DUNGEON(6)DUNGEON(6)NAMEdungeon - Adventures in the Dungeons of Doom
SYNOPSISdungeonDESCRIPTION
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. Hardened adventurers have run screaming from the terrors con‐
tained 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
treasures long hidden from prying eyes, treasures guarded by fearsome
monsters and diabolical traps!
Dungeon was created at the Programming Technology Division of the MIT
Laboratory 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 version 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
quantities 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 material is scattered around the dungeon as
well; some of it is rumored 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 object. 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
abbreviated 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
transparent. 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
attack <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 immediately 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 fol‐
lowing 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 abbrevia‐
tions. 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 any‐
thing 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
construc- tions. In particular, multiple commands (sepa‐
rated 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
specified. 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 imple‐
mented.
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)
