Source:Eamon Adventurer's Guild Newsletter, March 2000

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Description	The Eamon Adventurer's Guild Newsletter, March 2000 issue.
Source	Eamon Adventurer's Guild Newsletter Archive
Date	March 2000
Author	Eamon Adventurer's Guild; Tom Zuchowski (editor)
License	Permission has kindly been granted by the copyright holder for this copyrighted item to appear in the not-for-profit Eamon Wiki website. Permission granted by Matthew Clark in email with Huw Williams on 22 November 2012.
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The Eamon Adventurer's Guild
March 2000

Annual Financial Report

EAG Finances for 1999:

Starting Balance:	$87.79
Income
Back Issues:	$14.75
Renewals:	$120.00
Total Income:	$134.75
Expenses
Copier:	$100.41
Postage:	$56.93
Supplies:	$9.53
Total Expenses:	$166.87
Ending Balance:	$55.67

A net loss of $32.12 for the year, very much in line with the decline in membership we saw for the year. Since the first of the year we've seen a lot of renewals. Membership is presently 28 people. We're actually pretty much in line for another membership extension, but I am going to put that money towards your free Eamon CD-ROM.

CD-ROM update

I have a lot of it done, but it's turned out to be a lot more work than I had anticipated. It has been a major chore to convert all of the old AppleWorks EAG newsletter documents to PC text, as these conversions require quite extensive hand tweaking. I have carpal-tunnel problems that limit my ability to work on this for long stretches. Another delay resulted from the fact that I got a new PC and have spent much of the past month or so getting to know it better.

Also, as of this moment I do not have disk copies of the old NEUC newsletters. I have been trying to get a set of them from John Nelson. If he comes through with them for me, there will be some further delay as those documents are converted, but I think it's worth the wait to get a full set of reviews, if nothing else. I am modestly optimistic that those old documents will convert more quickly because of their simpler formatting.

If it turns out that I can't get a set of NEUC newsletter files, then I may just scan my paper NEUC newsletters in and supply them as JPG images. I hate to do that for a number of obvious reasons. I may try typing in just the reviews, although that would be fairly unsatisfactory as well. Either of these options would also consume considerable time, of course. We'll just have to hope that I can get those disk files.

I the meantime, I will probably be sending out a test CD to some Mac people in the near future to make sure that I have the emulators properly covered for both PC and Mac.

I have set a personal goal of getting the CD-ROM out by mid-summer. Wish me luck!

On a related note, John Nelson is still working on his PC Eamon project. While he has only converted a few Eamons to the new PC format, they are very nicely done. At present, they only run under MS-DOS, but they seem to work fine in a DOS box under Windows. Knowledge of QBASIC or BASIC PDS is required to write or modify your own PC Eamons. But John says that he is well along in development of a Visual BASIC version for Windows.

John is very enthused about getting a PC-Eamon organization going, and would love to hear from people who are interested in getting involved with Eamon for the PC. (See the related article inside.)

Eamon Adventurer's Guild

Thomas Zuchowski, Editor

Membership/subscription fee for 4 issues:
US-Canada: $7.00; foreign: $12.00; in U.S. funds

This newsletter is published 4 times per year, in March, June, September, and December.

This newsletter was composed in its entirety using Word 2000 on a Pentium computer. It was printed on a Hewlett-Packard 830c inkjet printer.

We are always looking for new material! If you would like to publish your own letter or article in this newsletter, feel free to send one in.

If you would like to add your own Eamon adventure to the EAG list, send it on a disk to the above address. It will be assigned an Adventure number, and tested for bugs and other problems. An informal critique and disk with bug corrections will be returned for your final comment, action and approval before release.

Back issues

NEUC Adventurer's Log:
Mar'84, May'84, Aug'84, Oct'84, Jan'85, Mar'85, May'85, Aug'85, Oct'85, Jun'86, Jan'87, Oct'87

EAG back issues:
   1988: Jun, Sep, Dec
   1989, '90, '91, '92, '93: Mar, Jun, Sep, Dec
   1994, '95, '96, '97, '98: Mar, Jun, Sep, Dec
   1999: Mar, Jun, Sep, Dec

Price:
EAG members: $1.00 each
non-members: $2.00 each

Our mail-order Eamon vendor:
 

Eamons are available online at various sites. Two that I can recommend are ground.ecn.uiowa.edu and ftp.gmd.de.

EAG Eamon Disk Offer

EAG members can obtain the complete Eamon set from the EAG. This contains both the DOS 3.3 and 80-col. ProDOS Eamon collections archived to 3.5 disks. These are ShrinkIt archives. To access the ProDOS titles, you must at least one 3.5 drive. The DOS 3.3 titles require both 3.5 and 5.25 drives.

The EAG members' price for the entire set is $25.00. To take advantage of this offer:

1. This offer requires that you supply the disks. You must include 19 DD 3.5 floppies with your payment. NOTE that these MUST be DD disks. My drives cannot read nor write to HD disks!
2. You must use a shipping container that I can re-use to return the filled disks to you.
3. The $25.00 price includes formatting the floppies with ProDOS If you format the disks for me, the price is $20.00. This reflects the time savings I get from not having to do the formatting. It doesn't mat­ter what ProDOS volume name you use since they will be rewritten.
4. If any of the above requirements are not met, the disks will be returned unfilled, and the shipping cost will be deducted from your refund.
5. Both versions of 8-bit ShrinkIt and basic instruc­tions are included with the set.

Purchasers of the set will automatically get free updates at irregular intervals.

Eamon on the PC

by John Nelson

A few years ago, I turned my attention to the PC World and left my Apple II behind (but still set up and functional.)

I wanted to convert the Eamon stuff to the PC and it was taking a lot of time to do so. I couldn't devote the time necessary to continue to run the club, publish the newsletter and convert to the PC as well as perform some contract programming on the side.

It has been almost ten years now. I stopped working on Eamon years ago because there didn't seem to be much interest in Eamon on the PC and I didn't have time to advertise as I would need to. Eamon seemed like such a trivial game on the PC because the machine could do so much more. With the introduction and conversion of the world to Windows and then Windows 95 and now maybe even Windows NT, it has been growing so rapidly that DOS is being left far behind.

But Eamon still has its charm and I have recently received inquiries on the availability of Eamon for the PC. I still love Eamon and would like to see it flourish on the PC, but I didn't know there would be an interest, so I'm asking everyone to help me out and spread the word for me a little. There is an Eamon for the PC. I have converted the following to the PC format:

• Master Diskette
• Lair of the Minotaur
• Cave of the Mind
• Zyphur Riverventure
• Castle of Doom
• Devil's Tomb
• Abductor's Quarters
• Assault on the Clonemaster
• Magic Kingdom
• Molinar's Tomb
• Quest for Trezore
• Heroes Castle
• Case of Mondamen
• Death Trap
• Quest for Marron
• Orb of Polaris
• Temple of the Trolls
• Prince's Tavern
• Sorcerers Spire
• Orb of My Life
• Designer Diskette

I have a dozen others with the files converted to the PC format and I can roughly turn out about one adventure per week if I put my mind (and the time) into it. But here's the catch: somebody has to want this stuff. I don't want to devote all my spare time converting adventures or writing new adventures for the PC unless there is somebody out there that is going to play them!

If anybody wants these adventures, here's what they'll get:

The adventures come with source code (and can be run as such using QBASIC that comes with DOS 5.0 and above.) If you have Microsoft's QuickBASIC or BASIC PDS 7.0 you can run or compile your own programs. If you don't have the compilers, you may either use the QBASIC that comes with DOS, or run the executable files that have already been compiled by me (or someone who does have a compiler.) Microsoft has discontinued QuickBASIC and BASIC PDS 7.0 compilers, but you can sometimes pick up a used copy of these.

Anyway, the adventures will run on almost any PC. (I haven't found ANY exceptions yet, but then I'm not looking very hard either!) I've run them on the original IBM PCs with the 8088 processors and dual floppy diskettes, but if you're going to do that, I can't guarantee I can get you 5.25" DS/DD floppies that will work on your machine.

The Designer System is a big improvement over the Apple version I used to use, but I haven't used in new version 7.0 that Tom has developed, so I can't speak for that version.

Eamon Walk-Through

19	Death Trap	Mar98
62	The Caverns of Doom	Mar97
77	Temple of the Trolls	Mar99
107	The Last Dragon	Dec99
114	Thror's Ring	Dec96
116	The Iron Prison	Dec99
120	Orb of My Life	Sep98
126	Pyramid of Anharos	Jun98
127	The Hunt for the Ring	Dec98
129	Return to Moria	Jun99
132	Rhadshur Warrior	Jun96
145	Buccaneer!	Dec97
147	The Dark Brotherhood	Sep96
150	Walled City of Darkness	Mar96
161	Operation Endgame	Jun97
239	Idol of the Incas	Sep99

I want to make a note about Sam Ruby's best Eamons. You are not seeing Walk-Throughs in this section for Sam's best works, because these Eamons typically include very complete hints and solutions programs on the disk. For example, Storm Breaker has a SOLUTIONS program, and Animal Farm has BASIC TRAINING. Both of these programs offer fairly complete walk-throughs of their own.

Always check your Eamons for bonus programs on the disk! Several of the better authors have been known to do this on occasion.

A Walk-through of Eamon #074, DharmaQuest

In this adventure, you have offended Hokas, and he sends you to another land to learn some manners and compassion.

First, the hints for those who wish to solve it on their own:

If you delete line 19050 from the MAIN PGM, you can restart a saved game more than once. You will need a separate "Save" disk . This disk will be formatted and erased when you save a game to it.

There are two ways to exit the adventure. One is through a simple magical portal, which can be done at any time once you find it. The other exit is more difficult to achieve, and gives a far more satisfying outcome. The maximum outcome ends with the gods boosting every one of your major stats. Those of you who use cheater-superman characters will not want to return to the Main Hall, as the reward maxes your main stats to 25.

Use the Ring of Asroth sparingly. You must kill some enemies in the conventional fashion in order to learn every clue you need to completely solve this outing.

There is a bug that deposits you in the Temple of Aphrodite if you SAY something that the program doesn't recognize. You will find things less confusing if you only SAY things you are reasonably sure that the SAY routine should recognize.

There is a random chance that you will be denied entrance at each of the four temples. There is nothing in these temples that you have to have in order to achieve the maximum outcome. If you want to complete all of the temples, here is a workaround:

1) If the statue disappears and your prayers are ignored, halt the game with a Control-C, then type:

R2=xx:POKE51,0:GOTO3500

2) Replace R2=xx with these values:

Temple of Poseidon:	R2=39
Temple of Apollo:	R2=45
Temple of Aphrodite:	R2=63
Temple of Artemis:	R2=52

Be aware that the gods cherish their pets!

OK, those are enough hints. Let's get started!

Many people that you meet have a random chance of being friend of foe. Take care of them as necessary if they are enemies. Note that there are some exceptions, listed below.

Note the new commands: PRAY, HELP

As you begin, there is nothing to see in any direction but north, so go N and meet Gwynnith. Continue N, then go E into a cave and meet Polydorus

Continue E deeper into the cave and discover TABLET1. EXAMINE TABLET1 (NOTE: you MUST use the FULL command! Command abbreviations often do not work with the EXAMINE command in this Eamon.)

You learn about 4 great wizards' magical rings:

Ilgaard's opens locks and seals

Twalrep's cures wounds

Xantec's gives wisdom

Asroth's destroys all in its path

Return W twice to the canyon, then go N into the valley Climb U into a small cave and meet a hermit in trouble. HELP the hermit, and acquire the bronze Ring of Ilgaard. Return D to the valley.

Continue N to the river bank, then go N again into the river, and discover TABLET2. EXAMINE TABLET2, which reads:

F.OM ..S..TH CAME ….R,THE B.A.. WIZARD
.. KIL.ED THE FOUR AND USED A SPELL TO
WELD THE RINGS INTO THE ULTIMATE RING OF
POWER.HE WAS SLAIN BY THE GODS FOR THE
SIN OF HUBRIS AND THE RINGS SCATTER.. TO
THE FOUR .INDS. THEY … … ..

That looks interesting! We'll have to remember that.

Go W upriver and help a drowning boy. He tells you that death lurks west of here and east of the ford. Believe him, and return E.

Continue E. Here is the ford, so let's turn N. Continue N again into the village.

There is nothing of real interest in the huts; explore them as you wish.

Continue N into the Grove of Athena. Help the old woman, and acquire the golden Ring of Xantec. SAY XANTEC and learn how to use rings (I guess you already knew that, though, huh.)

Return S three times. Continue S to the south side of the river and meet Deiphobus. Then go W three times along the path.

Don't go D below the bridge. This is the same point in the river that laid W of the boy, and Death awaits there. Instead, go N across the bridge and meet Polydamus.

Continue N to the city gate. The gates are locked and you are blocked here. This looks like a good place to try out the Ring of Ilgaard – SAY ILGAARD. You find yourself on the Main Plaza, where you meet Memnon.

You will get yourself into some combat if you GET the statue of Patroclos. There is nothing to be gained apart from the thrill of combat and the chance to see a couple Effects. It's your call.

Go N to the palace, then go W and find a crying girl who can't get her cat. HELP the girl. Have you noticed that none of these people in trouble quite seem to be what they appear to be? Return E.

Go N twice to the throne room, then N and meet Machaon.. EXAMINE TABLET3. Hmm. To gain the power, you have to not only possess the four rings but must also be noble of spirit? Well, we have been helping all of these people . . .

SAY XANTEC and learn of a secret passage down. Go D and meet Theoclymus. SAY XANTEC again and learn of another secret door down. Continue D and meet Xuthus.

You have found a gold box. SAY ILGAARD. Get the black Ring of Asroth and some other loot. Do not ever say ASROTH unless you have an enemy standing before you! Even then, use it sparingly. When you destroy an enemy, you also destroy whatever he is carrying; so only use it when you are sure you won't want what they might have, or if you are perhaps trying to leave no evidence. I wound up not using it at all and didn't miss it.

Return U twice and go N into a courtyard. SAY XANTEC and discover another secret passage down.

Go D and discover a sarcophagus. EXAMINE INSCRIPTION. The Black Wizard! The tablet said that we need his name to forge the rings together. Let's see if we can find any clues in the sarcophagus. SAY ILGAARD.

Oops. He's not so dead, after all. Kill him with your weapon. Do not use the Ring of Asroth! If you use the ring, you will never learn his name. As soon as he dies, note his name! It will appear just as he dies. You get just this one chance to learn it, so be attentive. Write it down, as it changes with each play.

Return U, S, and E. Continue E and meet Phaedra. SAY ILGAARD to open the silver box, and discover the silver Ring of Twalrep. If you are injured, feel free to use this ring as needed to heal yourself. You may require multiple tries before you become totally rejuvenated.

OK, we've got all of the rings, and we know the Black Wizard's name. But let's hold off on that until we're through exploring everything else.

Return W, then go N and meet Nemo. I expect you'll have to kill him. Continue E into the wizard's lair. EXAMINE INSCRIPTION over the door. Is this the exit? (Yes, this is the quick way out. But we are going for max points here, so don't go through it!)

Return W, then S four times to the Main Plaza. Go D to the Plaza of Temples.

Go W into Temple of Aphrodite and PRAY.

(If the statue disappears, this temple is barred to you. You can still proceed by halting the game with control-C and then typing: R2=63:POKE51,0:GOTO3500.)

EXAMINE INSCRIPTION over the east door. Big deal, danger, and glory, the usual stuff. Yada, yada.

Go E through the door. It becomes blocked behind you – you're trapped! EXAMINE INSCRIPTION on the wall and find a riddle! Luckily, it's the old Sphinx riddle that we've all seen on many an outing. Answer MAN and learn the magic word to exit (get it right the first time—you just get one chance.)

Get the gold ingots, then SAY NAUTA to escape the room.

Explore the south room if you wish, then go into the west room and meet Helen. SAY XANTEC and learn of a hidden door behind the mosaic. Go N and find yourself back in the little girl's garden. Return E, S, D to the Temple Plaza.

Go N into the Temple of Apollo, and PRAY.

(If the statue disappears, this temple is barred to you. You can still proceed by halting the game with control-C and then typing: R2=45:POKE51,0:GOTO3500.)

Go N, then W, and get the hamster. Return E. Continue E and meet Admetus. Get the chest if you wish. Continue N and meet Cassandra.

SAY XANTEC and find a secret passage down. Go D and find a crown. Get the crown. A python appears! Do not kill him. Give him the hamster and earn his trust.

Again SAY XANTEC and learn of another hidden passage in the floor. Continue D and meet Astynax. Go S and return to the Temple Plaza.

Go E into the Temple of Poseidon, and PRAY

(If the statue disappears, this temple is barred to you. You can still proceed by halting the game with control-C and then typing: R2=39:POKE51,0:GOTO3500.)

Go W and get the salt. Return E. Explore the south room and return.

Go E and meet Thetis, and then continue N. SAY XANTEC and discover a secret passage north, behind the mosaic. Get the golden cup. A sacred bull appears! Do not kill him. Give him the salt and earn his trust.

Go D into the pool, and find yourself in the small cave near the beginning. Return to the Temple Plaza (D, N, W, W, N, N, SAY ILGAARD, D)

Go S into the Temple of Artemis, and PRAY

(If the statue disappears, this temple is barred to you. You can still proceed by halting the game with control-C and then typing: R2=52:POKE51,0:GOTO3500.)

Go N, then E, and meet three Amazons (alternatively, you can go S and circumnavigate the island until you run into them from the other direction.)

Go S, then D and meet Andromache and Clytemnaestra. Get the jewels, then return U.

Continue U and meet Penthesilea and her leopard. EXAMINE INSCRIPTION on the door. It says THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST AND THE LAST FIRST. SAY DNEIRF AND ENTER.

That's simple enough—SAY FRIEND and find yourself on the path outside the city.

OK, we've done it all. Time for the finale. SAY the Black Wizard's name.

Lots of gods here. Let's try PRAY and see what happens.

Not bad!