Village (file)
Village is the name of a BASIC program file created by John Nelson included on certain versions of the Eamon Master.
Purpose
Nelson explained in the August 1985 issue of the NEUC newsletter that the standard Eamon Characters file limits the length of a character's record to just 150 bytes, which can sometimes be insufficient and cause the Main Hall program to crash. To address this, he created a new version of the Characters file called Characters.Ext that instead uses 250-byte records, and created a new version of the Main Hall program to read and write such records. This revised Main Hall was named "Village", and Nelson published a detailed set of instructions for players to be able to make the necessary modifications to their masters.
In addition to handling the longer character records, Village also included a new feature written by Nelson called the "Training Center" where adventurers could spend gold to increase their weapon abilities.
Tom Zuchowski discussed the problem in the March 1997 issue of the newsletter and agreed that those wishing to "bullet-proof" their Eamon masters against crashes causes by overflowing character records should follow Nelson's instructions. He also offered some alternative tips to make crashes unlikely using the standard master.
Availability
Zuchowski writes, "I have never seen the modified version, and I am afraid that I am responsible for eliminating it from the public domain because I did not ever make the mods to the Master in the EAG library." The modified version did make it into other libraries, though, including that of the Big Red Apple Club which distributed it as their Eamon Master, volume E232.
Source code