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The Eamon Adventurer's Guild March 1993 News and Stuff - by Tom Zuchowski Annual Financial Report I finally got around to putting the EAG transactions into a database, so this year I have a better breakdown than in years past. EAG finances for 1992: Starting Balance: $173.63 Income Back Issues: 104.65 New Memberships: 186.00 Renewal Memberships: 290.00 Updates: 37.00 Miscellaneous: 21.00 Total Income: 638.25 Expenses Copier: 302.39 Postage: 301.22 Supplies: 149.04 Total Expenses: 752.65 Ending Balance: $59.23 Not a real terrific year, yet it's better than it looks at first glance. That unscheduled reprint of the March issue cost nearly $100. If you figure that in, the EAG only lost some 20 bucks in 1992, an amount which I am very comfortable with. And I don't anticipate screwing up any newsletters in 1993! <grin> The bottom line is still well into the black. Inquiries are up. The EAG is getting exposure in several new places, including a mention in Softdisk and as a Quality Computers freebie. I expect 1993 to be a pretty good year. ____________________________________ The shoe has finally dropped. After allegedly selling 14 Apple II computers in October, Apple Corp. announced that the Apple IIgs line would be permanently discontinued on Dec. 15. The IIe is still available to institutions, but I don't expect it to long survive the GS. This has no significant effect on the Apple II world, which began organizing for "orphan" status a couple of years ago. The good news is that used equipment prices are better than ever as the techno-junkies bail out and sell their machines. Apple Corp. now sells all Apple II hardware (except CPUs) through direct mail-order, saving us from the trauma of trying to obtain stuff through our local Mac dealers. Apple's Continuation Support group is unchanged, still working with programmers and software vendors to maintain order in the Apple II world. And they are selling literally hundreds of thousands of IIe cards per year. The II is far from dead! Things could be better, but they could be a heck of a lot worse. Despite the widespread whining, Apple Corp. has treated II owners pretty darned well over the years and continues to support us even now. Apple made one major error years ago (not marketing the GS as a Macintosh for the home), and it put them in an impossible position, competing with themselves. Even so, the long-rumored GS+ computer very nearly made it into the marketplace. The rumored revamping of A+/inCider into a Macintosh magazine has been reconsidered, and it has retained a format that is similar to the one it had. Quality Computers has begun publishing its own Apple II magazine, called II Alive. Resource Central still publishes its newsletter plus five disk-based magazines. Softdisk is going strong. The II has strong support on the commercial online services. New software and hardware continues to appear. Yes, things could be a lot worse. We're doing OK. ___________________________________ Another One Bites the Dust Computer Budget Shopper of Cheyenne, WY has discontinued sales of Apple II software. Don't send them any more orders. Jim Hassler didn't say why he dropped the Apple II, but I'd bet it had a lot to do with recent increases in advertising costs. ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ EAMON ADVENTURER'S GUILD Thomas Zuchowski, Editor Membership/subscription fee for 4 issues: US-Canada: $7.00; foreign: $12.00; in US funds The Eamon Adventurer's Guild is published 4 times per year in Mar., Jun., Sep., and Dec. ________________________________________________ We are always looking for new material! If you would like to publish your own letter or article in this newsletter, feel free to send one in. If you would like to add your own Eamon adventure to the list, send it on a disk to the above address. It will be assigned an Adventure number, and tested for bugs and other problems before release. An informal critique and disk with bug corrections will be returned. ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ BACK ISSUES: Apple-based back issues of the formerly Apple-based NEUC's 'Adventurer's Log' are available from us: Mar'84, May'84, Aug'84, Oct'84, Jan'85, Mar'85 May'85, Aug'85, Oct'85, Jun'86, Jan'87, Oct'87 EAG back issues: Jun'88, Sep'88, Dec'88 Mar'89, Jun'89, Sep'89, Dec'89 Mar'90, Jun'90, Sep'90, Dec'90 Mar'91, Jun'91, Sep'91, Dec'91 Mar'92, Jun'92, Sep'92, Dec'92 Quantities of 1-5: $1.75 each Quantities of 6 or more: $1.25 each ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Contest Results ________________________________________________ Results of the "no-contest" from last issue: Robert Parker offers this: a modification of "drinkable artifacts" to "eatable/drinkable". Rob would use the unused Field 8 to distinguish between food and drink. Rob's second idea is a "disguised monster" artifact, with these fields: 5: Disguised Artifact type 6: First Effect Number 7: Number of Effects 8: Monster Number. Phil Schulz came up with this: day/night cycles that require the player to sleep occasionally. While sleeping, the player would be exposed to attack, robbery and abandonment by companions. If he didn't sleep, he would become less effective and eventually pass out. Phil also thinks that "special lighting" (other than simple light and dark) would be neat if there was a good explanation for it. He likes the idea of ammo-dependent weapons, too. Holly Zehnder had this idea: "puzzle monsters" that blocked passages and would not move until the riddle had been correctly answered. Holly envisions the monsters showing varied personalities and reacting in varied ways to right and wrong answers. Holly also suggested a side trip in an adventure that offers a chance to gamble in several simple games of chance. "I can just picture it: the character being hacked to death in a duel over a disputed match of Go Fish." I'm pretty sure that nearly all of these things have been done at one time or another. Rob gets extra credit for the most complete suggestions, and Holly gets extra credit for good examples. Nobody made a killing with a runaway "best idea", but all three get credit for giving a bit of thought to the contest. Rob, Phil, and Holly, you have won some free Eamon adventures. I'll send you any four Eamon disk sides that you desire. Let me know what you want. ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ New Adventures ________________________________________________ 221 Count Dracula's Castle by Robert Parker 222 The Halls of the Adept by Tim Berge and Johnathan Thomas Cottingham In "Count Dracula's Castle", you find yourself wandering about in a castle full of vampires. Reviewed in this issue. You venture into "The Halls of the Adept" on a mission for rescue and vengeance. This is Good Stuff. Also reviewed in this issue. In other news, we've got several new adventures cooking, some of which you will not want to miss when they come out! _______________________________________________ _ ________________________________________________ Dungeon Designs ________________________________________________ Adding a New Command by Tom Zuchowski While the version 7.0 MAIN PGM has a fairly complete basic command set, sometimes you need to add extra commands to get the play that you desire. Let's set up a simple example and then step through the procedure. Let's say that part of the quest requires that the player be able to TALK to a certain denizen of the dungeon. This scenario needs to have the command TALK added to the command list. For the sake of simplicity in this example, let's say that only one monster actually has something to say, and that this is monster #12. Let's make this monster's comments Effect #6. The required syntax for this command will be TALK (MONSTER). First, let's write the code for the new command: 35000 REM TALK 35010 GOSUB 4900: GOSUB 4700: IF NOT F THEN 96 35020 IF M = 12 THEN R = 406: GOSUB 45: GOTO 98 35030 PRINT: PRINT "YOU EXCHANGE "; 35040 IF M%(M,11) = 1 THEN PRINT "INSULTS." 35050 IF M%(M,11) > 1 THEN PRINT "PLEASANTRIES." 35060 GOTO 98 Let's examine this, statement by statement: 35010: GOSUB 4900 (Check to make sure that a specific object has been named in the command.) GOSUB 4700 (Find out if the Monster named is in the room, and what his number is in the monster database.) IF NOT F THEN 96 (If the routine at 4700 cannot find a match between the object and the name of any monster present in the room, it returns with F = 0. If no match was found, jump to line 96, which prints NOBODY HERE BY THAT NAME!) 35020: IF M = 12 THEN R = 406 (If the routine at 4700 finds a match, it returns with M = the monster number. In our example, the only monster that has anything to say is monster #12. Effects are stored in EAMON.DESC at records 401-600. Effect #6 is record #406.) GOSUB 45 (This is the routine that gets text from EAMON.DESC and prints it.) GOTO 98 (Exit the routine. This exit prints a blank line and updates the screen pause line counter.) 35030: PRINT: PRINT "YOU EXCHANGE "; (Print this text when M does not equal 12 so that the player gets a response to his command.) 35040: IF M%(M,11) = 1 THEN PRINT "INSULTS." (If the monster is an enemy.) 35050: IF M%(M,11) > 1 THEN PRINT "PLEASANTRIES." (If the monster is not an enemy.) � 35060: GOTO 98 (Exit the routine. This exit prints a blank line and updates the screen pause line counter.) OK, that is our new command. Now we have to integrate it into the command list. The number of basic commands (32) is stored at line 31910, and the commands are listed at line 31920. To add TALK, we must increase the number at 31910 by one and add the command at line 31930: 31910 DATA 33 31930 DATA TALK TALK will now be listed as the very last command in the command list and will be recognized by the command parsing routine at line 200. The only thing left to do is to add the line number of the routine to line 290 so that the command parser will know where it is: 290 ON C GOTO 3000,3000,3000,3000,3000,3000, 4000,5000,6500,6000,7000,8000,9000,10000, 11000,12000,13000,14000,15000,16000,23000, 17000,18000,19000,20000,21000,22000,24000, 25000,26000,27000,28000,35000 Note that the numbers in line 290 must be in exactly the same order as the commands in lines 31920-31930! That's it! We now have a working TALK command! _____ OK, that covers new commands involving monsters. The code for commands involving artifacts is much the same, except that the artifact search routine is at 4800 instead of 4700, and the routine at 4800 has several entry points. Let's look at the differences from the above code. It's identical except for the GOSUB 4700. The artifact search routine compares to three "locations": HA, WH, and EM. The defaults are: HA = - 1 (held by player) WH = RO (visible in room) EM = RO + 200 (embedded in room) GOSUB 4801 if the player must be holding the artifact for the command to work. (eg: DROP). GOSUB 4804 if the command works whether the artifact is being held, is in the room, or is still embedded in the room (eg: EXAMINE). HA = RO: GOSUB 4805 if the artifact must be in the room or embedded in the room but not held by the player (eg: GET). HA = - 999: EM = HA: WH = HA: GOSUB 4810 You can also define your own special "locations" to be checked. The example above is from the REMOVE command, which requires that the artifact to be acted on be worn by the player (- 999). This can be any number that you choose to use. _____ There are several optional exits from your routine. The two main ones are: GOTO 98 prints a line, increments the line counter by three, and proceeds to the monster melee code at 300. GOTO 99 is the same as GOTO 98 except that it proceeds to the YOU SEE code at 100 instead of the monster melee code. If the routines at 4700 and 4800 do not find a match to the object and return with F = 0, you have several optional exits: GOTO 91 "YOU AREN'T CARRYING IT." GOTO 92 "YOU MUST FIRST OPEN IT." GOTO 94 "YOU CAN'T (player's command) (eg: YOU CAN'T WEAR TABLE) GOTO 96 "NOBODY HERE BY THAT NAME!" If none of these four error messages quite fit your new command, you can use your own error message and exit through a GOTO 98 or GOTO 99. Let's recap by looking at some examples from the regular commands: Drop: 5010 GOSUB 4900: IF S$ = "ALL" THEN 5100 5030 GOSUB 4801: IF NOT F THEN 91 Examine: 6010 GOSUB 4900: GOSUB 4804: IF NOT F THEN 6040 6040 GOSUB 4700: IF NOT F THEN PRINT "YOU SEE NOTHING SPECIAL": GOTO 98 Get: 4010 GOSUB 4900: IF S$ = "ALL THEN 4200 4020 HA = RO: GOSUB 4805: IF NOT F THEN 94 Remove: 26010 GOSUB 4900: HA = -1: WH = RO: EM = - 999: GOSUB 4810: IF NOT F THEN 94 Attack: 7020 GOSUB 4900: GOSUB 4700: IF F THEN 7300 7030 HA = RO: GOSUB 4805: IF NOT F THEN 94 ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Bugs'n'Fixes ________________________________________________ #23 The Temple of Ngurct Date Fixed: 2/15/93 Problem: RETURN WITHOUT GOSUB IN 7665 Fix: In Line 13070, change GOTO 7639 to GOSUB 7639 ________________________________________________ #166 Storm Breaker Date Fixed: 1/9/93 Problem: SYNTAX ERROR IN 7530 Fix: In Line 7530, change A%(M%(0,),3) to A%(M%(0,9),3) ________________________________________________ #166 Storm Breaker (40-COL. PRODOS ONLY) Date Fixed: 1/9/93 Problem: SYNTAX ERROR IN 9097 Fix: In Line 9097, change LM < 0 to LM = 0 ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Adventure Reviews ________________________________________________ #18 Hogarth Castle - by Ken Nestle Reviewed by Steve Bernbaum MAIN PGM Version: 4 Extra Commands: UNLOCK, SAY, CLOSE, OPEN, KISS Deleted Commands: READ Special Features: advice and artifacts offered by monsters Playing Time: 15 minutes to 2 hours Reviewer Rating: 5 Average Rating: 4.5/2 Description: You are hired to rescue Rowena by her father, a king. He gives you some advice on how to get help and on what you can take. She is being held prisoner by Prince Hogarth in his castle. Once you head for the castle you, find yourself in Hogarth Town. In town you can enter various shops and encounter townfolk, who may be friendly or not and helpful or not. Exploring the town you will find the castle and the way back to the Guild Hall. You can leave anytime you want without penalty. Once you enter the Castle, you will want to find Rowena and get out to collect the reward. Comment: Pay close attention to the advice that the king gives you. If you follow this advice, both as to what is said and what is not said but logically follows, you will get lots of help and aid from the villagers. If you ignore the unsaid implications, all hands will be turned against you. HOWDY is the code word the king gives you. SAY HOWDY to everyone, no matter how unlikely they look to provide help, or you will not succeed in freeing Rowena. Even if they are unfriendly, they will give you the advice and artifacts they have for you before attacking. If you explore the town thoroughly before entering the castle, read between the lines in the advice given by the king and the villagers and use your head to think through your mission, you can get into the castle, find Rowena, get some backup warriors, free Rowena and get out pretty quick and easily. It took me about fifteen minutes to do so. Then I went back to the adventure with another character and explored the rest of the castle. If you don't figure out the easy way, make a wrong turn once you are in the castle or just decide to check the whole place out, you can take about two hours to finish this one. There are a few fairly nasty monsters about, as well as lots of loot. So, you can aim for accomplishing the mission quickly or have a hack and slash adventure where you can get filthy rich. Overall the monsters are of average hardiness. Some are tough. Some are pushovers. Most are in between. None are super tough. However, if you don't do the right thing around a couple of them, you're dead, no matter how tough the adventurer. If you think about the things helpful villagers give you and follow the king's advice, you won't have this problem. Otherwise..... Except for these spots, there was no situation that my adventurers could not handle. However, I might add both were well experienced and carried heavy duty weapons but I think an average character with average weapons would do fine. Don't waste any effort using EXAMINE or LOOK. They just reprint the room description. Although there are some secret passages and other hidden objects, you can find them by hints in the descriptions and using the action commands. There are numerous locked doors that you can't open without first finding the keys. Once you have opened the doors, any friendly monsters that are with you will not enter. They will wait by the door until you come back. Any friendlies you find beyond the door will come out with you. Weapons seem to get broken and dropped with great frequency but there are loads of others around, either dropped by dead monsters or just sitting there to begin with. Neither of my characters left with the weapon they readied at the start. If you have friendlies with you that aren't helping out, GIVE them weapons. Some are unarmed but pack quite a punch once you arm them. HINT: The most valuable treasure is located in a place that looks like a 'gotcha' death trap. It's not a 'gotcha' but the toughest monster in the place lives there. If you go after it, you're on your own. No other monster will enter there. If you figure out the clues and decide to go for the easy rescue, this is a pretty straight forward adventure. However, if you decide to search for glory and wealth, be sure to map the place. It is large and the room connections are often convoluted. There are a few nice effects scattered about the castle. Greedy adventurers, who don't follow the between the lines advice that the king gives, will be in for some nasty shocks, both during the adventure and when they head back to the Hall. Overall, I'd give it a 5 for difficulty. If you make the easy rescue, you will find it only a 3 or 4 for difficulty. ________________________________________________ #23 The Temple of Ngurct - by James & Robert Plamondon Reviewed by Tom Zuchowski MAIN PGM Version: 5 Extra Commands: OPEN, READ, UNLOCK Deleted Commands: None, no SAVE Special Features: Wandering monsters Playing Time: 1-2 hours Reviewer Rating: 7.0 Average Rating: 7.2/4 Description: "There is an old ruin of a small citadel on a cliff overlooking a rarely used pass. The road through the pass has become increasingly hazardous in recent years. Now, only rash and desperate travellers -- or those travelling in very large parties -dare to use it. Those who have survived the crossing tell dark tales of fearsome beasts and strange happenings; in all these tales the citadel is the eye of the storm. It is rumored that the evil priests of Ngurct have occupied the citadel. Their foul creed worships the black demon of the same name. Ngurct is the patron demon of exotic monsters -- and he requires the regular sacrifice of human unbelievers. You have been hired by your king to eradicate this scourge, and make the pass safe for travel and commerce once again. The power of Ngurct is locked into a gold medallion. If you return the medallion to the king, the power of Ngurct will be broken. For your efforts, you will be paid 5,000 GP upon the return of the medallion. Comment: The Plamondons did a really good job with this adventure, given the early state of the Eamon gaming system at the time they wrote it. The game has all the unrefined characteristics that you would expect from a number this low, such as requiring full words in commands and having no screen pausing at all. But screen pausing, at least, is handled nicely by pacing text speed at different rates for different events. Some interesting things have been done with the POWER command. There are several interesting side-tracks in the dungeon that are not required for a successful quest. In fact, there is evidence that they originally had a much more complex quest in mind but scaled it back for unknown reasons. You will attain a fully successful quest if you do nothing more than recover the medallion. Anything else you do is for your own interest in fully exploring the dungeon. Warning: best to bring your tactical nukes if you plan to awaken Ngurct himself! This one is a bit tough to grade for difficulty. It depends a lot on what companions you gather along the way and whether you manage to avoid causing inadvertent trouble for yourself. The average difficulty might be (6). _____________________________________________ #221 Count Dracula's Castle - by Robert Parker Reviewed by Tom Zuchowski MAIN PGM Version: 5 Extra Commands: None Deleted Commands: None Special Features: None Playing Time: 30 min. Reviewer Rating: 2.0 Description: "One fine day, after having one too many root beer floats, you layed down to take a nap. It was an awful nap, and you had a bad dream. You dreamt of vampires! But the really scary part was when you dreamt that you woke up, and you were there..." Comment: This is a very simple adventure, with no puzzles or secret stuff. The bad guys are easy enough, though there are a lot of them. I give it a (4) for difficulty. The map is simply laid out. Just about the only monsters that you see are bats and vampires, which gets a bit old. The descriptions were quite simple, with numerous spelling errors. The adventure does have a "quest" to fulfill, though it's not spelled out: kill the Count. I suspect that this adventure may be a pretty good pick for young boys, with tons of combat and absolutely zero mental heavy lifting. It's actually not that bad of an adventure; it's just way too simple for my tastes. ________________________________________________ #222 The Halls of the Adept - by Tim Berge and Johnathan Thomas Cottingham Reviewed by Tom Zuchowski MAIN PGM Version: 5 Extra Commands: OPEN, READ, UNLOCK, SIT, STAND, WEAR, REMOVE Deleted Commands: None Special Features: 10-directions, secret door screen effects Playing Time: 30-60 min. Reviewer Rating: 7.0 Description: "The king needs your services. He informs you, 'The beautiful princess Aeriel has been kidnapped by an evil Adept. "This is bad enough, but it is worse. A war may break out if she is not returned in time to marry the barbarous king of the Northern Reaches. It is said that the king has the aid of Demon magic, and Eamon would be destroyed if you fail. "The king offers you a reward of 7500 gold pieces for Aeriel's return, and another 2500 for the Adept's body. And of course, you may keep whatever you, well, acquire while questing. He cannot send another man with you, as they are preparing for war." Comment: After a lapse of 150 adventures, Tim Berge rises from the dead with a quite competent offering. It is rather dated by being based on an early version 5 MAIN PGM, with such flaws as requiring full object names and having virtually no screen pauses. But it is simply jammed with nonstop specials and effects. This adventure has all the right elements: a clear quest, interesting companions and foes, magical devices, and some minor puzzling. The POWER spell is loaded with special stuff that you won't want to miss. There's a (literally) fire-breathing companion that makes combat rather more interesting. There is a special screen gimmick for secret doors that I really enjoyed. There are a number of random traps, but most are not fatal. This could possibly have garnered an 8 or 8.5 rating if it had been based on the more solid footing of the version 7 MAIN PGM. But the massive special programming required by the use of such an ancient version is a little uneven and a bit cantankerous in spots, which accounts for the lower rating. I guess I give it a (6) for difficulty. This one is worth a play for all the specials; they are pretty neat. ________________________________________________