Adventure Quest

ADVENTURE QUEST

Middle Earth is a tranquil and peaceful place. The problems with the Dark Lord

Sauron are ancient history, and no dragon has been seen since the sack of

Esgaroth.

The last elves sailed for the West centuries ago, after the rescue of their

fellows from the dungeons below Colossal Cavern. Indeed nothing remotely

interesting has happened for ages, and the ordinary folk lead peaceful, mundane

and - for the most part - contented rural lives.

At least this was true until a year ago. First there was a complete crop-failure

in the northern provinces due to a drought of unprecedented severity. This was

followed by attacks by maddened wild animals on storehouses and outlying farms,

with the result that people fled south in their thousands.

Then the troops sent north to keep order were ambushed and decimated by unseen

enemies in a hundred coordinated attacks. And finally a vast army of orcs moved

in.

There was total panic.

The combined armies of Middle Earth were mustered and marched north. As yet

nothing has been heard from them but it is rumoured that they are beseiged near

Amon Sul.

Then a messenger appeared at the gates of Minas Tirith. "My Lord AGALIAREPT

calls on you to surrender. Even now His armies are sweeping towards you and He

cannot be defeated in battle. If you surrender, you will be permitted the boon

of death with dignity: otherwise it will be much worse when you are defeated.

You will have one week to decide.".

The name AGALIAREPT is well known to the magicians in the city: it is that of a

Demon Lord renounced for his ferocity and skill in battle - there is no doubt

that He will be victorious and there seems to be no hope.

There seems to be only one option open to the King, and he takes it. The leader

of the Wizards Guild is hauled before the throne and issued with an ultimatum.

"We remember the favours bestowed on your guild over the years. Now is the time

for you to repay them. You have one week to defeat the Demon Lord by magic. Fail

and you will not live to see the fall of the city. That is all."

You are an apprentice magician (as are all members of the Wizards Guild under 60

years old), and have taken courses in the three M's (Meditation, Mysticism and

Moneymaking) but not yet used a spell in earnest. Thus you are amazed to be

called before the Wizard's High Council.

"The base of the Demon Lord's power has been discovered: He has taken up

residence in the Dark Tower, on the far edge of the world. Even now the full

council is preparing an assault on its defences."

"But there is a second way. Perhaps one person, acting alone, could find the

four Stones-of-the-Elements and use them to enter the tower. Then, the

Medallion-of-Life could perhaps enable you to defeat the Demon. There is little

chance of success But will you do your duty and try?"

You mumble a reply and are rushed from the room. And as you leave you think that

you hear the shouted order: "Next!"

Shortly afterwards you are dressed in travel clothes and stand before the tele

portal. You step through and there is a sensation of rapid movement. As your

vision clears you find that you stand at the end of a road, outside a small

brick building. What next?



The Game

Adventure Quest is a full scale adventure game with 225 individually described

locations. You will have to solve a very large number of problems on your

journey to the Black Tower and (perhaps) victory.

To play Adventure Quest you simply enter English phrases to tell the computer

what you want to go (e.g. MOVE NORTH, FILL THE BOTTLE or LOOK AROUND), and it

acts as your eyes and ears to describe your surroundings.

In fact, Adventure Quest is amazingly easy to play - you don't need to be able

to find the cursor keys blindfold or hammer the space-bar for hours. But it may

take weeks to solve! Fortunately you can use the SAVE command to store the

current state of the game and return to everyday life for a while, resuming play

later.



How to Load and Start

Adventure Quest is a 32K program designed for the 48K Spectrum.

It is made up of two parts: a very small BASIC program and a large machine code

program which does all the work.

To load it, enter LOAD "" (press J; SYMBOL-SHIFT + P; SYMBOL SHIFT + P; ENTER)

and the game will automatically load and run when you play the tape, using

either side.

When you eventually finish the game, press BREAK (CAPS-SHIFT + SPACE) or enter

QUIT to return to BASIC.

To restart (eg. if you press BREAK by accident), enter GOTO 100 (press G; 1; 0;

0; ENTER) and the game will be continued where you left off.



Instructions

Unlike our other games, Level 9 Adventures contain few instructions within the

programs. We feel that this type of game is very easy to play and that the space

is better used for more rooms and treasures etc.

The program asks you "What next?" whenever it expects you to enter another

command. Simply type an English phrase to tell it what you want it to do and

press ENTER The program will then act on your request, ask you for the next

command and so on..

Please ignore all of the keywords etc marked on and around the keys of your

Spectrum (except for DELETE which works as usual). If you want to READ a scroll,

for example, you should type READ in full. However you are allowed to abbreviate

words to save typing. See on..

Now at this point, we must admit that the program does not really understand

English (no program does, despite claims in press adverts) but it does know a

large vocabulary of English words. Thus it can behave as if it knows the

language by examining each entered phrase, picking out the words it knows and

guessing the meaning from these. Words that it does not know are ignored.

In practice this works well and you should find it simple to state what you want

to do. If the program does not understand, re-phrase your request.

Adventure Quest provides great freedom in possible input, but to help you get

started a sample of possible instructions follows:

Word Example Meaning

EAST MOVE EAST Move east, if possible.

NORTHWEST TRY NORTHWEST Move northwest.

INTO WALK INTO THE CAVE Walk into the cave.

TAKE TAKE THE MEDALLION Take something

DROP DROP THE RUBY Drop something carried.

GIVE GIVE TABLE TO UNICORN Give a present.

SCORE WHAT'S MY SCORE How well am I doing?

INVENTORY INVENTORY What am I carrying?

To save typing, words can be abbreviated (e.g. EAST to E and NORTHEAST to NE).



Three special commands are provided to control the program. These are:

Command Meaning

QUIT Stop playing the game, returning to BASIC.

You have to answer a YES/NO question to check that you mean it,

first.

SAVE Save the current state of the game on tape. Enter SAVE (as S; A;

V; E; ENTER) and then, having started one of your tapes in the

recorder (on RECORD), press any character to save the

state-of-play onto it.

RESTORE Restore a previously saved game from tape, so that you can carry

on playing.

After typing RESTORE, start the cassette on PLAYBACK.



Scoring

You score points for getting nearer to the Black Tower and more for possessing

any of the four Stones. There are bonusses for entering the Tower itself and, of

course, for winning.

On the debit side, you lose points as time goes by, and lose more points if you

manage to get yourself killed.



Hints

You are entitled to one free clue, and a SAE is enclosed so that you can send

any one question to us at Level 9. We will try to reply by the next post. Don't

use up the clue too soon - you may waste it on something that you'll work out

yourself while the reply is in the post. Answers will be truthful, but if you

try to find out too much (e.g. by asking "How do I win?") the reply may be very

cryptic.

Almost everything in Adventure Quest has a purpose: if only to keep you trying

to work out its purpose.

Use SAVE/RESTORE regularly. Adventure Quest involves a long journey and you

don't want to have to start all over again if you get killed. SAVE the state of

play when you get past a significant obstacle and you can start from there if

you have a later accident.



Implementation

You may be wondering how Adventure Quest can be crammed into only 32K, after all

typical adventures of this size have only a third as many rooms etc.

Adventure Quest is not written in ASSEMBLER or BASIC, either of these would have

made it too big - and BASIC would also have been too slow. Instead it is written

in a super-compact language known as 'A-CODE', which is specially designed for

writing adventure games.

Similarly, the text messages output by the program have been compressed by a

'data compiler' to a fraction of their usual size. This also stops you peeking

at the program to find out what might happen next!.

Together, these two means of size reduction - combined with tight coding - allow

Adventure Quest to run in only 32K



Other Products

Adventure Quest was produced by, and is Copyright © of Level 9 Computing.

If you enjoyed this game and want details of other Level 9 products (games or

utilities) then please write to:

Level 9 Computing

229 Hughenden Rd,

High Wycombe,

Bucks.