ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º Welcome to a world of magic and knights, of kings and º º adventurers, where fantasy meets reality, welcome to the º º º º MAGIC REALMS: º º THE SWORD OF KASZA º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ This will be a short readme file followed a some what short history of the making of this game. Many long hours not to mention the months, it took to create MRSK, which will be explain below. Therefore, I'am asking for a small reasonable donation of five to ten dollars. Which will greatly upgrade my small computer setup :) Either by check or money order, thank you. This is an IF (or Interactive Fiction) game, where 'you' the player type in every day commands at what many call the 'prompt' character, which usually is a '>' character. Type 'instructions' at the You can reach me on the internet at: prompt for more info. mortral@ix.netcom.com For donations, if any: James Mallette 14412 Devlin Ave. Norwalk, Ca. 90650-4921 And now that history lesson I promised. Please, I hope you will read this. MRSK started in late 1989 on a Commodore 128 computer using it's Basic 7.0 language, which was much better then the C64's 2.0. Only several short routines was written then - a full proof input routine, a wordwrap routine that I borrowed from Ahoy! magazine, how many of you remember that one! Creating maps and various plots and sub-plots, I then wrote out about 160 room locations and placed them within the main program along with their room directions (10 directions per room X 160 rooms - 1600 numbers of directions) A lot of data statements! Now, after that was done, I began working upon a parser that will take user input and disect it into various subroutines that I'll enter later with the program. Except, it was a bit too hard, hey I was learning Basic 7.0 here, I wasn't 'that' smart yet! :) Anyway, the parser just wasn't working the way I was hoping it would. So, I put the game on the shelf, so to speak; and left it alone until late Jan. 1991 when I took it back down and hacked it! With the C128 came 'banks', 15 of them. I hope I remember right, Bank 0 was for system init., values and space for Basic programs to be entered. Bank 15 was for the Kernel and Basic Rom, and other system routines. However, bank 1 was for mostly, basic variable space solely. Using an old Infocom game I hacked, (Sorcerer, by the way); I found that it's main program did not placed it's room locations and their directions within it. All it did have was a table of tracks and sectors written in a section of code. Taking MRSK back down, I remove all those data statements of the rooms and their directions and using D-SNAP, A very good track/sector program for the C64/C128; I transfered all rooms followed by their directions to track 35 sectors 0 to 5. And what a job that was! Along with the rooms and their directions, I began placing the room descriptions on tracks/sectors as well. By the end of April 1991, MRSK was finished! Debugged and tested. Now we come to late Nov. 1993. I sold my C64/C128 systems, and bought, yep you quest it; a IBM. So begins the transformation of C128 Basic 7.0 code to IBM Basic. Alas, all the room descripts were never printed out on hard copy like the room locations and their directions. Trying to create a wordwrap routine in IBM Basic was a bit too hard for me, gave that up. Around this time I was taking a class in C programming, the routine still did not worked too well, but I kept trying. In spring 1994, I took another class called Intro to the Internet. A whole new world opened up. I soon found that IF games where still being created and placed within the Internet world. My first IF game was Deep Space Drifter (downloaded that is), written in TADS (Text Adventure Development System) And was I surprised when I found the TADS files at the ftp.gmd.de site. By mid year '94 I regestered my copy of TADS and ordered a game from it's author. Printing out it's ADV.t file, the manuals and the game I bought that came with the complete source code, I began to rewrite MRSK. Much the rooms text description I tried to remember and wrote down. Much I couldn't, therefore, it took me about TWO YEARS to rewrite this game into TADS. The original didn't have NPC's that the player can interact with, i.e. player meets white rabbit, rabbit tells player about green pool, rabbit kicks player out of it's home, player can't re-enter rabbit's home - and so on. TADS allows you to create 'true-to-life' characters. With TADS, I needed to created 'life' for these character's. And that too took time to developed. Much of the orginal script was remembered, some parts I completely re-wroted. The ending was completely re-written from it's orginal in the old Basic 7.0 version. Again, it took me two years to re-write this game so I hope you understand why I'am asking a small donation of five to ten dollars. You don't HAVE to pay anything if you wish. However, any cash would go towards upgrading this system so that I can create MRSVC which unfortunely must be done in graphics. MRSK is very huge, MRSVC is in the range of three to four times as large. Those who program in TADS would know this line: tc c:\mydir\mygame.t This compiles TADS source code, later in the development of MRSK, I needed to add a switch, thus: tc -m 200000 c:\mydir\mygame.t It later became: tc -m 150000 c:\mydir\mygame.t Ok, so I didn't used tcx, I'am still learning this... I do hope you enjoy MRSK and share it with your friends, it is a simple game comapared to some others out there. Many games are written in TADS and others are written in another format, pattern after the old Infocom Z-Machine called Inform which is another great IF programming package. Don't you just hate history classes, they tell you it's going to be short, but........ Have fun programming and keep IF ALIVE!!!