--------------------------------- Red Dwarf Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers --------------------------------- Version 2.11 Official Documentation by Joseph A. Stanko (comments to jstanko@csua.berkeley.edu) http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~jstanko 1) LICENSE AGREEMENT This program is copyright (C) 1996 Joseph A. Stanko. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (see "license.txt"); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. The characters and story in this game are based on the BBC television series "Red Dwarf" as well as the books "Red Dwarf- Infinity Welcomes Carefully Drivers" and "Red Dwarf- Better Than Life," all of which were created and written by Grant Naylor. Only the original portions of the story and the program code itself are covered by the above copyright. The above copyright and license agreement should not be interpreted as a claim on any of the characters or story that are already the property of Grant Naylor. Furthermore, this game was created without the knowledge or consent of Grant Naylor or any other owners of the story and characters. It is in no way associated with or endorsed by Grant Naylor, the BBC, or anyone else and no such connection should be infered or assumed. 2) DISTRIBUTION PACKAGE All of these files should be included when this program is distributed: README.TXT LICENSE.TXT REDDWARF.EXE REDDWARF.DAT REDDWARF.000 3) USING RED DWARF In order to run this program, you must have a PC compatible system that runs MS-DOS. It was designed on a 386-25mHz system with VGA running DOS 5.0, but it should run on any system, though screen color selection obviously won't work on a monochrome monitor. To install, copy the 4 files listed in section 2 onto your harddrive, or a floppy if you don't have a harddrive. 4) PLAYING THE GAME Those of you who remember the classic Infocom text games shouldn't need to read this section. You are the main character in an interactive story. At the ">" prompt, type what you want to do in a sentence in command form, i.e. beginning with a verb. Examples- walk north take toaster open the door kick the big rat put the toaster on the counter look behind the counter The game takes place in a series of "rooms." You may move from room to room by typing "n" for north, "s" for south, "e" for east, and "w" for west. Since some passages twist and curve, it is possible to go west from room A to room B, then go south to get back to room A. It may be helpful to draw a map as you go, and to indicate this type of passage as follows- ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ Room A ³ ÀÄÄÄÄÂÄÄÄÙ ³ ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´ Room B ³ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ It is very important that you "examine" important things in the game and "take" things which may come in handy later. By typing "inventory," you will see a list of everything you are carrying and everything you are wearing. You may "drop" things you no longer need, but there is no limit to the number of items you can carry so there is never a need to drop anything. As you play the game, you will encounter other characters. You may interact with these characters by typing "talk to." You may also "give" or "show" something to people, and you may "ask...about" or "tell...about" any item you have with you or anything interesting in the room. Some characters are 'extras' and will give simple responses to everything, but others are very important to the game. They may even move around or follow you from room to room. You will find it interesting and often helpful to talk to them every time you enter an interesting room, find an interesting item, or solve a puzzle. Remember, after something has happened, they may have something new to say. You can, of course, save your game by typing "save." This will get you to a menu from which you may choose to save over a previously saved game, save a new game file, or cancel. If you choose to save a new game, you will be asked to type a name for this game. Any series of characters is acceptable; this is NOT a DOS name. There is a limit of something like 40 characters to a name. You are only allowed to save nine games, after which you will have to start saving over old games. You will be asked which game to replace and whether or not you want to change the name of this game. To load a previously saved game, type "restore," then choose which game you want to play. 5) WINNING THE GAME Yes, it IS possible to win Red Dwarf. Figuring out how is up to you. As you play the game, a plot will develop, and you should get some clues as to what your character's motivations and desires are. When you have achieved what your character wants in life, you will win the game. There is also a scoring system in Red Dwarf which has nothing to do with winning the game. Every time you solve a puzzle or do something clever, you will get points. Every time you do something, you will lose points. You will lose large amounts of points if you manage to get yourself killed. If you proceed through the game slowly but surely and win, you may still find that you have a very low score. The score is just an incentive to keep you going. 6) GETTING THE GAME TO UNDERSTAND YOU In my humble opinion, Red Dwarf has the best parsing system available in a game since the classic Infocom games, a system which certainly surpasses the weak text of Sierra Online games. Still, this program will not teach your computer to speak English. Every sentence must begin with a verb, and be phrased as if you were telling a person to do something. Hence you should type "eat the marshmallow" rather than "I want to eat the marshmallow You must also limit your sentence to two objects. While "give the pen to Nixon" is perfectly allowable, "hit Nixon on the head with the large club from Brazil" will not work. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO TYPE IN LOWERCASE OR UPPERCASE AS APPROPRIATE. In the sentence above, typing "Give the Pen to Nixon" or "give the pen to nixon" would not work, but "give the pen to Nixon" will. Always use lowercase except when typing a proper noun. The word "all" may be used to refer to every item in the room which you are not carrying and which is not contained within another item. (exception- "drop all" will drop everything you are carrying) You may exempt one item from this instruction with phrases such as "drop all but the pen" and "examine all but the vomit." You may perform an action on two items at once by using the word "and," as in "take the cat and the hat." You may NOT use two verbs at once, such as "take and read the book." You may use the word "it" to refer to the last item mentioned in the last input line. For example, if the last line was "take the cat and the hat," "drop it" would drop the hat. You may use the word "again" to repeat the previous action. You must use verbs with which Red Dwarf is familiar, and you must only refer to objects which are present in the current room. Whenever Red Dwarf doesn't understand your input, it will respond by saying what it doesn't understand or prompting you for more information. In all cases, you must retype the entire line in order to correct the mistake. 7) OTHER STUFF If you need some technical help while playing the game, type "help" or "?" at the prompt. To quit the game, type "quit." This game should run without problems on nearly any IBM compatible system. If you run the game and it tells you a file is missing, supply the file. All files must be in the same directory. Otherwise, if the game won't work, buy a better computer. 8) REVISION HISTORY Version 1.0 was the beginning of this program written for a high school class in a Mac lab, but it was never completed. Version 2.0 was the PC adaptation of the first version, the major improvement being that this version was actually completed. Version 2.1 contains various minor fixes and adjustments, which mostly clean up a few of version 2.0's several million spelling errors. Version 2.11 is the final build, nearly 3 years later, when I finally decided to distribute the game. 9) SOURCE CODE I wrote this game back when I was still in high school using Turbo Pascal. I am now a fourth-year CS major at U.C. Berkeley, and looking back on it, although I am mighty proud of the game, I am equally embarassed by the source code. It is crude, clumsy, poorly documented, and highly inelegent. If you really want it for some reason, write to me (jstanko@csua.berkeley.edu) and I'll send you a copy. 10) SUPPORT, HINTS, COMMENTS Drop me a line (once again, that's jstanko@csua.berkeley.edu) and let me know what you think of the game. If you can't get it to work or can't figure it out, I may be able to help. If you are stuck, I may or may not give you a hint.