THE MIRROR OF KHORONZ Background to the game The Mirror of Khoronz is a sequel to an earlier adventure called Gateway to Karos. In that game the player enters a parallel universe through a magic gateway and becomes involved in a quest for a powerful object called the Talisman of Khoronz. If you have played Gateway to Karos you may know that one of the objects to be found and brought back to your own world is a mysterious and valuable mirror. It is this mirror, intimately associated with the wizard Khoronz, which provides the title and the starting-point for the present adventure. If, however, you haven't played the earlier game don't worry! You don't need to have played Gateway in order to play Mirror. It isn't set in Karos but does inhabit what might be called the "Karos Universe". Playing instructions As in other adventure games the computer is your eyes and hands, giving descriptions of your immediate surroundings, descriptions of objects and messages telling you what is happening around you. It will also accept your commands, which should be entered as phrases or simple sentences in ordinary English. One or two words will often suffice, but the computer can detect these when embedded in a sentence and will also recognize certain synonyms. e.g. DROP BOX has the same effect as I WANT TO LEAVE THE BOX HERE. You may string together several commands into a single input, as long as they are separated by either a comma, a full-stop or the word AND. e.g TAKE THE BOX, GO NORTH AND DROP THE AXE will perform three separate actions. Once a verb such as GET or DROP has been entered it will apply to all other objects named in that command unless a new verb appears later. e.g. GET BOX, ROPE and AXE does exactly what you would expect it to do. All words may be abbreviated to any extent you wish, e.g. NORTH is equally acceptable when entered as NORT, NOR, NO or N. Too much of this sort of thing will obviously cause confusion, in which case the computer will act on the first word in the vocabulary which the abbreviation matches. e.g. You may shorten INVENTORY to INV, but not to IN, because IN is a recognized word in its own right and it comes before INVENTORY in the vocabulary. The multi-player aspect This is the thing which makes Mirror of Khoronz different from any other adventure on a home micro. Up to seven players may take part in a game. They may follow each other around or go their separate ways, give objects to each other, even kill each other under certain conditions! When you first load the game you are asked for your name. The request is printed in red and, having entered your name, it appears (also in red) at the top of the screen. Note that it designates you as PLAYER 1 and also prints your current score. Beneath this is the description of your surroundings and then the command prompt What now? (in red again). Should another player wish to enter the game, he or she should press one of the function keys f2-f7. The request for the new player's name will appear in a different colour. What happens is that each of the players 1-7 is assigned to the corresponding function key. Once a player is associated with a function key, pressing the key makes it that player's turn at the game. The screen shows the player number, name, score and description of surroundings for the player and prompts for input in the player's own colour according to the following table: Player 1 RED Player 2 GREEN Player 3 YELLOW Player 4 BLUE Player 5 MAGENTA Player 6 CYAN Player 7 WHITE Once a player is selected, that player's turn continues until a different function key is pressed or until the player quits or is killed. In either of the latter cases the program will request the next player and requires a function key to be pressed. If the key is that of someone already playing then that player's turn begins, otherwise the program requests a new name first. When a player leaves the game by quitting or dying, any objects being carried are dropped at the place where the player ceased to exist. Someone else pressing that player's function key may then enter the game as a new player, but will of course be starting from the beginning again. Locations and objects The game consists of 190 separate locations and over 60 objects. Movement from one location to another is usually by means of the compass directions NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, NW, NE, SW, SE, but UP, DOWN, IN, OUT (and a few others) are also necessary. Some of the objects are treasure whilst others are needed to solve the many problems and obstacles which you will meet in your wanderings. Many objects are containers and other things may be placed inside them, or be already there. The way in which your INVENTORY is printed is important. It clearly shows when objects are inside others by making use of colour and indentation. When other players are present you will be told who they are and what they appear to be carrying. Since you don't have X-ray vision you will not be told what they have inside any containers which they are carrying! Also, when you first find a container you usually won't be told what's inside. EXAMINE will tell you that. So will GETting the object then entering the command INVENTORY. Light and dark, day and night Although many of the locations in Mirror of Khoronz are out in the open, others are in caves or buildings and some of these will be dark, so a light source will be needed. (Although it must be added that this is not one of those adventures where a few moves in the dark always cause the player to fall down a pit, of which no trace can be found when the area is explored with a light!) There is also an element of "real time" play in the game. At the top right of the screen is a display marked TIME which, at the beginning of the game, shows 10 printed in yellow. As play proceeds this number changes, becoming 11, then 12, then 1, 2, 3 etc. This shows the passage of "game hours", each of which actually lasts about 2 minutes. There are 24 such "hours" in a "day". The adventure commences at 10 a.m. Sometime during the evening night will fall, which is shown by the TIME display turning dark blue. If you are outside when day changes to night or vice versa you will be given a message too. Certain aspects of play depend on whether it is day or night, but this doesn't mean that the whole world becomes dark when night comes. In most open places you will be able to see just as much as before, but the idea does have a definite purpose. Saving and loading game positions You may save the current state of the game at any time by typing SAVE . You will then be prompted for a filename. Up to 12 characters may be entered, but you must provide a name which is valid for the filing system in use. e.g. if using the disc version of the game you could enter filenames such as: WHATSIT (Simple filename; 7 characters max) Z.WHATSIT (Directory Z specified) :2.WHATSIT (Drive 2 specified) :2.Z.WHATSIT (Both drive and directory specified) If using the cassette version your filename must not exceed 10 characters. To restore a SAVEd game position type LOAD and enter the filename when prompted. Filing system errors are reported as normal. Should you accidently enter a SAVE or LOAD command and then change your mind when the Filename? prompt appears, enter @, or any string beginning with @ to abort the command. It is important to realize that SAVE and LOAD operate on the entire game situation including the status of all participating players. There is no way in which a player can save and subsequently restore only his or her own game position while leaving other players unaffected. This is impraticable because another player might, in the meantime, have done something which makes aspects of the SAVEd game no longer true. €PE Using operating system/filing system commands This is mainly of interest to disc users. You may enter operating system or DFS commands from within the game just as you would in immediate mode. The ones you are most likely to use are *CAT (when you have forgotten the name of your SAVEd game and keep getting File not found errors!) and *ACCESS (to lock and unlock your game files). *DELETE and *DRIVE may also be useful. *COPY, *BACKUP and *COMPACT should not be used since they make use of the computer's memory and will overwrite the program. Some useful words Many of the words recognized by the program have already been mentioned, e.g. GET, DROP, EXAMINE, SAVE, LOAD and the "movement words" NORTH, SOUTH, UP, IN etc. A complete list would give too much away and spoil the fun, but here are a few which are especially useful and which call for some explanation. RESET This is used to re-start the game from the beginning. It replaces all objects at their initial locations, deletes all players and requests a name for player 1. Do get the agreement of other players before you use it! QUIT Causes the player who enters it to leave the game. All carried objects are dropped at the place where the command was issued and may be retrieved by other players. The program then prompts for the next player and expects a function key in the range 1-7 to be pressed. FOLLOW Player Fred, at the same location as player Jim, may type FOLLOW JIM. Fred is now attached to Jim in a manner similar to that of a carried object. If Jim takes his turn immediately afterwards, Fred will be taken wherever Jim goes. In this way a novice may tag along with a more experienced player; in fact one player could lead a party of as many as six! If Jim doesn't want to be followed he may sever the connection by typing LEAVE FRED. The link is broken in any case as soon as Fred presses his own function key to take his next turn. (PUT) IN Besides being a "movement word" IN is used to place objects in containers, e.g. PUT BOX IN RUCKSACK. The word PUT isn't actually necessary in this command. If you wish to remove an object from a container use GET (or TAKE). You won't be told You already have that, even if you are holding the container. WAIT Moves the game's "clock" on by one "hour". There are several places in the game where you need to wait for something to happen and this command will be needed at such points. Two function keys besides those used to change players are used by the program: f0 changes the display from coloured to monochrome. Pressing f0 again restores the colour. Mirror of Khoronz makes extensive use of colours to identify players, print inventories, indicate different types of message etc. If you have to play on a black-and-white television or monochrome monitor (or if you simply don't care for the colours), then press f0 and you will have everything in black and white. f8 allows you to conceal your input from other players. Pressing the key once causes every character entered to appear on the screen as a white square. Your commands will be interpreted correctly, but other players won't be able to read what commands you are giving (although they can see the program's responses). Pressing f8 again turns the feature off. Objectives and scoring Your meddling with Khoronz's mirror has resulted in you being drawn, against your will, into another region of the world which contains the island of Karos. Your main objective is to get back to your own world, and in order to do this you will need to solve many tricky problems, chief among which is acquiring some gold in order to purchase help. Gold, you will find, does not actually exist in the land in which you are destined to wander - which presents you with quite a difficulty! It was rumoured, however that Khoronz was not only a Wizard but a successful alchemist who posessed the secret of the Philosophers' Stone...... By solving all the puzzles, finding all the treasures and successfully returning home you can achieve a maximum score of 1000. Most adventures are then put on the shelf and forgotten, but this one has a whole new dimension! A player who attains the maximum score is promoted to the rank of Wizard and invited to save a special file under a chosen "Wizard name". When this file is loaded into any subsequent game, using the normal LOAD command, the player who has become a Wizard has special powers and privileges and may use certain commands which are forbidden to the "profane". A Wizard may, for example, move objects around so that other players don't find them in their expected places. Even the players themselves may be moved around! It is possible for a Wizard to set up an entire non-standard game then enter the special command WSAVE (which may only be used by Wizards). This allows the Wizard to withdraw tracelessly and causes the dynamic part of the database to be saved. If two Wizards each do this then swap discs or tapes they can have endless fun setting traps and puzzles for each other. In the ordinary way it is only possible for one player in a game to be a Wizard. Is there a way of claiming your privileges in any game? As a matter of fact there is - but you don't really expect us to hand it to you on a plate, do you?