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SHATTERED MEMORY
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Game (c) 2001 Akbarr
Adaptation by Akbarr, Yokiyoki & Joe Balta-Archer
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USER MANUAL
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This adventure starts with the initial situation of a man, unable to
remember anything, who has to recover his memory.
There is a verb which has a special importance in this game, in two
forms:
1. RECALL
2. RECALL <theme>
The first form can be used to make a special effort to recall general things.
Whether something can be remembered or not depends on the context, on
whether "something" happened before which can help you to remember.
The second form allows you to concentrate on a particular issue to remember.
Regarding to the Non-Player Characters (NPCs), there are several ways to
communicate with them:
1. SPEAK WITH <npc>
2. SAY TO <npc> "(...)"
3. ASK <npc> ABOUT <theme>
The first one begins a menu-driven conversation. You can speak with the NPCs
choosing from a set of predefined options. These options depend on the context of the player,
they are the ones which are worrying the player in that moment;
the normal questions everyone would make or either the things everyone could say
about what is happening. These options will change as the game is going on:
the conversation itself can lead to new options in the conversation menu.
Both the second and the third ones, allow you to say some concrete thing or ask about
a particular issue. This form is useful for more "advanced" conversations,
for example, because they aren't "evident", or simply because they require the player
to do the next step. This issues could be expressions more complex than a simple name, or
"adjective name", even a complete sentence may be required in some cases.
Examples:
SAY TO FRED "What's your name?"
ASK PETER ABOUT HIS NAME
or even:
SAY TO FRED "How much is it?"
(ok, don't use this in the game, money is not important on it :-) )
An important observation: the second and the third forms (SAY TO, ASK) are almost
equivalent, but they are completely different to the first way (SPEAK WITH). In
fact, they are COMPLEMENTARY, there are some responses which only can be obtained
by one way and others which need the other one. Don't use the forms SAY and ASK for
issues which are present in any menu's option, because the NPC's will not understand you.
Other useful command is "SUMMARY". Since the knowledge is so crucial in the game
and it is possible for the player to get "lost" through the game
(ie, there's no way to see what has happened during the game),
this command makes a summary of the knowledge obtained by the
player character. The summary won't include all that the player has done, nor even all
the important things, but it will include enough to make it possible for the human player to
remember what the player character already knows.
Other handy commands, usual in this kind of games, are:
L(ook), (e)X(amine), I(nventory), TAKE, DROP, LOAD, SAVE...
However, the vocabulary is not limited to these commands.
REQUIREMENTS
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This adventure has been written in Inform. This means that it is multi-
platform, it can be run in any Z-machine interpreter. More concretely, it
has been tested on DOS Frotz.
(
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/intepreters/frotz).
The game uses color for the text, concretely for the sentences said by
the characters. So, in order to see them, an interpreter with color
support should be used (such as DOS Frotz), though it is not necessary
for the normal operation of the game.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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Betatesters (ordered by test time): Adr, Alfred Z. McGuffin, George, Carol,
the Dark "U" Cleric, Kieran and Duchess.
