Release Notes Uncle Zebulon's Will, release 3.0 Copyright 1995-96, 2003 by Magnus Olsson (mol@pobox.com) All rights reserved. ================================= "Uncle Zebulon's Will" is a small text adventure game, which I wrote for the first Annual Interactive Fiction Contest in 1995 (the term "Interactive Fiction" is often used to mean text adventures). Release 3.0 is essentially the same game, but with some minor improvements and bug fixes (see below). "Uncle Zebulon's Will" is freeware. This means that you may play it, copy it and give it away without paying any royalties. You are not allowed to sell it or distribute modified copies without the written permission of the author. You may charge a distribution fee for covering distribution costs. The game was written in TADS, a computer language designed specially for writing adventure games. It is released as * a platform independent TADS game file (archive name: zebulon3.zip) * source code (archive name: zeb3src.zip) How To Play =========== To play this game you need a copy of the TADS runtime version 2.5.6 or later. The TADS distribution is available for many popular operating systems, including Windows, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari and several flavours of Unix. It can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads. The command for running the game will probably be "tadsr zebulon" or something like that - see the TADS documentation for your system. If you have never played a TADS game before, or find that you have difficulty playing, you may wish to read the file instruct.txt, which contains generic instructions for TADS games. Changes in Release 3.0 ====================== A way back to get back from the endgame was added - previously, the game became unwinnable if you didn't bring the right items along when entering the endgame. Some other ways of making the game unwinnable were also eliminated. In previous versions, you could conduct a conversation with the demon on the proch, and when you then walked east he reacted as if he'd never seen you before. This has been fixed. Some vocabulary and (non-essential) actions were added. Added a getGameInfo function to generate information for the Game Chest system. Changes in Release 2.1 ====================== The changes in release 2.1 are very minor and should not affect gameplay at all. Some minor changes were made in the help and information texts, and the source code was updated to make the game work with TADS 2.5.5 (the source code for versions 2.0 will compile with TADS 2.5.5, but you won't be able to find the wand). Changes in Release 2.0 ====================== The changes in release 2.0 are quite small and don't affect gameplay - the sequence of actions needed to complete release 1.0 will be perfectly adequate here as well. Most of the changes are bug fixes. I've also added some functionality that isn't essential but makes the game more consistent or simply more detailed, as well as increased the vocabulary somewhat. I've also polished the writing a bit, removing some run-on sentences, repetitions and anti-climaxes. The reviewer who found my prose flat and lifeless will probably still be disappointed, though, since that's more a matter of style and I didn't want to rewrite the entire game. Finally, I've rearranged and tidied up the source code so it is fit for human consumption (see below about the source release) - the first release was written in rather a hurry and keeping the code nice and readable wasn't my highest priority. I'd like to thank the people who've contributed bug reports, suggestions for improvements, or just general feedback. Typing "INFO" inside the game will show a list of the most important contributors. Getting Help ============ "Uncle Zebulon's Will" was designed to be a short and easy game: one of the rules of the competition was that it should be winnable in two hours. For this reason there are no hints included in the game. If you should get stuck, you are welcome to contact me for help. A good place to ask for help is also the newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction. Interactive Fiction Resources ============================= If you are interested in interactive fiction, playing text adventures, or even writing your own, the place to go is the IF archive: http://www.ifarchive.org or ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive. This site contains hundreds of megabytes of text games, tools for creating them, and articles discussing them. Two Usenet newsgroups are devoted to interactive fiction: rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction. The former is for discussions about writing interactive fiction, and the latter is for discussing the games (including requests for help from stuck players). There are quite a few Web pages devoted to interactive fiction and adventure games. Some good links can be found on the SPAG homepage (see below). For reviews of old and new text adventures, check out the e-zine SPAG, available on the Web as http://www.sparkynet.com/spag The e-zine XYZZYnews contains articles about interactive fiction in general, as well as some reviews. You can read it on-line at the Web page http://www.xyzzynews.com