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1.1 root 1: .TH DUNGEON 6 "February 9, 1987"
2: .SH NAME
3: dungeon\ -\ Adventures in the Dungeons of Doom
4: .SH SYNOPSIS
5: .B dungeon
6: .br
7: .B dungeon
8: [-r [savefile]]\ \ \ --\ pdp-11 version only
9: .SH DESCRIPTION
10: Dungeon is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it
11: you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortal
12: man. Hardened adventurers have run screaming from the terrors contained
13: within.
14: .LP
15: In Dungeon, the intrepid explorer delves into the forgotten secrets
16: of a lost labyrinth deep in the bowels of the earth, searching for
17: vast treasures long hidden from prying eyes, treasures guarded by
18: fearsome monsters and diabolical traps!
19: .LP
20: Dungeon was created at the Programming Technology Division of the MIT
21: Laboratory for Computer Science by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce
22: Daniels, and Dave Lebling. It was inspired by the Adventure game of
23: Crowther and Woods, and the Dungeons and Dragons game of Gygax
24: and Arneson. The original version was written in MDL (alias MUDDLE).
25: The current version was translated from MDL into FORTRAN IV by
26: a somewhat paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous.
27: .LP
28: On-line information may be obtained with the commands HELP and INFO.
29: .SH OPTIONS
30: In the pdp-11 version, the
31: .B -r
32: flag allows restarting a saved game. The default savefile is
33: .I dungeon.sav
34: which may be overriden on the command line. In the Vax version,
35: the game is restored by using the
36: .B restore
37: command.
38: .SH DETAILS
39: Following, is the summary produced by the
40: .B info
41: command:
42: .RS
43: .LP
44: Welcome to Dungeon!
45: .PP
46: You are near a large dungeon, which is reputed to contain vast
47: quantities of treasure. Naturally, you wish to acquire some of it.
48: In order to do so, you must of course remove it from the dungeon. To
49: receive full credit for it, you must deposit it safely in the trophy
50: case in the living room of the house.
51: .PP
52: In addition to valuables, the dungeon contains various objects
53: which may or may not be useful in your attempt to get rich. You may
54: need sources of light, since dungeons are often dark, and weapons,
55: since dungeons often have unfriendly things wandering about. Reading
56: material is scattered around the dungeon as well; some of it
57: is rumored to be useful.
58: .PP
59: To determine how successful you have been, a score is kept.
60: When you find a valuable object and pick it up, you receive a
61: certain number of points, which depends on the difficulty of finding
62: the object. You receive extra points for transporting the treasure
63: safely to the living room and placing it in the trophy case. In
64: addition, some particularly interesting rooms have a value associated
65: with visiting them. The only penalty is for getting yourself killed,
66: which you may do only twice.
67: .PP
68: Of special note is a thief (always carrying a large bag) who
69: likes to wander around in the dungeon (he has never been seen by the
70: light of day). He likes to take things. Since he steals for pleasure
71: rather than profit and is somewhat sadistic, he only takes things which
72: you have seen. Although he prefers valuables, sometimes in his haste
73: he may take something which is worthless. From time to time, he examines
74: his take and discards objects which he doesn't like. He may occasionally
75: stop in a room you are visiting, but more often he just wanders
76: through and rips you off (he is a skilled pickpocket).
77: .RE
78: .SH COMMANDS
79: .LP
80: .TP 15
81: .B brief
82: suppresses printing of long room descriptions
83: for rooms which have been visited.
84: .TP
85: .B superbrief
86: suppresses
87: printing of long room descriptions for all rooms.
88: .TP
89: .B verbose
90: restores long descriptions.
91: .TP
92: .B info
93: prints information which might give some idea
94: of what the game is about.
95: .TP
96: .B quit
97: prints your score and asks whether you wish
98: to continue playing.
99: .TP
100: .B save
101: saves the state of the game for later continuation.
102: .TP
103: .B restore
104: restores a saved game.
105: .TP
106: .B inventory
107: lists the objects in your possession.
108: .TP
109: .B look
110: prints a description of your surroundings.
111: .TP
112: .B score
113: prints your current score and ranking.
114: .TP
115: .B time
116: tells you how long you have been playing.
117: .TP
118: .B diagnose
119: reports on your injuries, if any.
120: .LP
121: The
122: .B inventory
123: command may be abbreviated
124: .BR i ;
125: the
126: .B look
127: command may be abbreviated
128: .BR l ;
129: the
130: .B quit
131: command may be abbreviated
132: .BR q .
133: .LP
134: A command that begins with '!' as the first character is taken to
135: be a shell command and is passed unchanged to the shell via
136: .I system(3).
137: .SH CONTAINMENT
138: .LP
139: Some objects can contain other objects. Many such containers can
140: be opened and closed. The rest are always open. They may or may
141: not be transparent. For you to access (e.g., take) an object
142: which is in a container, the container must be open. For you
143: to see such an object, the container must be either open or
144: transparent. Containers have a capacity, and objects have sizes;
145: the number of objects which will fit therefore depends on their
146: sizes. You may put any object you have access to (it need not be
147: in your hands) into any other object. At some point, the program
148: will attempt to pick it up if you don't already have it, which
149: process may fail if you're carrying too much. Although containers
150: can contain other containers, the program doesn't access more than
151: one level down.
152: .SH FIGHTING
153: .LP
154: Occupants of the dungeon will, as a rule, fight back when
155: attacked. In some cases, they may attack even if unprovoked.
156: Useful verbs here are
157: .I attack
158: <villain>
159: .I with
160: <weapon>,
161: .IR kill ,
162: etc. Knife-throwing may or may not be useful. You have a
163: fighting strength which varies with time. Being in a fight,
164: getting killed, and being injured all lower this strength.
165: Strength is regained with time. Thus, it is not a good idea to
166: fight someone immediately after being killed. Other details
167: should become apparent after a few melees or deaths.
168: .SH COMMAND\ PARSER
169: .LP
170: A command is one line of text terminated by a carriage return.
171: For reasons of simplicity, all words are distinguished by their
172: first six letters. All others are ignored. For example, typing
173: .I disassemble the encyclopedia
174: is not only meaningless, it also
175: creates excess effort for your fingers. Note that this truncation
176: may produce ambiguities in the intepretation of longer words.
177: [Also note that upper and lower case are equivalent.]
178: .LP
179: You are dealing with a fairly stupid parser, which understands
180: the following types of things:
181: .RS
182: .TP 5
183: .B Actions:
184: Among the more obvious of these, such as
185: .I take, put, drop,
186: etc.
187: Fairly general forms of these may be used, such as
188: .I pick up, put down,
189: etc.
190: .TP
191: .B Directions:
192: .I north, south, up, down,
193: etc. and their various abbreviations.
194: Other more obscure directions
195: .RI ( land,
196: .IR cross )
197: are appropriate in only certain situations.
198: .TP
199: .B Objects:
200: Most objects have names and can be referenced by them.
201: .TP
202: .B Adjectives:
203: Some adjectives are understood and required when there are
204: two objects which can be referenced with the same 'name' (e.g.,
205: .I doors,
206: .IR buttons ).
207: .TP
208: .B Prepositions:
209: It may be necessary in some cases to include prepositions, but
210: the parser attempts to handle cases which aren't ambiguous
211: without. Thus
212: .I give car to demon
213: will work, as will
214: .I give demon
215: .IR car .
216: .I give car demon
217: probably won't do anything interesting.
218: When a preposition is used, it should be appropriate;
219: .I give car with demon
220: won't parse.
221: .TP
222: .B Sentences:
223: The parser understands a reasonable number of syntactic construc-
224: tions. In particular, multiple commands (separated by commas)
225: can be placed on the same line.
226: .TP
227: .B Ambiguity:
228: The parser tries to be clever about what to do in the case of
229: actions which require objects that are not explicitly specified.
230: If there is only one possible object, the parser will assume
231: that it should be used. Otherwise, the parser will ask.
232: Most questions asked by the parser can be answered.
233: .RE
234: .SH FILES
235: dindx.dat - game initialization info
236: .br
237: dtext.dat - encoded messages
238: .br
239: rindx.dat - index into message file for pdp version
240: .br
241: dungeon.sav - default save file for pdp version
242: .br
243: dsave.dat - default save file for non-pdp versions
244: .br
245: listen, speak - co-process routines for pdp version
246: .SH BUGS
247: For those familiar with the MDL version of the game on the ARPAnet,
248: the following is a list of the major incompatabilties:
249: .RS
250: -The first six letters of a word are considered
251: significant, instead of the first five.
252: .br
253: -The syntax for
254: .I tell, answer,
255: and
256: .I incant
257: is different.
258: .br
259: -Compound objects are not recognized.
260: .br
261: -Compound commands can be delimited with comma as well
262: as period.
263: .RE
264: .LP
265: Also, the palantir, brochure, and dead man problems are not
266: implemented.
267: .LP
268: The pdp version is slightly stripped down to fit within the memory
269: contraints.
270: An overlayed pdp version might be made that would allow the
271: complete game to be compiled and loaded, but I don't have the
272: inclination (or machine) to do it.
273: .SH AUTHORS
274: .LP
275: Many people have had a hand in this version. See the "History" and
276: "README" files for credits. Send bug reports to [email protected]
277: (or ...!tektronix!tekred!billr).
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