The Hollywood Murders An Interactive Mystery BeOS version 1.2 - Freeware (Text only) This text adventure puts you into the shoes of a hardboiled 1950's private eye. You are about to begin a case that will either bring you a nice fat paycheck, or death. To play the game: start a Terminal session and change the current directory to the directory containing the Hollywood Murders files. Then simply enter 'HM' to begin the game. This game has a reasonably flexible parser and should accept short sentences in the Verb-Noun format. Adjectives, pronouns and prepositions are also allowed. If a certain command doesn't work, try experimenting. You may use normal English sentences, such as: Take the gun and the bullets. Open the desk drawer and look inside it. Take everything. When interacting with characters in the game, there are a number of specific commands you may use. To speak with a character, you may: Talk to Ask about You may also give or show objects to characters. The correct syntax for these commands would be: Give to Show to These are just a couple of examples, but it will give you the right idea for interacting with people in the game. Again, if something doesn't seem to work (and you think it should), try experimenting with different commands. To travel about, use the directional commands, N, S, E, W, Up and Down. You may need to use objects to travel in certain situations. The Inventory command will show all the items currently in your possession. In order to save your current game position, use the Save command. Restore will load your saved games. To exit a game, simply use the quit command. Other useful commands and shortcuts are: X :Examine object L : Look (will repeat room description) I : Inventory (will display current player inventory) It may be useful to save your position in the game while playing, (in case you get killed or are stumped on a puzzle). If you get stuck on a puzzle, try to use common sense and logic. Hope you have fun. This game may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes. Design... Michael Zerbo Special thanks to... Thomas Nilsson, Goran Forslund, Bob Newell, Stephen Griffiths, and Christopher Zerbo E-mail: deadletteroffice0@lycos.com (C) 1996 M. Zerbo