T.A.C.L. The Adventure Construction Language Copyright (c) 1988, 1989 by Kevin S. Kelm and Alternate Realities Produced by Micro Momentum, Inc. This document is freely distributable when accompanied by PADV. PADV (Play ADVenture) Tutorial GETTING STARTED The easiest way to play an adventure is to click on the icon of the Game that you want to play from Workbench. Double click on icon to start the game. The game will load PADV (The adventure player) and then load the game you have selected. Note: The same thing can be accomplished by typing "PADV GameName" from the CLI. (Remember to substitute the actual name of the game that you want to play for "GameName".) PADV is the fun part of TACL, where you play the games that you or someone else has created with MADV. PADV has been designed to be as flexible as possible, and each computer's version is written to take advantage of any special capabilities available on that computer. The Amiga version, for example, uses pull-down menus, special windows for various functions, a separate screen for graphics which may be manipulated using the standard Amiga layering and drag gadgets, speech, and other Amiga-specific features. LOADING AN ADVENTURE From the Workbench, either double click on the icon of the game that you wish to play, or double click on the PADV icon to load PADV, and then load the game by using the menu options in PADV as described below. From the Command Line Interpreter (CLI), type "PADV GameName.GAM" or "PADV GameName," or just type "PADV," and then load the game using the menu options as described below. Note that PADV often uses a lot of stack space, and THE STACK SIZE SHOULD BE SET TO AT LEAST 20,000 BYTES. To do this, type "STACK 20000" at the CLI prompt, or put it in your Startup-Sequence. (Just edit the file "s:Startup-Sequence" and add the "STACK 20000" line somewhere in the file.) PADV's MENUS Padv has three main menus. The ADVENTURE menu allows control over which adventure game to play and system options, the GAME menu allows save, restore, and restart options, and the OPTIONS menu allows you to toggle Graphics, Audio, and Speech. The ADVENTURE menu is as follows: Load (Right-Amiga-R) Colors (Right-Amiga-C) About (Right-Amiga-A) Help (Right-Amiga-H) Quit (Right-Amiga-Q) Use the LOAD Option to load an new adventure, or to change to a different adventure. See the section below about LOAD and SAVE game for a complete description of how to use the file requestor. As screen colors are a matter of personal choice, feel free to adjust the colors to your personal favorites with the COLORS menu option. At the end of the game session, PADV will attempt to save the file "TACL-PAdv.Config" to the "s:" directory so that next time you run PADV, it will start with your favorite colors as well as your selections for Graphics, Audio and Speech. The ABOUT option will display a window with some information about PADV's legal status. The HELP menu option, the Right-Amiga-H combination, or the HELP Key can be used to pop up a window that describes the commands that are always available in any adventure. Note that both the help and about windows, and any PADV requesters will accept keyboard input. The help and about windows will accept any keypress as an "OK", and any requesters that ask for a yes or no response will accept "Y" or "N" from the keyboard. The GAME menu is as follows: New (Right-Amiga-N) Load (Right-Amiga-L) Save (Right-Amiga-S) Select the NEW option to abandon your current game, and re- start the adventure from the beginning. Use the LOAD and SAVE functions to save games in progress and to resume from any previously saved point. PADV is a nice program, and does not erase your saved games when your character dies. This means that you may continually keep trying to get past a difficult portion of the adventure, if you have saved your game just before your character died. Both LOAD and SAVE games, and LOAD adventure will pop up a file requester. To look for files in the directory that you were last in (or started the program from), just click in the display window. If you wish to look on a specific drive just click on the appropriate icon on the right side of the requester. You may not have all of the drives or devices listed, so ignore the ones that you don't have. If you have a device that isn't listed on a gadget, click in the path selector on the bottom, and type in the device name followed by a colon (:). If you already know which file you want, you may just type it in the file selector by first clicking in that box, and typing the name of the file that you wish to load or save. The PARENT gadget will back up one directory, and the ROOT gadget will read the root directory of the current device. When you see the file you want, either double click on the filename, or single click, and then click the OK gadget. If you decide that you want to stop and go back to what you were doing, click the CANCEL gadget. The OPTIONS Menu is as follows: Graphics Audio Speech No keyboard shortcuts are available for this menu, but options from this menu are generally not used often and this should not be an inconvenience. Each Item in this menu has a submenu that will have a checkmark in front of the current state of each option. The GRAPHICS submenu will turn the graphics screen on and off, thus enabling you to see or not see any graphics that may be part of the adventure that you are currently playing. The AUDIO submenu turns any sound effects in the adventure on and off. The SPEECH option will read ALL text, including PADV requesters, help window and about window using the Amiga's built in speech capabilities. The submenu allows three different speech speeds to be selected to suit your personal taste. This feature is included in the hope that it may prove useful -- for a child learning to read, for someone who has difficulty seeing the computer screen, or for someone who just wants to show off the Amiga. KEYS PADV's keys are simple and fairly straightforward. In addition to the menu-shortcuts mentioned above, all the standard characters "0" thru "9", "a" thru "z", and "A" thru "Z", dash "-", underscore "_", the spacebar, the up and down cursor control keys, F1, F2, F10, the backspace, return, help, and escape keys are accepted. Here's how to use them. ESC Blanks the current line of input. UpArrow Recall the last line of input. Use to re-do a previous command. DownArrow Recall the first line of input. Help Display the quick help window. F1 Toggle between text and graphics. F2 Toggle image select window. F3 Toggle the EXITS window. BackSpace Delete the last character typed. (as usual) Return Tell PADV you're done typing that line, and to try and do what you've asked. Other Keys Same as usual. (i.e. the "A" key will type an "a" or an "A") Use the F1 key to swap back and forth between the graphics screen and the text screen. The graphics screen will pop to the front automatically after any graphics are drawn or displayed, to return to the game, press F1 WITHOUT clicking in the graphics window. If you accidentally do click in the graphics window, click about one centimeter to the left of the upper right corner of the screen. The layering gadgets are really there, in their usual places, but are invisible. The F2 key is used to toggle the image select window. When visible, this window will display all objects (and the current room) for which there are images. The first one is usually the room, any items in the player's inventory that have images are next, followed by the objects in the current room, if they have images. You do not have to wait for the adventure to display these, but single-clicking on any listed object or room will draw and display the picture for that object. This allows every object to have its own picture, often saving on long explanations. If you don't want to see the objects that have available pictures, except when they are automatically displayed by the adventure program, then press the F2 key and the image select window will disappear. Note that clicking on the close gadget will turn off the whole graphics system. The F3 key toggles the presence of the EXITS window. This window will always show the exits that the player may use to leave the current room or place. They are arranged in a circle with "N" for "North" at the top. Following clockwise, they are Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West and Northwest. In the center are "U" for Up and "D" for Down. These abbreviations will appear only when that corresponding exit is valid. PADV's STANDARD COMMANDS PADV has several commands that are standard, and should always be available, but most of these can be re-defined by the Adventure creator, and may function differently. ALL Directions: NORTH, NORTHWEST, NORTHEAST, SOUTH, SOUTHWEST, SOUTHEAST, EAST, WEST, UP, and DOWN, including abbreviations (N, NE, NW, S, SW, SE, E, W, U, D) are standard, and move you from room to room as described in the room's links. (See MADV section for complete details on room links) The SCORE command will display your current score. The INVENTORY (abbreviated as "I") command will display all objects that you are currently carrying. The LOOK (abbreviated as "L") will display the full room description that you got when you walked into the room the first time. LOAD or RESTORE will bring up the "LOAD GAME" file requester, to allow you to continue or re-start an adventure. SAVE will give you a file requester to save your current position in an adventure so that you can continue from that position at a later time. QUIT will do the obvious, but will first give you a last chance to confirm your request before doing so. SENTENCE STRUCTURE One of the most important parts of an adventure game is the command parser. TACL's parser is a solid, top quality parser, but in order to simplify the TACL language, it is not as complex as some parsers. Generally, the biggest limitation is that TACL only allows one verb per sentence, and one sentence per turn, unless specifically implemented for specific situations by the adventure writer. The following sentence structures are standard, and should serve for almost all situations. Once again, other sentence structures can be used in certain situations, but supporting them is up the the adventure's author. Note that articles (A, AN, THE and THAT) can be placed in front of any noun (or in front of the adjective in front of the noun.) SENTENCE STRUCTURE LISTING ex: GRAB TIMER ex: GRAB the NUCLEAR BOMB ex: DETONATE the BOMB WITH the TIMER ex: STEAL the SECRET DOCUMENT FROM the AGENT ex: DECODE SECRET DOCUMENT WITH the DECODER RING ex: LOOK UNDER the TRASHCAN ex: SEARCH THROUGH the OAK DESK OFTEN USED SPECIAL CASES: (These must be specifically implemented by the adventure writer.) ex: LAY DOWN ex: STAND UP ex: YELL ex: SLEEP We hope that you enjoy using PADV when playing adventure games written with the TACL system. REMEMBER: PADV NEEDS A STACK OF AT LEAST 20K!!!