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|                                                                         |
|                   (Tales of)  The Traveling Swordsman                   |
|                  For the 2006 Interactive Fiction Comp                  |
|                                                                         |
|                                           Version 1.3                   |
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      (N)        "You are the traveling swordsman; the strong and silent
    // | \\      stranger; the wandering vanquisher of villainy. Damsels
  (W)--+--(E)    swoon for you. Good men respect and envy you. Scoundrels
    \\ | //      learn to fear you. Even so, you are but a rumor
      (S)        throughout the land."

 GETTING STARTED

    If you are playing The Traveling Swordsman for the 2006 Interactive
 Fiction Competition, you have probably already installed a Hugo runner.
 If you have not, a version for multiple platforms can be found at the
 General Coffee website: http://www.generalcoffee.com/gethugo.html.

    Hugo for Windows is recommended, but The Traveling Swordsman will
 work fine in other interpreters and on other platforms. Alternate section
 headers have been optimized for Gargoyle (a slick GLK implementation of
 Hugo and other Interactive Fiction runners), assuming a default 60x25
 display on a white background. If you use Gargoyle and you have altered
 these defaults, you may see The Traveling Swordsman a little differently
 than intended. This should not interfere with actual gameplay.

    Also see the "WINDOW THEMES" sections for Hugo and for Gargoyle, for
 some additional information about changing the theme/style settings.

 STATUS

    On the status line in the upper right corner of the game window, the
 percentage completed and number of turns taken are shown. The former is of
 importance during the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition voting period,
 because it's an easy way to check your progress. If you progress by 25%
 every half hour, you should finish in time. This is a good benchmark for
 deciding whether or not you need the walkthrough, and for how long.

    The completed percentage is not a score. It will progress frequently
 as actions lead to results, but it may not always increment after every
 minor action (especially optional ones, or when the actions are part of
 alternate solutions to a task). This should not be taken to mean that
 those actions are wrong or unimportant. When you have completed the
 game, the status will be 100%.

 WINDOW THEMES - HUGO

    In a Hugo runner that supports it, The Traveling Swordsman will appear
 in a custom style: gray text on a white background, with blue headers and
 cyan prompts. Although this is intended to be a pleasant and stylistic
 display, your default Hugo settings can be used by typing THEME DEFAULT
 at a prompt. Switch back to the white Swordsman theme with THEME CUSTOM.

    In high resolution displays, and if your Hugo runner supports it,
 you may want to increase the size of the default proportional and fixed-
 width fonts. The default font sizes (for instance, in Hugo for Windows)
 may be too small on larger displays. You may also set the default fore
 and background colors to match the settings you prefer in other games
 (for example, gray on black, or white on blue), but your preferred colors
 will not be used in this game unless you type THEME DEFAULT at a prompt.

 WINDOW THEMES - GARGOYLE

    A similar theme is included for Gargoyle, and is defined in the
 included "tales_ts.ini" file. These settings will be used by default. If
 you prefer to use your own Gargoyle settings, simply delete this INI file
 from the TALES_TS directory and re-start Gargoyle. Some players may prefer
 the look and feel of Gargoyle to that of the native Hugo interpreters, and
 TALES_TS should work well with the most recent version.

    Note that some earlier versions of Gargoyle (most notably, from early
 July 2006) were compiled in a way that may cause exception errors. This
 appears to be an aspect of those version(s), and running a newer version
 of Gargoyle will resolve it.

 WALKTHROUGH

    In the competition version of The Traveling Swordsman, an in-game
 walkthrough is available using the WALKTHRU command, at a prompt. Small
 sections are shown (with a prompt for more), and only for the current
 area. This may help you avoid unintentional spoilers. This in-game
 walkthrough is complete, but will often show only the simplest commands
 and solutions for any given task. Your unassisted solutions may vary.

    A more comprehensive walkthrough is also available, as a download.
 Although The Traveling Swordsman is not designed to be difficult, you
 may want to see alternate commands and solutions, or pointers to the
 clues and cues that lead to solving the game. Even though the built-in
 walkthrough is complete, it does not provide that level of detail. To
 request a copy of the extended walkthrough or to send feedback during
 the IFComp voting period, you can reach me at [email protected].

    During the IFComp voting period only, the walkthrough will also be
 available for direct download at http://www.geocities.com/tts_walkthru/.

 CREDITS

    This game would not have been possible without the assistance of the
 volunteer test team. I owe a big thanks to James Boyd, Craig Ross,
 FatBoy Fonz, Bryan Dalby, William Head, Crystal Shafer, Fabio Bittar,
 Vladimir V. Korablin, Jason Devlin, Blake Ballard, and Dan Shiovitz.
 I owe an equally big thanks to my wife, for her support and assistance.
 Lastly, I want to thank Stephen Granade for running this competition,
 Kent Tessman for the brilliant programming language that is Hugo, and
 Tor Andersson for some assistance getting things right with Gargoyle.

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