Eamon Adventurer’s Log
National Eamon User’s Club
Volume 2 Number
Editorial
Last issue we discussed the removal of some Eamon adventures from our list and talked about replacing these adventures with other adventures. We have since decided not to replace these adventures on our lists, but to leave their numbers open so that our list does not become different from everyone else’s.
We have received a few hate letters for taking our stand, but the vast majority of you stood behind us and we thank you.
We have received letters from some members wanting Adventure $32, stating they knew of the tasteless ‘erotic’ content, but that they wanted it anyway and they were of legal age. They asked if they could get a copy of it.
If a person writes to us asking for a particular adventure, tells us they are aware of the type of material and says they are willing to take the adventure anyway and that they are of legal age, then we will sell them a copy on the grounds that we want to provide service to our readers.
CLUB NEWS
by John Nelson
Over the past couple of months, things have been exceedingly hectic for us here at the club. With vacations and other things reducing our staff to a mere shadow of what it normally is, it is difficult to get all the things done that we want to do.
ITEM: Those of you who didn’t heed Steve’s advice last issue and are holding their breath waiting for the club to buy a photo-copier can release it now. We finally took the plunge and we are the proud owners of a new MITA copy machine. This will improve response time immensely for documentation orders, requests for adventure lists, etc.
ITEM: The notebook sales have picked up sole, but we still haven’t broken even on them yet. The notebooks are so great, we can’t imagine anyone not wanting one to keep their Eamon newsletters, players manual, maps and other such vital information. If you haven’t bought one yet, you’re missing ut of one of life’s little pleasures.
ITEM: For those of you who are new to the club (or have spent the last year in a mining camp in outer Bohemia), the notebooks are standard size custom made vinyl notebooks with the Eamon Dragon silk-screened on the front and the name Eamon in old English text on the cover and spine. They contain inside pockets and index holders on the spine for easy labeling.
ITEM: Steve is no longer copying diskettes for us. He has been very busy this summer and it is too hard to get a hold of him to get orders back and forth, so we have reclaimed that duty. Orders hopefully will be processed more quickly now (once we get caught up from summer vacation
ITEM: It appears we have temporarily (permanently?) lost the services of two of our staff for some reason. They have been making themselves quite scarce. We are hoping they’ll come back.
National Eamon User’s Club staff:
John Nelson -
Bob
Tom Zuchowski - Business adviser
Jeff Harris - Lost in battle
Gary Flanagan - Last seen doing bike cartoons
The
NOTICES & JUNK
ITEM: Please note: If you want to order an adventure that is no longer distributed by the club, you may do so by sending a letter stating:
1. You are aware of the drug / sex / etc. content of the adventure in question.
2. You are aware the club does not normally distribute this adventure.
3. You are willing to accept the adventure as is AND that you are over 21 years of age.
ITEM: We would appreciate it very much if you could complete an order form when ordering anything from the club from now on. It will help us keep the paperwork straight for us and help get your order out faster and more accurately. An order form is attached to this newsletter. When we send an order out to you, we will send you another order form and a current list of adventures.
ITEM: Since the club now has its own copier, we are able to get documentation orders out in record time. In fact, we make up copies of documentation ahead of time and can normally get documentation orders out the same day they are received.
ITEM: Also another advantage in having a copier is we can keep our adventure lists up to date easier. Therefore, between newsletters, if you would like to get the latest adventure list, send in either an order for adventures or a self-addressed stamped envelope and request the current adventure list.
ITEN: If you accidentally order an adventure that has been discontinued, you will receive a certificate for a free adventure and a notice that one of the adventures you ordered has been discontinued. You may sign and return this form with the certificate and receive that adventure anyway, if you like.
P.S.
ITEM: A reminder - the expiration date of your
membership is printed on the label attached to your newsletter. If your
expiration date is before
EAMON NEWS
by John Nelson
Eamon is still getting bigger by leaps and bounds. The last batch of adventures we have gotten have also improved in quality. The new adventures we have received for distribution are:
101. Ground Zero by ?
102. Eamon Railroad by ?
103. Top Secret by ?
104. The Lost World by ?
105. The Strange Resort by ?
106.
107. The Last Dragon by Roger Pender
(two diskettes)
108. The Nines of Maria by Sam Ruby
109. The
The last two adventures (108 and 109) are from Lord of the Rings, parts 1 and 2.
In addition to the adventures above, we have received our first entry to the ‘Un-contest, and another adventure for review only. These will not be released at this time. The Un-contest adventure will be released when the Un-contest is over. The other adventure will be released when the author gives us the go-ahead.
Roger Pender’s latest adventure is another 2 diskette adventure. Please note that when you order two diskette adventures, count them as if they were two separate adventures.
IBM-PC / IBN-PCjr VERSION
The IBM-PC version has made very little progress because of a lack of time to test it. We have tested the Main Hall and the main programs on the master diskette and they appear to be working pretty well. The displays have not been changed from 40 column to 80 column, in order to allow them to be more compatible with the PCjr.
As soon as the testing is completed on the main programs and the beginners cave, we are planning on writing some programs on the IBM-PC that will convert programs (or at least do sole of the conversions) for us. This will save us a lot of time when we start converting utilities and designer programs.
I think the IBM-PC version will be terrific. The IBM seems to have a lot more power than the Apple and more sophisticated adventures could be written for it. Also the diskettes are bigger, so we could create larger adventures.*
*P.S. IBM Version is ready as this goes to the printer
COMMODORE 64 VERSION
The Commodore 64 version of Eamon has been temporarily placed aside. We at the club have taken a look at our work load, added up the estimates for each project, divided it by 1.5 (the number of people actively working on projects) and, making allowances for vacation, a movie here and there and eating, have come up with a projected completion date of all projects - May 16, 1994. It was time to re-assess our position on certain items.
Bob has spent considerable time learning the internals of the Commodore 64, but the club feels it must remain responsive to existing club policies and procedures before taking on extra work without making allowances (such as getting some help in here) for the time being shifted from other projects. This in no way reflects an attitude of dropping the conversion of to the C-64 altogether.
GRAPHICS MASTER
We also received a new Eamon Master diskette. The new master is being called Eamon Master 5. Rick Volberding created it and it contains a Graphics Main Hall. It is very well done and after testing, no bugs were found.
A couple of issues back, we announced a new Master
diskette containing a special weapons shop. That master was stated as being
written by Jim Tankard. Whoops --- a slight mistake was made there. Jim Tankard
wrote the
MASTERS, MASTERS EVERYWHERE
We thought it would be a worthy effort to identify, categorize and document the various that are floating around and try to assign some name to them. We talked to the people at 3A and with the names given here.
But First - A history on the Eamon Master ---
In the beginning there was the Eamon Master. It was simply called the Eamon Master because there was no other version of it. (Donald Brown created all Eamon Masters to be equal.) There were a couple of drawbacks to the original Master, however. One of these drawbacks was that when you went to Hokas to learn a spell, the guy never gave you a chance to refuse the spell. If you had enough gold to buy the most expensive spell, you were stuck with buying one, even if you didn’t like his prices. Another thing, albeit a very minor thing, was that the man at the desk sounded like a broken record. He always muttered about strange Saxon names. This was okay, but why couldn’t he complain about other things too?
Revisions were made to allow you to select nothing from Hokas and a file of ‘Snappy’ phrases was added to the diskette to allow the man to have a wider complaint range.
Then it came to pass that really lousy characters could be generated and you had to force yourself to live with them at least long enough to go on an adventure and kill them. This was corrected by adding a ‘suicide routine’ to the program that regenerated your character if he fell below a minimum threshold.
This seemed to suffice for years until other ambitious programmer types decided their weapons were boring. One of these people, Bob Linden added an unusual weapon routine to the weapons shop and sent us a copy of his special MAIN HALL. This diskette did not get too widely distributed, but has managed to find its way to a few Eamon households. Later, another enterprising programmer, Rick Volberding, I believe, wrote a special main hail in which you had a casino and some other fun things.
In order to easily access some utility functions from the Eamon Master and be able to train characters a new master was created and was named Eamon Master 2.0. At the same time, the beginners cave was expanded and the files were standardized.
We therefore ended up with a whole pile of Eamon Masters. Nobody is really sure what all the features, functions, differences, advantages and disadvantages were, so we had a mess.
To try to straighten out this mess, we must assign names to the Eamon Masters and document what they are so that everyone will know what’s going on. (A very unique concept, I know, but that’s us - innovative!)
We are working on a new system to keep track of update levels, as well as dates, so everyone can determine when their adventures or masters are up-to-date. This system will be discussed next issue.
The current versions of the Eamon Master are:
Eamon Master [1.0] - This is the original Eamon
Master. The one Donald Brown created and has not been muddled up by anyone’s
programming (except Don’s!). This master was not distributed very widely. It
remained pretty much local (within
Eamon Master [1.1] - This master supercedes Master 1.0. It has been the most widely distributed master diskette and is the one we normally are referring to when we simply state the Eamon Master. It has the SNAPPY file on it for the Irishman at the desk to be a little more interesting. It has the ability to say ‘N’ for nothing from Hokas and if you generate a really bad character, it allows you to ‘commit suicide’ which really just re-tolls your character. This master contains the original non-standard text files for The Beginner’s Cave. This master is also no longer distributed because it has been replaced by improved versions.
Eamon Master [1.2] - This master is the earliest version of the Eamon Master in current distribution. It contains the same features as Eamon Master 1.1 except the text files have been standardized. You may list the Beginner’s Cave using the standard dungeon list programs.
Eamon Master [2.0] - This master boots to a utilities
menu that allows you to perform operations on your characters file, such as
listing names, displaying characters, resurrecting a character, moving a
character to another diskette, going directly to an adventure with either a
test character or a standard character, etc. It contains a standardized
Eamon Master 3 - (Formerly called Eamon Master JB) - This master diskette was created by John Beaty, and contains a special weapons shop which allows you to buy weapons that other adventurers have sold. It works like this: You go into the special weapons shop and pay a copying fee for a weapon you have, plus a fee for the weapon you want to buy and you are allowed to buy duplicate copy of someone else’s weapon. (t is a nice improvement to the Main Hall. This master was erroneously dubbed Eamon Master JT in a previous issue of the Adventurer’s Log.
Eamon Master 4 - (Formerly called Eamon Master RF)
NOT DISTRIBUTED BY THE CLUB - This master was written by Ragnar Fyri (pronunciation is anybody’s guess). This master contains ‘champion’ routines. This allows you to declare one of your characters to be a champion and allows you to go directly to an adventure without going into the Main Hall. This master is ‘unsupported’ by the club because it contains altered programs with renumbered lines, merged programs and other changes that make it non-standard. It also contains programs that alter adventures to be non-standard. It has no features that give it any advantage over existing Eamon tasters or utilities. (There is no point in making more trouble for ourselves by messing up Eamon adventures beyond recognition!)
Eamon Master 5 - The Graphics Main Hall. This master contains a graphics main hail and IS public domain. It was written by Rick Volberding. I have play tested it and have had no problems. It works, works well, is fun and has every function you’ll probably ever need in Eamon (for now).
SUPER EAMON - This master diskette is included here to help clear up some contusion regarding SUPER EAMON. SUPER EAMON is PROPRIETARY. The club DOES NOT and CANNOT distribute SUPER EAMON. It is copyrighted by Little Green Software and must be purchased from them. Super Eamon contains a graphics main hall with additional options. It uses a non-standard characters file, but allows a transfer function to allow you to bring over characters from your old master.
BUG BYTES
by John Nelson
Bug reports were still fairly scarce over the last couple of months. We went through a bunch of the adventures with a fine tooth comb looking for errors. Using a new tool from Nibble called APH, we located some adventures that contained undefined line numbers. Some of these adventures did not need the lines that were undefined and so they caused no real problem. They were fixed by the club, anyway just to clean them up, but it wouldn’t hurt anything for you to leave these fixes out. Therefore some of the fixes are optional.
This issue, we change our format a little to include a problem block that will give you the problem that was encountered, the date the program was fixed, the cause of the problem and a fix, if possible. We also indicate whether the fix is required or optional. The required ones should be made, because they may cause trouble if you don’t. The optional ones will not cause trouble, but may not work quite up to specifications or may be confusing if you dig into the code.
All revisions to programs refer to the main program (normally called MAIN PGM) for each adventure, unless otherwise stated.
TERMINOLOGICAL INEXACTITUDES
Things appearing in this column must not be confused with actual facts.
Of course, no Eamon Founder’s Day would be complete without the traditional Ale/Mead Guzzle-off. Winners will be announced once they stop drinking (expected sometime January).
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EAMON CLUB FOR
NEW! The 1986 EAMON WANDERLUST Calendar - filled with your favorite Eamon scenes! Charlene in the Castle of Doom, Princess Marie chained to a four-poster bed in Mondamen’s bedroom, 100 sex-crazed slaves milling about the alter of Molinar looking for the secret button, an interpretation of demon Vaprak in the latest French pink chiffon, and many more?
National Eamon User’s Club spokesman John Nelson denied rumors that his famous King Mondamen was really named for a street in Des Moines, that his demon Vaprak was really pulled from a book of Advanced D & D and that the Fantastic Four made a guest appearance in Assault on the Mole Man. He further denied he was overweight, Bob was short, Heather Thomas was good looking and that the sky is blue. More details next issue.
ADVENTURE TIPS
by Bob Davis
#1) When your character dies, sometimes the files get closed before the program comes up with ‘PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE’. Check lines 2000 - 2010. If the CLOSE is before the PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE, then the files are closed. To restart an adventure that has closed the files after your character has died, try this - First get into basic mode (with the bracket prompt) and check if the adventure has the SAVE game feature. If so, notice the line number the OPEN files command is on. (If not, you are probably out of luck.) Now type in the following commands:
POKE 51,0:DI=0:GOTO line#
The line number is where the SAVE game routine OPENs the files and restores the game (normally 19060). You should see the YOUR COMMAND prompt after that and be off and adventuring again.
NOTE: If your character has extensive damage and you would like to alleviate this problem before restarting, add the command MD%(0,13)=0 after the DI-0 command (separated by a colon, of course).
#2) If your character has no magic abilities and finds himself/herself in an adventure where a spell is absolutely necessary to survive (such as 17 Devil’s Tomb), here is what you can do; type CTL-C then RETURN at the YOUR COMMAND prompt. This will get you into basic mode. Change the variables SA%(x) and S2%(x) where x is:
1 - BLAST
2 - HEAL
3 - SPEED
4 - POWER
To do this, type in SA%(4)=90:S2%(4)=90 and press RETURN. This will change the adventurer’s POWER spell expertise to 90%. Remember that the spell expertise is decreased by 50% of the current value every time the spell is cast successfully unless the adventure has been modified not to do so. If you list these variables later in the game, do not be surprised if they have been lowered.
To get back into the adventure, type in GOTO 210 and the YOUR COMMAND prompt should re-display. You are now ready to continue on.
UTILITY LINES
by John Nelson
This column appears in the newsletter at times to help keep you informed on utilities and how to run them and when to run them.
There have been some questions as to when Utilities V will be available. In order to answer this question, I would like to explain a little history behind the utility programs and what they were intended for.
The utility programs were written as a need for them arose. No one ever sat down and said ‘I think I’ll write a dozen utility programs, or so.’ Most of them were written because either some information was wanted about adventures, or some corrections, enhancements or conversions were wanted.
The first utility diskette was put out when, through the natural accumulation, a disk full of them built up. The second was created when the first was filled, etc.
Utilities V contains programs useful mostly to club personnel only. When it has been mostly filled with programs that are useful to a lot of people, we will release it to the public. Normally we like to go through the programs and make them more user-friendly and bullet-proof before releasing them. It could he another year or two before we release it. In the meantime, it will be removed from our list.
ADVENTURE LOG
Now that we have over 100 adventures, ‘Adventure Log’ no longer works on adventures over 99. While working on upgrading this program, we discovered it was getting too big to be a single program anymore. We therefore had to split the program up into several smaller programs. One of the programs is used for maintaining the file of adventures, one is used for listing the adventures, one is used for label printing, etc.
Lack of time has prevented us from completing the operation, however. For those of you who would like to continue to use the Adventure Log program to keep track of adventures greater than 100, you will have to make the following changes to the program:
CHANGES OMITTED FOR INTERNET
DESIGNER’S DEN
by Bob Davis
Hello Dungeon Designers! This issue we will start with something easy - adding commands to your new dungeons.
Using the Dungeon Designer 6.0 MAIN PGN, there are 3 basic (no pun intended) lines to be concerned with: 1910 and 1920 and 290. First, let’s cover lines 1910 and 1920. They should appear as follows:
1910 DATA 30
1920 DATA NORTH,SOUTH,EAST,WEST,UP,DOWN,GET,TAKE, DROP, LOOK, EXAMINE, ATTACK, FLEE, GIVE, INVENTORY, BLAST, HEAL, POWER, SPEED, SMILE, WAVE, SAY, READ, READY,SAVE, LIGHT, OPEN, PUT, DRINK, FREE
Line 1910 has the number of commands that will be valid for this adventure. If you add three new commands to the adventure, then you will need to add three to the number of commands. Line 1920 is a list of the actual commands that will be used in the adventure. To add new commands, simply place them at the end of this list separated by commas - OR, you may start a new line directly after line 1920.
Let’s add three new commands to a hypothetical adventure. They will be EAT, DIG and SLEEP. First we will need to update lines 1910 and 1920 (I will use a new line number) to look like this:
1910 DATA 33
1920 DATA NORTH,SOUTH,EAST,WEST,UP,DOWN,GET,TAKE, DROP,LOOK, EXAMINE, ATTACK,FLEE, GIVE, INVENTORY, BLAST, HEAL, POWER, SPEED, SMILE, WAVE, SAY, READ, READY, SAVE, LIGHT, OPEN, PUT, DRINK, FREE
1925 DATA EAT, DIG, SLEEP
Line 290 decides what line number each command will execute. It should be as follows:
290 ON C GOTO 3000, 3000, 3000, 3000, 3000, 3000, 4000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000, 10000,11000,12000, 13000, 14000, 15000, 15000, 16000, 23000, 17000, 18000, 19000, 20000, 21000, 22000, 24000
Notice there is a line number for each command, or 30 line numbers in all. When a command is entered, it is used to search against the command list and is converted to a number and assigned to the variable C.
Normally we could just tack on the line numbers of the new commands at the end of this line. If too many command line numbers are entered however, the total length of the line becomes too long and the line will not be properly saved. To avoid this, I always add another line directly after 290 with the line numbers of the new command routines - in this case:
295 ON C – 30:
When the command is one of the three new ones (EAT, DIG or SLEEP), the command number (C) will be greater than 30. Since there are only 30 line numbers on line 290, control will fall through to the next line number - 295. The number of commands previously defined (30) is then subtracted from C and the ON GOTO works perfectly.
That’s the easy part, now comes the fun part - making your new commands work. As always, the more you know about the Eamon MAIN PGN and its variables, the easier it is to make your new commands work the way you want.
If the dungeon had rhino meat that, when eaten, would toughen an adventurer’s skin, one (or both) of two variables could be changed to simulate this. One would be the hardiness MD and the other is the armor rating MD%(0,8) of the adventurer, either of which could be increased a reasonable amount (1 or 2). But let’s say if a religious band of rhino worshipers witnessed the consumption of the rhino meat, they would begin attacking unmercilessly. How would this be programmed?
First, a few basic things must be checked. Whenever the adventurer tries to eat anything, it must be found in the artifact table and it must be in the room or in the adventurer’s possession. This can be accomplished by using an existing routine in MAIN PGM of DDD 6.0 at 4800 - the artifact search routine.
Once the rhino meat has been found, the room number of the meat must be set to zero to simulate it being eaten. The adventurer’s attribute(s) may then be changed to simulate the thicker skin and the check for the presence of the rhino worshipers can be made. If they are present, the worshipers must be made unfriendly and must be re-evaluated (routine at 3600).
This might sound like a lot of coding, but with several of the needed routines easily accessible the amount of coding is reduced substantially. This is one of the advantages of using DDD 6.0 for designing adventures. The actual code to perform the above simulations is as follows.
25000 REM --- EAT RTN ---
25020 GOSUB 4900:GOSUB 4800: IF NOT FOUND THEN ?:?"YOU CANNOT EAT THAT!":GOTO 100
25040 IF A THEN AD%(A,4)=0:MD%(0,1)=MD%.(0,1)+l: MD%(0,3)=MD%(0,8)+1 :?:?"YOU FEEL YOUR SKIN THICKEN AND BECOME":?" HARDER!"
25060 IF A=6 AND MD%(12,5)=ROOM THEN MD%(12,3)=0:MD%(12,4) = 0 :R3=ROOM:?:?"THE RHINO WORSHIPERS ARE SHOCKED AND":?" ATTACK, BELIEVING YOU ARE EVIL ITSELF!":GOSUB 3600
25080 GOTO 300
25020 - The routine at 4900 makes sure an item was entered with the EAT command. If not, it will prompt for one. The routine at 4800 searches the artifact table for the item entered (RHINO MEAT) with the EAT command. If it is not found in the artifact table, the variable FOUND (FO) will be set to zero. If the artifact is found and either it is in the room or the adventurer is holding it, the variable A will contain the number of the table entry - in this example 6; the supposed number of RHINO MEAT.
25040 - If the item found is RHINO MEAT, the room number ADX(A,4) is set to zero, the adventurer’s hardiness MD%(0,1) and armor MD%(0,9) is increased by 1 and a message prints explaining what has happened.
25060 - If the RHINO WORSHIPERS (monster #12) are in the room and the RHINO MEAT was eaten, the WORSHIPERS’ friendliness MD%(12,3) is set to zero, their reaction MD%(12,14) is set to zero, a message is printed informing the adventurer of the WORSHIPERS new attitude and the monsters are re-evaluated (routine at 3600). Anytime one monster’s reaction is changed, a GOSUB 3600 must be performed to re-calculate the system variables such as the ‘IN BATTLE’ flag.
25080 - line 300 is where all successfully executed commands should go. If a command is unsuccessful, control may be returned to line 100 (as in line 25020).
SPOTLIGHT ON
(Ratings are given on a scale 1 to 10 with 10 highest. Format is R:D where R = rating for quality; D = difficulty, problem solving and survivability.)
Eamon Master 5 - Graphics Master
Reviewed by John Nelson
Extra features (since commands in not applicable here):
Training for weapons, armor, spells; the ability to increase Hardiness, Agility, Charisma; a Casino, and other fun stuff.
If we had ratings for Master diskettes, this would receive a 10! Congratulations to the author, Rick Volberding.
When I received this diskette, I saw ‘Graphics Main Hall’ I thought another version of the master - no big deal. NOT SO!! This master is very well done and was lots fun to explore! I thoroughly enjoyed taking my little guy wandering around the Hall looking for trouble.
The fist stop, I had to get a weapon and some armor. The graphics shoved the little guy carrying the weapon and I thought he was so cute (Until I realized it was me!) When I bought a shield, I looked so much more experienced and ready to go out and tame those dragons!!
After gambling away all that earned in the Casino, I started getting hooked on the new master and decided it was the one for me.
I discovered a lot more than the standard features found at the Main Hall. There is a warlock that teaches applied spellology. This is the science of becoming more proficient at casting spells you know. You must first hire Hokas to teach you the spell. Then there is a witch that will mystically enhance your hardiness, agility or charisma, but she is very expensive. Once you get oodles of gold, maybe you won’t mind.
One of my favorites was the friendly giant who teaches armor training. He’s good at thrusting and parrying and can really put you to the test. I was knocked down many times before I started getting the hang of it.
Some of the fun is discovery, so I won’t go into some things found in the new Main Hall. You’ll enjoy finding them for yourself.
I tried everything I could find (and afford) and was very impressed. This is going to be MY new master from now on.
The Beginner’s Cave for this master is the standard (unexpanded) one, and is text. Transfer to and from the Beginner’s Cave went without a hitch. I borrowed the same horse and went down the same road I had in previous lives.
All-in-all, I think the Graphics Master is the nicest addition to Eamon since DDD 6.0 (and maybe better.)
#91 - FutureQuest II (
Reviewed by Bob Davis
Extra commands: SAVE
Special features: 10 directions, 2 diskettes
Playing time: 4 1/2 hours
You have once again been chosen to perform a great deed in the 35th century. Since your successful assassination of the Krell emperor, much progress has been made in liberating Earth’s former space colonies but the fighting is bitter and the advances slow. A Krell scientist, Mordir Kang, has developed a doomsday device - the Zontar ray machine. This ray machine generates an anti-matter field which, when it touches matter, produces a dimensional inversion sucking matter into the 8th dimension with cataclysmic results. Your mission is to locate Mordir Kang’s secret base, kill him, steal the plans to the ray machine and destroy the device.
I first started playing this adventure with a wimpy guy and lasted 15 minutes. Well, says I, a hardier character is needed. How about the Mad Haranguer, hardiness 23, agility 28, charisma 16 - dead in 30 minutes. Uh-oh. Methinks this calls for drastic measures; in from the Stone-age walks Fred, hardiness 32, agility 17, charisma 4. (What he lacks in speed he makes up for in good-looks.)
Between getting lost in the desert, getting lost in the jungle, getting lost in the swamp (Fred isn’t the greatest at directions) and having the entire Krell empire after his buns with weapons ranging from rockets launchers to missiles (alas, poor Fred has a rock, a club and a big stick), Fred decided he wasn’t having a very good day. If it weren’t for luck, a few tricks of Eamon and an altered heal spell, Fred would have been back in the Stone-ages as a fossil.
This adventure kept my interest during play, always having to get out of a tight situation. Some special effects are present, most notably the SAY command which is used to activate machines. Interaction with these machines is sometimes quite interesting.
I do have a couple of "gripes: with the adventure. The short descriptions do not have directions in them so when a room is re-entered, a LOOK must be done to find the exits (unless you can keep flawless maps). The names of the monsters are not in the long descriptions so something must be done (such as trying to leave) to get the short descriptions to print without getting attacked first. And last, but most frustrating of all, the POWER routine is unchanged from the original MAIN PGM (i.e. you hear sonic booms, tunnels collapse, the dead are brought back to life and all wounds are healed). Realizing these may be personal pet peeves, I did not take them into consideration when rating the dungeon.
Overall, this is a tough adventure. Not so much tough in problem solving as tough in surviving. One hint because I think you’ll need it; an XM-68X device will heal you once you acquire it, however it has a limited number of uses. This is indicated by a warning message that the unit is beginning to short-circuit. I discovered by method of flawless deduction, that I could perform a certain technical adjustment (not documented in the owner’s manual) by using normal, standard commands that would remedy this problem as often as needed. Good luck.
Super Eamon by Little Green Software (no rating)
Re-reviewed by Bob Davis
I originally did a review on Super Eamon, a graphics version of the Eamon Plaster, in the March issue of the newsletter. Since then I have been on ten weeks vacation (yes, count ‘em - 10!) and have not done a thing with it until just before the printing of this newsletter. For those of you who missed the March issue, here is a quick recap.
The graphics are very professional and I enjoyed the pictures of each shop, the movement of the townspeople and my character, and the format of the informational displays. Some of the extra features of the Eamon Master are:
1. Informational help upon request.
2. Special weapons training.
3. Acquiring better made weapons.
4. Resurrection of dead characters.
5. And others you need to discover yourself.
In the March issue I stated that some bugs were crawling around the Super Eamon programs. These have since been taken care of and I was impressed with the notification I received explaining how to fix the program or, at my option, how to send in my diskette for Little Green to fix for me. After applying the changes, I did not have any further problems with the Super Eamon diskette.
Now for the things I didn’t like:
- Having to transfer my characters from my old master to the Super Eamon master and having them deleted from the old master.
- Being pick-pocketed by thieves to the point of having no money and not being able to do anything to prevent it.
- Having to type in *READ* at the place where my name is to be typed to get a list of the names of all my characters on the disk. Something more appropriate (like typing in WHAT?) and easier to remember would be good for me.
Aside from these items, I like Super Eamon. It has very responsive people standing behind it. And, to answer a question some of you undoubtedly have, it does have better graphics than the previously reviewed Eamon Graphics Master.
Super Eamon is NOT public domain, so please don’t try to order it from us. To get a copy, send $20 plus $2 postage/handling to: (ADDRESS OMITTED)
You will receive the Super Eamon master diskette, the Beginner’s Cave (not available as a graphic adventure, but it does have a graphics map that can be called up at any time) and the Super Eamon manual.
It is rumored that version 2 of Super Eamon will include adjustment of the thriving pick-pockets, extra things to do in the bar and other items. It is not known when these revisions are planned.
CUSTOMIZERS CORNER
by John Nelson
This column contains material for customizing your Eamon adventures / Masters / utilities. Making these changes will normally make your diskettes non-standard. YOU SHOULD MAKE BACK-UP COPIES of your diskettes before making any modifications. Most of the changes suggested in this column should be done only by experienced programmers.
CHANGING THE CHARACTER RECORD
Changing the format or length of the character record is normally the last thing you would want to do to your Eamon diskettes. It will make your adventures and master non-standard and incompatible with the rest of the system or the rest of the world.
The time is coming where this may become necessary, however. The record length of the CHARACTERS file is only 150 characters. With 37 characters needed just for return characters between fields, this is frequently not enough.
Some people have reported that their character records have been getting ‘trashed. 1, myself had this happen with Galahad when returning from SwordQuest.
If the total length of all the fields in the record, plus return characters exceeds 150, you will over-write the next character on your file. When this happens, your file becomes somewhat like unto trash.
To combat this, you could change your characters file to use a record length higher than 150. I would recommend 256, because this makes the record an even 1 sector per character record.
The problem is, if you change your master diskette to use a length of 256 for the CHARACTERS file, you become non-standard and have to convert every adventure you have (as well as every adventure you ever get) to use the non-standard length before you could use it. It would be nice if everyone in the world could convert at once and we could make 256 the standard all over.
Since this is not practical, there must be a better way. --- Hmmm... maybe there is!
I have devised a sneaky little trick where you can customize your master diskette to use larger records by using an alternate ‘extended’ file. This file will have a different name than the CHARACTERS file. (I have used ‘CHARACTERS.EXT’).
Using this sneaky trick, only the programs on the master diskette will need to be changed. - The adventures themselves will not.
To do this, here is the plan: Since the adventures always write the updated character into the CHARACTERS file upon completion of a mission and then run MAIN HALL, all you have to do is replace the MAIN HALL program with a program that will read the character from the standard CHARACTERS file and write him into the extend characters file. It will then run the ‘real main hall’ (we will call it "VILLAGE").
Note: All the characters will be copied from the old characters file into the extended file during installation of this change.
The standard Characters file will be used only as a temporary work file. The adventures will always write into record slot 1. Therefore if record slot 2 is accidentally overwritten by too long a character, it won’t matter.
The VILLAGE program will read the character from the extended file, instead of reading it from the old characters file.
The VILLAGE program will always use ‘1’ for the record number written into FRESH MEAT. This insures that the adventure will write the record into the work slot (slot number 1). The ‘real record number’ will be written to another new file called REC.NUM. The MAIN HALL program (the new one we will write) will pick up the record from slot one, read the real record number from REC.NUM and write the character into the proper record slot of the extended characters file.
The program changes and specifications are given below. Be sure you back up your master diskette before doing this and test thoroughly when finished. Keep your old back-up around forever, since it is still your standard master.
Master Program Changes: -
OMITTED FROM INTERNET VERSION – available if desired…