WhatNow? ======== by Garry Lancaster v1.05 - 5th September 1999 WhatNow? is an application that can load and play many freely-available text-only and text/graphic adventures on your Z88. It is a complete emulation of Incentive's Graphic Adventure Creator (or GAC) runtime system. Using this application you can play many adventure games that were released in the eighties for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum; titles such as Book Of The Dead, Frankenstein, Karyssia - Queen Of Diamonds and more. New with version 1.05 is support for some GAC adventures produced for the Amstrad CPC range of computers. Additionally, if you feel so inclined, you can use your own Speccy (or one of the many emulators) to create your own adventures with GAC so that they can be enjoyed by Z88 users. If there is any interest in doing this, I might even consider adding an adventure compilation feature to WhatNow?, so get writing! Loading GACed adventures ======================== The standard Z88 menu system is used throughout WhatNow?. When you first enter the system, or when you close an adventure file, you will arrive at the title screen. From here, you can use commands on the File menu. If you choose a command but change your mind, you can cancel by pressing ESCape in the dialog box that appears. Load file --------- This command allows you to select a GAC datafile (either by selecting from the Filer or simply typing the name) to load and play. Some datafiles can be obtained from the Z88 forever! website. If you write your own adventure on the Spectrum, using the "save datafile" option will produce a file suitable for WhatNow? The system will take a few moments to load the file and ensure that it is a valid GAC datafile. After that, you will enter the game. Close file ---------- When used from within a game, this command returns you to the main title screen, where you can choose to load another adventure. Quit ---- Terminates the application. Extract file ------------ If you obtain Spectrum snapshots or tape images from the internet or a CD-ROM, you can use this option to attempt to extract any GAC datafiles within them. This works with most snapshot and tape images, the most common being TAP, TZX and SNA. If in doubt, try using the option anyway; the worst that can happen is that no game will be found! During the extraction process, only a cursory inspection of the data is made, so it's possible that datafiles that don't work will be produced (the load file option makes a thorough check of the data and will refuse to run an invalid game). Some GAC games were saved on tape as a number of separate blocks rather than as a single chunk, and these will not in general be extracted properly (for example, Frankenstein). If you run into this problem, you will have to load the game into a Spectrum emulator and take a snapshot; datafiles can then be extracted from the snapshots. The extract command continues searching a file even after successfully extracting a datafile, so if you give it a TAP or TZX file containing a multi-part adventure, all parts will be extracted. The first part is always given the .gac extension, with other parts being called .ga2, .ga3 and so on. At the moment, there is no way to extract files from the popular Z80 snapshot format. To get around this, you will have to convert these snapshots to the SNA format (or similar) using an emulator or other conversion utility. Version 1.05 now includes limited support for Amstrad CPC games. The extract option is capable of producing datafiles from snapshots or uncompressed tape images of these games, but disk files (.dsk) are not supported. Unfortunately, due to memory limitations, some of the larger games cannot be played and so are not extracted if detected. The Parser ========== WhatNow? provides a complex parser which can understand a variety of sentences. Rather than entering single commands, you can enter many in one go, separating them with "and", "then" or punctuation. The system also understands the use of the word "it" to refer to the last object mentioned. For example, you could enter: Get the lamp, light it and go east. Go south then get the rat. Finally, you can abbrieviate words as much as you like, and the parser will do its best to understand what you mean. NOTE: There is a known bug in the parser when using punctuation to separate commands. If you use a punctuation mark, be sure to follow it with a space, or the next word will not be properly interpreted. Graphics ======== Within the limits of the Z88 display, pictures are displayed as accurately as possible. However, since the height of the display is only half that used on the Spectrum, some distortion is unavoidable. Spectrum colours are given different shading patterns when used to fill areas. However, due to the Spectrum's unusual display arrangement, which is effectively a two-colour display overlaid with colour information, some pictures may look slightly odd if the designer has tried to be clever in the use of ink and paper colours. This is particularly noticeable in the example adventure, Ransom. Graphics from Amstrad CPC games can look even more peculiar, due to the four-colour system used which cannot be easily reproduced on the Z88. User-defined graphics (UDGs) ============================ Although GAC did not provide any way of using the Spectrum's user-defined graphics facility, many games included an alternate character set (for a more pleasing typeface), and some of these used a few of the symbol characters as user-defined graphics. Due to differences between Z88 and Spectrum character definitions, it is not possible to automatically extract any of these UDGs from snapshot files. However, special .udg files are now available for some games, and these add the graphic characters found in the Spectrum versions to the Z88. To allow UDGs to be displayed, you must keep the .udg files together with the adventure datafile, and they must have the same name. For example, if you have botd1.gac and botd1.udg in the same location the UDGs will be automatically installed when you load the adventure. Game commands ============= During gameplay, there are a few commands on the Game menu that you can use. Load position ------------- Allows you to load a previously saved position. Most adventures also allow you to type "load" to perform the same function. Save position ------------- Similarly, lets you save your current position to a file. You can usually type "save" to do this as well. Restart ------- Restarts the adventure. Well, what did you expect? ;-) Options ======= A number of options are available to affect the way the system behaves. These can be selected at any time, whether playing a game or not. Graphics on ----------- Splits the display into a text window at the left, and a graphics window at the right. In most adventures, you can also type "pictures" for the same effect. You can select this even if the adventure is text-only, if you prefer a narrow text window. Text only --------- Devotes the entire width of the display to text. This can also usually be selected from within an adventure with the "text" command. Pause mode ---------- If a large amount of text is being displayed, having this option on (it is on by default) means that the system will pause to let you read the text before scrolling it off the screen. Scroll mode ----------- If you prefer, you can select scroll mode which lets text scroll through the screen without any pauses. Trap errors ----------- This option, set by default, means that WhatNow? will stop the game with a report if an error in the GAC game file is encountered. Ignore errors ------------- If you find a particular game has errors in it (eg Matt Lucas often causes a "stack imbalance" error), you can use this option to simply ignore them and allow you to continue playing. Errors and bug reports ====================== Please contact me via the Z88 Forever website if you should encounter a bug in the system. I'd also like to hear if you discover a particular game with errors in it. If possible, please include a saved game position just before the error occurs, and let me know full details of what you did when the problem appeared. Credits ======= Incentive for designing such an excellent utility All GAC adventure writers, especially the prolific Charles A Sharp Paul White for much valuable testing, and providing GAC downloads Dominic Morris for more testing, and the wonderful "Oh Sh@#!" Paul David Doherty for researching available GAC adventures History ======= v1.05 Added limited support for Amstrad CPC games v1.04 Added user-defined graphics capability Fixed the deliberate mistake in v1.03 ;-) v1.03 Added error trapping/ignore options Pictures no longer redrawn if unnecessary Bugfix: if local conditions were satisfied, "I don't understand" errors could still be displayed (Matt Lucas) Fixed a nasty bug introduced in v1.02 (oops!) which caused WhatNow? to hang if a game error was encountered v1.02 All possible memory now given back to the system on pre-emption Bugfix: end of conditions not always properly detected (Book Of The Dead) Bugfix: extra "Okay" messages after a GET/DROP/BRIN/FIND action failed (Oh Sh@#!) v1.01 Bugfix: ellipses of zero height hung the system (Deadenders, Spacestation Beta 1) Bugfix: turn count should be incremented after high priority conditions and not as in GAC manual (Oh Sh@#!) Bugfix in output buffering routines (Wiz-Biz) Minor optimization in output buffering routines Bugfix: after pre-emption pictures were redrawn even if it was "dark" (Ransom) Bugfix: effects of BRIN and FIND actions corrected v1.00 Initial release Garry Lancaster, 5th September 1999 Z88 Forever! Website: http://www.z88forever.org.uk