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iMMortal version 1.70 by Kenneth Bledsoe @ The Outer LiMiTS BBS (713) 344-0526 FIDO@ 1:106/50 ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ ShareWare Information ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Is this product crippled? Yes. This is shareware. This allows you to try it out before you buy it, and see if it's really worth buying before you do. Some of the major features have been disabled in the shareware version, but the game is fully playable. But there are none of those lame shareware delays. God knows I hate those... If I send the $20, what do I get? A unique registration code to kick iMMortal in regisitered Mode. This code can be easily input with iMMedit.exe, Just use the (R)egister iMMortal option. Once entered, the entire game will be functional. This means: 1. The game can be completed. 2. You can become iMMortal 3. Quests are active 4. You can use script files. To enhance the Game play. 5. The Inter-BBS feature is available 6. The Map-editor will work. By supporting quality shareware such as this, you ensure the future of iMMortal. I have alot of ideas from various players that I would like to incorporate. If you have any ideas and suggestions. Please feel free to leave them on my support BBS. Free upgrades. (But you will have to get them!) ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ iMMortal Features ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 1. Easier starting Play for new characters! At your request. 2. Powerful Script Language to Create Unique encounters, dungeons mazes, etc... Its up to you! 3. Script files will be made backward compatible with future releases. 4. The game generates a scores screen and a Hall of iMMortals screen in ANSi and ASCii format so you can use them in your BBS. They are Scores.ANS/Scores.Asc and iMMortals.ANS/iMMortals.ASC 5. Tons of Monsters and Ememies to encounter, Plus an editor to create your Own... 6. A configurable map. This will allow you to change locations of towns, objets, THE Arena, and Script Files. You do not have to ever do this, the game is already ready to play. Plus You can now add more maps to the game. NOTE: If you start to adjust any of these settings, it might not be a bad idea to back up the \data directory. {Just in Case} 7. Multi Node support, Though I have not implemented a cross line chat and cross node combat, it is planned. 8. Two uniqie modes of play A. Auto Pilot mode. Basically the game can be set from iMMedit to Lock itself for Final Combat. While in Auto Mode Final Combat Stage is for existing iMMortals ONLY! New players are now allowed to enter the game! But for non-iMMortals the quests are on hold until the Final Stage is Over! At this point quests are unlocked and the game continues until the Number of iMMortals is reached to set the Final Combat Stage Active again.. {No Reset Play} B. Tournament Mode. While in this mode game play continues until the Sysop Locks the game from iMMedit! At this point all characters except NPC are considered iMMortal and must fight each other until there is only one remaining! The Winner.. The game will automatically reset once a person as one! Note: Once the game is locked in this mode. No new players are allowed in! 9. A unique game system. All players start with approximatly the same amount of experience points. But there skills are 0. So they can burn experience points in different training halls on different skills to create a character of there choice. 10.Magic, There are a ton of spells available to the player if he so desires burn experience points on magic and prayer skills. 11.Special Weapons and Armor editors. So that you can define extra items that the players can find throughout the game. Or perhaps even Buy? 12.In each town there is a Unique Encounter Area. This area is one place the characters can go to earn experience points and find items. It is unique, because each enemy is flagged to a certain type of terrain. And each town, can choose the terrain types it wants it's encounters to come from. This is all set up easily from iMMedit.exe 13.The majority of the town screens are external ANSi screens and with the use of Text Control Codes list in the Script.doc file, you could create your own unique menus..If you come up with some good ones feel free to upload them to my BBS. I might add them to the next release. 14.Cursed items can also be found. You will have to find a place to take these to. 15.The option to add third party utilities to the game. 16.The Arena. A place to go and fight for prizes. But be carefull some challengers could be tuff! 17.Inter-BBS functions are now available 18.If you write any scripts. Please upload them to my BBS. And to other Registered iMMortal sites also! The object of the game: First and foremost is to have fun. But you can't have any fun unless you can kick some Butt. So iMMortal is designed as a Playere versus Player game. Players will explore the different parts of the world and create a unique character as they go along. During this time they will be able to create rivalries amongst themselves and NPC. Which should enhance game play. But, the ulitmate goal, is to create a "DIVERSIFIED" characater in order to earn the Four Brands required to become iMMortal. Once a player becomes iMMortal if he/she is attacked and beheaded by another iMMortal the DEAD player will be forced to generate a new character. At some point in the game, depending on how you have it set up, the game will enter the Final Combat stage. Once begun, all players will become iMMortal and they will have to fight each other until there is only one left. The Winner! Remember, "There can be only One!" After this the game will automatically reset! ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Getting Started With iMMortal ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Step 1: Run iMMedit and select setup iMMortal. Adjust the settings here to suit your needs. Select Configure Node. Enter 1 for node one, 2 for node two, etc.. Select the correct values here. Step 2: Create a batch file to run iMMortal from your BBS Package iMMortal requires one parameter to be passed to it. This is the Node Number running. In this style /N=<node> Example iMMortal /N=1 Note: The node number must be in the range of 1..255 and CAN NOT be 0 ! Step 3: Setup you BBS software to run it? That should get you up and running from scratch ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Getting Started With iMMortal ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 1. See the <SYSOP.DOC> for Installation Instructions 2. (S)et-Up iMMortal BBS NAME : Your BBS Name SySop First : Your First Name SySop Last : Your Last Name Log Errors : Enables/Disables Error Logging to Disk Number of days to delete inactive players : No explanation Number of movement points a day : {50..200} Note : Each combat in the town dungeon is considered a movement, Each time a palyer moves outside of a town is considered a movement.. I like to keep it at 100.. Player Starting Money : 5000 {5000 gold} {0 = Random Amount} Number of Player Challenges Per Day : 0..255 Note : The number of palyer challenges a player can initiate during a day, In town or on the map! Final Combat Stage : Auto/Sysop Defined Auto : The game continues to play, allowing new players in at all times, but once a certain number of iMMortals is reached. The game locks all non-iMMortals from becoming iMMortal, forces all iMMortals to fight each other until there is only one, and then unlocks itself and continues playing. {No-Reset Play} SYSOP Defined : The game plays continously until the game is actually locked into Final Combat Stage with (L)ock Game. This will prevent new players from entering the game, Force ALL players into iMMortal status, and force all players to fight each other until there is only one left. Then the game will reset itself allowing new players in.. {Tournament Style Play} Number of iMMortals to start Auto Final Stage : See Above Script Files For Quests: Not Implemented yet, but scripts can still be used on the map. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Town Editor ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ NOTE: In order for you to have different ANSi screens for each town, you will need to have an ansi file in the IMMORTAL\SCREENS directory with the same name as the towns data file. Examaple: If you create a town called TOWN1.DAT then iMMortal will look for a file called TOWN1.ANS in the screens directory. If this file is not found then the default menu will be displayed... 1. Here you can change certain values of a town. Town Name : The name of the town! Menu File : Not implemented yet, Because I have not finished the editor but the game is ready for it. Basically what this will do is allow you to tell the town what functions are available in this town. Example. You could have a town that does not have any Shops in it. Dungeon : The name of the Encoutner area for this town. Percentage chance a twon will have magic armor and weapon in stock. : Well this should be self-Explanitory. 0%..100% Random Encounter Table : See the Enemy Editor for a description of this. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Armor/Weapon Editor ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 1. These features are available in the registered version ONLY! 2. You can create any number of weapons and armor, these items will be sold in the Weapon/Armor shop as Magic items {Unless they are found to be a cursed item}. They will may also be found throughout the game in other areas. 3. You can place negative values in the damage, bonus, and Absorbtion slots and these items will then be considered Cursed Items. 4. The Identified Description is the desc. given to the player if he/she knows what kind of item it is. But if the item is Unknown, then the UN-Identified desc. is given and the player must have a identify spell cast on the item to find out what it is. 5. Note: If a player does not know what an item is, then he may not be able to get its full worth from a shop keeper if he tries to sell it. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Enemy Editor ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 1. This Feature is available in the registered version ONLY! 2. You can have an unlimited amount of monsters in the database, but if you ever get Run-Time Error 203 and the game halts, then you will need to give iMMortal more memory to run. You can safely get away with 500 to 600 monsters and about 350 kb of memory. 3. The Monster editor is self-explanitory but here is a line by line description of what each slot means. Name : The name of the Monster. {Displayed to the user} Hit and Miss Descriptions : The Descriptions displayed to the user when a monster hits or missed the player, respectivly. Hit Percentage : Base Chance of hitting a player. 1..100% chance Where average is 50%. Hit Dice Min,Max : Used to determine the hitpoints for each monster. The Min should be 1 where the Max limit is 99. The Hit Points are determined by determining a random value between Min and Max which will give us the Number of Hit Dice. Then for each Hit Dice we assign a random value from 5 to 10 hit points. These Hit Dice are added up to create the number of Hit Points. Note : This formula is for Average encounters. Harder enocunters are assigned the Max number of hit Dice, and the range of hitpoints could go as high as 10 .. 15 Damage Min,Max : The damage done for one attack is a random value from Min to Max + (damage Modifer). Damage Modifier : Added to the damge calculated by Min,Max damage to give ys the total damage done. Bonus Expereince : Experience is calculated by an algorithm that takes into consideration Number of attacks, hit dice, and max damage! This is just bouns experience that is added to that total! No. Of Attacks : The number of attacks a monster gets per round! Now For the Monster Location! Note: This is only used in the Towns internal dungeon area... In the town editor, you will see a similiar table. In order for an enemy to appear in that town, the monster and the town must ahve at least one identical switch turned ON.. Example: You create a monster that is known only to be found in the desert. Then you turn on the Desert switch ONLY! If a town has this switch enabled then this monster will be added to the towns Random Monster List.... Hope you got all of this.... ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Setting Up Inter-BBS Features ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 1. This feature is available in the registered version ONLY! 2. Run iMMedit and select the (I)nter-BBS Setup.. 3. Set up the paths, and don't forget to enable the Inter-BBS feature.. 4. If you are not using a mailer, than it will be up to you to figure out how to get your packets from one bbs to another. If you have a mailer that handles Front Door style *.msg netmail messages. Then the mailer will handle this for you.. I did not include any routing features into the netmail functions, Your mailer should be able to handle this if you need it. All *.msg created have the following flags set.. Private Local Kill Delete/Sent FileAttached So, After the *.msg has been sent, the file and message will be deleted! 5. You will need to go to the Map editor and place the 'Mystic' Somewhere on the Map.. This is where the players will go for the inter-bbs features.. You can have more than one location. 6. You will need to creat a Nodelist. The name of the file should be NODELIST.IMM an example has been included as NODELIST.SAM 7. The most important.. There is a new utility included with the Distribution.. iMMTooLS.EXE In order for the other BBS in your league to know of the other players out there, each bbs keeps its own individual record of all players in the league.. iMMortal does NOT handle this internally. iMMTooLS DOES! IT is done this way, for one reason.. TIME... It would take alot of time to send a new packet to every BBS in the league EVERYTIME the players record was updated.. So iMMTooLS can handle this seperatly... The way I would suggest doing this, is to run immtools during your nightly maintanence with the following switch. "IMMTOOLS /IBBSEXPORT" This will create an updated player list, and ship it to ALL the BBS in the league...Now this same program needs to be run to import updated players list into iMMortal.. There are 2 ways to do this.. First the switch to import is "IMMTOOLS /IBBSIMPORT" A. You probably should have your mailer run this program when it exits on recieved mail, if no packets are found no harm done..The reason I suggest this is because this also imports Player text messages from other BBS to the MAIL database as well as importing player list... B. But you could also do the same thing in the batch file that you you use to run iMMortal, just prior to running iMMortal... Note: IMMTOOLS needs to be run from the DIRECTORY iMMortal resides in.. If isn't then it will NOT work.. 8. Make sure you the directory OUTBOUND exist off your iMMortal Directory. Example. If iMMortal runs in <C:\DOORS\IMMORTAL> then you will need to make sure <C:\DOORS\IMMORTAL\OUTBOUND> exist. 9. If all the above is up and running then you should not have any problem running an inter-bbs game. 10.At the present time iMMortals are NOT allowed to remove other iMMortals head on another bbs. {But this feature is planned} OK, now you should be good and confused..But I hope not... Here a Description of iMMTOOLS valid switches. /IBBSIMPORT : imports updated player packets and message packets. /IBBSEXPORT : exports updated player packets to all BBS in the nodelist /SCORES : updates the league ANSi and ASCii score files.. This is automatically done if iMMTooLS detects an updated player packet.. iMMTooLS can take more than one command line parameter... ie.. you coulds run IMMTOOLS.EXE /IBBSIMPORT /IBBSEXPORT ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Locking iMMortal ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ This allows you lock the game in final combat mode manually. It is intended for use in tournament style play. If the game is in Auto mode then new players will still be allowed to play and will work as if the number of iMMortal to enter locked state was reached. If in tournament style play the game will be locked from new players until only one iMMortal remains, then it will unlock itself and start over in the current mode that is set in (S)etup iMMortal. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Map Editor ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ iMMortal comes with one map ready to run, but you have the ability to change the existing map or add new maps to the game. In this version and future versions, iMMortal will no longer require an ANSi map file, as the screen information is stored in the map data file itself. To move the cross-hairs around on the map use the arrow keys, (F1) will bring up a list of keys available to you. Here is a list of what can be placed on the map and a description of each item.. (A)rena : The internal combat arena in iMMortal. (B)ridge : A bridge that players can cross. {Left in for compatibility} (D)ungeon: Same as the forest, but does not send ANY description to the player. (E) Script-Files : When the player lands here he will either.. Auto : Go straight to the script. Once : Go to the script if he has not already been here today. Ask : Ask the user with a description you enter if he/she wants to do the script file (F)orest : Same old forest, just a place to have random encounters.. (I)nter-BBS : This is the place the users go to access the Inter-BBS features of iMMortal. I call it the "Mystic" (M)outain: An impassable region that the player can not go beyond. (N)ext Map: Hmm, now we can have more than one map. When the player steps here, iMMortal will load the new map and place the character at either the starting location, if defined, or a random place. (R)oad : A safe place for the players to travel, no random encounters. (S)tarting point : Where iMMortal will place characters when they get to this map, if not defined the the coordinates will be random. (T)own : A town. Make sure the town you place here is a valid town. (W)ater : Another impassable area for the players. At least for now. Hopefully we will have magic items in the future that will allow a player to cross water or climb/fly over the mountains??? (0) Wall : An impassable area to be used if you create a map that you want to be a dungeon instead of land. Included for completeness. (1) Door : A door to connect to a wall, or have in the middle of no where? Can be locked or unlocked. The player will have to bash it down or use his open locks skill to pass it. Once the player leaves the map and returns all the doors are reset to there original state. (F1) : Help menu (F2) : Changes the color used when changing the characters on the map. This is displayed in the lower right corner as "CLR". (F3) : Changes the default characters set, used by "F4" (F4) : Allows you to change the characters on the map at the current location of the crosshairs. Well I hope you enjoy this feature as much as I have. To give you some idea to what I did. I created 2 maps, one was a desert map and the other was an arctic area. Each location was a script-file that said you were lost in the blinding snow and the cold was taking its toll on you, and it deducted Hit points from the player, and the desert did the same thing.. The player had to find his to the location marked next-map to get out of it.. Sounds cruel, well I guess it was, but it was fun! (Oh, the exit was not marked just a screen full of the same characters) ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Extra Stuff ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ 1. In the Data directory you will find a file called TALK.DAT. It is actually and ANSi file and contains random phrases that npc write on the wall in the local bar. You can load up your favorite ANSi editor and edit this file. The rules for editing this file are located at the bottom of this file! ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ █ Thanks ██████████████████ █ ██████████████████ ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ Thanks to ALL who have helped me beta test this game and to all the complements that kept me going during the burn out phases of development!!! Sorry this version took so long to get out, I hope it was worth the wait... Oh, and a Special Thanks to ALL the people who registered iMMortal! Whats to come you ask? 1. RIP. Had to make alot of changes to the map to get it ready for RIP, but I think I am there now. 2. Inter-BBS Tournaments, so you can remove the head of those iMMortals in the other realms. 3. The ability to save user varaibles in the script files to disk, should make the script files more usefull. 4. More magic items!!!!! 5. And I am sure there will be more ideas from you all! -Kenneth Bledsoe