RACE

The Great Archeological Race! An Absolute Zero Release Interactive Fiction by John LaBonney Copyright (c) 1992 by John LaBonney. All Rights Reserved. Beta Testers: Dave Dechellis Melissa Dempsey Cheryl Ingram Chuck Ingram Phil Irwin Michael Wlodyka INTRODUCTION In The Great Archeolgical Race you play the Assistant Curator of The Evelyn Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Donations are low, and it's up to you to find some new exhibits. Be aware that artifacts aren't just lying around anywhere, and when a cache is found, there are many dangers that await those who try to claim it! PLAYING THE GREAT ARCHEOLOGICAL RACE In an adventure game, you tell the game what you want to do. The Great Archeological Race has a vocabulary of around 800 words, and is pretty good at recognizing sentences once you've gotten used to formatting your commands. Whenever you see the prompt ">", the game is telling you it's ready to accept a command. Your command should be a simple imperative sentence. Press [RETURN] (or [ENTER]) when you're done typing your sentence, and the game will begin processing the command. Some simple examples might be OPEN THE BOTTLE or READ THE BOOK. You can use articles if you wish, but they may be omitted. You may use capitals and lowercase in any mixture, and you can even enter more than one command at once by separating them with a punctuation mark. GETTING AROUND At any one time in the game, your at a certain location. The game gives a description of the room when you first enter, and you can see it again at any time by typing LOOK. In general, objects that you see in a room are directly accessible; you don't need to move around within a location to reach them. -1- To move to a different room, you type the direction you want to go. The rooms description will give a list of obvious possible travel directions. The game understands the commands NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, NORTHEAST, SOUTHEAST, NORTHWEST, SOUTHWEST, UP, and DOWN. You can abbreviate these to N, S, E, W, NE, SE, NW, SW, U, and D. In some locations you can use IN and OUT, or you can GET IN or OUT of something. In general, backtracking will take you back to where you started. If you start in the bedroom, go south to the hallway, then go north, you'll be back in the bedroom. When the game describes a door or doorway, you don't have to worry about opening the door; the game will do this for you. Only when a specific impediment is described will you have to type a command to open the door, or whatever. OBJECTS There are many objects in The Great Archeological Race that you can manipulate. You'll want to carry objects that you find with the TAKE command. For example, TAKE THE APPLE. Some objects can't be taken because they're too heavy, or require you to solve a particular puzzle before they can be collected. You can only carry so much weight and bulk at any one time, but you can carry more bulk by puttin…