7 Welcome to the game of Larn. At this moment, you face a great problem. Your daughter has contracted a strange disease, and none of your home remedies seem to have any effect. You sense that she is in mortal danger, and you must try to save her. Time ago you heard of a land of great danger and opportunity. Perhaps here is the solution you need. It has been said that there once was a great magician who called himself Polinneaus. Many years ago, after having many miraculous successes, Polinneaus retired to the caverns of Larn, where he devoted most of his time to the creation of magic. Rumors have it that one day Polinneaus set out to dispel an attacking army in a forest some distance to the north. It is believed that here he met his demise. The caverns of Larn, it is thought, must be magnificent in design, and contain much magic and treasure. One option you have is to undertake a journey into these caverns. Good Luck! You're going to need it! Help File for The Caverns of Larn Game: Information: Command: Action: ? help screen ^ identify a trap . stay here c cast a spell v program version D list items found T take off armor d drop an item ^L redraw screen i inventory pockets Z teleport self e eat Q quit the game g give pack weight q quaff a potion S save the game P give tax status r read a scroll / what is this stuff? W wear armor Movement: w wield a weapon standard keypad arrows mouse y k u 7 8 9 ^ => Click on character and drag to move, or \|/ \|/ | => Click on character and release to stay, or h-.-l 4-5-6 <- -> => Click anywhere on screen to move one square. /|\ /|\ | b j n 1 2 3 v Hold down the shift key and type a movement key to run in that direction. Hold down the alt key and click on an object or monster to identify it. See the last page of this help file for copyright and credit information. Special Notes When dropping gold, if you type '*' as your amount, all your gold gets dropped. In general, typing in '*' means all of what your interested in. This is true when visiting the bank, or when contributing at altars. When in the store, trading post, school, or home, an  will get you out. When casting a spell, if you need a list of spells you can cast, type 'D' as the first letter of your spell. The available list of spells will be shown, after which you may enter the spell code. This only works on the 1st letter of the spell you are casting. larn ++ restore checkpointed game larn -s list the scoreboard larn -i list scores with inventories larn -n suppress welcome message when beginning a game larn -l print out the log file larn - specify difficulty of the game (may be used with -n) larn -o specify the .larnopts file to be used larn -c create new scoreboards -- prompts for a password Background Information for Larn Welcome to the game of Larn. At this moment, you face a great problem. Your daughter has contracted a strange disease, and none of your home remedies seem to have any effect. You sense that she is in mortal danger, and you must try to save her. Time ago you heard of a land of great danger and opportunity. Perhaps here is the solution you need. It has been said that there once was a great magician who called himself Polinneaus. Many years ago, after having many miraculous successes, Polinneaus retired to the caverns of Larn, where he devoted most of his time to the creation of magic. Rumors have it that one day Polinneaus set out to dispel an attacking army in a forest some distance to the north. It is believed that here he met his demise. The caverns of Larn, it is thought, must be magnificent in design, and contain much magic and treasure. One option you have is to undertake a journey into these caverns. Good Luck! You're going to need it! How to use the .larnopts option file The file ".larnopts", if used, should be in your current directory (see -o). A sequence of words terminated by whitespace is used to specify options. Word Meaning bold-objects select bold display of objects inverse-objects select inverse video display of objects no-introduction do not display intro message enable-checkpointing turn on periodic checkpointing no-beep disable beeping of the terminal male choose your sex to be a man female choose your sex to be a woman name: "your name" choose your playing name monster: "monst name" choose a name for a monster savefile: "save-file-name" define what the savegame filename will be Your name and monster names must be enclosed in double quotation marks and may be up to 34 characters long. Longer names are truncated. Anything enclosed in quotation marks is considered one word, and must be separated from other words by whitespace. Explanation of the Larn scoreboard facility Larn supports TWO scoreboards, one for winners, and one for deceased characters. Each player is allowed one slot on each scoreboard, if the score is in the top ten for that scoreboard. This design helps insure that frequent players of Larn do not hog the scoreboard, and gives more players a chance for glory. Level of difficulty is also noted on the scoreboards, and this takes precedence over score for determining what entry is on the scoreboard. For example: if "Yar, the Bug Slayer" has a score of 128003 on the scoreboard at diff 0, then his game at diff 1 and a score of 4112 would replace his previous entry on the scoreboard. Note that when a player dies, his inventory is stored in the scoreboard so that everyone can see what items the player had at the time of his death. Note that once you win, the next game you play will automatically be at the next higher difficulty level. You will also owe some taxes on the gold you had at the end of the winning game. Thus the - option is not generally necessary unless you want to go back down a level. Amiga implementation notes For normal game play, the Amiga implementation creates a separate 8 color screen in which to run the game. The colors and the graphics characters are taken from the .monsters and .objects files in the Larn: directory. These files are in standard HACKICON format. You will be prompted to press return at the end of the game. This is to give you a chance to read any messages on the screen before it disappears. Wizard mode: This mode gives you a +25 lance of death, a +50 ring of protection, 25 levels of experience, and one of everthing in the game. It is useful for learning the game or for working off frustration (much better than kicking the stairs). To get into wizard mode, type an underscore (_) and type 'amiga' (with no quotes or carriage return) in response to the prompt. Note that wizard games will not appear in the scoreboard and there is no way out of wizard mode. You must have a name: "Wizard" line in your .laropts file for all this to work. Credits Written by: Noah Morgan (1982-3) Characters: Edmund Burnette, Ported by: Edmund Burnette (1986-7) Shirley Galbrecht, Hackicon written by: Doug Walker cast of thousands Moral support: The Software Distillery Special thanks: John Toebes Amiga Larn 12.0A Copyright © 1987 Edmund Burnette, The Software Distillery; All Rights Reserved. Larn is Copyright 1986 by Noah Morgan, All Rights Reserved. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * |_o_o|\\ Copyright (c) 1987 Edmund Burnette, The Software Distillery. * * |. o.| || All Rights Reserved. * * | . | || Dave Baker Edmund Burnette Stan Chow Jay Denebeim * * | o | || Gordon Keener John Mannering Jack Rouse John Toebes * * | . |// Mary Ellen Toebes Doug Walker * * ====== BBS:(919)-471-6436 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Edmund Burnette / 210 Willoughby Lane / Cary, NC 27511