOURS
You can alter colours as often as you like. This causes no
incompatibility problems as regards restoring games which have
previously been saved. However, if you restore games that were
saved as text mode while using the default windowing setup (or
vice versa), you may hit some snags. The saved game may try to
write to windows that are no longer there or write to a full
screen which is now divided into windows. The simple answer is,
if you choose text mode, then stick to it!
Wombat Manual Page: 7
DOING IT THE HARD WAY
You can manually create a file called Colours.txt using any
standard text editor or word processor which saves in ASCII
format. I don't advise this. But I'm providing details anyway-
for instance, you may want to run it in text mode but alter the
colours even so. If you must use this method, be sure to enter
one number or character per line and not omit any lines. Probably
the easiest way to alter colours for text mode wombat is to set
the game to text mode using the SetUp program then manually
adjust only those colours you don't care for.
The first line contains an upper case character. All other lines
contain an integer colour code as follows.
Line 1: 'C' or 'T' (specifying CGA or Text mode)
Line 2: Integer( 0 to 15 ) = Main text colour
Line 3: " " = Background
Line 4: " " = Highlight
Line 5: " " = Top Frame
Line 6: " " = Line around top Frame
Line 7: " " = Text in top window
Line 8: " " = Background of top window
Line 9: " " = Intro text
Line 10: " = Intro background
Line 11: " = Subtitle( version number etc.)
Line 12: " = Intro frame
Line 13: " = Line around intro frame
Line 14: " = Highlight in intro help window
Line 15: " = Game name in Intro
Line 16: " = Help frame
Line 17: " = Help background
Line 18: " = Line around help window
Possible integer values to be entered in lines 2 to 18 are:
0 - black; 1 - blue; 2 - green; 3 - cyan; 4 - red; 5 - magenta;
6 - brown; 7 - light grey; 8 - dark grey; 9 - light blue;
10 - light green; 11 - light cyan; 12 - light red;
13 - light magenta; 14 - yellow; 15 - white.
Wombat Manual Page: 8
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* * * WARNING * * *
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MEMORY RESIDENT PROGRAMS:
The saving and restoring of games may not work if memory resident
programs are loaded. Some common examples of such programs are
'friendly interfaces' to DOS and utilities which may be called up
on top of other programs. Even bits of DOS itself can alter
memory, so beware of using MODE or other Dos programs.
Programs to watch out for include:
SideKick, Windows, Gem, SuperKey, ProKey,
Spoolers, RamDisks, International keyboard
programs (KeybUK.Com, Keybit.com etc.),
Networking software, Desqview.
This does not mean that Save and Restore will never work when
using these programs. In fact, most of them should not affect
saving and restoring done in any one game session. However,
because The Wombat saves using absolute memory locations, Memory
Resident Programs may screw up restores done at earlier sessions.
This is because the resident program may load itself into a bit
of memory where The Wombat expects to find the things it has
saved.
If you absolutely cannot bear to be without resident proggies,
then at least be consistent. If you always load the programs in
exactly the same order and don't make any alterations to their
previous configurations, then your saves should restore without
problem. To ensure that this is the case, you might like to
create a Batch file using an ordinary text editor. An example of
such a file might be:
superdrv b:
sk
wombat
The batch file must then be saved with a '.Bat' extension Then,
instead of loading the programs separately, you need only enter
the name of the batch file at the Dos prompt (for example, you
would enter 'Wom' for a file called 'Wom.Bat').
If you are unsure whether resident programs are likely to affect
your saves then << Always save your current position BEFORE
restoring a game saved from an earlier session >>. If the restore
fails you should be able to restore your more recently saved game
without problem.
Wombat Manual Page: 9
If a restore has failed, you should get an error message to tell
you so. You will then be given the opportunity to restore a
different file ( the one you just saved! ), to restart the game
or to quit. If you restart the game, the Golden Wombat is
reloaded just as though you'd started it up for the first time.
Note: some programs may 'alter' the state of memory so that even
when they have been unloaded, they can still cause problems with
restoring a game. If you have been using a program which causes
this problem, the best thing to do is to reboot before playing
The Wombat. Programs which do this kind of thing should be
frowned upon and despised as being definitely a bit on the
naughty side - (and you thought hypocrisy had gone out of
fashion!)
CREATING A GAME DISK
If you have any doubts about whether or not you use any memory
resident software which might clash with Wombat, you might
consider creating a special 'self-booting' game disk. To do this,
format a disk using the command 'Format /s' (explained in your
Dos manual). Then copy all the files needed by Wombat using the
command 'Copy a:*.* b:' (on a twin disk PC this command copies
all files from the a: to the b: drive. On a single disk PC
exactly the same command will copy all files back onto a new disk
in the a: drive - even though 'b:' was specified). Now create an
autoexec.bat file using a text editor or by entering the
following command at the 'A>' prompt:
Copy con autoexec.bat
wombat
^Z
( The ^Z is added by holding down the Control key and pressing
the Z key ).
Now, to load the game, simply place the disk into the a:
drive and re-boot or switch off the computer and switch it back
on again. This self-booting disk will load no extraneous programs
so you should never experience any memory-resident clashes.
Wombat Manual Page: 10
WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF PROBLEMS...
* If the program crashes for any reason, check -
a) that all required files are on the current disk and
directory. These include all the data files with a '.dat'
extension. The required files are listed at the beginning of
the manual.
b) are all the files valid? An invalid file is one with the
same name as one of the required files but which isn't the
one the program expects. An 'O.Dat' from an earlier version
of the Wombat would be an invalid file, for example. In this
case, the Wombat will try to use this file even though its
contents are not what it's expecting. The Wombat's responses
to errors of this type are unpredictable...!
c) have you read the warnings about memory resident
programs? Take heed.
d) you may have a dodgy disk!
e) you've found a bug. Turn off the machine. Swear very
loudly at me. Try again.
ERROR MESSAGES
It is possible that the program may terminate with an error
message. Normally these messages should be self-explanatory (e.g.
"Disk full"). If you get a message that is not clear, it may be
worth bearing in mind the following: Errors numbered between 1
and 199 are IO errors. Errors numbered above that are 'Fatal
errors'. Many IO errors may be recovered from. You will be given
a message and the game will continue. Some errors inevitably
cause program termination. For example, the program will halt if
one of the data files cannot be located.
The error numbers are standard Dos error numbers as listed in the
Technical Reference Manual which, unfortunately, you (and I) are
most unlikely to own. Common IO errors may involve trying to save
or restore files that don't exist, restoring a corrupt file,
reading in data that is incorrect (may affect files with the .dat
extension or Colours.txt), trying to save a game on a disk which
is full, unformatted, protected by a tab, in the drive the wrong
side up, formatted for a different machine (formatted for 1.2Mb
but used on a 360K drive, for example). If the cause of the
problem isn't clear, check your disk, check that you have all the
correct data files on the current drive/directory. Check your
hardware. Run 'Chkdsk' on your game disk (see your Dos manual for
guidance). Most IO errors can be corrected if you take the time
and trouble to track down the cause and rectify it!
Wombat Manual Page: 11
N.B.....
The Golden Wombat is a public domain adventure game. It is
absolutely NOT 'user supported' or 'shareware'. That is to say, I
am happy for anyone who wants to play it to do so without paying
for the privilege. Naturally, some clubs, bulletin boards and
commercial organisations may charge a fee to cover costs of
copying and distribution. In the case of a commercial concern, I
accept that they may charge a bit extra too so they can make a
profit. But please bear in mind that I am the person who did all
the work and even so, I'm giving it away. You may, therefore,
feel justifiably annoyed if somebody charges you a great deal
more than the costs of media and postage for the game. If you
find yourself in this position, I suggest you kick up a stink
with the people you bought it from (I emphasise again, I don't
receive any money from anybody whether they be 'end users' or
distributors).
If somebody cons you that the Wombat is Shareware or if you
are ever asked for a 'registration fee', you have been well and
truly had. In this case, please contact me as well as the people
who sold it to you.
<< CHANGES TO PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF THE GOLDEN WOMBAT >>
Version 1.1
* Bug fix done to improve save/restore. You still need to
be cautious about memory resident programs, however.
* It is now possible to load the game with a parameter to
specify the drive on which you'd like to save the game.
The parameter should be in the form of a single letter
between A and D. For example, entering:
'Wombat C'
at the Dos prompt sets the save drive to 'C'. The
opening screen of the game is bypassed when it is
loaded in this way.
* In case of a bad restore you are now given three
choices - restore another file, restart the game, quit.
* The SetUp program: you can now break out of SetUp using
Control-C or Control-Break. No file will be written.
Wombat Manual Page: 12
Version 1.2
* Overlay files removed. The Golden Wombat program now resides
in a single program file - Wombat.exe. This means that the
game requires more memory to run (around 250K) but there are
no longer any disk swaps during game play.
* Although there is still no score, a comment and a 'ranking'
have been added at the conclusion of the game to give you
some indication of your progress. Note that ranks are not
given lightly, so don't despond if your efforts seem to be
poorly rewarded.
* Control-F is now the way to repeat a command - not
Control-R.
* The game may now be run in pure 'text mode' for those with
computers which cannot use the Wombat's windowing. This must
be set using the Setup program.
* The game now clears the screen on exit. This was added by
request - I'm told it's handy for anyone who sees their boss
approaching when playing the game at work! ...not that I
approve of that kind of thing, of course.
* One of the puzzles has been made slightly more difficult. I
realised that you Wombatters were being given an easy time-
and that was never my intention!
Wombat Manual Page: 13
NOTES FOR NOVICE ADVENTURERS:
* Make a map.
* When you enter somewhere for the first time, you'll be given a
full description of your surroundings. If you enter the same
place later on, you'll only get the name of the place. The full
description may be recalled if you type 'l' or 'look'.
* 'i' is a very useful command. It prints a list of all the
things you are carrying.
* All of the puzzles may be solved from information given in the
game itself. True, some of them can be solved using other sources
of information (some people have resorted to books on Antipodean
wildlife and the Works of Shakespeare) but this is not really
necessary. Often you'll need to find a clue in order to solve a
problem.
Have fun....
Huw
