THE DIGITAL DUNGEON

WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON?

1-1 Why the Digital Dungeon?

Role-playing games have traditionally had four complaints with their
fun.  Firstly, it is very difficult in general to accurately envision
even a simple combat scene.  The positions of the various creatures,
the locations of the walls, doors, and large objects, the areas of
effect of spells and bombs, the limit and span of vision from the
perspective of each entity... the scene begins to spin and waver as 
combat progresses, and within minutes no one (often including the
gamemaster) is really sure what is going on.

Secondly, the information necessary to control a creature in combat
must be readily available and speedily alterable in order that combat
progress with any exciting pace.  Copious figures and notes do the
trick, but at what cost do the patience of all concerned?

Thirdly, while rolling the dice is an inexhaustible source of excitement
for the players, it can be very tedious for the gamemaster, who often
ends up rolling more dice than the players combined.

Fourthly, players very often have only a sketchy idea as to their foes'
physical appearance.  While a powerful orator can cater to the
imagination of the players, describing their circumstances in
deliciously immediate terms, after a while even the most accomplished
gamemasters begin to show their patterns.  It is simply too much to ask
of even the most radically imaginative person to be continuously
original.

Probably at least one of these problems seems fairly serious to you.
And thus...

1-2 Congratulations!

Congratulations!  By purchasing the Digital Dungeon, you have become one
of a rapidly growing group of people who see the real benefits of 
integrating the computer and the role-playing game.  Every attempt has
been made throughout the design of the program to harness the power
of the machine in logical and reasonable ways, all the while attempting
to minimize the intrusive aspects of the program.  The result is a 
utility which we feel will meet the needs of most gamers.

The primary goals of the designers (in order of importance) were to 
provide an accurate representation of a combat scene, information for each
creature (and quick ways to manipulate it), a very fast user-interface,
and tools to automate and enhance the gaming experience.  In realizing
these objectives, a number of smaller features have been developed,
generally as a result of observations made during play-testing.

Concerning the user-interface; it was decided to make the program
entirely mouse-based.  The presence of the keyboard during play can
be distracting and has not in practice yielded any real increase in
speed.  

The program has specifically been designed with a fairly steep learning
curve in mind.  While it will take a little time (and some reference
to the manual) to learn adequately how to use the Digital Dungeon, the
payoff comes in the exceptionally fast pace that is possible once it is
mastered.

One of the factors in the difficulty of learning this program is the
abundance of new ideas and graphic schemes.  It has to be kept in mind
that nothing like this has ever been tried before, and so some departure
from the normal way of doing things would be expected in order that a
genuinely viable product be brought into the world.  The designers found
(often to their dismay) that most of the conventional ways of going about 
things would not work with the Digital Dungeon for one simple reason:
speed.  Can you imagine using an intuition-style Digital Dungeon?  All
requesters and menus?  It was tried, and it was not pretty.

As a last note, it would be advisable to sit down with the manual and
get a basic grasp of what is going on before experimenting.  It is
simply not possible to use the program fully without the manual, and
not a good idea at all to even try without preparation.

1-3 The Digital Dungeon Package

The program comes in a permanent plastic disk caddy with labels on the
side and front of the package.  Inside should be eight labeled disks:
a program disk, three entity disks, two icon disks, and two relief disks.
There should be a registration card as well, and careful searching will
reveal the documentation, already open to section 1-3.

1-4 System Requirements

The Digital Dungeon will run on any Amiga with at least one megabyte of
memory.  That is to say, both NTSC and PAL video standards are supported,
the program is compatible with Kickstart 2.0, and you can get by with
512K of chip memory.

It is very advisable, however, to have at least one megabyte of chip
memory and 1.5 megabytes of total memory.  Further chip memory is not
in itself significant, but more total memory will allow for caching
of complete combat scenes in memory - especially useful if the program
is run from floppy disk.

1-5 Hard Drive Installation

The Digital Dungeon comes with a program called "HDInstall".  This utility,
located on the program disk in the "tools" drawer, serves to install all
Digital Dungeon-type disks onto the hard drive.  These include not only
the eight disks that come with the basic package, but any future 
expansion disks as well.

The utility simply works by copying the disk in df0: to the hard drive
location of your choice.  It should be noted here that because of the
way the Digital Dungeon works, all art volumes must go to the same
location as the program itself.  Therefore, you will want at least
eight megabytes of space available on the partition you choose.  Bearing
in mind that you will almost certainly want some of the expansion disks,
it would be a good idea to have more like fifteen or twenty megabytes
of space available on the partition.

The hard drive install utility creates a directory called "DD" wherever
you specify you want it.  All the Digital Dungeon disks are copied into
subdirectories of DD that are given the same names as their floppy
disk sources.  The best way to go about it is to put the program disk
into DF0: and activate the "HDInstall" utility by clicking on its icon.
You will be asked where to create the Digital Dungeon subsystem, and then
the program disk will itself be copied to that location.  The actual
transition from floppy disk to hard drive is not at all simple to do
manually, so use of this utility is absolutely necessary.

To install the other disks, remove the program disk from DF0: and put
one of the remaining ones in.  Now open the "DD" directory on the hard
drive where you installed it and call the "HDInstall" utility from the
"tools" drawer there.  All seven art volumes should be installed in
this way.  When and if you purchase future expansion sets, the utility
is used the same way to install them on the hard drive.

It should be noted that floppy disk art sources can still be accessed
easily when the program is installed and run from the hard drive,
but not the other way around.  If the program is booted up from floppy,
then the hard drive will not be available.

1-6 Booting the Digital Dungeon

There are two scenarios in which the Digital Dungeon can be started;
from a hard drive (after it has been installed, of course), and from
floppy drive.  In both cases there is a certain sequence that must be
followed to successfully load and run the program.

You will find, in the same window the Digital Dungeon is located in,
a set of icons called "DD Setup1" and "DD Setup2".  One of these (and
only one) must be activated each time before the program itself is
called.  You will call "DD Setup1" if using the 1.3 operating system,
or "DD Setup2" if using the 2.0 operating system (or higher).
Basically, these utilities configure the Digital Dungeon for use under
the 1.3 operating system or the 2.0 (or higher) operating system.
If you forget to use one of these, the program will terminate 
immediately after loading.  If you use the wrong one, it will not
handle floppy disk changes successfully.

One of the advantages of configuring the system in this fashion is 
that floppy users don't have to perform lots of disk swaps to load
the program.  To make things simple (if you have a disk-based system),
copy the appropriate setup file to the boot disk you use by dragging
its icon.  Thenceforth, you need merely double-click on the setup
file on your boot disk and the system will be configured properly,
involving no disk swaps.  For those with sufficient expertise, the
script lines in the setup files can be added to your boot disk
startup-sequence, making the setup process automatic.

1-7 Formatting Floppy Disks

In order to use a floppy disk with the Digital Dungeon, it is first
necessary to place a small file on it called "Quickdir".  The
source for the file is the "tools" drawer on the program disk.
Simply drag the "Quickdir" icon you will find in that drawer to the
blank, formatted disk you are interested in using, and you're ready to
go.  When you actually use the disk for the first time with the Digital
Dungeon program you will be asked to give the disk an original name.

One warning: Do not under any circumstances attempt to move the "Quickdir"
source onto the root directory of any Digital Dungeon disk that you
do not wish to format.  Its mere presence there means that the disk
has already been cleaned.  It is best simply to keep all original 
Digital Dungeon disks write-protected.

1-8 Using the 1.3 Operating System

Some peculiarities of the way the 1.3 operating system works force
the following convention on Digital Dungeon users who use that version
of the operating system:  When changing a floppy disk you must first
remove the old disk (if there is one), then select the source or
destination device in question, then put the new disk in the drive.
If this exact order is not followed, there will be trouble in
updating the disk.

                          THE END