NARCOLEPSY by Adam Cadre with Stephen Bond Liza Daly Jennifer Earl Stephen Granade Jon Ingold Nick Montfort Paul O'Brian Andrew Plotkin Dan Shiovitz Emily Short Bridget Sweeney Rob Wheeler ----- CONTENTS I. Instructions for those new to interactive fiction II. Instructions for those not new to interactive fiction III. Known problems and fixes ----- I. Instructions for those new to interactive fiction "Okay, so I've read the opening paragraphs. What am I supposed to do with this > thingy?" Good question. The > prompt appears whenever it is your turn to tell the program what you want to do. Simply type in an imperative statement, like OPEN THE DOOR, or EAT THE SANDWICH, and press the Enter key. Also, articles aren't necessary: OPEN DOOR or EAT SANDWICH will work just as well. Occasionally, the program will ask you to clarify a command you've typed. For instance, if you type EAT SANDWICH, and there is more than one sandwich in your immediate vicinity, the program may respond, "Which sandwich do you mean, the ham sandwich or the bologna sandwich?" It is not usually necessary to retype your command - simply answering the question is fine (HAM is a sufficient reply, for example.) Of course, you don't have to answer the question if you don't want to; if you're a vegetarian and don't want to eat either sandwich, you can type OPEN DOOR and the game will treat it as an all-new command. No matter how enthralling your initial location is, chances are you'll eventually want to go somewhere else. If you see a list of places you can go, then a command like GO TO THE KITCHEN or GO OUTSIDE will move your character to the desired location. If there is no list, you'll have to resort to compass directions: WALK NORTH, for instance, which can be abbreviated to simply N. UP and DOWN also work in some areas. In other locations, you'll only be able to leave by typing LEAVE. Pronouns such as IT are useful, but can be tricky. Usually, IT refers to the last object you used as a direct object of a command: if you type EXAMINE RHODODENDRON and the description is appealing enough that the rhododendron must be yours, TAKE IT is sufficient. Be careful, though, or you'll fall into the following trap: > EXAMINE FLOWER Which flower do you mean, the rhododendron or the chrysanthemum? > RHODODENDRON It's awful purdy. > TAKE IT Taken. > PUT IT IN BACKPACK Done. > CLOSE IT You can't close a rhododendron! ALL is another useful word for when you want to PUT ALL IN BACKPACK or TAKE ALL FROM CUPBOARD; you can even go so far as to DROP ALL EXCEPT RHODODENDRON AND SANDWICH if you like. Sometimes you will encounter people and other animate creatures with whom you'll wish to interact. Of course, you can try to KILL them or SMOOCH them or what have you, but it is most likely that you will want to speak to them. In such cases, you should see a list of things your character can say to the other characters around; to say one of them, simply type SAY 1 or SAY 2 or whichever item you prefer. There are all sorts of actions you can try; here are a few: DRINK DROP EAT EXAMINE GIVE JUMP KILL KISS LISTEN LOOK OPEN PULL PUSH READ SEARCH SIT SLEEP SMELL TASTE TOUCH WAKE WEAR You can also combine some of these verbs with prepositions: in addition to LOOK, you can LOOK AT, LOOK UP, LOOK UNDER, LOOK THROUGH, and so forth. There are also a number of special commands and abbreviations you should be aware of. In addition to the compass directions mentioned above, they include: G: short for AGAIN, this repeats the last command. I: short for INVENTORY, this produces a list of what you're carrying. L: short for LOOK, this describes your surroundings. X: short for EXAMINE, this provides a description of an object. Z: short for WAIT, this causes a turn to pass without an action being performed. QUIT: ends the game. RESTART: restarts the game from the beginning. RESTORE: restores a saved game. SAVE: saves your position in the game. And that just about wraps it up for the instructions. As for tips: this isn't one of those stories where there's a "right" set of commands that will lead you to a "win" and a "wrong" set of commands that will get your character killed; instead, you can have drastically different adventures depending on what you try, so even if you get to an ending, you may have only seen a small fraction of what's possible. Try different things! ----- II. Instructions for those not new to interactive fiction Moving around: sometimes the program will provide you with a list of exits. When it does, you can't move around with compass directions. Simply type GO TO THE KITCHEN or GO OUTSIDE or LEAVE or what have you. Conversation: you'll be provided with a list of things you can say to the characters around you. Simply type SAY 1 or SAY 2 or whichever to speak. Structure: NARCOLEPSY has several very different plot threads, so even if you get to an ending, you may have only seen a small fraction of what's possible. Try different things! ----- III. Known problems If you find that the configuration file in the Windows package isn't working properly - if you find that, for instance, the text seems misplaced and cut off - try this: rename narco.cfg to narco.zzz and restart the game. Chances are, your interpreter window is maximized. De-maximize it (by clicking the appropriate box in the top right corner) and close the interpreter. Rename narco.zzz back to narco.cfg and everything should be fixed. (If not, stick with narco.zzz; it won't be as pretty, but at least you'll be able to play. Thanks to Gunther Schmidl for discovering the solution.) On the Mac, a certain window doesn't clear correctly when the program attempts to clear it. This is somewhat annoying but shouldn't interfere with gameplay. (In any event, it seems to be an interpreter issue I can't do anything about.)