Lore. v1.25wb released 4-21-95 Article by Walter Cade Out just in time for this article. Much information I was able to obtain only at Article deadline. PRESSURE from the great and mighty editor forced this to come through!!!! Installing ---------- This is one of the better door games I have seen as for sysop setup utilities. I am really impressed with this setup routine. It should be simple enough that a new sysop can set this door up in only a few seconds. The pull down windows are fantastic. Upgrades -------- Better yet, I found an upgrade to 1.25wb (WIDE BETA) just today. I unpacked it into my Lore directory. Ran install. BINGO! Once again only took seconds. You can tell the authors are really interested in us getting the door running quick. THIS I LIKE! Main Menu ------------- Most of these options are self-explanatory and will be easy for you to find your way around. This makes the game simple to join in for your users and reduces frustration. As we all know if a game is too difficult to join in and learn they won't be back to play. How to play ----------- As you play, you can see the terrain under you pass by. To aid in understanding all the symbols in the map. These 'terrains' are important, as each terrain has it's own set of monsters and variables. The roadways are a safe bet for any beginning adventurer, so use them till you get better at playing. They connect many major locations across the continent. Your character is in the lands Crusonia. To play, you use your numeric keypad, which I enjoy as it makes it more realistic. Other Options are accessed by pressing various keys. A simple ? will tell the user what these keys do. You can journey further into the wilderness where the only promise is that monsters are all around! There are many different types of establishments and landmarks to encounter. Just to name a few; - Castles: These are the homes of rulers and sites of some of the finest shops in all of Crusonia. If you run into one of these places, be sure to seek out the assistance and advice of the ruler of the castle. - Cities: These are bustling cities and city-states where you can find all sorts of interesting people to talk to, and stores to browse. All characters start at a city somewhere in Crusonia. - Villages: Smaller than cities, these establishments are common in areas which are either defensible, or have good soil, suitable for farming. - Huts: These are the homes of individuals or families. They are spotted all across the continent, and the people within usually have either services or words of wisdom to offer the traveler. - Caves: Be it a natural occurrence, a mine, a tomb, or whatever else, these places mean "underground". Naturally, underground means dangerous! - Doors: In cities, these symbols represent doors. Of course, not every door in the world in unlocked, and many shop-owners lock their doors when they close for the evening. - Bridges or docks: The brown ones are bridges, and the gray ones are docks. Ships can only dock at docks. - Lamp-posts: During the night, these illuminate an area around them. When outside on the mainland, these represent lighthouses. - People: The red dude in the center of the display area is you! Other people are all sorts of color. To talk to them, use the Talk command, and point in their direction. You can also talk with store-owners over counters. See a bit further down on "how to talk". - Signposts: Stepping onto these will show you what's on the sign. How to talk to the characters ----------------------------- There are hundreds of people to talk to in Lore. Everybody has a few basic things which you can ask them. Try asking about their "JOB", or their "HEALTH", or anything else which comes to mind. Use SINGLE-WORD queries. Usually you can get ideas for what to say next, by reading what they have already said. If you ask someone what their job is, and they reply with something like: "I'm a gardener, I tend to these gardens.", the most logical thing to ask about, would be their "GARDENS". With enough effort, you can learn a lot about the world around you. Some people may send you on a quest. Others might reveal information about the locations of other cities, or of people who you should talk to. But if nothing else, talk to EVERYBODY! Most people know something which you would like to know. OK, give me some early tips ------------------------------- Go to the nearest establishment, and get to know the city. Consider this your "home town". Talk to the people. Know where the stores are. Try to find out more about the area of the world you are in. If you're a Fighter, Ranger, Scout, Bard, Warrior Monk, or Thief, you will want to get a weapon. Visit the weapon shop and buy a weapon that BEST SUITS YOUR SKILL in weapon usage. To find out which weapon is best for you, look at your "Weapon Skills" screen (View Character). The highest positive amount is your best weapon skill. Buy a weapon of that type, and don't forget to ready it! (You do that from the Inventory option in View Character) When you go up a level, return to the city and do some training. You can improve your skills at training halls and also learn new spells at libraries. Not all cities have these facilities. If yours does not have what you need, it's time to get moving along the roadways to the next city. If there is a treasury in the city, you should deposit any money you have left in there. If you happen to die while out in the wilderness, you will loose any money you have on-hand; As you become more self-sufficient and more proficient with using your weapons and spells, start exploring further away from your home city. With luck you will be able to make the trip between cities with only minimal damage. From this point on, you are on your own. GET SOME ARMOR!. The monsters outside are nasty and they are much more difficult if they can hurt you easily. Buy the best armor you can afford. In some places, helmets and shields may also be cheap enough to buy on your starting gold. Go for it! Don't forget to ready these items. Go outside and start attacking some monsters. Remember, the more powerful monsters are further away from the main roads (in the brush and hills). If you aren't doing too well, stay close to home city so that you can run in and get healed if necessary. This just in and I couldn't leave this out. DIRECT FROM THE AUTHOR. Version 1.25wb April 21, 1995 - UPGRADE EDITION ------------------------------------------------ o CONFIG program additions: * A context-sensitive help system has been added to CONFIG; pressing F1 will now bring up a help window that describes what's going on. The help files are a hypertext format, so selecting highlighted phrases will take you to that related topic. * ROUTE.CFG can now be edited from inside CONFIG. o COMBAT additions/changes: * The entire text display for combat has been reformatted and reworked to make things less complicated to understand. Prompts now appear indicating to the user what keys are available. - Boat combat terrains have been added, one per type of craft. You must do your fighting from on-board the craft (no swimming) - Water monsters stay in water; Land monsters stay on land; Flying monsters go where-ever the heck they want. - Players now start at different spots in a combat map, depending on what direction they were traveling in at the time. (If it doesn't make sense, get into combat and find out ;-) x The long-standing combat/no-combat loop 'problem' has been fixed! o LORETOOL additions/changes: x INBOUND and OUTBOUND now work as prescribed. o Other: * The Shipyards will now let you recover skiffs, boats and ships that have been lost at sea... for a fee. x Oops. You will now once again receive skill development points for going up levels. - A number of sysops reported problems with BNU support in LORE; the new DDPLUS has some BNU-specific routines in it for higher baud rates; I don't know if this fixes the problem or not. Please let us know. * DORINFOx.DEF support now can use 1..9,A..Z for referring to node numbers. x /M now works as prescribed for loading alternate control files. - Added support for using network-compatible file reads with a couple of commonly used files; specifically, Lantastic 6.0 should not error out with runtime error 163 anywhere near as often as it used to when using the internal share. þ