The Hollywood Murders
An Interactive Mystery

Version 1.5

This text/graphics 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 begin the game, simply click on HollywoodMurders.exe in Windows
Explorer, or load the game via the Start Menu.


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 <character>
Ask <character> about <object>

You may also give or show objects to characters. The correct syntax for 
these commands would be:

Give <object> to <character>
Show <object> to <character>

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:

Graphics <on/off> : will turn the graphics in the game on or off.
Sounds <on/off> : will turn the sound effects on or off.

(Default for both is on)

X <object> : 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 stuck). I attempted to make the puzzles easy enough for
beginning level players, but if you are stuck, simply try to use common
sense and logic. Hope you have fun.

This game may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

Design...  Michael Zerbo 
Title Screen Graphics... Bonita Hein
Game Graphics...  Christopher Zerbo, Michael Zerbo, Karen Grotzinger, Bonita Hein, Todd Smith, Michael Illuchine, Maarten Oerbekke, Laura Kennedy
Testing... Jennifer EmgeHosner, Matt Flinton, Joe Majsterski

Special thanks to...  Thomas Nilsson, Goran Forslund, Bob Newell, 
                                 and Christopher Zerbo


Created using the ALAN programming language by Thomas Nilsson
For further information, go to:
http://www.alanif.se 

For game questions/help -
E-mail: deadletteroffice0@gmail.com

(C) 1996-2006 M. Zerbo