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DUNGEON(6)			  Games Manual			      DUNGEON(6)

NAME
     dungeon - Adventures in the Dungeons of Doom

SYNOPSIS
     dungeon

DESCRIPTION
     Dungeon  is  a  game of adventure, danger, and low cunning.  In it you will
     explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortal man.   Hard-
     ened adventurers have run screaming from the terrors contained within.

     In  Dungeon,  the	intrepid explorer delves into the forgotten secrets of a
     lost labyrinth deep in the bowels of the earth, searching	for  vast  trea-
     sures  long hidden from prying eyes, treasures guarded by fearsome monsters
     and diabolical traps!

     Dungeon was created at the Programming Technology Division of the MIT Labo-
     ratory for Computer Science by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and
     Dave Lebling.  It was inspired by the Adventure game of Crowther and Woods,
     and the Dungeons and Dragons game of Gygax and Arneson.  The original  ver-
     sion was written in MDL (alias MUDDLE).  The current version was translated
     from MDL into FORTRAN IV by a somewhat paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to
     remain anonymous.

     On-line information may be obtained with the commands HELP and INFO.

DETAILS
     Following is the summary produced by the info command:

	    Welcome to Dungeon!

	    You are near a large dungeon, which is reputed to contain vast quan-
	    tities of treasure.   Naturally, you wish to acquire some of it.  In
	    order  to  do so, you must of course remove it from the dungeon.  To
	    receive full credit for it, you must deposit it safely in the trophy
	    case in the living room of the house.

	    In addition to valuables, the dungeon contains various objects which
	    may or may not be useful in your attempt to get rich.  You may  need
	    sources  of light, since dungeons are often dark, and weapons, since
	    dungeons often have unfriendly things wandering about.  Reading  ma-
	    terial  is	scattered around the dungeon as well;  some of it is ru-
	    mored to be useful.

	    To determine how successful you have been, a score	is  kept.   When
	    you  find  a  valuable  object and pick it up, you receive a certain
	    number of points, which depends on the difficulty of finding the ob-
	    ject.  You receive extra points for transporting the treasure safely
	    to the living room and placing it in the trophy case.  In  addition,
	    some  particularly	interesting  rooms  have a value associated with
	    visiting them.  The only penalty is  for  getting  yourself  killed,
	    which you may do only twice.

	    Of	special  note is a thief (always carrying a large bag) who likes
	    to wander around in the dungeon (he has never been seen by the light
	    of day).  He likes to take things.	Since  he  steals  for	pleasure
	    rather  than  profit  and is somewhat sadistic, he only takes things
	    which you have seen.  Although he prefers  valuables,  sometimes  in
	    his  haste	he  may take something which is worthless.  From time to
	    time, he examines his take and discards  objects  which  he  doesn't
	    like.  He may occasionally stop in a room you are visiting, but more
	    often  he  just  wanders  through  and rips you off (he is a skilled
	    pickpocket).

COMMANDS
     brief	    suppresses printing of  long  room	descriptions  for  rooms
		    which have been visited.

     superbrief     suppresses printing of long room descriptions for all rooms.

     verbose	    restores long descriptions.

     info	    prints  information  which	might give some idea of what the
		    game is about.

     quit	    prints your score and asks	whether  you  wish  to	continue
		    playing.

     save	    saves the state of the game for later continuation.

     restore	    restores a saved game.

     inventory	    lists the objects in your possession.

     look	    prints a description of your surroundings.

     score	    prints your current score and ranking.

     time	    tells you how long you have been playing.

     diagnose	    reports on your injuries, if any.

     The  inventory command may be abbreviated i; the look command may be abbre-
     viated l; the quit command may be abbreviated q.

     A command that begins with '!' as the first character  is	taken  to  be  a
     shell command and is passed unchanged to the shell via system(3).

CONTAINMENT
     Some objects can contain other objects.  Many such containers can be opened
     and  closed.   The rest are always open.	They may or may not be transpar-
     ent.  For you to access (e.g., take) an object which is in a container, the
     container must be open.  For you to see such an object, the container  must
     be  either  open  or  transparent.  Containers have a capacity, and objects
     have sizes; the number of objects which will fit therefore depends on their
     sizes.  You may put any object you have access to (it need not be	in  your
     hands)  into  any other object.  At some point, the program will attempt to
     pick it up if you don't already have it, which process may fail  if  you're
     carrying  too  much.  Although containers can contain other containers, the
     program doesn't access more than one level down.

FIGHTING
     Occupants of the dungeon will, as a rule, fight  back  when  attacked.   In
     some  cases, they may attack even if unprovoked.  Useful verbs here are at-
     tack <villain> with <weapon>, kill, etc.  Knife-throwing may or may not  be
     useful.   You  have a fighting strength which varies with time.  Being in a
     fight, getting killed, and being injured all lower this strength.	Strength
     is regained with time.  Thus, it is not a good idea to fight someone  imme-
     diately  after  being killed.  Other details should become apparent after a
     few melees or deaths.

COMMAND PARSER
     A command is one line of text terminated by a carriage return.  For reasons
     of simplicity, all words are distinguished by their first six letters.  All
     others are ignored.  For example, typing disassemble  the	encyclopedia  is
     not only meaningless, it also creates excess effort for your fingers.  Note
     that this truncation may produce ambiguities in the intepretation of longer
     words.  [Also note that upper and lower case are equivalent.]

     You  are dealing with a fairly stupid parser, which understands the follow-
     ing types of things:

	    Actions:
		 Among the more obvious of these, such as take, put, drop,  etc.
		 Fairly general forms of these may be used, such as pick up, put
		 down, etc.

	    Directions:
		 north,  south,  up, down, etc. and their various abbreviations.
		 Other more obscure directions (land, cross) are appropriate  in
		 only certain situations.

	    Objects:
		 Most objects have names and can be referenced by them.

	    Adjectives:
		 Some  adjectives are understood and required when there are two
		 objects which can be referenced with  the  same  'name'  (e.g.,
		 doors, buttons).

	    Prepositions:
		 It  may be necessary in some cases to include prepositions, but
		 the parser attempts to  handle  cases	which  aren't  ambiguous
		 without.   Thus give car to demon will work, as will give demon
		 car.  give car demon probably won't  do  anything  interesting.
		 When  a preposition is used, it should be appropriate; give car
		 with demon won't parse.

	    Sentences:
		 The parser understands a reasonable number  of  syntactic  con-
		 struc-  tions.   In particular, multiple commands (separated by
		 commas) can be placed on the same line.

	    Ambiguity:
		 The parser tries to be clever about what to do in the	case  of
		 actions  which  require  objects that are not explicitly speci-
		 fied.	If there is only one possible object,  the  parser  will
		 assume that it should be used.  Otherwise, the parser will ask.
		 Most questions asked by the parser can be answered.

FILES
     dtextc.dat     - encoded messages and initialization information
     dsave.dat	    - save file

BUGS
     For  those  familiar  with  the MDL version of the game on the ARPAnet, the
     following is a list of the major incompatabilties:
	    -The first six letters of a word are considered significant, instead
	    of the first five.
	    -The syntax for tell, answer, and incant is different.
	    -Compound objects are not recognized.
	    -Compound commands can be delimited with comma as well as period.

     Also, the palantir, brochure, and dead man problems are not implemented.

AUTHORS
     Many people have had a  hand  in  this  version.	See  the  "History"  and
     "README"	files  for  credits.   Send  bug  reports  to  ian@airs.com  (or
     uunet!airs!ian).

				 March 11, 1991 		      DUNGEON(6)
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