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POPHINTS.DOC
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1991-04-27
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PopHint, A Pop-Up Hint System for IBM Text Adventure Game Players
v1.0 Copyrighted 1990 - All Rights Reserved by David Malmberg
and...
Softworks
43064 Via Moraga
Mission San Jose, CA 94539
(415) 659-0533
This PopHint package was developed by Patrick Farley for use with his
Cliff Diver adventure, The Case of Crime to the Ninth Power
Okay pal, what's a Pophint?
Before I answer that, let me direct your attention to the shelves of most
any major bookstore, under the heading of Computers. There you'll find at
least one entire shelf filled with "Hint Books" for nearly any adventure
or battle simulation game on the market today. In these books you'll dis-
cover information on everything from how-to fly an attack chopper to how-
to charm a girl into a hot tub without losing the fizz in your cooler.
These books tell you how the author came up with the idea of the game, how
he developed the sequel and how he has games three, four, and five waiting
in the wings. The books can walk up ahead of you, telling you to watch out
for this or that, or they can go all the way to taking you by the hand and
walking you step-by-embarrassing-step through the adventure. Some of them
serve to enlighten you about a game while others burst your bubble by tak-
ing all the mental excerise right out of the game (more about this later).
PopHint is an on-line, Pop-Up Hint Book. I wrote it to provide you with
hints for my Cliff Diver adventure games. Let me show you how to install
it.
PopHint is installed onto your hard disk in your adventure directory or on
your floppy disk alongside the game files (make sure there's enough room).
You'll install PopHint as a TSR or "RAM-resident" system before you begin
playing the adventure (it only requires 6k of memory). PopHint requires
the following files:
POPHINT .EXE the TSR driver program
CDHINTS .HNT an encrypted hint file for Cliff Diver
Install PopHint into your system with the following command:
POPHINT HintFile [options]
HintFile can include a directory path, so you can have PopHint elsewhere.
The following options may by included on the command line:
/B forces black and white video
/C forces BIOS rather than direct screen writes
/E forces the use of EMS memory (if available)
/H hotkey for accessing hints (see below)
/M disables PopHint's "Swapping in..." message during access
/N forces PopHint to remian in memory with no swapping
/S path for specific drive and/or directory
/U to unload the system from memory
Notes: /H allows you to specify an alternate hotkey for popping-up POPHINT
and accessing the hints. A hexadecimal value specifying the hotkey to use
must follow the /H option on the command line. For example: /H 021E would
tell POPHINT to use the combination of the left-shift and the A key to pop
the hints onto the screen.
Please refer to your system's DOS manual for hexadecimal scan key codes.
A word about me, Cliff Diver, and this particular "hint book":
Throughout my hobby as magician, mime, street performer, puppeteer, etc.
I've never really enjoyed "bursting the bubble" or uncovering the truth
behind an illusion. When I design a puzzle for someone, I want them to
have to scratch their head a bit. I don't want someone to come along and
say, "...now do this, than this, and this." That's not playing the game,
as it were.
But "hint books" tend to go hand-and-electronic-hand with adventure games,
and I thought I would write one for Cliff. Before I got too deep into the
writing, Cliff approached me and said, "Since the player is directing me,
why not present this as a player's de-briefing; asking me the questions
and having me divulge the answers?" I thought that was great.
So here it is: Cliff, waiting for you to direct him through the adventure,
and at the same time waiting off-line to help you through the adventure.
When you access the POPHINT system, you'll be greeted with a menu contain-
ing topics ranging from the background of the adventure on to the moment
when Cliff steps out the front door of the Zamboni building. Each topic
will contain a number of questions you might ask Cliff. Use the up and dn
arrows to hi-lite a particular question and press the return key to ask
it.
Cliff may be able to provide the answer on one screen, or may need more
screens to provide more information. Use the Page-up and Page-dn keys to
step through the answer(s). Understand that as Cliff reveals more and more
of an answer, he may be getting closer and closer to taking you by the
hand and walking you through the adventure. The amount of information he
provides is up to you.
I hope you enjoy my-- our text adventure, and I hope this "hint book"
provides some help along the way. Any questions, comments, donations or
letters of commendation can be sent to:
Patrick Farley
1751 13th Street
Los Osos, CA 93402
ATTN: Cliff Diver/PopHints
Thank you. Your support of ShareWare Programming is appreciated.