Source:A Quick Guide to Eamon CD Files
| This page is a verbatim reproduction of original source material and should not be edited except for maintenance. | |
| Description |
A Quick Guide to Eamon CD Files, a document to accompany the Eamon CD. |
|---|---|
| Source | |
| Date |
c. 2000 |
| Author | |
| License |
It is believed that the use of this copyrighted item in Eamon Wiki qualifies as fair use under the copyright law of the United States. |
| Other versions | |
A Quick Guide to Eamon CD Files for the Apple II computer
by Tom Zuchowski
There are two kinds of Eamon files to be found here: 80-col. lower-case ProDOS Eamons, and 40-col. upper-case DOS 3.3 Eamons.
At the time of this writing, there are 242 DOS 3.3 Eamons and 63 80-col. ProDOS Eamons. The ProDOS Eamons constitute the best 1/4 of the entire DOS 3.3 Eamon set.
Every Eamon here has been personally played and debugged by me, and has no known serious bugs. That is not to say that you won't ever see a bug. Thorough debugging requires a staff of debuggers, not just one guy playing a game through once or twice.
Some of these Eamons use an older revision of the Eamon version 7 MAIN.PGM. This older revision has a bug that may appear when interacting with other creatures (people, animals, monsters.) The program will crash if the object of your command is "S" (example: "ATTACK S".) This bug was fixed on the Dungeon Designer in 1990.
The work-around solution is this: never use a solitary "S" as your object, but use at least two letters of the name. For example, when attacking a serpent, the command "AT SE" will work fine.
The ProDOS Eamons all use the naming convention EAMON000.SHK; they are ShrinkIt "file" archives that can be unpacked to any size drive. The archive includes a folder for each adventure, necessary because all Eamons use the same filenames. Most will fit on a 5.25 floppy, and those that are too large include instructions for unpacking to multiple 5.25 floppies.
The DOS 3.3 Eamons use the naming convention EDOS3000.SDK; these are ShrinkIt "disk" archives that can only be unpacked to blank 5.25 floppies. Note that GS-ShrinkIt does not have this capability; you must use ShrinkIt 3.4 or IIPLUS.UNSHRINK 2.1 (a self-extracting copy of ShrinkIt can be found in the UTILS folder.) Some of the DOS 3.3 Eamons use multiple disks; you will find these are SHK archives that include more than one SDK archive and will have to be unpacked twice to get the final disks.
Besides the Eamon adventures, you will also find the Eamon Master/Main Halls. There is a text version that includes a players' manual and a very simple Beginners Cave (Eamon #001), and a hi-res graphics version called the Graphics Main Hall (the GMH files). There are designer utilities to write your own Eamons, utilities, a mapmaker, an Appleworks 3.0 ADB of known bugs, and other stuff.
The EAMONTU1 and EAMONTU2 files are collections of design tips and tutorial collected from the Eamon Adventurer's Guild newsletter. You will find more, in the Eamon newsletters on this disk that were published after these two collections were made.
The EAMONRV1 thru EAMONRV4 files are collections of Eamon adventure reviews from the Eamon Adventurer's Guild newsletter. Again, you will find more reviews in later issues of the newsletter.
Apart from the reviews, the most useful tool you will find for selecting which Eamons to play are the Eamon Lists (EAMONLST.SHK). These are text lists of the Eamon adventures that are arranged in different ways to help you see which Eamon might best interest you.
Also, the "DE" text files in this folder contain collections of descriptions that were used when the DOS 3.3 versions of these Eamons were uploaded to the old Genie Online service. They might serve you as a quick and dirty way to find Eamons that interest you. Of course, the DOS 3.3 warnings do not apply to the ProDOS versions.
The MISC folder contains various Main Hall and Eamon versions that have crossed my desk over the years. Some of this stuff is not compatible with regular Eamon; specifically, the "II" files and the "Super" files are compatible only with the other similarly-titled files. These programs are included here for historical interest and for your amusement.
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