------------------------------------------------ Title : "Fairlight Castle" Author : Paul Allen Panks Version : 1.02 (not stated in the game) Date : June 27, 2004 (also not stated) E-mail : dunric@gmail.com Homepage : http://panks.freeshell.org/flcas.html ------------------------------------------------ Synopsis: Fairlight Castle is a fairly original adventure game. The game was written using a special technique which encapsulates the room descriptions into a core group of 120 total words (stored as numbers 1 through 120). Each number corresponds to a word, and with a game vocabulary of a mere 142 total words, Fairlight Castle has remarkably robust descriptions (especially when you consider I only used the most commonly used phrases in a minimally sized adventure game). It took me over 12 hours just to code the room descriptions (looking up a word from a table list and then typing it in for each word is very time consuming indeed!); however, this saved a tremendous amount of coding space (perhaps over 10-15KB of program code). So what appears as a 26K adventure game migth actually have ballooned to well over 50K if I had used my traditional programming methods as before. Some of my smaller games, such as Halite, the Dark Forest series, and this game, use a fairly complex and complete adventure gaming engine that has been reduced to the most minimal components possible -- thereby ensuring a very smoothly playing game with excellent replay value. Ah yes...you're probably wondering how to play Fairlight Castle! :) Good question! Fairlight Castle is similar to Chateu Le Mont, which I also coded last year. But the game is much better (and has far more puzzles than before), so it should both challenge and delight the casual adventure gamer for hours at a time. Good luck! You can always e-mail me at: dunric@gmail.com if you have any questions. Take care. :) Sincerely, Paul Allen Panks dunric@gmail.com June 27, 2004 A.D.