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ISV Strong Games
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ISV_STRONG_GAMES.iso
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adventure
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secgarden
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!HELP
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Text File
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1990-07-13
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3KB
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64 lines
Secret Garden by The Sleeping Sphinx
THIS PROGRAM IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
Every day, you take the same path to work, which takes you along one of the
dreariest imaginable back alleys. One grey november evening you are trudging
home when you notice something very odd: a door in the alley wall which you
are quite sure was never there before. You could hardly have missed it, as
it is bright yellow and unusually large. Curious, you try the door, and
finding it unlocked you peek through. The sight which greets you is so
baffling that without thinking you open the door wide and walk in. You find
yourself in a beautiful garden, bathed in brilliant sunshine from a
cloudless sky! Suddenly you sense danger, and turn to leave, only to find
that the door you entered through has disappeared, leaving a blank wall far
too high to climb! Your adventure starts here; can you escape from this
mysterious trap?
Notes on playing the game:
In order to be able to save game positions, copy the directory !SECGARD and
its contents to another disc which is not write-protected. (Alternatively,
copy the game to a RAM drive - see later.)
The parser of this game is a compromise between the simple VERB-NOUN type
and the very sophisticated sort; it will accept several words, ignoring any
that it does not recognise. So, acceptable commands are INVENTORY, GO NORTH,
TAKE THE KEY FROM THE CASE, PUT THE LADDER AGAINST THE SHED, or
abbreviations of these; you may use sensible abbreviations of words, as
well. (Commands must be given in upper case.) Multiple commands are not
accepted, nor can IT be used.
Error messages may sometimes be misleading if too much is read into them.
E.g. the message "You can't do that here." does not necessarily mean that
you can do it somewhere else!
The usual SAVE and RESTORE commands are included. After either of these, you
will be prompted for a file name. (Normally, it will be stored in the
directory !SECGARD, unless the pathname starts with $.) There is
error-trapping, although some of the messages may be a little cryptic; e.g.
trying to restore a non-existent file gives the message 'Channel'.
GET ALL (or EVERYTHING) is allowed, and similarly with DROP. Note that
sometimes a gettable object is included in the location description itself;
if so, GET ALL will not get this, and you will have to name it individually
the first time at least.
You can speed up the game considerably by running it from a RAM disc. To do
this, simply configure a RAM disc of at least 140K size and copy the
application file to it. (See RISC-OS User Guide, page 43.) The program can
then be run by double-clicking on the icon. Note that if you save a game
position as just SG, say, it will be saved in the directory on the RAM disc
and will be lost if you switch off (unless you copy it to another disc
first). If you want to be sure of saving it permanently, use a full pathname
such as ADFS:$.SG (with a suitable disc in the drive, of course!) I would
suggest doing a CTRL-BRK after finishing the game if you do this, as there
may occasionally be odd side-effects.
After quitting the game, you will find that the CSD may have been altered;
this is a problem which I have not as yet been able to solve. This will not
affect you unless you use the CLI
The Sleeping Sphinx July 1990.