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Robert J. Deutsch 1402 Liberty St. Apt# 302 Allentown, PA (1) 18102 *** WELCOME TO THE GREAT ULTIZURKIAN UNDERLAND *** A World-Simulation RPG by The Mach Gryphon SYSTEM NOTES, PLAYER'S GUIDE For: The Great Ultizurkian Underland (Version 5.0 - Final) Hi! The game you are about to play took two years to develop! I hope you enjoy it. I have worked diligently to try and make the best top-down style graphics RPG I could, and this, so far is it. The game is immensely sophisticated and contains over 1,000 tiles of colorful variety, dozens of characters to interact realistically with, and a motion control which keeps NPC's and monsters moving realistically! It includes a day/night cycle, innumerable magic spells, artifacts quests, surprises, you name it! You will explore many levels of a mysterious underground world where an entire race of people live! Talk with Lord Baldwin of the upper level! Convince Leomund the great Archmage that you are worthy of his spells! Combat dozens of monsters! Watch as you can open and close doors! Hear the lids of chests pop open and closed! Watch lovely waterfalls and flows of lava moving! The list of features goes on and on! You gotta play it to believe it! It is a deep and complex adventure, with an unforgettable graphical ending in which you confront the mysterious Rainbow Lord in his throneroom, and defy an evil so bizzare that no one even knows what it is! Will YOU discover the truth? Find out! I am currently working on Ultizurk III: "The Guildmaster's Quest" which will be an even more amazing affair. I am always researching new ideas and techniques. In the current game, you will be able to visit the first four levels of the dungeon. If you register $15 dollars, you will have the complete game, access to all levels, as well as a SAVE and RESTORE game feature. Just send $15 dollars to: Robert J. Deutsch 1402 Liberty St. #302 Allentown, PA 18102 Trust me, it is well worth the fifteen dollars! I went quite out of my way to make this a truly unique game. If you get the registered version, remember to first SAVE a game before RESTORing it, or it could lock up. Your comments are always very welcome! Please feel free to write me at the above address. It is my firm resolve to provide the best shareware at the lowest prices. Thank you very much! Your registration will be well-invested in further research into this form of game design and more. Thanks! -Rob *** SYSTEM NOTES *** SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: You will need at least a 386SX PC compatible machine with 16mhz speed, MS-DOS 5.0, and 2 megabytes RAM. We suggest a 486DX/33, but the game is alright on a 386SX/16. ************ FINE TUNING FOR YOUR SYSTEM ********************* If you run the game on a machine faster than a 386SX/16, the people will run around like ants on a hot stove! Unless you are nuclear-powered, you don't want to fight monsters like that! Well, you can manually adjust the speed at which things move for realism. This feature has been added so you can fine-tune the speed to any machine to insure maximum realism. Adjust the movement tempo as follows: When in the game, press SHIFT plus the _ underline key. You will see three numbers. Good numbers for a 386SX/16 are: 1100,2,4 (Enter with commas) Good numbers for a 486DX/33 are: 9400,12,10 (Enter with commas) Using these as a guide, you can fine-tune the game if you are running it on other than a 16 or 33 mhz machine. Simply enter three numbers using commas. They needn't be exact. Here's how to configure best: The first number is a ratio that controls how fast people and monsters will move in RELATION to your character -- when he is walking as opposed to standing still. You can determine an accurate value by watching as NPC's walk nearby. Walk a bit, stop, walk again. The NPC's should continue at the same pace, whether you are walking or standing still. If not, try a higher or lower value. A lower value moves them faster. A higher value moves them slower. (2) The second number controls the speed of moving tiles. Use the above reference to modify it, probably a value between 2 and 12. The third number is for the various grandfather clocks you will find. Again, experiment with values between 2-12. They will not affect the actual time in the game, but merely adjust the realism of the tick and pendulum for different machines. We have provided this function to insure beyond doubt that your game will run on any machine of any configuration. Once you have these numbers set, they will be remebered in future play sessions unless you elect to change them again with the _ command. In fact, if your friend is comming over to play and you have a 486, try putting in the 386 numbers! A good laugh is certain! You can always change it back to a realistic speed. This feature works in either the unregistered or registered version. ***************************************************************************** *** EXTENDED MEMORY THE EASY WAY! *** We further reccommend that you include a CACHE system for your hard disk. This has an immensely good effect on the game, and in fact is the means by which the games uses extended memory. We did this because we feel most people are familiar with caches such as SMARTDRV, and, as always, strive to make the game as easy as pie to set up and use. You don't really need the cache, but the difference in speed is worth it! Although any cache will work, we strongly recommend the Microsoft cache that is used with Windows version 3.1 You can set it to run by including it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV It should default set to about 1 meg. That's good. Also, if you like, you can configure it anywhere between 512K-2000K. This will speed things up, especially with the inventory control. We suggest to remove all un-necessary TSR's and drivers from your config.sys and autoexec.bat files, however, the game is not hard on memory and likely will not have problems with other configurations. We have designed it to run under almost any configuration, and the Underland is not too hard on memory. Run CHKDSK. If you have at least 500k available memory, it should run fine. The installed program will require about 2.5 megabytes of hard drive space. It has been tested with everything except hard disk compression utilities. Although it might work, we would recommend not to use a disk compression utility. It will also help speed the game. (3) You can also run this in Windows, or with EMM386 installed. But it does not use EMM386 and we suggest you not use it. Also, unless you have a really fast machine, use the DOSSHELL or the DOS prompt, exited from windows to run the game. You do not need a boot disk unless you use many TSR's. Remember, for a small fee of $15 dollars, you will get the full-blown version of the game, with SAVE and RESTORE game features, plus you will be able to enter the terrible Dungeon 5, where Prince John the Mad Knight is! And beyond! Unto the great confrontation with The Rainbow Lord, in his fabulous throneroom! I have carefully designed this game that each successive level is more incredible than the last - you don't see repeat stuff - everything is radically different from level to level. And I promise it will be invested in even more powerful equipment (like a scanner and CAD programs) to make Ultizurk III: "The Guildmaster's Quest" a program that will rival commercialware! I am a serious programmer, and very much appreciate not only your registration, but your comments as well. This Great Ultizurkian Underland took me nearly two years to develop. I hope thou enjoy it as much as I hath enjoyed developing it for you! -Dr. Dungeon -In The Castle of -The Mach Gryphon ***************************************************************************** (1) GREAT ULTIZURKIAN UNDERLAND -- The Story so far... The great Grandmaster Adventurer found himself on a strange world in the Arcturian star system, in a bizarre contest with another Grandmaster. That tale was chronicled in the minstrel's song of: ULTIZURK II: "The Shadow Master" Our hero emerged victorious, after helping the residents of the planet with their water problem. Now he was home again, promoted to Guildmaster, the highest honor and level an adventurer can achieve. And so, you went to your quarters to rest, but found a mysterious old tome upon the floor. You picked it up, read it, then feel asleep. You do not know if perhaps you yet dream, for you've found yourself in a fantastic underground world of huge proportions. And there is a terrible problem here. But no one knows what it is! Your vacation is over. *** PLAYGUIDE *** ***MAKE SURE THE CAPS AND NUMLOCK KEYS ARE ON!*** Just run the file ULTIZURK to begin the game! You'll see other EXE's in the list, but it'll crash if you don't run only ULTIZURK to play. When you are done looking at the title screen, tap ENTER or ESC. You will be taken to the main menu. When first running the game, you should select V for view introduction. It tells about the Underland and how you got here. When it is done playing, you will be back at the title screen. ESC again returns you to the main menu. Now select S to start a new game. If you type Q for quest onward by mistake, it could crash until you have a SAVEd game, possible with the REGISTERED version. After the game loads, you will see a viewport where the Guildmaster has arrived. Everything happens in this viewport. Underneath is his statistics and a quick-list of commands. The stats line contains the following: LEV:1 HP:65 HM:65 EXP:0 MANA:15 AC:0 ATC:0 AMMO:0 GOLD:5 These are abbreviations for: Level, Hit Points, Hitpoints Maximum, Experience, Mana Points, Armor Class, Attack Class, Amount of Ammo, and Amount of Gold. Level is an over-all indicator of how powerful you are. It also controls how many hitpoints you have, as well as mana. Hit points are your current energy. It will go down in combat, but can be restored by sleeping (if you have food in your pack), or by magical means. You can also restore a bit by eating. In the jungle dungeon area, you can eat as much as you want from the trees. You will also find nourishing berries in the game. Hitmax is controlled by level. It shows the maximum hit points you can have. This also can be modified by magical means, and will rise as your level rises. You will discover early in the game how to move up levels. Experience is an over-all measure of how much you have accomplished. Mana is like hit points, but determines how much magical energy you have for casting spells. It will go up when you rest to a maximum determined by level, or can be adjusted with certain herbs you will find in your quest. It will always restore to full when you sleep at an Inn. Armor Class is a value from 0-15, with 15 the strongest. It determines how much you will resist enemy blows, and is determined by what type of helm, shield and armor you are wearing. Some people claim there is magical armor, but most Arms Masters regard this as hogwash, since it supposedly raises one's AC to 18. (2) Attack Class determines how powerful your current weapon is, and gives an indication of how hard you will hit an enemy. Many variables in combat can modify this somewhat. Ammunition shows how many projectiles you have for a ranged weapon. These are kept in a seperate quiver, and will not clutter your inventory pack. Gold is how many gold pieces you have in your purse, also seperate from the main inventory pack. *** COMMANDS *** The keyboard inputs are very intuitive and easy to use. Please remember to keep NUM and CAPS lock ON. At every step of every command, a display line will appear at the bottom of the screen listing available options. We firmly believe the player should have it easy with inputting commands, and save his problem solving for the quest! The next game, Ultizurk III, will have full mouse support. We feel, however, that you will find our keyboard "hotkey" method in the current game to be extremely intuitive and easy to use. We are also running a survey on several on-line services and have determined that a similar mixture of players have preferences for either keyboard or mouse. For this reason, future games like Ultizurk III will include both. Again, we are dedicated to making the game interface easy! Movement is controlled with the KEYPAD arrow keys. For now, you can move in four directions. In COMBAT, however, you can ATTACK in all eight, using keys 7,9,1 and 3 as well as 4,6,8 and 2. L-Look: When tapped, you'll see a red cursor. Move it with the same arrows as for walking. The cursor will move all over the screen. Tap L again to get a description of anything in the land. You can continue to move the cursor and LOOK as long as you wish, tapping L, all over the viewport. When done looking, tap the ESC key to exit look mode. Unlike most adventures, you will get detailed descriptions, often accompanied by a comment by the Guildmaster. Many clues are found with look. We have designed them to be informative and often humorous. This is especially interesting with any moving things, like people or monsters. You can actually get several descriptions of a single thing. For example, try LOOKING at the girls on level 6 in all their steps, and also the walking reapers on 4. They are quite humorous! Also remember to LOOK in open chests, and BLOODSPLATS if you kill a monster. Many neat items are found in this manner! G-Get: When tapped, you'll be asked to enter a direction. Simply tap an arrow keypad key. If you have room in your inventory, and are next to the item, you'll pick it up and it will be in your inventory. This is also true of getting things from open chests, cabinets, and other containers, as well as any holes you might dig with your shovel. (3) T-Talk: This works just like get, but move next to a person beforehand. You will enter talk mode and see a nice portrait of the person. Ask his NAME or JOB, and BYE to exit. (Caps lock ON, please.) Many more things will they say in red highlight, and later in your quest you'll find even more things that the people can talk about. Just type what you see hilighted in RED, or any special topics you might learn from others. NPC interaction is an important part of this game. There are quite a few people here in the Underland! We think you will enjoy the delightfully different characters in this game. Each has a unique personality. U-Use: This is the do it all command. You can open chests, close them, open and close doors, sit on certain chairs, throw switches on and off, pick fruit from trees and bushes, get bones from a skeleton, dig holes, read books and scrolls, and even climb up glaciers! (With the right equipment readied.) Using stuff on land asks you to then enter a direction. In your inventory, some items, like a watch or sextant, get used right away. But if an item in your inventory needs to act upon something on the land, you will be prompted. We made it easy to do! Just tap the direction of what you want to USE it on when asked. Items in hand, like a shovel, are used immediately, without needing to open your pack. For example, if you have a SHOVEL armed in your hand where you usually hold a weapon, you can USE the ground in front of you to dig a hole, then LOOK inside! It's very realistic! Instances where you need to GET rather than USE have been made to be obvious, so you should have no trouble with confusing these two. A-Attack: Weapon readied in hand, you approach a monster, or he approaches you. Hit A for Attack. You'll see a printout on the screen bottom as to what you are attacking with. Just tap in a direction of which way you're attacking, and whamo! Your Guildmasterly senses will also detect how many hit points the monster has. Remember, you can attack in all eight directions, and there are also some ranged weapons. (Just tap in the direction of the distant monster.) And don't forget that these monsters fight back! If the screen flashes red, it means you're going critical, so move away quick! I-Inventory Control: When tapped, your inventory will open, graphically displaying your items. A little pointer will appear, which looks much like a professor at a school would use. Again using the arrow keypad, move it around. You will also see a new list of options appear at the screen bottom. Move the rod over an item to select it, then: L-Look: Describes the item currently pointed to. U-Uses the item. (Watches, sextants, keys, read book, etc.) D-Drops the item. Get near any open chest. P-Put on armor -- When selected, you'll be asked Helm, Shield Weapon, Armor. Just tap in the first letter. If you already have something there being worn, the items will automatically switch places. Really! T-Take off armor -Like above, but will remove the armor as long as there's a blank spot in your backpack. Since items switch automatically if something is already worn, you don't really need this, but it's nice to have anyway. After all, you won't want to be wearing 100 pounds of armor while visiting the girls of level six! ESC -Key -Close your backpack. (4) S-Savegame: Saves your current game progress. (Registered version) R-Restore : Restores a previous savegame. This will happen automatically whenever you begin play with (Q)uest Onward from the menu screen when you begin a play session, if you have a saved game, and the registered version. Please don't (Q)uest onward without first saving a game, or it'll crash and you'll need to start your quest over! Y-Yell: You will learn many magic spells from Leomund. They are words shouted in a deep, resonant voice, and will burn some mana. Make sure to shout them in a strong, resonant voice! For example: nu si ta will be ignored by the mystic forces. But NU SI TA is bound to work! (Now really!) When selected, simply type one of the magic words you have learned. For a list of spells and their words, USE the spellbook that Leomund will give you. Talking with Leomund you'll learn everything you need to know about spells. You will also find that the herbalist on Level One knows much about herbal magic. Magic is endless in this game! Remember, many mages can be QUITE eccentric, and odd at times, so be prepared when you meet this famous Archmage! Leomund attempts to simulate what an actual old time mage may have been like. We have done much research on this. An actual "mage" was usually an alchemist who was either working on a way to find eternal youth, or a method to turn base metals into gold. Leomund's great palace was rendered with immpecable detail. We feel that Leomund, like many characters in the game, is among the most interesting and realistic NPC's you'll ever meet in a game. Really! Q-Quit: When you are done adventuring, use this command to exit the game. Be sure to save your current game first, as it does not automatically save. (5) *** PLAYING TIPS *** You will discover quickly that all is not right in the dungeon. The people are forming strange guilds. The trouble in the land is not apparent. It is vital that you speak with all whom you meet. The people are very busy and will be seen walking around the dungeon, even those not in view will continue to walk. Listen carefully to what Leomund says about the LOCATE spell. It can aid you in tracking down the residents. Many times they will stop and ask if you'd like to speak, or you can chase them down. Always remember that the game is designed with realism in mind. Do what you would in real life. At least 50% of programming time was dedicated to researching the whole arena of realism. Two years of dedicated work have been spent to bring you this level of realism, that you may enjoy all the more your stay in the Underland. Do not worry too much about level. You will progress as you quest. Even at a low level, you will find many other options to help. When you reach the Library, make sure to read everything (USE). Great heroes have left a lot of advice there in scrolls and parchments about dungeon warfare. There are also many other neat things in this massive library area. Numerous people in the dungeon will tell you where it is as you quest. Look at everything. Pick up any items you think handy. Explore! In time you will master The Great Ultizurkian Underland! * * * There are many things to do and places to explore in The Great Ultizurkian Underland. You will find and learn everything you need as you quest through this vast empire, working your way to the final confrontation with whatever it is that's invading the dungeon. It is my sincerest hope that you enjoy this adventure as much as I have enjoyed these past two years developing it. Consider it a token of this Dungeon Master's appreciation for your interest. Happy questing and good luck! --Robert J. Deutsch aka "The Mach Gryphon" To register for the full-blown game, with SAVE and RESTORE options, plus access to level 5 and beyond, just send $15 to: Robert J. Deutsch 1402 Liberty St. #302 Allentown, PA 18102 And I promise you'll meet Prince John and Lord Rockmasher of the Cyclops dungeon within a week!