DAVID GOOD'S "MENAGERIE!" ©2001 by David D. Good Release Notes This is the release notes of David Good's "Menagerie!". This is not a walkthrough - you won't learn anything you don't want to know from reading this. PLOT Your name is Willow Murphy, (Willow is a kind of tree, Murphy means warrior) and you are an animal lover who works for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In other words, you're a bleeding-heart liberal. Your goal is to get videotape of the animals at the Waleri Bros. Menagerie and Circus, whom you suspect are mistreated. You start the game at the circus midway with a camera case that contains: a video camera, a battery, a videotape, and you have $2 in your purse (PETA is a non-profit, they must not pay well). You run into Wemmie, a "towny" as the circus folk call the locals. She is playing some midway games, and seems rather friendly. Maybe she will be helpful to you. Also you'll run into a variety of clowns, performers and even a gypsy fortune teller. GAME PLAY Before any scoring, you have the chance to select EASY, MEDIUM or HARD game play (the game defaults to Medium). Simply by typing "easy" on a line by itself will set the game to Easy difficulty level. Once the game is configured to Easy or Hard, or you have scored, you must start the game over to change difficulty levels. Beyond the standard ADRIFT runner commands, you can type "money" or "dollars" at any time to find out how much money you have. Likewise you can type "tokens" to find out how many midway game tokens you have. There are a few hints within the game using the built-in "hint" feature of ADRIFT. ABOUT THE MINICOMP This game was conceived by David Good as an entry to the ADRIFT Spring 2001 Minicomp. The basic rules are that games must be made with the ADRIFT authoring system, must be previously unreleased material. Entrys are to be submitted by March 15, 2001, and must be limited to no more than 20 "rooms". Games were judged on the merits of Originality, Playability, Mechanics and Entertainment on a simple 1-10 scale. For more information visit http://adriftgames.homestead.com/index.html. I started work on this on February 13, 2001, a couple days after we began discussing the ground rules of the minicomp on the ADRIFT forum, http://www.adrift.org.uk/forum, and completed the game approx. 2 weeks later with some minor fine tuning before submitting it. VERSION NOTES: VERSION 1.03 - Tracked down a description bug (Finally! Thanks to D.C. on that one.) in one of the objects. - Tested in runner version to 3.90 r17. VERSION 1.02 - Unreleased test version. VERSION 1.01 - Fixed minor spelling errors. - Fixed one of the NPC's descriptions. - Updated the "Troubleshooting" portion of the release notes. - These changes were made after voting on the games was complete, so judging was done on the game prior to these modifications. - Added text about results of the MiniComp. TROUBLESHOOTING This game makes use of features introduced in ADRIFT 3.90, revision 16. If runner seems to freeze and then produces the message "Variable Exceeded Limits", or you cannot buy tokens, it is because you are not using the most current version of the ADRIFT Runner. Make sure you have at least revision 16 of ADRIFT 3.90. At the time of this writing, 3.90 r17 was most current. You check your version by going to the "Help" menu and choosing "About" in the runner. The current version can always be downloaded from http://www.adrift.org.uk. For comments, please contact me at david@dreamnetstudios.com, visit my web site at www.dreamnetstudios.com. I am also available on ICQ/AIM/AOL/Yahoo/MSNM - email me to request my number or screen name. David Good April 14, 2001