-+ 4K Adventure +- programmed for the PC MART Venture Forth competition.
Copyright 1995-1996, John Metcalf of Patchwork Algorithms

This game was programmed from scratch in assembly language, taking approx. 35
hours. I wrote a text compressor especially for this program so I could squeeze
over 4500 bytes of text and the program code into 4096 bytes (exactly 4K).

The game is so simple, it is ideal for a complete beginner providing they
examine everything. The verbs are as follows:

NORTH, N           CUT
SOUTH, S           UNLOCK, OPEN
EAST, E            INVE(NTORY), I
WEST, W            LOOK, L
GO                 QUIT
EXAM(INE), EX, X   DROP ,DISCARD
TAKE, GET

A free program called Clock is included with 4KA. It displays the time in large
numerals in a random colour. Type either red, green or yellow as the command
line parameter if you wish to select the colour yourself.

Two other free programs, Hardy and Blake, are included with 4KA. These clear
the screen and display a poem selected at random each time they are run. The
poems are compressed using the same text compression system as used by 4KA and
were written by Thomas Hardy and William Blake. These programs are ideal to add
to your autoexec.bat file.

I am presently working (very slowly) on a second adventure which will probably
be called Caspian's Realm. CR will use a greatly enhanced version of the 4KA
system. So far I have coded most of one of the major locations and improved the
flexibility of the system as a whole.