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stac-manual - Museum of Computer Adventure Game History

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1. 25 exaccsccacoveds is A esesesesascesss SO ironie se s csecnesssnseoncoues 23 68 72 scsi ist oies 49 60 IGNORE scccseccoscscceses seuseaseewasncevedsctesendces 14 27 cseraresacisa sssass Wenesessesd sesesssseexes Q ERIMDSP qasscssckeeen ves esseeen TUR essesesussssesus Program disk TP Purpose of adventure S 13 Questioning the player TAPER ssdee ssve rsc dese 21 Quick adventure sqes eobbuwseecuskovia 565 3 Quick start file ei 4edu deivouaee MH veesssceessss v esses Os 10 00 40900 Ranges of numbers Te Roforence ADO wicsccorscsseuccessesecssvessencccccsesececccseceseeces secedetosnestbstibevstieens 71 Repeat until sssssssssseses se 34s ea ewe evevecete T code 24 68 Return oes PIE T twee BOOB Rooms conditional words ROM 13 15 65 Rooms general Rtiblsvdbevresersussez ssexpsapedtdkdi 34 38 39 49 56 61 65 Royalties dite P ss 41 Runnable adventure program eee ee eee ee eee eth nnno en nana PP EEPO S 40 41 Save adventure 66 PNAN
2. This is invaluable when you are writing adventures as you can print out all your messages and not have to swap between messages and conditions all the time whilst looking for the right message number In addition option X allows you to set up the program to recognize your printer s needs Some printers need to be sent a linefeed signal to advance to the next line others do it 43 themselves hence the Auto linefeed question If your printer does this itself press Y for yes otherwise for no Many of the newer high quality printers are 24 pin dot matrix printers so the next questions asks 24 pin Again answer Y or N This is for the graphics printing it uses a higher quality screen dump for 24 pin printers NOTE the graphics screen dump will only work if you have an Epson compatible printer This is true of most printers which can handle graphics The new printer dump routine is also patched into the normal screen dump This is activated by pressing Alternate and Help at the same time The contents of the entire screen are then sent to the printer If you do not have a printer and hit this option by accident be patient It takes the computer nearly a minute to realize that the printer is not attached and return to normal operation Also note that since this feature was included primarily to print out pictures it wil not give faithful reproduction of text from a medium resolution 80 character Screen or a split
3. were 40 Save game position M 4536400684 os 17 18 21 25 26 66 URN oies Une 33 Scoring cccvcsveveccccecs 400656965 0599660500940000090000000000000000040099500 90090805 sence 96 91 Sereon display cssevecrsisersecdcvecccccocecscecvcesvceess P 52 Screen dump ee eere V eve duae crosses ei v vao eed 6v sees qs 44 SEDATALOPS uiseeeeses cssc csveuo eese d4ied v s e s e s E E re esse 00 01 58 11 Short Cuts nisin MO Special conditions O 48 65 70 71 Starting the Bdvontufo Ju iiscissicesccccctsccsecccssccceccccscsccsdsseccsbudesoonte s 39 40 Strings conditional words ETT 12 13 18 21 67 Strings gt ge nePH dievdseveveseseesesesscecceqosetecceodos 34 53 56 58 67 Testing sienne PPS TT PRESS DUO ECS TU NET DO DIN PPT I TE II TE ET EO Text ie Mirti ss ide sise RTE CT ETUDES ENS es eduduee 14 68 Tricks and tips Vibe sessesvs aboeas ev sees rire eeesssesses sessenessee 20 T fns COUNTER uiveeercis 6006752 6S mn ai no TT CELT Teer o ty CL Vocabulary conditional words eee eee nennen 4 9 21 22 25 64 Vocabulary general Sub O TE 34 37 39 40 48 50 58 61 64 71 WEN rT Teh ee TT ere IIT T T TT 10 48 68 Wearing CRI
4. THE ST ADVENTURE CREATOR CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX INDEX ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE EH ES USER MANUAL by Sean T Ellis 29th April 1988 Introduction Writing adventures Use of Conditions Graphics Music in messages Our small adventure Disk and printer menus The font editor Special conditions and commands Keys and control characters Glossary Contents of QSTART file Character key sequences Conditional words Adventure Flowchart Handy Reference Sheet c Sean Rilis Incentive 1988 Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page Page 27 32 34 42 45 48 52 54 58 62 64 70 71 72 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Welcome to the world of the ST Adventure Creator I hope you will have fun in creating and playing your own adventure games and even selling them if you wish there is no fee for this just put a credit in the program Sean EQUIPMENT To use this program you will need an Atari ST computer 520 1040 or Mega ST at least one disk drive and a colour monitor or a television set In addition a printer is useful but not essential YOU CAN NOT USE THIS PROGRAM WITH A MONOCHROME MONITOR CONTENTS
5. ss 9909099992929 eee 10 25 Getall eere 80 M 65 GIOSSALY eene sisi ness DO Graphics serre n RR 14 27 Help screen P amp 566040 5520 040 895959 I ee 40 High priority conditions eene 37 If then else TT PPP 4BaNARSASAS abesse su Vn ssssses 9 284 64 Importing pictures nennen nnn nnns e 29 Initialization PTT noie ed sisaise 933 RARAKS ERA EST 30 50 51 200 81859 SN BETTTTISTITTTIT TET QTEEQTQQQQT TC O US PERAN 51 TTA css 0 T RR ess B4 Keys Dinosaure oi uen TA 58 68 feed sssssssscsececocacusosessasao eesse 08 Life and death conditional words NITR se 16 21 23 66 Life and death general ESKADR RAS ARARR AR CR UEM DES 38 39 48 59 60 66 00073127 isses us ions der as Beall gag il Lighting a lamp issues C M TT i Te files dose 5168 67 Load adventure ae dd stresse opaennaddseseetevonesevenes 40 eame position v e eee ee eeune t dnakihmaateaseesscssckenteeasy 1B BEEN BOFOOh 0011
6. Unknown noun verb adverb the word in quotes is not in the vocabulary Example if verb aardvark then will give this error if aardvark isn t a defined verb 26 CHAPTER FOUR GRAPHICS The STAC is designed to allow you to accompany your adventure with 16 colour graphic pictures These may be created using the inbuilt graphic editor or they may be imported from either NEOCHROME or DEGAS drawing programs To get to the graphic editor from the main menu press G The menu will be replaced by the drawing screen see next page This consists of a large blank window filing the top two thirds of the screen and smaller window filling the lower third of the screen which contains your drawing tools You must enter a picture number before you can draw on the screen This is so that you can recall the picture at later time Enter your number it wil appear on the right hand side and press RETURN You are now ready There are bewildering array of icons on the left hand side of the screen The first row represent the 16 colours you can use One will be outlined in a different colour and this is the one you wil be drawing in To change to a different colour just move the mouse pointer over the colour you wish to draw with and press the left mouse button The second row represent the different drawing tools you can use They are from left to right airbrush paintbrush line draw rectangle circle
7. Mark this room as already visited Has this room been visited before Get number of this room Is the player at room number COMMENTS 21 Either of these signals that the rest of the line is to be treated as a comment and ignored 64 get drop o getall dropall r swap bring find objing o objsht Hin r carried avail weight whereis stren amount setstr e firstob r entobj list r list with set m reset m change set m reset m e setontr c counter c inc c dec c e tcount c e count c e oount c OBJECTS p10 12 22 25 48 49 Get object o Drop object o Get every object in this room Drop every object you are carrying Move object o to room r Swap object o and O Bring object o here Move player to object o Print long description of object o Print short description of object o Is object o in room r Is object o being carried Is object o in this room Is object o available ie here or being carried Return the weight of object o Return location of object o Return your current strength Return the total weight of everything you are carrying Set player s strength to e Return number of first object in room number r Return the number of objects in room number r List all objects in room List all objects with you being carried MARKERS p15 38 Set marker m Reset marke
8. 2 message 9902 print counter 0 message 9903 print turns message 9904 pause 5000 byebye print score and number of turns wait for keypress then end the game 2 Success 1 lf message 9901 1f print Well done 2 message 9902 print counter 0 message 9903 print turns message 9904 pause 5000 byebye 59 SPECIAL CONDITIONS ctd 3 Quit 1 message 9915 if yesno then lf message 9902 print counter 0 message 9903 print turns message 9904 pause 5000 byebye 4 Ok 1 message 9905 wait print Okay wait for new command 5 Get failed object not here 1 message 9906 newcom print I can t see that scrap rest of command line wait for new command 6 Get failed carrying too much 1 message 9907 newcom 7 Get failed already got object 1 message 9908 newcom 8 Drop failed not carrying object 1 message 9909 newcom 9 Dropall 1 if zero firstob with then message 9929 newcom If not carrying anything say so 2 if firstob with then repeat lf message 9919 itis firstob with objsht firstob with drop firstob with until zero firstob with A little complex this one Print You drop then describe the first object you have with you set it to refer to this object and drop it Repeat until all objects have been dropped 10 Getall 1 if zero firstob room then message 9930 newcom 2 if firstob room then repeat lf caps objsht firstob room itis firstob room message 9931 get firstob room message 9920 until zero firstob room Sim
9. id CHAPTER THREE CONDITIONS USE OF THE CONDITIONS The conditions are the most i powerful and flexible part of the STAC system They provide the guiding intelligence for the game by matching the player s commands and taking appropriate There are four types of condition in i Yeu the STAC low priorit high priority local and special C 9 priority bad as it p onfused Well it s not as Low priority conditions are executed after the i i command They are usually used for interpreting that mp ates taking action based on it and are executed no matter what room you are in Typical low priority conditions are those fo manipulating objects and controlling the feel of the ie Se with save and load options quit and examining things High priority conditions are execut ed before the player ent his P ee and are thus beyond his control They i vo for signalling dangerous events and finally killing the Player off or letting him win An example would be killing the player off i ui Ra y after 3 moves in the dark whatever the moves E ue conditions cover situations which only occur in one room cae ge _ may do little on a level plain but next to a cliff cou quite easily be fatal They are also used for movin between places when the connections cannot cope E f Wege are called at any time They take the form of ists of instructions to be carried out i situations which mi
10. If you do not do this the program does not know that the word lamp is a noun and will complain at you Obviously we need to do something useful with the do something all our efforts far are pretty useless OBJECTS Objects are there for you to mani pulate The most obvious thin you do with them are to pick them up and drop them Each nein g Imagine that object number 1 is a la mp To get th get 1 To drop it again use drop 1 p g e lamp we use So we can now pick up the lamp i P in response to replacing the something with a get RPS ay bee if verb take and noun lamp then get 1 ok if verb drop and noun lamp then drop 1 ok We use ok here because the actio i i k he n of getting or droppin object is invisible to the player he needs to know er his command has been dealt with correctly Thus the ok which just gives an indication that everything is all right These are very useful conditions i and they are very close to the English form There are other things you can do with objects You can list the objects in a certain room with list If you want to list the objects you have with you use list with So to check what you have with you you can use if verb inventory then list with wait which wil list all the objects you are carrying when you type inventory See how we now use wait rather than ok since the list being printed on the screen is all the player needs to s
11. No This is useful for adventures which are not in English and the words begin with different letters For example French is O Oui or N Non and German is J Jah or N Nein je You can get the amount of stuff you are carrying using amount and find out your current strength using stren You can also find out the number of turns taken since the start of the game using turns There are a set of tests for checking numbers which have not yet been mentioned zero will be true if the number is zero pos will be true if the number is positive neg will be true if the number is negative notzer will be true if the number is not zero notpos will be true if the number is not positive notneg will be true if the number is not negative Tests may be negated using not To check if object 1 is not being carried use if not carried 1 then do something Combinations of tests use and and or which we have seen already and can also use which is in effect either one or the other but not both Additionally you may use abbreviations amp or amp amp for and or u for or this is accessed by using shift backslash next to the Z key or for xor and for not This is used to save time and space and also to make C programmers feel at home pause will pause for specified time Fifty pauses is one second so pause 50 wil wait for one second pause 250 will wait for 5 seconds Long pauses may be
12. counter 0 which you should set up to hold the score LIFE DEATH AND THE DISKS There should be some definite end to the i game eithe cu E quest or by getting killed Hence two E jea yan what they say death and success both end the game hag r manner but with different messages The first gives ou have died type message the second Well done ione the player might want to give up Thus the word 9 w ich is the same as death except that the player is asked e 15 sure that he wants to quit If he answers for yes then he is exited from th 5 ame If nag he is returned to the game he answers N for no then 16 Adventure games are dangerous things and you are likely to get killed several times before completing the adventure Most adventures give the option of saving your game position to disk and restoring it again afterwards This is done in STAC using the words save and load which do just that The player is asked to give a name for the position before the save or load is executed Closely related to these are ramsave and ramload which save and load game positions to and from a reserved portion of memory rather than the disk This has the advantage that it is considerably faster and that disk space is not taken up with lots of game positions in dangerous situations It is however lost on exit from the game There are three ramsave areas reserved and you can save and load from these using
13. that his command has succeeded Note that with is really a wi that moves around wit room number h you and you can use it like any other You can describe objects There are two descriptions per object a long one and a short one objin i objsht prints the short one and f t If you are alread i y with th s find has no effect So object or you are carrying it if verb summon and noun lamp then bring 1 ok will bring the lamp to you when you type summon lamp You can move an object to room using fto 1 to 3 wil move the lamp instantl 14 Y to room 3 You can then test where an object is if 1 10 then do something wait 10 will do something if object 1 the lamp is actually in room 3 You can also swap two objects using swap 1 swap 2 will swap objects one and two over This saves a lot of mucking about when using lamps for example You simply have two objects an unlit lamp and a lit lamp and swap them over when you light the lamp You can check whether an object is being carried using carried whether it is here in this room using here and whether it is available ie within reach either being carried or this room using avail the words that are understood 7 letters or less long which is why we use avail It is the best meaningful abbreviation of available that fits As usual you can combine these to produce quite comple
14. writing an adventure does require a bit of thought beforehand Speaking personally I cannot just sit down and write an adventure there are a few things to work out first You will have to decide what the purpose of the adventure is to start with The traditional rescue the beautiful princess and get as much gold as possible then kill all the monsters type adventure is one and a bit old hat it is too another might be to tackle the robot defenses to deactivate a large automatic enemy weapons installation better or even to prevent the domination of Earth by a race of lust crazed females seems familiar from somewhere Once the main story has been decided on the adventurer will need a world in which to play the adventure The world or adventure universe is arranged as series of distinct locations rooms which you can travel between some of which may contain objects or require the solution of a puzzle to get out of Where you are is communicated by a description of the place you are in along with a list of any objects which are there The rooms do not need to be indoors it is just a convenient way of splitting up the adventure universe 3 The easiest way to set out an adventure universe is I find to draw a map showing the positions of each room the connections between each and the objects which are in each one Objects have several characteristics It is quite useful to know what the object
15. 65 Dirk METRO oed eoeeesnueeesaksatbsssabucves MH I ose 9 901 909 71 boshdon MB Te eve 9 24 64 Demonstration disk PEL EE TT rn E T ees 1 BEBE DUUM auexiespnieeniesi beset debbesesdseasceDgudtesnPsentesessdeqteidaesbdoso RES 6 42 PER dater vk Dirkeh eusecs xcaev dkuuualvwsesaesanuups cbe evsesses 40 43 55 Drawing screen e e PT e Ht OUS 4 28 Dropping GHIGCES ssccsccucecssacseestiaseccsacas M T RA S eee 10 25 HAINE MR em ROC TR 87 39 Editing data suisse sms OTROS T n 6 64 68 ERCOUOD Lindon TTE ETT PIT 18 50 61 PALATINO TAT T t m 9 oe 1 ERPOTG ecvsn escsscnesasa rest M eMe ee Ela Evo edo Ste exo ES eecesss 20 440 517 Hramine sencssrscrecrccccccecccecscvece t 37 39 cmd e 99 RSE ete ser 460003024 E USE 49 EREET RENE 43 EHG Lits s di a a ee eroe re oh 6 42 Flowchart eee too etane es4u92ss2sie9550s5005 E GE CE VA AX EU 1099569009900 960640680669699468060508 70 qaeess sisssooQ dd e44 ERP AE E aise E E 50 0a 40 0608 s 43 PONI shimano 45 PONTS SHOP ssnin sida T scris 465 46 Format diek eoaeesexsesoxencsceekis gtest iw odd ATI NEWER 42 T2 Get objects PETTILLLLLELERLELE IIITITIII See eee
16. 7 yak 16 Insert see row 8 For rows 8 to 16 press Insert then follow the key sequence 8 rows above eg row 16 column 1 would be Insert then row 8 column 1 which is P giving the sequence Insert P 63 APPENDIX E CONDITIONAL WORDS For a full description of the words in each section see also the page numbers indicated if then else verb v noun n adverb a nounl noun2 advbl advb2 verbl itis n goto r moveto r desclng r descsht r look draw p pietof r split colour xxx topcol xxx visit visit room at r DECISION MAKING p9 24 Tests if a condition is true or false If true performs action after then otherwise performs that after else if present PLAYER COMMANDS p4 9 21 22 25 35 50 64 Was verb v typed Was noun n typed Was adverb typed Return numbers of first and second nouns typed by the player Return numbers of first and second adverbs typed Return number of verb typed Force it to refer to noun n ROOMS p13 15 39 Move player to room r and redescribe Move player to room r Print long description of room r Print short description of room r Print description of this room with picture if present using short description if already visited Draw picture number p Get picture number associated with room r Turn split mode screen on and off Change colour c in bottom part of screen to RGB value xxx Change colour in top part of screen
17. OF THE PACKAGE Inside the box you should find two disks the program disk and the demonstration disk this manual and a registration card Please complete and return this to become a registered user LOADING THE ST ADVENTURE CREATOR To load the ST Adventure Creator which will henceforth be referred to as the STAC place the program disk in drive A which is the internal disk drive if you are using a 520STF 520STFM 1040ST or Mega ST and switch the machine on The screen will show a small window with a program icon called STAC PRG Move the mouse pointer over this icon and quickly click the left hand mouse button twice THE PROGRAM DISK This contains the STAC program itself along with a Quickstart file which contains many of the common words actions etc used in most adventures small adventure file for you to examine and change and set of fonts already set up for you to use This disk is NOT public domain If you experience problems with this disk please send it just the disk not the entire packaging back to us at the address printed on the back of the box for replacement This does not affect your statutory rights THE DEMONSTRATION DISK The demonstration disk contains as its name suggests some demonstrations of what you can do with the STAC Full instructions can be obtained by booting up from that disk double clicking on READ ME and selecting Show The instructions will then appear on the scre
18. So far so good but what about playing notes Notes are represented by the letters abcdef and g as in normal music You have two octaves for use immediately to get the upper octave use upper case ABCDEFG So to play a scale of C you might try v15 t5 cdefgABC Remember to include the Cntrl T and Cntrl U to show that this is a tune You will have to actually print the message to hear the tune All the notes here are in the key of C To sharpen a note append Here is a scale in the key of C v15 t5 c d ff g A CC To change the durations of the notes add a number afterwards Notes with no number afterward will sound for the amount of time dictated by the last number Here is a scale with an odd rhythm vib t5 c2 del f g2A BC4 Notice the use of as a rest here The duration can be altered just as if it was another note Two octaves is a bit restrictive You can access the full range provided by the sound chip by using and These transpose up and down one octave respectively Here is an example of an extended scale in C v15 t5 cdefgAB cdefgAB4cdefgABC Repeats can be handled easily The start of the repeat is marked by an r with the number of repeats The end is marked by a colon because it looks a bit like a repeat mark Hence to play a scale 4 times use v15 t5 r4 cdefgABC 32 Finally chords can be played like ordinary notes Just replace the note with curly brackets around the notes you w
19. W prints string 1 So if string 1 is John and message number 1 is Hello Control W then it will be printed as Hello John You can move strings around using copy For example 1 copy 2 wil copy string 1 to string 2 destroying whatever was originally in string 2 swap will swap two strings over and is used in the same way You can add strings together To add string 1 on to the end of string 2 use 1 add 2 If string 1 contained Aard and string 2 contained vark then after doing this string two would be changed to Aardvark You can move the text of message into a string using mess 1 mess 0 wil copy message 1 into string 0 Note that with all of these string commands if the string gets too long more than 79 characters then any characters after the end will be lost You can cut a number of characters off the start or end of a string using cutst and cutend 5 cutend 7 will cut 5 characters off the end of string 7 If you cut more characters off than are actually there then you will be left with an empty string a string with nothing in at all not even a space To find out the length of a string use length This gives you the number of characters in a string You can add a character on to a string using addchr and find out the value of the first character in a string using ascii These use the fact that in a computer all the characters are represented by a code number from 0 to 255 For
20. cut short by the player by pressing a key Additional special conditions may be invoked by using the word special They can then be used for frequently used sets of conditions To return from special condition early usually as the result of a test use return For example the special condition that describes room first checks whether it is dark and if so it prints a message to that effect and returns before it prints the room description There are two extra words which are designed especially for use within special conditions byebye exits you from the game immediately no messages nothing newcom waits for a new command line to be entered discarding any commands not yet done on the previous line This is useful for player errors such as trying to pick up an object that is not there Whatever is after this on the command line is ignored since the player will normally want to try again before proceeding 23 if then construction can be extended to if then else if necessary The part after the else is executed only if the test is false An example might be if at 1 then message 1 wait else message 2 wait will print message 1 if you are at room 1 and message 2 if you are not Finally there are two words used for re i i peating things repeat and until The repeat marks the beginning of block of conditions that will be continually repeated until the condition after _ the until is true So for example
21. end of string s Return length of string s Add character c to end of string s Find first occurrence of character in string s Find last occurrence of character c Get character code of 1st character of string s Obey string s as if the player typed It im Fill in additional nouns verbs and adverbs from string s Put the rest of the command line into string s Is string s equal to string S Is string s less than string S Is string s greater than string S Is string s not equal to string S Is string s less than or equal to string S Is string s greater than or equal to string S Print number e wait ok newcom turns false true yesno repeat until t LT text pict e word n connect v random e special s return pause e setamnt setturn setwith cursor e MISCELLANEOUS Wait for a new command p10 Print Ok wait for a new command p10 48 Ask player for new command line All commands not already done the current line are discarded p23 Returns the number of turns since the start of the game p21 23 Returns the same result as false test p23 Returns the same result as true test p23 Waits for the user to press Y which returns a true result or N which returns false p22 Repeats conditions between repeat and until until condition t is true p24 Move printing on to a new line p13 Disable pictures p14 Enable
22. enter these press L from the main menu which will give the familiar scrolling list Insert wil insert a new line of conditions before above the line you are currently on All the lines after this will then be shuffled up one For example if the conditions are listed as 1 print 1 2 print 2 3 and you are on line 1 then inserting a line print 7777 will result in 1 print 7777 2 print 1 3 print 2 4 You will be asked to type the conditions in a line at a time Here they are again comments are in italics don t type them in Line Condition 1 if verb score then message 9902 print counter 0 message 9903 print turns message 9904 wait If you typed score then print score and number of turns taken Score is held in counter 0 2 if zero nouni and verb get then message 13 newcom if you typed get but no recognized noun say I don t know what that is 36 3 if zero nouni and verb drop then message 13 newcom and the same for drop 4 if zero nouni and verb examine then message 12 newcom and again for examine 5 if verb get and noun gold then get 4 20 count 0 ok give player 20 points for getting the gold 6 if verb drop and noun gold then drop 4 20 count ok and minus 20 points for dropping it again 7 if noun1 lt 5 and verb get then get nounl ok this is the short cut I mentioned If you typed get and the noun number was less than 5 ie 1 2 3 or 4 then get object 1 2 3 o
23. example the code for A is 65 so 65 addchr 1 19 would add an x on to the e d f j 2 ethen nd of string 1 and if string 2 was ascii 2 would give a i i i gt ea value of 65 since the first character in string 2 You can find the first and last occurrence of a particular character in string using first i nd Jast If strin 1 HELLO ARTHUR AARDVARK then 65 first 1 would give a nde ER the first occurrence of A is the seventh character in th string 65 lasts 1 would give 19 If there were no mating characters in the string you will get 0 back You can compare strings in much the same way as numbers except that the value of one strin is smalle I j comes before it So ae Perra er ad E anteater but buzz is greater than bee The alphabet s extended so that all the UPPER CASE letters are smaller than all the lower case ones and all the numbers are smaller than that Using this system here is an alphabetical list Note the space on the front 88 wild horses Alphabet soup Zoological ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha aardvark gun You can compare strings using the following words 0 1 Is true if string 0 is EXACTLY the same string 1 lt Q 1 Is true if string 0 comes before string 1 a gt 1l Is true if string 0 comes after string 1 lt gt 1 Is true if string 0 is NOT exactly equal to string 1 24 1 Is true if string 0 comes
24. is not actually a previously saved link file Also occurs when testing an adventure actually loading a link file would destroy all your carefully typed adventure data 8 No repeat for this until Occurs when an until is found which does not have a matching repeat before it DISK ERRORS Several errors can occur whilst trying to access the disks Some of these are not obvious so here is a list 1 File not found There is not a file with the requested name on the disk 2 Pathname not found You have tried to enter a folder that is not there Typing a pathname of A FONTS SANSERIF FNT effectively opens folder called FONTS If there is no folder on the disk with that name then this error will occur 3 Disk write protected The disk you are trying to save to has its write protect tab removed 4 Disk full There is no more room on the disk for the file that you are trying to save The warning box for all these file errors can be cleared by pressing a key 69 APPENDIX E ADVENTURE FLOW CHART This is a flowchart showing what goes on when you play an adventure START Startup 17 Add 1 to turns Execute high priority conditions Print player s prompt 13 Get next command from the player Check connection table Have we yes 2 no Execute local conditions mats yes m gt yes no no Execute low priority Tien yes conditions no yes Print no erst gt yes 4
25. met Load Save and Runnable Format sets up a completely blank disk so that you can save data on it Output allows you to save a single section of data on to the disk such as just the verbs or just the pictures Merge allows you to merge these saved sections back into your adventure This is useful for building up say a library of pictures which can be merged in after an adventure is written and tested The X option erases a file from the disk and the Disk information option gives you an indication of how much space is free on a disk The Encode option is used to create files to link to in multi disk adventures It would not be a good idea to let other people just load these link files into the STAC and look at them so these files are encoded using a sort of secret password known only to the program Only if you know the password and how it is used can you get the original data back again This is only an analogy you will not be able to load these files by typing in a password so I thought I would save everyone a lot of wasted time and energy looking for it All of these use the file selector which we have come across before but not al of its features have been mentioned At the top is the pathname which indicates which area on the disk in which to search for files The name at the bottom is the filename the name of the file to search for In the middle is the directory window which shows a list of files that are on the disk in
26. no Print You Print can t 11 Pardon 12 The numbers in brackets are special condition numbers 7O APPENDIX G HANDY REFERENCE SHEET Ranges of numbers Rooms 1 to 9999 Messages 1 to 9999 Pictures 1 to 9999 Objects 1 to 511 Special conditions 1 to 255 Verbs 1 to 255 Nouns 1 to 255 Adverbs 1 to 255 Markers 0 to 511 Counters 0 to 511 which store 2 147 483 648 to 2 147 483 647 Colours on screen any 20 from 512 16 in graphics screen 4 in text Maximum picture size 288 pixels horizontally x 132 pixels vertically Special Conditions Death Success Quit Ok Can t get object not here Can t get object too heavy Can t get object already got Can t drop object Drop all 10 Get all 11 Print You can t 12 Print Pardon 13 Print What now 14 Look 15 Describe room on entry 16 Strength reduced below load 17 Startup condition 18 Load prompt OPNP POD Markers etc used by STAC Marker 0 Set when room described Marker 1 Set means dark Marker 2 Set means lamp available Counter 0 Score Noun 255 It Verb 255 Again Adverb 254 255 separators T INDEX Item Page Adventure Universe 0000960988989890090500840000409650600000 60000006 3 AGVOPDBS EX EAS 00696 P UEM Sez o eer 9 64 71 notariale ohnr ni les an nds 22 51 ABE SIP BOG eerstisexteressezcsesek sstes xesecssss
27. objects 6 for 5 objects etc Wearing things is another useful trick To wear something you already have just move it to an unused room say 19999 for the sake of argument Since you haven t actually dropped it the weight of stuff you are carrying will not be updated so the weight of the object will still register To take the object off just move it back to your standard inventory Here are examples of wearing and taking off object 2 hat if verb wear and noun hat then 2 to 19999 ok if verb remove and noun hat then 2 to with ok You could have used the swap objects trick like we used for lighting the lamp but swapping a hat for a hat worn and then doing a dropall wil allow you to drop that object and you can get nonsense messages like You are in a cave You can also see a hat worn How can you wear a hat that is on the ground This trick places it safely out of the range of dropall To check whether an object is being worn in this case the hat use in with the room number you decided to put worn objects in if 2 in 19999 then the hat is worn ok The same trick allows you to make use of bags pockets etc To give a list of what you are wearing use list with your chosen room number in our case list 19999 25 If you want to particularly kind to your player you can build in an Oops command to take him back to before his last command This will use up two of the ramsave pos
28. over multiplication weight 3 5 will return five times the weight of object 3 not the weight of object 15 Again brackets A preference ould overrule this order of The final three words to do with objects are not used very often cntobj counts the objects in particular room firstob gives you the number of the first object found in a meuler room and whereis gives the room number where the object is MESSAGES So far we have met quite a few word 5 but not many print things 4 the screen The few that do list for example give rather bare response If you were carrying a lamp and some gold the inventory condition above would print a lamp some gold 12 when you asked for an inventory Messages can be used to liven it up and make it a bit more friendly Would it not be better if we could make that into You are carrying a lamp some gold Well we can using the messages Messages are entered like room descriptions and objects and are called by their numbers So if we entered message 1 as You are carrying then we could add to the condition like this if verb inventory then message 1 list with When you type inventory the condition first prints message number 1 You are carrying then lists the objects you have with you Note that some of the messages are used by the STAC but you can change the wording if you wish as long you don t change the meaning significantly
29. pictures p14 Set word n to be equal to value e The value of may be 1 nounl 2 noun2 3 verbi 5 adverbi y or 6 adverb2 p22 Gives the number of the room which is connected to this room by verb v p14 Gives a random number between 1 and e inclusive p21 Executes special condition number s p23 24 Return early from special condition p23 Pause for e fiftieths of a second or until a key is pressed p18 23 Set amount to value of e p22 Set turns to value of e p22 Set with to value of e p22 Sets the height of the text cursor to e e may be 0 to 7 68 ERRORS 1 Number out of range Occurs when you try to access counters markers or objects with numbers greater than 511 and when you try to use nouns verbs or adverbs with numbers greater than 255 2 Internal error Will only happen if a very complex expression is being evaluated and STAC runs out of space to store its results This should never happen as very complex 15 really very complex 3 Object not found Occurs when you try to describe an object which does not exist 4 Room not found Occurs when you try to describe a room which does not exist 5 Message not found Occurs when you try to print a message which does not exist 6 Break Occurs when both shift keys are depressed at the same time whilst executing the conditions 7 Not a valid link file Occurs when the file whose name was given to link
30. ramsave 1 ramsave 2 ramsave 3 ramload 1 ramload 2 and ramload 3 MULTI PART ADVENTURES Adventure games can be very large too If an adventure cannot be squeezed on to one disk or into memory then extra data can be saved on to other disks using the Encode option on the disk menu When a game is saved as a runnable adventure two files are created on the disk both with the same name but one with a PRG extension and one with LNK The file with the PRG extension contains the parts of STAC needed to run the the game whilst the LNK file holds your game data When data is saved using Encode from the disk menu a file containing your game data is saved also as a LNK file Several LNK files can be used by the same adventure either from the same disk or spread over several disks This allows you to write enormous adventures Thus if we assume that a game is split into three parts each one taking up a full disk more or less then disk 1 would hold the files PART1 PRG and PARTI LNK disk 2 would hold the file PART2 LNK and disk 3 would hold PART3 LNK Parts 2 and 3 would both have been saved using the Encode option whilst part 1 would have been saved as a runnable adventure When a new file is linked in all the markers and counters stay intact as do object positions except when the object is in room 0 In this case the object is set back to its start position This prevents objects reappearing at their start positions i
31. s see what happens Word Take the lamp put Verb YES NO NO NO Noun NO YES NO Adverb t YES L I LI verbi 1 ignore nounl 1 254 so end command So we have verbl 1 TAKE nounl 1 LAMP 50 as our first command Having dealt with this we come back to the next word in the line Word put it in the green Verb YES NO NO NO NO Noun i YES NO NO NO Adverb i YES NO YES i i verbl 1 1 255 1 3 ignore advb2 2 becomes 1 Word box Verb NO Noun YES Adverb i noun2 2 Any occurrence of noun 255 it is immediately replaced by the last noun referred to in this case noun 1 the lamp Thus the command is verbi 2 PUT nouni 1 LAMP noun2 2 BOX advbl 3 IN advb2 2 GREEN We then come to the end of the line so processing stops and the command is passed through to the conditions Since there are no more commands on this line the next time through a new line will be requested from the player The difference between adverbs with numbers 255 and those with 254 is subtle one In command which was separated by a 254 adverb if there is no verb in the command then the one from the previous command is used This allows such things as assuming adverb and had number 254 get the lamp and the rat since it preserves the get from one part to the next Of course if there is verb in the next part the previous verb is abandoned It does however add a useful additional to
32. should print a message Okay and wait for a new command 5 Can t get an object that is not here This is called when the player attempts to get an object that is not here It should print a message to that effect then either wait for a new command or scrap the rest of the commands on the line and wait for the player to type new one by using newcom In the first case if the player had typed whole string of commands then any after where he could not pick up the object wil be executed In the second case it gives him a chance to correct his mistake before continuing This is a common thing to do in situations that are errors 6 Carrying too much to get object Is similar to 5 and is handled in the same way 48 7 Already got that object Is again similar to 5 8 Haven t got that object to drop This is called when you try to drop an object you do not have and is handled in much the same way as 5 9 Dropall This is what is actually executed when the STAC comes across a dropall command It should include a loop that goes through each object that you are carrying and drops it repeating until you are carrying nothing The default action also gives a list of items dropped 10 Getall This is like dropall cycling through all the objects in the room and attempting to pick them up It will stop if you try to pick up too much 11 You can t This is called when you have asked the system to do something it does n
33. the area specified by the pathname You can select one of these by clicking on it or enter new filename by clicking on the old filename at the bottom On the left hand edge of the directory window are a close box and four arrows up down fast up and fast down If there are more files on the disk than can fit in the window you can scrol up and down by clicking on the arrows 42 Sometimes you will find that a seemingly normal file will be displayed with a small mark alongside it This is not a file but a folder It can contain more files and folders and is used to organize the disks better To open a folder and see what is inside click on it The close box closes it again Note how the pathname at the top changes when using folders You can alter the pathname if you like by clicking on it There are several disk selector buttons on the right hand side of the file selector These will only be of use if you have more than one disk drive as they allow you to switch between drives quickly and easily Clicking on the disk selector button for the disk you are already on will update the directory if you have just changed disks you should do this to see what is on the new disk Finally there are the OK and NO buttons Clicking on OK will confirm that you want to continue with what you are doing and clicking on NO will abandon it Thus if you select the Delete file option by accident click on NO and nothing will happen A short cu
34. there are no rooms stored in memory so the centre part of the screen is blank To insert a new room press Insert on the right near the arrow keys You will be asked which room number to add If the displayed number is not the one you want delete it using the Delete key several times if necessary and type in the number you want Then pres Return or Enter Enter room 1 to start with The screen should now look like a form with titles and blank spaces to be filled in At first the Connections title will be displayed in wnite on black inverse showing which bit of data you are currently expected to provide Since room 1 has no connections there is no need to type anything here Just press Return to go on to the next line which is the short room J Seapine T room 1 this is Above Ground Type that in e enclosing quote the next line the ime iio Vines EAR ee This is the part where you can description might run become poetic A typical long You are standing outside a large c the cliff face to your east ge cave entrance which runs into n nn ne the gens information without submerging it in relevancy It could be view i ep on ran dl i ed as bit terse however You are standing in the warm sunshine wh majestic cliff face to your east in which there Eurer of stygian gloom which appears to be a cave entrance You shiver you look at it reminded of the day you fought the venomous cave
35. two parts a name and a type The name can be up to 8 letters long and the type up to 3 letters They are separated by a dot It is customary to give files that hold the same sort of information the same type also called its extension An example 15 SANSERIF FNT whose type of FNT proclaims it as a font file FILE SELECTOR is a useful tool for selecting files to save on to disk or to load from it Rather than having to remember names of files and type them in the file selector allows you to pick one from the disk using the mouse It also handles opening and closing folders and changing disks FONT when printing characters on the screen the font specifies exactly how they look FOLDER files can be grouped together in folders for conven ience Rather than having to look through a whole load of files for the one you want you can just open the relevant folder All the font files on the STAC disk come in a folder called FONTS to keep them all together See also pathname GAC short for Graphic Adventure Creator an adventure writing system for many 8 bit computers upon which the STAC was based See also STAC GRAPHICS pictures as opposed to text ICON a small picture representing a function to be performed To do the function click on the icon with the mouse These are used mostly in the graphic editor see also chapter 4 IMPORT use a picture which has been produced using a different program either NE
36. you were asked to supply each word with an identifying number Any words with the same number were taken as being the same You can directly access the numbers of the verb nouns and adverbs typed in command 21 verbl gives the number of the verb t i nouni and 2 giv the number of the first and second nouns and adverbl and emo E give the numbers of the first and second adverbs This is very useful for dealing with objects If you define the name of object 1 as noun 1 object 2 as noun 2 etc t 1 conditions like then a whole string of if verb Set and noun lamp then get 1 ok if verb get and noun fish then get 2 ok etc can be replaced using a single condition If th j e last object w say number 10 then the following conditions would pt you de pick up and drop all objects if verb get and nouni lt 11 and nouni gt 0 1 then get nounl ok if verb drop and lt 11 and nounl gt 0 then drop nounl ok This works because the object numbers and the noun numbers are the same for each object It wil only work this is so Closely related to these is itis Usually the word it in a command refers to the last noun that you typed in You can force it to something else if you wish by using itis For example having just given a message A rock narrowly misses you tou might like it to refer to the rock Therefore you da use itis rook to achieve this assuming that ro
37. 0099095 00496009499 S9 bonding STAC 04 92920322233410 202 Ness TIT nuire vs m l Local conditions Sauces NERESI n PEESI i 198 no occasions i08 NARSXAUASS UMS ete 24 40 56 68 Low priority conditions T T E ddncuseecaseds ses 930 68 BEEN t e ssssasssasq sessaseeesas 6 5000 CLIE TTTTQQTTQQ TQUE T T essssesesesesssssesssseseosedosesseseeesa Markers conditional words O ees 15 26 65 Markers general An PR Asaeussedsddo 5 38 40 65 71 Messages conditional words dntretcetosessipeenaresssccezntes vs 12 13 18 21 67 Messages general socccecsoee 34 53 56 58 67 00 o0 01 0 e M essessssesess 108 incidences M ET 295544 s we Nesting eee n sosie PREIS e scecssesess 24 quassesesse eeoos PTT TT Raven est een vsosssesssosseses 68 Nouns USE ET saison M eecsosesossesesssseesseessosseses 9565 71 DENUMDOPIDE scccccccvecccccesce M saisis M ess sesse BO Objects conditional words eere 4 5 10 12 14 22 25 64 Objects general r 3 34 37 39 40 48 50 60 61 64 ooo T N RIPT n Mm asesssessss 10 48 68 rcp
38. 15 so the object description tells the player that information The objects will start the adventure B particular rooms although they may move around later Thus the start room for each object should be recorded Also the weight sad ps object oportere You may be able to carry 100 coins only one go ar i oed g 50 a gold bar will be 100 times as heavy With the _STAC it is a good idea to give all the rooms and objects their own specific numbers at this stage It will be more difficult to add them later on when we actually need them Then another thing you will need to specify is t needed The player will be with the yee ged his typed commands which must be interpreted by the adventure and used as a basis for action It would be impractical to include a complete English dictionary only the words you nd need are given In general the larger the vocabulary more friendly the adventure needs to be For example might have lamp which needs to be lit If you have n light lamp it would be nice if you could also ei light torch torch on lamp on turn lamp on switch on lamp etc as well These loosel i initially y define the adventure universe as set up us go through the construction of a very short adventure We start by setting up the adventure universe here then conclude with the worki i introduced orkings in Chapter Five after they have been Story Get the gold f
39. 4 however are printable and they can be redesigned by you to add a personal touch to the adventure When you call up the font editor the 256 characters are displayed on the left and an 8 by 8 grid on the right There are also three buttons at the bottom marked Exit Save and Load the grid are four rectangles of colour which are black red white and blue You can draw in the grid using the mouse Click on one of the coloured rectangles not white for the moment it will not show up and click in a square on the grid It will be filled with the colour you selected This will alow you to construct and change characters To see how a character is constructed click on the character you want using the left mouse button The grid will show a magnified view of the character which you can then edit by selecting colours and clicking in the grid This is easier to do than to explain The character will also be displayed life size in the top left hand corner of the screen When you have finished redesigning the character you can put it back in the character set by moving the mouse over the character you wish to replace and clicking using the right mouse button You can redesign all the characters in the character set including the control characters When you are satisfied with the font you can save it to disk To do this click on then SAVE button This will give you a file selector in which you can enter the name of the fon
40. If you want your message to appear on new line then use the word first This stands for LineFeed and will move the printing position on to new line scrolling the screen up if necessary You can also print out numbers using print If you wanted to weigh an object for instance you could use if verb weigh and noun lamp then print weight 1 wait which will print the weight of object 1 the lamp when you type weigh lamp ROOMS Since you can move about in the rooms of the adventure some words to do with this might come in handy The first of these is look which will print a description of the room you are in along with a list of any objects that are here and a picture if there is one This one is very useful if you have been in a room a long time and wish to see the description of the room once more To move between rooms use goto which takes you to a specified room This can be used for magic teleporting words beloved of Colossal Cave fans if verb xyzzy then goto 7 wait will take you immediately to room 7 no matter where you were before It also prints a description of the new room and depending on whether you have been here before will either print the short description if you have or the long description if not moveto is exactly the same except it does not print the room description The goto is also very useful for movements which cannot be included in the connection table Connections t
41. NGE unennesesceeeesses css e s o v s TTE BO What now noenvituteVveteves qessseea enoe 9 60 Yes and NO eee NOE E TOE TT TTT L Tre TTL E 22 68 You Gantt uiuo AE TU PE PL LITE L T osseuses EDEN 4 E 1987 INCENTIVE SOFTWARE LIMITED ZEPHYR ONE CALLEVA PARK ALDERMASTON BERKSHIRE RG7 4QW
42. NS These take care of events the player cannot control for the most part They are accessed from the main menu by pressing H Here are the ones we wil need with comments as usual 37 No Condition 1 if set 1 and reset 2 then dec 1 if it is dark marker 1 set and we have no source of light marker 2 reset then decrease the turns left in the dark counter 2 if 1 count 1 and set 1 and reset 2 then lf message 6 if you have only one turn left in the dark then print the scuffling footsteps message to warn then player that something nasty is about to happen 3 if 0 count 1 then 1f message 7 death if the player has no moves left in the dark then kill him off 4 if at 1 and carried 4 then 1f message 10 20 count 0 success if the player is in room 1 with the gold then he has won Give him another 20 points Those are all the high priority conditions needed The turns in the dark counter is set up at the start of the game by special condition 17 the start of adventure condition that is executed only when you first enter the adventure This is available from the main menu under key S Enter 17 for the condition number and insert line one as follows 1 3 setontr 1 setstr 110 This gives you 3 moves in the dark before being eaten Marker 1 is already reset therefore it 15 not dark Also set the strength so you cannot carry everything To get back to the main menu press Esc then enter a condit
43. OCHROME or DEGAS INTELLIGENCE is generally the decision making property of an adventure rather than its ability to think We are still a very long way from a true thinking computer program INVENTORY a list of objects usually the ones you are carrying LINESTYLE how a line is drawn Examples are dotted dashed continuous 55 LOOP programming term for something which is done over and over again It is called a loop because on flowcharts a convenient programming aid consisting of little boxes connected to each other with squiggly lines the lines all join up in a loop Infinite loops just go round and round forever for an example of this see LOOP MAGIC a convenient cheat for letting the adventurer do something very difficult if not impossible OBJECTS generally anything in an adventure which you can pick up and move OPERANDS the pieces of information that are manipulated by operators OPERATOR in conditions is a word that does something to operands For example in 1 2 the operands are 1 and 2 and the operator is which simply adds them together PALETTE the set of colours that you can use on the screen You can use 16 colours chosen from the 512 available on the ST PARSER see command interpreter PATHNAME this specifies in which folder s a file may be found pathname that looks like A FONTS TIMES FNT means file TIMES FNT in folder FONTS on disk A See al
44. TRINGS It will sometimes be useful to ask the player question which requires an answer which cannot easily be handled using the standard verb noun adverb commands The player s name for example would be impossible to determine However for purposes such as this we have 16 strings which can be used to store a sequence of letters and or numbers up to 79 characters long To get a string from the user use get the on the end is usually pronounced string by the way and is a fairly standard 18 way of showing something to do with strings This will allow the player to type in string For example if message 1 says What is your name then the following will get the player s name and store it in string number De message 1 get 0 Now that you have the string you can print it out using print or allow the player to edit it using edit If you wanted the player to give you a number then you can find out the value of the string using value If the player typed 100 when asked and this was stored in string 1 then value 1 would give you the number 100 as a result Note that if the string had not been a number then the result would be 1 This can be used a check Conversely you can use number to turn a number into a string After 100 number 1 string 1 would be 100 You can also print strings from within messages If you use the control character Control V then string O will be printed and Control
45. age 9918 print You stumble 2 repeat lf message 9919 objsht firstob with drop firstob with until stren gt amount newcom drop objects until the amount carried is less than your strength 17 Start of adventure Not included adventure start is very specific 18 Load prompt il 1f message 9933 asslink 0 pause 5000 print Please insert disk containing then link file name then wait for keypress VERBS 255 a 9 1 2s 255 again 10 list 14 save 6d 15 load 2 south 6 down 9 look 17 splat 8 drop i n 11 3 e 1 north 7 take 3 east 13 pictures 12 text 16 exam Ld guit 17 textsize 16 examine 18 ramload 5 u 7 get 19 ramsave 5 up 13 graphics 14 restore 4 w AU 1 18 rl 4 west 10 inventory 19 rs 12 words 61 APPENDIX D CHARACTER KEY SEQUENCES When using the Font Editor it can be seen that there are considerably more characters than are actually displayed on the keyboard How do you type these in This generally requires use of the insert and shift help keys mentioned in appendix B Here is a list of how to get all the characters Since they may change in appearance from font to font they are organized by row and column as they appear on the font editor In order to compact the list the following keys have been abbreviated Control Cnt means with eg is Shf 1 Insert Ins means then eg row 1 column Shift Help Hlp 9 is Hlp Backspace Shift Shf Row Col Key sequence Row Col Key Sequence 1 1 Not ava
46. ake place no 13 matter what but you require something to be done before you can go somewhere then use a condition As an example say sen are in room 1 and there is an opening to the east Hier you need the lamp to pass through the opening So you must type east d two and be carrying object 1 the lamp to go east to room if verb east and carried 1 then goto 2 wait You can describe other rooms at a distan i er ce using descing which prints the long description and descsht which prints thie short go This could be useful for say magic crystal ball which allows you to look through it at another distant room _ For looking through doorways you will need to know which room is connected in which direction This is accomplished usin connect It gives you the number of the room lying in a het described by a verb a bit confusing to say easier to show Again one of my myriad examples should help If you are in fom two and room three is in the connections to the north then connect north wil give you the result 3 since room 3 is w the north of your current location This will only work with those doorways that are entered in the connections for that room t those that have to be dealt with otherwise ai To find out which room you are in s use roo 1 objects 44 this r om mb Heb avo m So to list all the To draw picture use draw In conjunction wi i 1 gives you the number of the picture anes
47. and keys to use for yes and no and asks you to supply name for a loading picture If you do not wish to have a loading picture for your runnable adventure just click on the NO button on the file selector box when it appears 39 SAVE THE ADVENTURE Now would be a good time to save the adventure This is done from the disk menu press D from the main menu On the disk menu is the option Save adventure data Press key S and a file selector will come up showing the files that are on the disk currently in your drive Replace this with a disk which you don t mind cluttering up with adventure data preferably a blank formatted disk To check what files are on this disk click on the drive letter it will usually be A on the right of the file selector box To enter a name for your adventure data click on the filename at the bottom of the file selector and type in the name of your adventure data This can be up to eight letters long and you should follow it by ADV to show that it is an adventure file Press Enter when you have a satisfactory name then click on the OK box to start saving the data The disk drive will whirr for a short while while the data is being saved When it has finished you can return to the main menu by pressing Esc as usual PLAYING THE ADVENTURE You can test the adventure from within the STAC by pressing Enter from the main menu You should then be able to play the adventure If anything go
48. ant to play as a chord Here is an example 15 t5 cdefgAB Cec which is a scale with a chord at the end You may have up to 3 notes in a chord You can change durations in the same way as a normal note 15 t5 cdefgAB Cec 4 will carry the chord on for four beats The relation of tempo to beats per second is given here Also if we assume that 4 beats is a crotchet note then the tempo in beats per minute is also given Tempo Beats sec Crotchets min 1 50 750 2 25 375 3 16 7 250 4 1245 187 5 10 150 6 8 3 129 7 741 107 8 6 2 94 9 5 8 83 10 5 75 13 4 5 68 12 4 2 62 13 8 8 58 14 3 6 53 15 33 50 Here are the names of the notes on the treble stave b f g A B e D E F G Notice that the STAC does not wait for the tune to finish before going on to the next thing If another tune is to be played before this one is finished then the old tune is stopped and the new one takes over CHAPTER SIX OUR SMALI ADVENTURE Having seen how to set out an adventure in chapter two and how to use the conditions in chapter four we will now attempt to get a complete adventure running I am assuming that you have already typed in the room and object descriptions from chapter two As recap here they are again ROOM DESCRIPTIONS Room 1 Above Ground Connections None You are standing outside a large cave entrance which runs into the cliff face to the east Room 2 Large Cave Connections east 3 You are
49. before or is equal to string 1 gt Is true if string 0 comes after or is equal to string 1 Finally for the string section pun not intended is the d obey This passes control from the player to a aes E example if string 1 was Go north then east then obey 1 the rest of the command line that the player typed lt s en make you go north and then east just as if you had actually typed it in It then returns control to you the player This can be used to talk to oth er charact asking them to do things cters in the adventure and Closely related to this are the two commands comm and parse pe 1 takes the rest of the command line and copies it into string 1 and parse 1 will search for nouns verbs and adverbs in string 1 and fill in the values as if you had typed string 1 20 Note that this keeps any verbs nouns and adverbs already found in your command line A useful application for this is when you require some extra clarification Say for example that there are two keys in your possession a silver one and a bronze one and the user types drop key The following condition will ask the user Which one the silver key or the bronze key message 1 get response from the user and fill in extra adverbs for example bronze or silver if verb drop and noun key and zero adverb then message 1 get 0 parse 0 lf This sort of thing makes adventures really friendly a
50. ck is a recognized noun For really advanced tricks you can even alter the values of nounl noun2 verbl adverbl and adverb2 this use the word word as you go along To do 13 word 1 puts 13 into nouni 9 word 2 puts 9 into noun2 11 word 3 puts 11 into verbl 99 word 5 puts 99 into adverbi 54 word 6 puts 54 into adverb2 Using 7 8 9 11 and 12 changes the command i 9 you are repeatin h you type again in a corresponding order E Similarly you can change the value of amount turns and with using the three words setamnt setturn setwith This will be of use _ when constructing multi character adventures This also requires 8 more comprehensive explanation of with It is as mentioned before a room which moves around with you and ig by default given the number 1 If you wish to have multiple inventories like one for your pockets and one for your backpack this can be achieved by changing the value of with to say 2 for your backpack inventory get yes or no response from the player like in quit you can use yesno This waits for the player to press eith x which are treated as true and false r 22 if yesno then do something will do the do something if the player pressed Y or just go on to the next line of conditions if the player pressed Note also that the Begin Where option on the main menu will allow you to change the keys used for Yes and
51. creatures armed only with your elven sword stinger It is really a matter of personal preference whether you prefer the first or second description I prefer the first the second contains much that is irrelevant Meanwhile back on the screen you have typed in the first description and pressed Return If you make any mistakes whilst typing the Backspace key will delete the character to the left of the cursor and the Delete key will delete the character under the cursor You can move the cursor about using the arrow keys and anything you type will be inserted shuffling everything after it along You are now asked to supply associated picture number This refers to the picture that will be drawn when you look at this room Since we haven t done any pictures yet press Deiete and change this to 0 From now on I wil assume you press Return at the end of each line You wil now be asked whether this is all right If it is press key Y for yes if not press N which will take you back to the top of the screen and give you another chance to edit the information you typed in The third option 4 abandons everything you have just typed Don t press this one If all is well you should now be back at the screen with the title at the top and mini menu at the bottom In the middle however will be a white on black line saying 1 Above Ground This is the one room you have typed in so far Use the Insert key to ins
52. cture you cannot get it back Click on the resize icon rectangle with arrows and draw a rectangle in the usual way on the upper part of the screen It will then be centred and you can use it for drawing in Undo allows you to undo the last thing that you did and only that one last thing The final icon drops you back to the main menu By this time you will probably have noticed that there is a small window towards the right of the screen in which appear coloured squares This is a magnify window and with it you can see the area around your mouse position with pixel accuracy It can be used to pinpoint the position of your mouse for sensitive things like joining lines together or small area fills Underneath this at the bottom of the screen is a small horizontal line Clicking on this with the left mouse button will change the selected line style There are 16 different styles so clicking 16 times will bring you back to the start pattern again The line style affects lines of course but also the paintbrush and the draw rectangle options There are many useful effects which can be achieved using a combination of brushes and linestyles At the extreme right are three boxes which slide up and down a scale marked 0 to 7 These represent the amount of red green and blue that go to make up the currently selected colour You can move them by clicking the mouse at the position you want them to move to The colour palette that y
53. do something if and only if the weight of object one is greater than 5 There are several of these types of tests Using any two numbers which I shall call and b since they could be anything there are the following tests gt b will work if number is greater than number b lt b will work if number is less than number b a b will work if number amp is equal to number b 11 hi b will work if is greater than or equal to b lt 6 will work if a is less than or equal to b and lt gt b will work if a is not equal to b So the following tests will work they are true 9e 1 lt 7 3 3 4 gt 4 5u lt 9 3 lt gt 4 but these will not 1058 B 4 329 4 gt 7 3 gt 9 3 lt gt 3 Many of the words used by STAC return numbers and these numbers can be manipulated further using simple arithmetic Although this is not used too often it can provide some or u t cuts in some situations quite useful short You can use add subtract X multiply and divid j WES ae oe 4 illustrate here are the results of several simple 4 3 7 4 3 a2 4 3 4 f 2 In a more complicated calculation th e X s and worked out first before the s and Jin 80 Me ape always 5 3 9 24 16 9 24 To alter this use brackets anything in brackets will be out first Note also that words that require numbers ike weight have preference even
54. e e lt 0 Is not negative gt 0 LIFE and DEATH p16 38 39 48 Kill the player and stop the game End the game since the player has succeeded Ask the player if he is sure he wants to quit and if yes end the game Exit from the game immediately DISKS p17 18 50 Save game position to disk Load a previously saved game position 66 ramsave n ramload n link m asslink message m caps get s print s edit s value s n number s S 5 swap 5 mess s cutst s 5 cutend s length s D addchr s first s c last s ascii s obey s parse s comm s o 0 uv vt ue Uu n wu cea DISES ctd Save game position to memory slot n Load previously ramsaved position Load and play an extension file Note that this will only actually work in a runnable adventure The filename to load is put in message m Prints the filename of the expected link file MESSAGES and STRINGS p18 21 36 Print message m to the screen Make sure first character of next message is a capital letter Get string s from the player Print string s to the screen Allow player to edit string s Get numeric value of string s Put numeric value n in string s Add string s on to end of string S Copy string s to string S Swap strings s and S Copy message m into string s Cut n characters off start of string S Cut n characters off
55. e are 512 markers numbered 0 to 511 and they can be either set or reset You might represent an open door by set marker and a closed one by reset marker You must be able to set and reset markers so the words set and reset do this for you There is also word change which will check the state of the marker reset it if ii was already set and vice versa It changes the state of the marker You can check the state of marker using set and reset which will test if the marker is set or reset respectively Imagine you are in room one with a door to the east which is initially closed You must open the door before you can go east to room two So let us use marker 3 to represent the state of the door If it is set the door is open otherwise it is closed AH of the markers are initially reset when you enter the adventure The following conditions wil take care of the door if verb east and set 3 then goto 2 wait wil only allow you to room 2 if you typed east and the door was already open To open the door 15 if verb open and noun door then set 3 ok This will set marker 3 which r typed open door epresents an open door if you mu 0 1 and 2 are used by the special conditions to denote ree special situations Marker 0 is set whenever a room is described Marker 1 is set if it is dark and marker 2 being set indicates that you have a source of light There are also 512 counters numbered 0 to 511 The
56. e player wins 9902 You scored total of 9903 points in 9904 moves To show the score 9905 Okay Message printed for Ok 9906 I can t see that Can t find object to get 9907 You are carrying too much already 9908 Why You ve already got it When you try to get something you already have 9909 You don t have that Drop something you don t have 58 MESSAGES ctd 9910 You can t do that 9911 Pardon 9912 What now 9913 You can also see When listing objects in a room 9914 9915 Are you sure Y N Ask when quitting 9916 You are carrying For inventory 9917 nothing 9918 You feel weak and stumble When strength reduced too much to carry load 9919 You drop For dropall 9920 taken For getall 9921 You can t examine that I m afraid 9922 You see nothing special For examining things 9923 SAVE HOME INVS CLRL Move to top line make it black with white letters 9924 TB10 Move across to print score 9925 Between score and turns 9926 NORM SMAL REST Go back to cursor position 9927 Dark in here isn t it For when you enter a dark room 9928 It s no use looking it s dark 9929 You don t have anything to drop 9930 There s nothing here to pick up Bool 9932 Text size changed 9933 Please insert disk containing NOUNS 254 all 254 everything 265 it it must always be noun 255 255 them SPECIAL CONDITIONS 1 Death L lf message 9900 1f print You have died
57. eae Mee room So if room 2 has picture 17 associated with it pictof 2 will give the result 17 The construction draw room will draw the picture associated with where you are Pictures can be turned off using text and turned back on again using pict The text beneath the pictures can be in either low resolution 40 characters across or medium resolution 80 characters across To switch between these use the word split The adventure wil always start up in low resolution since those of you who have TV sets rather than monitors will probably find 80 character text rather small and difficult to make out Note that this word ill picture will also clear all the text but will not affect the 4 change colours on the screen there are two words colour and i pcol Both work in the same way but colour changes the colours in the text region of the screen below the picture and topcol changes those in the top part of the screen that is the pict itself As an example i E O colour 666 wil change the background colour of the bottom part of the Screen to grey The first number O is the number of the colour you want to change 0 is the background and the second represents the amount of red green and blue you want in the colour This may range from 000 black to 777 bright white If you are unsure about the exact colour that will ge go to the graphics screen see next chapter and use e colour sliders to ge
58. ellipse fill area filled rectangle filled circle filled ellipse merge picture import picture resize window undo clear screen and drop back to main menu Again selection of these is by positioning the mouse pointer over one of them and pressing the left hand mouse button The third and fourth rows represent the different brushes you can use Selection of these is again the same The brush affects everything you do with the airbrush and paintbrush and also line draw rectangle circle and ellipse Here is a brief guide to each of the functions Airbrush acts like a spray can Position the mouse pointer and press the left mouse button to spray colour on to the screen Paintbrush acts like a paintbrush Again pressing the mouse button allows the brush to work Try using different brushes and colours with this and the airbrush to see what different effects you can get Try moving at different speeds Line draw introduces a concept called rubber banding which describes the way that the line can be seen before it is placed on the screen permanently Move the mouse pointer to the start of the line and press and hold the left mouse button Whilst holding it down move the mouse to the end of the required line The line can be seen acting like stretched rubber allowing you to position it exactly Release the mouse button and the line will be drawn permanently 2T The Drawing Screen 28 Ld Rectangle
59. en The disk contains a demonstration runnable adventure called SHYMER produced by Sandra Sharkey using the STAC a number of compressed pictures produced by the STAC and a slideshow to CHAPTER TWO display them all This disk is Public Domain and is not copy protected please make copies for your friends ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to use this space to thank some of th e have helped in the development of this program ne Thanks to Sandra Sharkey for the Shymer adventure Pat Winstanley for extensive playtesting David Wyatt for the demo pictures Dicon Peake for the graphics in Shymer Paul for graphic conversion Steve The for lively conversation Ian Andrew for constructive criticism Mike Griffin for destructive testing Deborah Stannard for not minding Jon Clark Jeff Maude John Maude and of course you for buying it DEGAS is trade mark of Batteries Incl uded NEOCHROME is a trade mark of Atari Inc ABOUT THE AUTHOR geen Ellis is a 21 year old graduate in Cybernetics and Computer runc from the University of Reading His previous work ps p n the Graphic Adventure Creator now the standard wis ure writer on many 8 bit micros He is not married has no children and lives in Reading with a lady Archaeologist The STAC was originally conceived as an extension of GA QM over the 12 months of design and development ilie m P a a system in its own right It was develo
60. ert the descriptions of the other five rooms in the same way as you did with room 1 Room two has a connection associated with it you go east to room three Therefore when you are asked for connections type east 3 then Return This means that if you type east you will move to room three Make sure you have a space between the word and the number Whole lists can be entered with spaces between each item Here is example of room with connections to the north south and west north 4 south 9 west 2 Type in the rest of the descriptions etc After doing this you wil have 6 numbers and short room descriptions in the middle of the screen You can scroll up and down this list using the up and down arrow keys by one item at a time Pressing Shift at the same time will scroll by 16 items at a time To delete the highlighted item press the key marked F1 which is far enough away from the main keyboard that it should not be pressed accidentally To have another go at typing in the required information editing an item press the space bar The Esc key returns you to the main menu from here as it does from most places in the STAC Entering the objects is very much the same except that the form will ask you to supply a short description a long description the weight of the object and the room it is in at the start The STAC is designed so that the procedure for entering data is as similar as possible no matter what it is
61. es wrong you can call up a help screen by pressing Help then Enter when the system asks What now This shows the state of all the markers and counters as well as where all the objects are and various other useful information You can scroll up and down the using the arrow keys as usual and return to the game using Esc If anything really major goes wrong then you will be given an error message and a listing of the line of conditions where the error occurred You can force an error by pressing both Shift keys at the same time in case you get stuck in infinitely repeating loop This will return you to the main menu Alternatively pressing the Esc key when asked for a command will do the same The errors are listed in appendix E with a brief explanation of what is likely to have caused them Remember to test everything the user is likely to say don t just test that the adventure is solvable Attempt to be as stupid as possible If a room description says You are in cave Entrances lead north and east Try going south and west too and up and try examining the elderberry bush that is not there and so on This can uncover many a mistake If however everything went all right you can save the adventure as a stand alone program This means that you can just start it up in the usual way from the desktop and other people will be able to play it even if they do not own the STAC Note 40 that this will require aro
62. f they have been picked up or moved before crossing over to the new LNK file However this does mean that you cannot use room 0 to destroy objects any more Instead you should use another unused room Room 10000 is useful in this respect since there can never be a real room 10000 and so the player can never get to the destroyed objects The command link m is used to swap from one link file to another during play The m is the number of the message which holds the name of the LNK file to be loaded Note link will only work in a runnable adventure not during the testing stage 17 The link m can be used anywhere in the conditions generally the form If new file needed then moveto r link m which will put you in room r of the new LNK file For each file that can be moved into a message must be set up containing the name of the file so that if the game was in three parts each of which being accessible from the others each LNK file would need to contain two messages for the names of the other two LNK files When link is operating it looks for the named file on the current disk and if found it loads the file describes the new room and waits for a new command The conditions cannot be continued since a new set will have just been loaded in If the named file is not on the current disk then the link command is ignored and the rest of the condition line is acted on This should ideally ask the player to inser
63. f this happens this condition is called The default is to drop items one by one until the amount you are carrying is less than or equal to your strength 17 Start up This is called once at the start of the adventure and is used to set up things It is too specific to be included in QSTART but typically it will be used to set your strength ask for your name if necessary set light or dark markers and moves in the dark counters 18 Load prompt This is called if load cannot find the link file it needs on the current disk This condition should print a prompt to tell the player to change disks and then press a key It should also wait for the keypress COMMANDS The commands that the player enters are processed by the STAC so that they can be passed to the conditions in usable form This process is quite complex but will allow you to see how a player command is interpreted and thus what sort of commands you can use Let us take a very small vocabulary NOUNS VERBS ADVERBS 1 lamp 1 take 1 green 2 box 2 put 2 red 296 it 3 in 254 and look at the player s command Take the lamp put it in the green box The STAC goes through the command one word at a time checking through the verb noun and adverb tables and filling in the recognized numbers in verbl nounl 2 adverbl and adverb2 If it comes across an adverb with number 254 or 255 then it stops and saves its position having got a complete command Let
64. ght occur at 1 F y point For example i a condition devoted to alerting the player shat re fae Bit action For the most part these can saiely alone and work well but the y can be used Ma ee pom Again an example might be een cial condition that is called when lok you try to pick rea i up that is too heavy The standard response to tell id p A3 t iat it is too heavy and leave it at that However if m Ee Je a el cruel towards your player it could e ered to make him try to pick the obj ect stumble fall over and drop everything else he was voe The conditions are entered in i language which is quite cl English but which has a limited vocabulary Most of din quite obvious and easy to learn so here goes I shall go through the conditi i all nditions in logical sections sinc they divide up quite neatly The first section deals with bota TESTING FOR A CONDITION Most conditions will be of the form If such and such happens then do so and so so there are two words if and then which do exactly what you would expect Note that words in italics are words that the STAC understands So most of the time condition lines will look like if test is true then do something Usually after executing the something you wil want to stop and wait for a new command from the player This is done with either wait which just wait
65. ilable 3 4 1 2 Cnt A 3 5 Shf 4 1 3 Cnt B 3 6 Shf 5 1 4 Cnt C 3 7 Shf 7 1 5 Cnt D 3 Ba lt 1 6 Cnt E 3 9 Shf 9 1 Cnt F 3 10 Shf 0 1 8 Cnt G 3 11 Shf 8 1 9 Hlp Backspace 3 12 Shf 1 10 Goter 48 1 11 Cnt J 3 14 1 12 Cnt K 3 den 1 13 Hlp Cnt L 4 26 f 1 14 Hlp Return 1 15 Cnt N 4 19 9 1 16 Cnt O 4 2 1 4 3 2 2 1 Cnt P 4 4 3 2 2 Cnt Q 4 b 4 2 3 Cnt R 4 6 5 2 4 Cnt S 4 B 2 5 Cnt T 4 D 2 6 Cnt U 4 9 8 2 7 Cnt V 4 10 9 2 8 Cnt W 4 11 Shf 2 9 Cnt X 4 12 3j 2 10 Cnt Y 4 13 Shf 4 11 4 14 2 12 Ege 4 15 Shf 2 13 Cnt 4 16 Shf 2 1 Cnt 2 15 Hlp Home 5 1 Ah 2 16 Hlp Cnt 5 2 Shf A 5 3 Shf B 3 1 5 4 Shf C 3 2 Shift 1 5 5 Shf D 3 3 Shift 2 5 6 Shf E 62 Row Col Key sequence Row Col Key sequence 5 7 Shf F 7 8 G 5 8 Shf G 7 9 H 5 9 Shf H 7 ao I 5 10 Shf I J A J B 11 Shf J T 2 K 5 12 Shf K K Sw B 13 Shf L 14 M 5 14 Shf M T 15 N 5 15 Shf N y X8 5 16 Shf O 8 1 6 1 Shf P 8 2 Q 6 2 Shf Q 8 5 BR 6 3 Shf R 8 4 S 6 4 Shf S 8 5 T 6 5 Shf T 8 Wu 6 6 Shf U 8 T na 6 7 Shf V 8 8 W 6 8 Shf W 8 6 9 Shf X 8 1D 6 10 Shf Y 6 cites BEI Shf Z 8 12 mae I 8 13 Shf ERIS V 8 14 Shf ae 8 15 Shf 6 15 Shf 6 8 16 Hlp Delete 6 16 Shf Insert see row 1 7 EN 10 Insert see row 2 7 B 11 Insert see row 3 7 3 B 12 Insert see row 4 7 4 C 13 Insert see row 5 7 D D 14 Insert see row 6 7 6 15 Insert see row 7
66. ilar to above Describe object you are about to pick up then make it refer to it Attempt to get the object this may fail if you are carrying too much already If it does not fail then print taken and repeat until there are no objects left in the room 11 You can t L message 9910 newcom 12 Pardon 1 message 9911 newcom 13 What now 1 lf message 9912 print What now 2 message 9923 descsht room message 9924 print counter message 9925 print turns message 9926 print the status bar at the top of the screen 60 SPECIAL CONDITIONS ctd 14 Look 1 if set 1 and reset 2 then message 9928 return if it is dark and you have no source of light print It s dark and return to where we were 2 set 0 desclng room draw pictof room otherwise print room description and picture if any and set marker 0 as confirmation of this 3 if firstob room then message 9913 list room message 9914 if there are any objects here list them 15 Describe room when entering it 1 lf 2 if set 1 and reset 2 then message 9927 return test if it is dark as above 3 set 0 4 if visit then descsht room draw pictof room else desclng room draw pictof room if this room has already been visited use the short description otherwise use the long one 5 visit mark this room as having been visited 6 if firstob room then message 9913 list room message 9914 list any objects that are here 16 Strength reduced to below load 1 mess
67. ill respond to VOLUME how loud a piece of music is played Again this might merit another Motorhead Val Doonican comparison ST APPENDIX CONTENTS OF QS TART FILE The QSTART file supplied with the STAC contains many things which are used in almost all adventures no matter what the story or the precise nature of the adventure Here is a list of exactly what you get when you load the QSTART file with additional comments in italics ADVERBS 254 Adverbs with number 254 5 are taken to be 255 separators between different commands on 255 the same line 255 254 and 255 then LOW PRIORITY CONDITIONS 1 if verb drop and noun all then dropall wait 2 if verb get and noun all then getall wait Get and drop all objects 3 if verb 1 then look wait Describe room when player types look 4 if verb i and notzer cntobj with then message 9916 list with wait Inventory when you are catrying something 5 if verb i and zero cntobj with then message 9916 message 9917 wait Inventory when you are carrying nothing 6 if verb quit then quit ok 7 if verb text then text draw 0 ok 8 if verb graphics then pict draw pictof room ok 9 if verb save then save ok 10 if verb load then load look wait 11 if verb split then split 1f message 9932 wait 12 if verb ramsave then ramsave 1l ok 13 if verb ramload then ramload 1 look ok MESSAGES 9900 You have died When the player dies 9901 Well done When th
68. inside a large cave A lit tunnel leads west and two dim passages lead east and south Room 3 Passage Connections west 2 You are in an east west passage A snake is asleep in a corner at the eastern end Room 4 Lakeside Park Connections None You are in a small park by a lake which surrounds you on all sides except the west where there is cave entrance The lake looks too cold to swim in Room 5 Outside Castle Connections None You are outside giant castle built into the cliff A cave entrance leads north and there is door to the east Room 6 Strong Room Connections West 5 You are in the castle strong room It has obviously not been used for some time and the only way out is to the west OBJECTS The five objects from chapter two were No Description Weight Start Room 1 a lamp 10 1 2 dead rat 10 5 3 a key 1 4 4 of gold 100 6 5 lit lamp 10 0 MESSAGES The next thing to do is to enter the messages we will need to alert the user to what is happening Press M from the main menu to get into the message editor This is essentially similar to the editor used for the room descriptions and the object descriptions There will already be some messages in there 34 numbered 9900 upwards These are the ones that are used in most adventures and were loaded along with everything else in the QSTART file To insert a new message press Insert then alter the message number if necessary You can
69. ion number of 0 when asked LOCAL CONDITIONS These are conditions specific to one place only and are used for movement between rooms that cannot be handled by the connections and also for interaction with scenery such unlocking the door to the strong room and dealing with the snake They are found on key C from the main menu key L was already taken up by the low priority conditions Enter the number of the room in which the conditions apply then you will be asked to enter the actual conditions in the usual way Here they are Room 1 1 if verb east then set 1 goto 2 wait if you typed east then set the dark marker and move to room 2 Room 2 1 if verb west then reset 1 goto 1 wait if you typed west then reset the dark marker and go back to room 1 Most of the other local conditions are of this form setting resetting the dark marker then moving 2 if verb south then reset 1 goto 5 wait 38 Room 3 1 if verb get and noun snake then message 11 death if you tried to get the snake then print message and kill the player off 2 if verb east and set 4 then reset 1 goto 4 wait marker 4 is set if the snake has already been fed and will let you past If so and you tvped east then you will get outside again 3 if verb east then message 8 death if you typed east and the snake had not been fed if it had been the last condition would be true and we would not have got this far ds then
70. itions leaving one more for normal ramsave and ramload options You will need to use a marker say marker 4 for sake of argument although you could use any one you want This will be a record of which ramsave holds your Oops position Then include the following lines In special condition 13 add if set 4 then ramsave 1 if reset 4 then ramsave 2 change 4 In the low priority conditions add if verb oops and set 4 then ramload 1 look wait if verb oops then ramload 2 look wait This leaves ramsave position three for the player s ramsave ramload option ERRORS When entering a line of conditions several errors can occur These are accompanied by a beep and a short me ssage at the bott of the screen The possible ones are ar Unknown operator the STAC cannot understand one of the words you have typed This is most commonly because of a typing error Example vreb instead of verb or by not leaving a space in between two words or between a word and a bracket Example prin 9 2 4 2 you must leave a space between words Mismatched brackets the number of brackets open does not match the number of brackets closed Example print 2 3 5 one too many Mismatched numbers either there is a result not doing anything or there are not enough results Example print set 1 set 1 does not return a result so print has nothing to work with Also weigh 1 what do we do with the weight of object 1
71. l size very detailed pictures will fill 300 000 bytes of available memory it is worth remembering is that a picture is not e thousand words Many of the best ec ever produced were purely textual ie no pictures is better to have a sparsely illustrated adventure that has pe locations and is fun to play than one which has lot o brilliant pictures but which is unplayable i i ictures are a waste of time Many adventurers maintain that pic effort and memory I disagree There is plenty of scope oe including pictures in adventures but I have said don neglect the adventure to produce the pictures 31 CHAPTER FIVE MUSIC IN MESSAGES The music system used in STAC is quite basic in construction but needs a separate chapter to explain so here it is The tunes are entered in messages and are played when the message is printed They can even be mixed with normal text But how does the STAC know what to play and what to print Tunes are started by typing Cntri T T for tunes Now anything after this will be interpreted as music until either the end of the message is reached or a Cntrl U character The first thing to do usually is to set the volume and tempo of the tune This is done using the v and t commands Each of these is followed by a number then a space remember the space on the end So to set the volume to 15 loudest and the tempo to 5 10 beats per second use vid t5 Ok
72. let us write an Examine all condition using a loop What we need to do is go through every object see if it is available and if so print its long description We can also put it in a special condition so that we can use it easily wherever it is needed Special condition 20 is not used so we can put it there We need to keep track of the number of the object we are looking at by using a counter Again we must choose one which is not used anywhere else say counter 3 The construction objlng counter 3 wil print the long description of the object we are looking at and we can test whether it is available using avail counter 3 All we need to do now is to put these together in a loop which will count from 1 to 511 the legal objects Here it is don t type in the comments in italics 1 setontr 3 set the counter to the first object repeat start the loop LE avail counter 3 then 1f objlng counter 3 if this object is available then describe it inc increase counter 3 look at the next object until 512 count 3 until counter 3 reaches 512 Putting these lines into special condition 20 allows us to describe everything around just by using special 20 See how the repeat and the until are on different lines repeating the whole block of lines in between them One thing to note is that an if then inside a repeat until must not be on one line If you find you have something like repeat if test then
73. mimic the actions of certain keys these are given in Italic after the description of the key and should thus be preceded by pressing Shift Help before typing them in Also you can quite legally include any of the characters marked ignored if you like but as it says they will be completely ignored They will not even leave a space Character Prints as Action taken Cntrl A TAB4 Tab across by 4 character tab Cntrl B CT B Ignored Cntrl C CT C Ignored Cntrl D CT D Ignored Cntrl E BUZZ Sound buzz Cntrl F BEEP Sound beep Cntrl G PING Sound a ping Cntrl H LEFT Move left one character Backspace Cntrl I RIGH Move right one character Tab Cntrl J DOWN Move down one character Cntrl K UP Move up one character Cntrl L CLRS Clear the screen Shift Home 52 Cntrl M Cntrl N Cntrl O Cntrl P Cntrl Q Cntrl R Cntrl S Cntrl T Cntrl U Cntrl V Cntrl W Cntrl X Cntrl Y Cntrl Z Cntrl Cntrl V Cntrl Cntrl Cntrl Prints as CR SAVE REST CT P CLRL LARG SMAL TUNE TEXT STRO STR1 INVS NORM TB10 ESC CT CT HOME CT Action Move to left edge of screen Return Enter Save this cursor position Move back to saved position Ignored Clear this line Large window size enabled The large window size covers the entire screen Small window enabled The small window size covers the area below the
74. mode screen when running adventure The Printer width question is used to determine whether picture will fit across the paper or not if not then it is printed along the paper Try experimenting with different values for this the higher the number the wider the paper Since it is in printer units it will vary from printer to printer I find a value of about 128 works well with an Epson LQ800 which is what I use The linefeed length is again used for graphics and represents the distance between successive scans of the print head whilst printing graphics If you get white stripes across your picture try reducing it Dark stripes suggest increasing this spacing Since control codes are widely used on screen but can cause havoc on a printer they are translated on printing to a more readable form The abbreviations for each can be found in appendix B along with what the control characters actually do on the screen 44 CHAPTER EIGHT THE FONT EDITOR Using the STAC it is possible to change the style in which text is printed on the screen though not to the printer This is known as the font and the font editor can be called up from the main menu with key F There are 256 characters in the character set including letters numbers and punctuation The first 32 are reserved and are not actually printed These are known as control characters and cause different effects on the screen see appendix B The other 22
75. n have mirror writing for puzzles The possibilities are endless and by using four colours you can get some great effects CHAPTER NINE SPECIAL CONDITIONS AND COMMANDS SPECIAL CONDITIONS The special conditions are a part of the STAC that can be loaded with the QSTART file and safely left alone They control the adventure s responses to errors and other extraordinary situations A full list of the default conditions can be found in Appendix D but here I would like to show what each special condition does and how you can tailor the responses to your own needs There are 18 special conditions that are used by the system You can use the others by using the special word in conditions and they can be useful for often repeated sections in conditions Here are the first 18 special conditions 1 Death This condition is called when the user dies ie when the death word is executed in a condition It should at the very least exit the game possibly giving a message as well 2 Success This is similar to 1 but is called when the player wins Again it should at least exit the player from the game 3 Quit This should ask the player whether he really wants to quit or not If he answers yes he should exit the game Special conditions wil always return to where they were called from unless they include wait ok newcom or byebye which will be executed as normal 4 Ok This is called when the ok word is executed It
76. nd pleasant to use COMMENTS You can include comments in your condition lines if you like If you include the characters gemicolon or V backslash in the line everything after that on the line will be ignored when the conditions are executed but will be stored for you to refer to later Here is an example if verb quit then quit ok let the player quit or if verb save then save ok save the position This can be very useful in keeping track of what you are supposed to be doing next However they can take up quite bit more memory than the actual conditions ADVANCED CONDITIONS There are stil a few words left which are slightly more advanced than the rest and whose use is limited at first but can be put to very good use after the basic condition system has been mastered They do not really fall into any neat category random returns a random number between one and a particular number For example random 100 could come up with any number between 1 and 100 inclusive caps makes sure that the first letter of the next thing printed on the screen is capital letter This is useful when listing objects as in getall where the first letter is usually small Tests return two values true and false For example 3 3 is true but 4 gt 7 is false Hence the words true and false which just return true and false values True is given value 1 false is O In the verb noun and adverb tables
77. now type in your message in the normal way Here are the messages we will need don t type in the comments in italics 1 It lights up When the player lights the lamp 2 It goes out When the player extinguishes the lamp 3 It tastes even better than it looks If the player eats the rat Think of everything 4 The snake wakes up comes over and bites you If the player tries to go past the snake without the rat 5 The snake wakes up comes over and eats the rat It then falls asleep again When the player goes past the snake with the rat 6 You hear shuffling footsteps nearby After two moves in the dark 7 An eight foot spider with glowing red eyes jumps from the shadows and neatly severs your head from your twitching body After three moves in the dark Gruesome stuff eh 8 The door unlocks and swings open When the player unlocks the door 9 You bump your nose on the door Ouch If the player tries to walk through closed door 10 You got out with the gold When the player succeeds 11 The snake does not like being touched and bites your hand The venom courses through your veins like liquid fire If the player tries to pick up the snake 12 You find nothing much If the player tries to examine an unknown object 13 I m afraid I don t know what that is If the player tries to examine something 14 14 is a large snake which looks poisonous If the player examines the snake This covers all the situations tha
78. nse of multi part commands and complex actions such as Get the screwdriver the axe and the dog then hit the log with the axe and examine the dog CONDITIONS are the part of the adventure which make the decisions See chapter 3 for a full explanation CONNECTIONS the means by which different rooms are connected to each other CONTROL CHARACTER is a character which is not printed on the screen but which instead controls some action on the screen such as clearing it or moving on to the next line These are for the most part typed by holding the Control key down and typing a letter CURSOR a small rectangle which shows where the next thing you type will appear CURSOR KEYS the four keys with arrows on to the right of the main keyboard They move the cursor in the direction of the arrow on the key 54 DEFAULT the state something is in before you do anything to it The default message number for instance is one more than the last one you used DOUBLE CLICK to click twice very quickly ELLIPSE a squashed circle an oval EDIT changing information about something is called editing ENTER when asked to enter information type the information and then press either the Enter key or the Return key FILE everything stored on a disk is in the form of files Each one stores a separate set of information much like files in a normal filing cabinet FILENAME the name of a file on the disk This consists of
79. ot recognize ie it has gone through all the local and low priority conditions and has not recognized anything It should just print a message You can t and then scrap the command line with newcom Again similar to 5 12 Pardon This is called if you enter a command containing no verbs that are recognized Yet again another one similar to 5 13 What now This is called when a prompt is required to tell the player he is expected to give a command The default also prints a status line at the top of the screen showing where you are your score and the number of moves taken 14 Look This is called when the look word is executed It should at least display the long description of the room you are in and a list of any objects that are there or a message to show that it is dark if marker 1 is set ie it is actually dark and marker 2 is reset ie you do not have a lamp 15 Describe room on entry When moving from one room to another you will want to be given a description of the room you have just entered This is what this condition is for The default action is to check if it has been visited and so only print the short description otherwise to print the long description The room is then marked as having been visited Again if dark a suitable message is printed 49 16 Strength reduced to below load When using setstr it is possible to set your strength to 1 whilst carrying a combined weight of 10 I
80. ou set up will be remembered when you leave the picture This is an almost indispensible feature the default palette of colours is useful for only a very few pictures You can get quite subtle shade variations using this feature since there are 512 colours available When they are printed on the screen during an adventure the pictures can either sit snug against the top of the screen or space can be left at the top for an extra line of text This space at the top of the screen is set up in pixels from the Begin where option on the Main Menu They are not surrounded by the frame shown on the drawing screen you can draw your own if one is needed The pictures are stored in a compressed format to save on memory If a picture cannot be compressed as is the case for some digitized pictures and for highly detailed or random pictures then it is stored as a complete section of screen This is why you may notice that some pictures are loaded more quickly than others A full sized uncompressed screen will take about 18000 bytes of memory Compression will take this figure down by a significant factor as will reducing the size of the window You may have up to 9999 pictures memory permitting but in practice this will not be possible The number of pictures you can fit in varies according to the amount of detail you include i i they take up In the The simpler the pictures the less memory worst case 16 ful
81. ped DX ABER 2 in 68000 Assembly Language using Fast Asm and pio elp of lots of coffee music by Rush and Tangerine eam shelf full of Larry Niven and David Brin books and battered co f ARG O of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy for STAC is dedicated to Deborah for her love and support C Copyright 1988 Incentive Software Ltd 2 Minerva House Calleva Park Aldermaston Berke All rights of the producer and of the owner of the work being produced are reserved Unauthorised copying hiring lending public performance and broadcasti j i cast ibi nibiy for wx Pali fr br of this work is prohibited The publisher assumes 2 WRITING ADVENTURES Having loaded the STAC you are now ready to write an adventure Well that s not strictly true Adventure writing needs a bit of careful thought first However for a bit of fun let s write an adventure in under 30 seconds Load the STAC and then do the following Start stopwatch Press D Press L Point the mouse at QSTART ADV and click the left hand mouse button Press Enter or Return Press Esc Press R Press Insert Press Enter Press Enter Type A cave Enter Type You are in a large cave Enter Press Enter Press Enter Press Esc Press Enter Stop stopwatch Now try a few commands Ok so it s not very interesting or challenging but look on the bright side it can only get better Seriously though
82. picture if there is one Tune starts here Tune ends here Print string 0 Print string 1 Inverse on off Inverse off Tab to 10 characters short of right margin Ignored Esc Ignored Ignored Home cursor to top left corner Home Ignored 53 APPENDIX B GLOSSARY OF TERMS This section gives the meanings of some of the less common phrases and words in the manual ADVENTURE UNIVERSE is the setting for the adventure and includes all the locations and objects that the player will visit or use ADVENTURER simply the person playing the adventure AUTHOR the person who actually wrote the adventure BRUSH on the screen the shape you are drawing with This need not look anything like a real brush CHARACTER any number letter piece of punctuation or symbol that the computer can display CHARACTER SET the sum total of all the characters the computer can display CHORD playing more than one note at once in music CLICK to click on something move the mouse over it and hit the left hand mouse button quickly COMMAND anything the player types to get the adventure to do something Typical commands are Go north or Get the gold COMMAND LINE what the player types in It may contain several commands separated by punctuation or words like and or then COMMAND INTERPRETER the part of the STAC that extracts meaning from the player s commands Also known as a parser The STAC parser can make se
83. plete descriptions of each No Description Weight Start room l A lamp 10 1 2 dead rat 10 5 key 1 4 4 bar of gold 100 6 5 A lit lamp 10 0 In addition it might be a good idea to add a longer description of each one for use when the player examines the object more closely Since rooms 2 and 3 are underground we can make these dark so that you will need the lamp to navigate them Let s be generous and allow the player three moves in the dark before being eaten by giant horrible nasty monsters of some form Being in the dark is signalled by using a marker something which is either on or off Setting a particular marker on could indicate that it is dark and setting a different one could mean that you have a lamp with you Using STAC the rooms are connected together in two different ways The first way is by connections which are entered with the room descriptions These are taken no matter what happens and merely move the player to another room without affecting anything else They can only be used sparingly in this adventure They cannot be used between rooms 1 and 2 3 and 4 or 2 and 5 since these moves must be accompanied by a change from dark to light or vice versa They cannot be used between 5 and 6 since the strong room must be unlocked first but on the return journey from 6 to 5 they can be used since the door must already be open for you to be in room 6 anyway Therefore the only place they can be
84. print a message and kill the player off 4 if verb feed and noun snake and carried 2 then message 5 set 4 drop 2 2 to 0 20 count 0 wait if you typed feed snake then say the snake has eaten the rat and set marker 4 to record that it has been fed Then destroy the rat and give the player 20 points 5 if verb feed and noun snake then message 8 death if you typed feed snake and you don t have the rat then it will come over and bite YOU 6 if verb examine and noun snake then message 14 wait if you examine the snake then print its description in message 14 and wait for a new command Room 4 1 if verb west then set 1 goto 3 wait Room 5 1 if verb north then set 1 goto 2 wait 2 if verb east and reset 3 then message 6 newcom if you try to go east and the door mrkr 3 is closed then print the appropriate message and wait for a new command line 3 if verb east then goto 6 wait if the door is open goto room 6 4 if verb unlock and noun door and carried 3 then message 8 set 3 20 count O wait if you type unlock door you have the key then print an appropriate message mark the door as being unlocked and give the player another 20 points Room 6 No local conditions To get back to the main menu press Fsc twice BEGIN WHERE On the main menu there is an option Begin where accessed by pressing the B key This sets up where in the adventure you will start space at top of screen
85. r 4 This only works if the nouns and objects have the same numbers 8 if verb drop and noun lamp and carried 5 then drop 5 1 swap 5 message 14 20 count 0 reset 2 wait if you typed drop lamp when you are carrying a lit lamp then drop the lit lamp and make it o out printing a message to that effect 9 if noun1 lt 5 and verb drop then drop nounl ok the same short cut for drop 10 if verb examine and noun 1 and avail 5 then objlng 5 wait if you typed examine lamp and the lit lamp is available then describe that 11 if nouni lt 5 and verb examine then if avail nounl then objlng nounl wait useful thing this short cut Here it is again for examining things 12 if verb eat and noun rat and carried 2 then drop 2 2 to 0 message 3 wait if you eat the rat and it is being carried then drop it move it to room O ie destroy it and print the relevant message 13 if verb light and noun lamp and carried 1 then 1 swap 5 20 count 0 message 1 set 2 wait if you typed light lamp and the unlit lamp is available then swap it for the lit lamp add 20 to your score print a relevant message set marker 2 to show you now have a source of light and wait for a new command 14 if verb extinguish and noun lamp and avail 5 then 5 swap 1 20 count 0 message 2 reset 2 wait and vice versa for extinguishing the lamp The rest of the low priority conditions are to be found in the QSTART file HIGH PRIORITY CONDITIO
86. r m Change state of marker m ie if it was set before then reset it and vice versa Is marker m set Is marker m reset COUNTERS p16 24 38 Place value e in counter c Return value stored in counter Add one to value of counter Subtract one from counter c Add e to counter c and put the value back in the counter Subtract e from counter c Is the value e the same as the value in counter 65 ooo o pj Ej pu m e mod E D D prj 09 zero e pos e neg e notzer notpos notneg death success quit byebye save load COMBINATIONS 23 Are both t and T true Both same as and Is either or T or both true Both same or Is either t or T but not both true Both same as xor Is t false Same as not ARITHMETIC 11 Return result of adding e to E Return result of subtracting e from E Return result of multiplying e by E Return result of dividing e by Note that this returns whole numbers only So 9 2 is 4 not 4 5 Returns the remainder when e is divided by 9 mod 2 is 1 COMPARISONS 11 12 Is e less than E Is e greater than Is e equal to Is e less than or equal to E Is e greater than or equal to E Is e not equal to E Ign e aero 7 e O Is e positive gt 0 Is e negative lt 0 Is e not zero lt gt 0 Is e not positiv
87. rom the castle strong room and bring it to the entrance All right so it igi is a demonstration s not very original but then this Here is a map of the adventure l Above Ground 2 Large Cave 3 Passage 4 Lakeside A dead rat The Gold OUR SMALL ADVENTURE a It may seem at first sight that the five objects are the lamp the rat the gold the key and the snake However there are a couple of nice tricks to be had here Since the player will not be allowed to pick up the snake it wil bite him and he will die it cannot be moved from that room and can thus be included as a permanent fixture in the room descriptions Only things that do not move about or otherwise change should be entered with the room descriptions We can still include a way of examining the snake to make the game more friendly However we will want to light the lamp There are many ways of doing this but the one I find easiest is to have two distinct objects lamp and a lit lamp When the lamp is lit swap the unlit lamp for the lit one and when it is turned off do the opposite The lit lamp can be started in room 0 which is not on the map In fact it is sort of limbo room where uncreated objects are put and where destroyed objects go Very useful especially for magic None of that in my adventure please So the five objects are lamp rat a key gold bar and a lit lamp Here are the com
88. s for a new command ok which prints Okay and then waits for new command or newcom which will ignore any other commands on the line that the player typed and ask for whole new line of commands This is most useful when the player does something silly and would not want to go blundering on obeying all the other commands on the line So our condition now looks like if test is true then do something wait if test is true then do something ok or if test is true then do something newcom The most common things you will want to test for are words that you entered as command COMMANDS Commands can be split up into three sections verbs are words which do something nouns are the things to do it to and adverbs say how to do it For example in Take the lamp quietly the verb is take the noun is lamp and quietly is an adverb You can test for these using the words verb noun and adverb The construction if verb take then do something ok will do whatever is after the then if and only if the word take was typed in the command line Note that you must already have entered the word take in the verb table You can combine several words with and and or if necessary if verb take and noun lamp then do something ok There is no real limit to the number of ands or ors you can combine in condition Similarly lamp must have already been entered in the noun table
89. so filename folder PIXEL the smallest dot you can produce on the screen PLAYER the person who plays the adventure RANDOM an action for which you do not know the outcome The action of rolling a dice provides a random number between 1 and 6 RUBBER BAND not a pop group A rubber band object is one that can be stretched using the mouse until it is the proper shape SPLIT MODE SCREEN the ST can display three screen modes usually referred to as high medium and low resolution The STAC allows a split screen so that you can have ful colour low resolution pictures in the top half and 80 character medium resolution text in the bottom part of the screen something which is not usually possible STAC short for the ST Adventure Creator STRING a string is a sequence of characters letters or numbers It may be up to 39 characters long Here are some examples of strings Hello 99 64 Aardvarks are not common in Iceland TELEPORT to move from point A to point B instantly without going through any point in between Star Trek and Larry Niven fans will know all about teleporting 56 TEMPO how fast a piece of music is played Most music by Motorhead for example has a faster tempo than that favoured by Val Doonican TEXT words and numbers as opposed to graphics USER the person using the STAC as opposed to the adventurer VOCABULARY the sum total of all the words that the adventure game w
90. something until test then split it on to three lines repeat if test then do something until test 1 You can put repeat until loops inside each other up to a maximum of 16 at a time If you come up with legitimate use for a 16 level loop please write and tell me I can t think of one 24 This restriction does not apply for loops which are not inside each other you can have as many of these as you like Similarly special conditions can be nested as far as you like as long as you do not call a special condition which is already in the nest If you do it will be ignored TRICKS AND TIPS There are several useful hints and tips which you can use to either short cut conditions or to do things that are quite common in adventures The first of these is using nounl to bypass a lot of drop and get conditions As long as the number of an object and the number of the noun describing it are the same ie the rock is object two and noun 2 is rock you can check for a whole range of objects in one condition if verb get and nounl gt 0 and nounl lt 11 then get nounl ok This wil allow you to get all objects with numbers greater than 0 and less than 11 ie objects 1 to 10 The reason it works is because the value of noun is the same the object number it refers to Obviously if you have more or less objects just change the 11 to one more than the last object number you have defined 21 for 20
91. t for selecting a file and then clicking on OK is to double click on the file you want in the window Also the OK button can be activated by pressing Enter or Return and the NO button by pressing Esc If you try to load a file which is obviously wrong like selecting a file called TIMES FNT a font file when asked to provide a name for an adventure file the STAC will realize that the file is the wrong type and a box will appear in the middle of the screen saying Invalid file format To continue press Return This prevents you loading incorrect types of data and confusing the STAC PRINTER MENU Many of you wil have printers but those that don t will still find the printer menu useful With it you can list any part of the data to the screen or to the printer You can also send it to the serial port or down the midi lines if you like this might be useful for transferring data between computers To use the printer menu press P from the main menu then the letter for the data area you want to use R for room descriptions O for objects etc Then the program will ask whether you want to send the output to the screen the printer the RS 232 port or the midi Respond with either S P R or M You will then be asked to supply a range of items to be sent from one value to another Thus you can list only messages 1 to 10 for example The list will then appear on the screen or the printer or be sent to the serial port or the midi
92. t in the normal way In order to show up on the file selector font files should be followed by extension Loading fonts is just as easy The font is then displayed ready for editing There are several font files on the disk in a folder called FONTS If you open this up with the file selector you can select and load any of these for use in your adventure The EXIT button takes you back to the main menu as does the Esc key The font you designed will now be used for all the printing to the screen that the STAC does The UNDO button takes you back to the main menu but restores the previous font that you had just in case you make a complete mess 45 Font Editor 2 i l TOS ICS IBS T K k one yoe OT Frol AGAZSIE ERO GABCOEFGHIJ PORS TUVWAYZ I LC ij iren PE F qo mn TO a 4123456 789 YW broo5 DUE r fag qrastuwiuur uz abcde f oh et i C U D 8 The Font Editor Screen You may notice that the font is broadly divided into two sections the first half which you can for the most part see on the keyboard and the second half which you cannot How do we type in the characters in the second half This is relatively straightforward When typing in a message or a room description for instance pressing the Inser
93. t key will let you use the second half of the character set If you press a key on the keyboard it wil now return the character directly underneath it by 8 lines on the character set ie it adds 128 to the character code for those of you who do a little programming For a full list of how to get all the characters see Appendix E To access control characters that also do things to the line you are typing like control M which acts like return press Shift Help and then the control character Shift Help means in effect put the next character into the line no matter what it 15 This is useful for inserting additional control characters into messages etc for special effects Successful fonts follow some general rules Firstly try to make the letters look distinct from each other or there is a danger of the text becoming unreadable try loading BLOCK FNT to see what I mean all the letters look more or less the same If all the vertical lines are double width then this makes the font look darker and it is consequently more readable Don t be tempted to use the whole 8 by 8 grid for a character if you do all the characters will butt up against one another and the result will again be unreadable You can put special characters in the top half of the character set since they can be typed in by pressing the Insert key This could be useful for say italics or bold or maybe double width characters or monograms You could eve
94. t need a message during the game VERBS and NOUNS In addition to those present in the QSTART file see appendix D we will need some verbs and nouns to cover specific actions in this adventure The nouns are quite straightforward and refer to the objects in the adventure Also the player will need to unlock the door so door must be included Notice that nouns which mean the same have the same number and the nouns for the actual objects have the same number as the object they refer ie rat is noun 2 and object 2 is the rat This is so we can use a short cut later on Here are the extra verbs and nouns we need 35 NOUNS VERBS 1 lamp 20 extinguish 1 torch 20 off 2 rat 21 feed 3 key 22 score 4 gold 23 eat 4 bar 23 devour 4 treasure 24 unlock 5 door 25 light 6 snake 25 on To enter these press N or V from the main menu You will be presented with a familiar list of items To insert a new item use Insert as usual then type the number and word on the bottom line of the screen As usual the Space Bar will allow you to edit a word and Fl will delete it The words are inserted in alphabetical order so you may not actually see your word go in You can scroll as usual with the arrow keys LOW PRIORITY CONDITIONS At this point we have al the raw data we need for the adventure but nothing to say how the adventure will react to player commands These are mostly handled by the low priority conditions To
95. t the correct disk and then press a key Then it should attempt to load the LNK file again If the name of the LNK file is in message 5 and a prompt message asking the player to change disks is in message 6 then the following construction will work if new file needed then repeat link 5 message 6 pause 5000 until false The pause 5000 will wait for about a minute and a half or until the player presses a key This is a useful way of waiting for the player to respond to something important When writing a multi part adventure it is a good idea to create and save your own multi quickstart file containing all the verbs nouns adverbs and objects in the adventure along with the messages and high and low priority conditions that govern things that can happen anywhere You can then load this at the start of a new section and just put in new room descriptions messages and local conditions rather than having to type GUB thing in again This approach requires a bit more planning in the short term but saves a LOT of time later on One other thing to note with multi part adventures is that save and ramsave save the name of the LNK file that you are currently in for later reference and load and ramload will attempt to reload that file if necessary If they cannot find it special condition 18 is called which just prints prompt std waits for keypress before trying agai j n construction above much like the S
96. t the shade you want Then just read off 14 their positions in order and voil your colour As another example red and blue make magenta so to get magenta purple text colour 3 is what appears black normally on black background colour 0 use 0 colour 000 3 colour 707 707 means 7 units of red 0 of green 7 of blue You may change colours 0 to 3 using colour and 0 to 15 using topcol Experimenting with these can lead to some pleasing effects To test if you are in a particular room use at if at 4 then do something wait will do the do something only if you are in room number four Two other little used words are visit and visit which set this room as having been visited already and test whether this room has already been visited respectively Thus if visit then message 2 where message 2 is Hmmm this looks familiar will print that if this room has already been visited MARKERS AND COUNTERS ILLAE L A lot of the time you will need to store information about the adventure universe for later reference which doors have been opened which buttons pushed and how much gold you have This is accomplished using markers and counters Markers are used for things which can be in two situations doors can be open or not and buttons can be pushed or not It may be dark or not there may be air or not that may be enough examples or not Ther
97. th this one so to preserve your current masterpiece click on the picture number you typed in at the start After a couple of seconds which is STAC compressing your picture to save memory it will be replaced by a cursor and you should then type a different number The screen will clear and you will be able to draw another picture We are now ready to merge pictures Click on the icon two overlapping boxes and you will be asked to enter a picture number to be merged on the right in the usual place Type in the number of your first picture It will be loaded onto the screen overlapping your current picture This is useful for adding subtle detail to a sequence of largely similar screens Import picture allows you to cut a rectangular piece from an uncompressed NEOCHROME or DEGAS slide which has been saved to disk previously Click on the disk icon and you will be asked Neo or Degas Press D for Degas or N for Neochrome A file selector box will then appear from which you can make your slide selection Click on OK to load the slide or NO to cancel the function If you selected OK the slide will be loaded in and the colours set up You can then draw a rectangle around any part of the screen which will be cut out and used as your picture Draw the rectangle as if you were using the rectangle function 29 Resize allows you to change the size of the window which you wish to use for drawing in Note that it also clears the pi
98. tss2U M RETESET AS 66 Arithmetio ccacccescccsene 12 66 nn nee 39 Characters Io vt TEE M M sisi 45 58 68 PROS Ineseiieqi ide s uipovetdo sp AIEO T equas Pes eesaconubsdukelesqussendte RE ns 33 Colour palette icsascccssrrceesese 6 50950000220009906004990900054009048040 00 4 2 ASE 9ERUEKEE SEP U Rud VB 30 qeasessvsopensaspsoansaensa vke aat sairo ss ues th Ne 66 7 5 rss 50 Oompat lODHB r al 11 12 21 23 66 67 COMGICIONS cacuccovsasccccsnccedeadeds TE NE IE AEE IPEER T dues 8 64 nena high priority 37 local 38 low priority 36 58 special 48 59 70 71 arithmetic 11 66 commands 9 64 comments 21 64 disks 16 66 markers counters 15 65 messages 12 67 objects 10 65 pictures 14 64 rooms 13 64 strings 18 67 testing 9 64 NY other 21 68 uepssistuievalededes s aaa adii tas D 4 5 14 68 Contents Of bk kis ee 1 Control CPAP ROTO usant eoa ene A9 RE Rs aes 00402 kot 00020400009 46 398 Counters conditional B o e o end eT eene edi oa aqoa P Ges 16 24 65 Counters general assimetric coiis I TT 38 40
99. uch to the command interpreter In addition to all this a verb with number 255 is recognized as an again feature and recalls the relevant information about the last command Even if your last command was throw the green pot at the monster a verb 255 again will repeat it This can be very useful 51 APPENDIX A EDITING KEYS AND CONTROL CHARACTERS KEYS USED WHEN TYPING If you make a mistake or leave something out when typing a line into the STAC then the following keys will help you to correct it The cursor is a black rectangle which shows where your typing will appear If it is before something then what you type will be inserted shuffling the rest of the text up rather than overwriting it Key Action Backspace Erase character to left of cursor Delete Erase character under cursor Arrow Keys Move cursor up down left right if possible Shift Up Move to start of what you typed Shift Down Move to end of what you typed Shift Left Move to left hand screen edge Shift Right Move to right hand screen edge Home Move to start of what you typed Shift Home Clear everything after cursor Shift Undo Clear everything you typed Insert Toggle between first and second halves of character set press again to cancel Shift Help Insert next character no matter what it is CONTROL CHARACTERS FOR USE IN MESSAGES These are accessed by holding down the Control key and then pressing the letter key indicated Note that some of these
100. und 30K of extra space on the disk since the part of STAC that is responsible for running the adventure must also be saved If you wish to sell your adventures that is fine we ask for no licensing or royalty payments However the adventure should contain a credit along the lines of Developed using the ST Adventure Creator by Sean Ellis for Incentive Software 1988 preferably on starting the adventure To do this go to the disk menu and press key R for Runnable adventure program Then follow the same procedure as for saving an adventure data file except give the file a PRG extension rather than ADV If you have one of the larger ST computers with double sided disks and over 512K of memory it is good idea to remember that most people who wil want to play your adventure will probably have single sided disk drives and 512K of memory so format your disks single sided and try not to use more than about 290K for your adventure This wil ensure the widest possible market CHAPTER SEVEN THE DISK AND PRINTER MENUS So far we have glossed over the printer and disk menus This chapter explains what the options in each menu do DISK MENU The disk menu contains the options Encode and save link file Format a disk Load adventure data Merge data section Output data section Runnable adventure program Save adventure data X erase a file Disk information as well as Esc to return to the main menu We have already
101. used is between room 2 and room 3 which is always possible and changes nothing and between 6 and 5 This over with we are now able to use the STAC program at last With it on the disk is a previously saved adventure file containing all the common vocabulary etc which is used in almost every adventure Having loaded the STAC you will be confronted with a screen full of options This is the Main Menu A menu is a list of choices from which you can select one thing We want to load the quick start file which is disk operation Option D on the main menu is labelled Disk menu Press key D and new menu wil appear Among the options on this is load adventure data which is the one we want Press L In the middle of the screen you will see a thin 1 selector Using this you can select any file io In Es box in the middle there should be list of file names includin QSTART ADV If you move the mouse pointer over this name the press the left hand mouse button this is known as clicking on something you will see the name at the bottom of the selector change to GSTART ADV Then click on the OK box The disk drive should whirr briefly loading the file as requested Press the Esc key to get back to the main menu There is now a set of data in memory including all the most frequently used vocabulary To enter the room descriptions ress R i displayed with a title at the top Edit E D Be at the bottom At the moment
102. uses the same technique Move the mouse to one corner hold the left button down and move to the diagonally opposite corner and release Circle and ellipse require you to start with the mouse at the centre then drag the outline of the figure Don t worry if the rubber band figure seems incomplete it is merely a guideline The real thing will be perfect By now you have probably got a messy screen we will skip ahead to the clear screen option the icon is meant to look like an eraser and is the second from the right hand end To use this position the mouse over it and click the left hand mouse button then move the mouse into the drawing area and click it again The window wil clear and you will be returned to whatever tool you were using before The next function is area fill the paint can icon Using lines or the paintbrush draw an enclosed area Any shape will do Then select the fill icon and click the left hand mouse button inside the closed area The area will then fill up with colour Be sure to leave not even the tiniest gap otherwise the colour will leak out Clicking on the UNDO icon will solve that cancelling the last thing you did Filled rectangles circles and ellipses are managed in the same way as normal ones but their outline is not affected by the brush being used and of course they are filled in with solid colour Merge picture requires that you have another previous picture to merge wi
103. x conditions if verb get and noun lamp and here 1 then do something ok will only execute the do something when you typed get lamp and the lamp is actually in this room Getting and dropping everything is quite useful hence getall and dropall which do just that It is unrealistic to expect the player to be able to carry every single object at the same time so the weights in the object description mount up If this amount exceeds the strength then you can t pick any more up So we have a command setstr which sets the player s strength If we do setstr 10 then the player can carry 10 objects of weight 1 or 1 of weight 10 or 2 of weight 5 or one each of weights 1 2 3 and 4 or and so on Any attempt to pick up more than 10 weight units will fail You can change the strength during the adventure Hence for a cheat you could use if verb superman then setstr 5000 ok if verb superwimp then setstr 1 ok You can find out the weight of any object using weight This introduces something new Everything we have met so far either was test or does something If you view the words as little servants the tests wil answer yes or no to a question and the others are dumb brutes who just go away quietly and do something This weight answers back with a number but what can we do with it Well you can check it against other numbers as a test For example if weight 1 gt 5 then do something wait wil do the
104. y can be used to store numbers such as the amount of gold you have left in your purse To set a counter to a value use setcntr To give yourself 200 pieces of gold in your purse counter 1 use the construction 200 setcntr 1 Counter number one now kilda 200 You can think of the counters as little boxes numbered 0 io 511 each of which holds number You can put a new number in which is what we have done or you can look at it using Dedi If we used print counter 1 now it would pri int th m Screen since counter 1 holds 200 his Manahe E can increase decrease the counters by one using inc and m This is useful as a countdown timer If you have set off an rm say and you have five moves to escape you can set a counter to 5 dec it every turn the i n do so player when it reaches zero mething nasty to the If however you are using the counter as a mo indi when you buy something for 20 gold pieces you ioi A eie have to type dec 20 times To do this use count or count t increase your gold 20 count 1 wil take 20 from the value counter one 50 count 1 will add 50 to it Both of these updat the counter there is no need to do a setcntr Finally to check if a counter has reached certain value use if 0 count 1 then do something will only do th value zero do something if counter 1 has reached the Again the special conditions in the QSTART file need the use of

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