Short: Uncle Zebulon's Will (TADS) Author: Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se) Uploader: Bill Hoggett (mas supplies easynet co uk) Type: game/text Version: 2.0 Requires: The TADS Run-Time module v2.2+ Architecture: generic This is the platform independent distribution of "Uncle Zebulon's Will", release 2.0. "Uncle Zebulon's Will" is a text adventure game in the Infocom tradition. The distribution consists of the following files: zebulon.gam - TADS 2.2 game file, requires the TADS runtime to run (see the file zebulon.txt for how to get the runtime). zebulon.txt - Release notes and some explanations. instruct.txt - Generic instructions for playing TADS games. read.me - this file Release Notes Uncle Zebulon's Will, release 2.0 Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se) ================================= "Uncle Zebulon's Will" is a small text adventure game, which I wrote for the first Annual Interactive Fiction Contest in 1995 (the term "Interactive Fiction" is often used to mean text adventures). Release 2.0 is essentially the same game, with only minor changes (see below). "Uncle Zebulon's Will" is freeware. This means that you may play it, copy it and give it away without paying any royalties. You are not allowed to sell it or distribute modified copies without the written permission of the author. You may charge a distribution fee for covering distribution costs. The game was written in TADS, a computer language designed specially for writing adventure games. It is released in three forms: * as a platform independent TADS game file (archive name: zebulon2.zip) * as an MS-DOS application (which can be run from Windows or OS/2 as well) (archive name: zeb2_pc.zip) * as a Macintosh application (archive name: zeb2_mac.sit / zeb2_mac.hqx) Exactly which files are contained in the distribution is described in the file read.me. How To Play =========== The MS-DOS and Macintosh applications are run just as any other program. To play the platform independent version, you need a copy of the TADS runtime version 2.2 or later. The TADS distribution is available for many popular operating systems, including MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari and several flavours of Unix. It can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/programming/tads. The command for running the game will probably be "tadsr zebulon" or something like that - see the TADS documentation for your system. If you have never played a TADS game before, or find that you have difficulty playing, you may wish to read the file instruct.txt, which contains generic instructions for TADS games. Changes in Release 2.0 ====================== The changes in release 2.0 are quite small and don't affect gameplay - the sequence of actions needed to complete release 1.0 will be perfectly adequate here as well. Most of the changes are bug fixes. I've also added some functionality that isn't essential but makes the game more consistent or simply more detailed, as well as increased the vocabulary somewhat. I've also polished the writing a bit, removing some run-on sentences, repetitions and anti-climaxes. The reviewer who found my prose flat and lifeless will probably still be disappointed, though, since that's more a matter of style and I didn't want to rewrite the entire game. Finally, I've rearranged and tidied up the source code so it is fit for human consumption (see below about the source release) - the first release was written in rather a hurry and keeping the code nice and readable wasn't my highest priority. I'd like to thank the people who've contributed bug reports, suggestions for improvements, or just general feedback. Typing "INFO" inside the game will show a list of the most important contributors. Source Code =========== I plan to release the TADS source code of "Uncle Zebulon's Will" during the latter part of May, 1996. It will be available from the IF-archive and other FTP sites under the filename zeb2_src.zip. Getting Help ============ "Uncle Zebulon's Will" was designed to be a short and easy game: one of the rules of the competition was that it should be winnable in two hours. For this reason there are no hints included in the game. If you should get stuck, you are welcome to contact me for help. Interactive Fiction Resources ============================= If you are interested in interactive fiction, playing text adventures, or even writing your own, the place to go is the IF archive: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive. This site contains hundreds of megabytes of text games, tools for creating them, and articles discussing them. Two Usenet newsgroups are devoted to interactive fiction: rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction. The former is for discussions about writing interactive fiction, and the latter is for discussing the games (including requests for help from stuck players). There are quite a few Web pages devoted to interactive fiction and adventure games. A good starting point is http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wsr/IF/homepage.html. For reviews of old and new text adventures, check out the e-zine SPAG, available on the Web as http://www.ocs.berkeley.edu/~kevinw/spag.html or by email subscription. To subscribe, just send a message to spag-request@df.lth.se containing the single line subscribe user@computer.domain (of course, you should substitute your real email address). The e-zine XYZZYnews contains articles about interactive fiction in general, as well as some reviews. You can read it on-line at the Web page http://www.interport.net/~eileen/design/xyzzynews.html