1DUNGEON(6)                       Games Manual                       DUNGEON(6)
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NAME

6       dungeon - Adventures in the Dungeons of Doom
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SYNOPSIS

9       dungeon
10

DESCRIPTION

12       Dungeon  is  a  game  of adventure, danger, and low cunning.  In it you
13       will explore some of the most amazing territory  ever  seen  by  mortal
14       man.   Hardened  adventurers  have  run screaming from the terrors con‐
15       tained within.
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17       In Dungeon, the intrepid explorer delves into the forgotten secrets  of
18       a  lost  labyrinth  deep in the bowels of the earth, searching for vast
19       treasures long hidden from prying eyes, treasures guarded  by  fearsome
20       monsters and diabolical traps!
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22       Dungeon  was  created at the Programming Technology Division of the MIT
23       Laboratory for Computer Science by  Tim  Anderson,  Marc  Blank,  Bruce
24       Daniels,  and  Dave  Lebling.  It was inspired by the Adventure game of
25       Crowther and Woods, and the Dungeons and  Dragons  game  of  Gygax  and
26       Arneson.   The original version was written in MDL (alias MUDDLE).  The
27       current version was translated from MDL into FORTRAN IV by  a  somewhat
28       paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous.
29
30       On-line information may be obtained with the commands HELP and INFO.
31

DETAILS

33       Following is the summary produced by the info command:
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35              Welcome to Zork!
36
37              You  are  near a large dungeon, which is reputed to contain vast
38              quantities of treasure.   Naturally, you wish to acquire some of
39              it.   In  order  to do so, you must of course remove it from the
40              dungeon.  To receive full credit for it,  you  must  deposit  it
41              safely in the trophy case in the living room of the house.
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43              In  addition  to valuables, the dungeon contains various objects
44              which may or may not be useful in your attempt to get rich.  You
45              may  need  sources  of light, since dungeons are often dark, and
46              weapons, since dungeons often have unfriendly  things  wandering
47              about.   Reading  material  is  scattered  around the dungeon as
48              well;  some of it is rumored to be useful.
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50              To determine how successful you have  been,  a  score  is  kept.
51              When  you  find  a valuable object and pick it up, you receive a
52              certain number of points, which depends  on  the  difficulty  of
53              finding  the  object.  You receive extra points for transporting
54              the treasure safely to the living room and  placing  it  in  the
55              trophy  case.   In addition, some particularly interesting rooms
56              have a value associated with visiting them.  The only penalty is
57              for getting yourself killed, which you may do only twice.
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59              Of  special  note  is  a thief (always carrying a large bag) who
60              likes to wander around in the dungeon (he has never been seen by
61              the  light  of  day).  He likes to take things.  Since he steals
62              for pleasure rather than profit and  is  somewhat  sadistic,  he
63              only  takes  things  which  you  have seen.  Although he prefers
64              valuables, sometimes in his haste he may take something which is
65              worthless.  From time to time, he examines his take and discards
66              objects which he doesn't like.  He may occasionally  stop  in  a
67              room  you  are  visiting, but more often he just wanders through
68              and rips you off (he is a skilled pickpocket).
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COMMANDS

71       brief          suppresses printing of long room descriptions for  rooms
72                      which have been visited.
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74       superbrief     suppresses  printing  of  long room descriptions for all
75                      rooms.
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77       verbose        restores long descriptions.
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79       info           prints information which might give some  idea  of  what
80                      the game is about.
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82       quit           prints  your score and asks whether you wish to continue
83                      playing.
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85       save           saves the state of the game for later continuation.
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87       restore        restores a saved game.
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89       inventory      lists the objects in your possession.
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91       look           prints a description of your surroundings.
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93       score          prints your current score and ranking.
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95       time           tells you how long you have been playing.
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97       diagnose       reports on your injuries, if any.
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99       The inventory command may be abbreviated i; the  look  command  may  be
100       abbreviated l; the quit command may be abbreviated q.
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102       A  command that begins with '!' as the first character is taken to be a
103       shell command and is passed unchanged to the shell via system(3).
104

CONTAINMENT

106       Some objects can contain other objects.  Many such  containers  can  be
107       opened  and closed.  The rest are always open.   They may or may not be
108       transparent.  For you to access (e.g., take) an object which  is  in  a
109       container,  the container must be open.  For you to see such an object,
110       the container must be either open or transparent.   Containers  have  a
111       capacity,  and objects have sizes; the number of objects which will fit
112       therefore depends on their sizes.  You may  put  any  object  you  have
113       access  to  (it  need  not be in your hands) into any other object.  At
114       some point, the program will attempt to pick it up if you don't already
115       have  it, which process may fail if you're carrying too much.  Although
116       containers can contain other containers,  the  program  doesn't  access
117       more than one level down.
118

FIGHTING

120       Occupants of the dungeon will, as a rule, fight back when attacked.  In
121       some cases, they may attack even if unprovoked.  Useful verbs here  are
122       attack  <villain>  with <weapon>, kill, etc.  Knife-throwing may or may
123       not be useful.  You have a fighting strength which  varies  with  time.
124       Being  in  a  fight,  getting  killed, and being injured all lower this
125       strength.  Strength is regained with time.  Thus, it is not a good idea
126       to  fight someone immediately after being killed.  Other details should
127       become apparent after a few melees or deaths.
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COMMAND PARSER

130       A command is one line of text terminated by  a  carriage  return.   For
131       reasons  of  simplicity, all words are distinguished by their first six
132       letters.  All others are ignored.  For example, typing disassemble  the
133       encyclopedia is not only meaningless, it also creates excess effort for
134       your fingers.  Note that this truncation may produce ambiguities in the
135       intepretation  of  longer  words.  [Also note that upper and lower case
136       are equivalent.]
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138       You are dealing with a fairly stupid parser, which understands the fol‐
139       lowing types of things:
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141              Actions:
142                   Among  the  more obvious of these, such as take, put, drop,
143                   etc.  Fairly general forms of these may be  used,  such  as
144                   pick up, put down, etc.
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146              Directions:
147                   north,  south,  up,  down, etc. and their various abbrevia‐
148                   tions.  Other more obscure  directions  (land,  cross)  are
149                   appropriate in only certain situations.
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151              Objects:
152                   Most objects have names and can be referenced by them.
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154              Adjectives:
155                   Some  adjectives are understood and required when there are
156                   two objects which can be referenced with  the  same  'name'
157                   (e.g., doors, buttons).
158
159              Prepositions:
160                   It  may be necessary in some cases to include prepositions,
161                   but the  parser  attempts  to  handle  cases  which  aren't
162                   ambiguous  without.   Thus  give car to demon will work, as
163                   will give demon car.  give car demon probably won't do any‐
164                   thing  interesting.   When a preposition is used, it should
165                   be appropriate; give car with demon won't parse.
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167              Sentences:
168                   The parser understands a  reasonable  number  of  syntactic
169                   construc-  tions.   In particular, multiple commands (sepa‐
170                   rated by commas) can be placed on the same line.
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172              Ambiguity:
173                   The parser tries to be clever about what to do in the  case
174                   of  actions  which  require objects that are not explicitly
175                   specified.  If there  is  only  one  possible  object,  the
176                   parser  will assume that it should be used.  Otherwise, the
177                   parser will ask.  Most questions asked by the parser can be
178                   answered.
179

FILES

181       dtextc.dat     - encoded messages and initialization information
182       dsave.dat      - save file
183

BUGS

185       For those familiar with the MDL version of the game on the ARPAnet, the
186       following is a list of the major incompatabilties:
187              -The first six letters of a  word  are  considered  significant,
188              instead of the first five.
189              -The syntax for tell, answer, and incant is different.
190              -Compound objects are not recognized.
191              -Compound  commands  can  be  delimited  with  comma  as well as
192              period.
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194       Also, the palantir, brochure, and dead  man  problems  are  not  imple‐
195       mented.
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AUTHORS

198       Many  people  have  had  a hand in this version.  See the "History" and
199       "README" files for credits.   Send  bug  reports  to  ian@airs.com  (or
200       uunet!airs!ian).
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204                                March 11, 1991                      DUNGEON(6)
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