____________________________________ / \ | THE HOBBIT | | | | typed by | | James Bond (007) | | The Sledge Hammer Workshop | | ************************** | \____________________________________/ INTRODUCTION: Welcome to Middle-earth. This is the world of Bilbo the hobbit, of Thorin and Gandalf, of dwarves and trolls and wizards. This is the magical and mysterious land of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. You are about to play one of the most sophisticated adventures ever designed for the microcomputer. Addison-Wesley and Melbourne House are very proud to be able to present the Hobbit Software Adventure, based on Tolkien's brilliant fantasy novel. In the Hobbit Adventure, you play the role of Bilbo Baggins. You will be able to roam freely throught Middle-earth, explore and discover this enchanted land. You will meet all types of creatures, some friendly and helpful, others very dangerous. Your adventure will be exciting and will hold many surprises each time you play. If you are unfamiliar with honbbits, you should know that they are "a little people," about half the size of humans. Since they spend a great deal of their time eating (at least six meals a day), they tend to have large and fat stomachs. Unlike most creatures of Middle-earth, they are not very magical, capable of preforming only the most ordinary kind of trick. Hobbits wear bright-colored clothing but no shoes, since their feet have leathery soles and thick fur on the tops to protect them. They are a quiet and simple folk and do not care for anything unexpected. No self-respecting hobbit has any use for adventures. Like other good hobbits, Bilbo just wanted to be left alone in quiet comfort. But there was always a little spark of adventurouness in him, a tiny bit of the not-entirely-hobbitlike Took-clan, inherited from his mother, Belladonna Took. Perhaps this was why Bilbo was singled out by the dwarves and mistaken for a burglar, and why he found himself reluctantly agreeing to join Gandalf and Thorin on the most incredible adventure any hobbit could imagine in his most unhobbitlike dreams. As the adventure opens, Gandalf the wizard has talked you (as Bilbo) into entering a new and exciting adventure helping Thorin the dwarf. Your Mission is to seek out the evil dragon, return the treasure he is hoarding to your warm and comfortable hobbit-hole, and place it in a chest for safekeeping. As a secoundary mission, you must look after Thorin and protect him. If he should die early in the game, it is most unlikely that you will be able to survive the dangers ahead of you. It is also important for you to know that, as a hobbit, you are a rather small and milad creature, and most others you will meet along the way will be bigger and stronger than you. You will therefore need to exercise all of your cunning and skill to survive. Best of Luck, Bilbo, and may you return with wounderful tales to tell on a cold winters evening in front of a log fire. ********************************************************************** COMMUNICATING WITH THE PROGRAM: In the Hobbit Adventure, the computer will act as a translator between you and the program. You will tell the computer what you want to do in Inglish, and the computer will translate the request and the program will execute it. The computer will also be your source of information about where you are, what you can see, and what other creatures in the adventure are doing. If the computer is not sure of something you mean, or if there is an ambiguity in your instruction, it will come back to you with questions for clarification. The Hobbit program has a large vocabulary (see the section on the Inglish Language). It knows over 500 words and can preform over 50 different actions (combining verbs and prepositions), so it is capable of very sophisticated communication. The use of Inglish to interact with the computer allows you to enter your instructions in familiarly structured sentences. THE SCREEN DISPLAY: The screen display is divided into two windows. The bottom five lines of the screen are the "communications window." Everything that you type in will be shown here. This is also the place where the computer will indicate when it does not understand something you typed. For instance, if you mistype the word door as "DOR," the program will come back with: I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE WORD "DOR." Other messages will also appear when the program is unable to execute your instructions. Each window will scroll independently of the other. The rest of the screen is the "adventure window." This is where you will find out what is happening in the adventure, what you can see, and what the other characters are doing and saying. The adventure window is displayed on the screen in upper- and lowercase. Every action that takes place, whether performed by you or one of the other characters, will be shown here. Descriptions of locations and of objects and their contents, etc., will also be shown. Usually, the text that is displayed on this screen is short enough to fit in one window. Occasionally, however, the screen must scroll to fit all of the information. When this happens, the screen will pause and the word MORE will appear. Press any key to see the rest of the information. The adventure window is also the area where graphics depictions of the various locations will appear. Over 80 locations described in the book are represented in this adventure. When this happens, the bottom two lines of the adventure window will remain text to let you know what is happening, and the rest of the window will change to pictures. Through the pictures of the locations containe many details, it is possible that Bilbo can see things and people in the area that you cannot see on the screen. Don't be decieved by thinking that the screen shows everything. It is always a good idea to take a look around. ********************************************************************** THE INGLISH LANGUAGE: The Hobbit program can understand the following words (valid abbreviations are given in parentheses). THE INGLISH VOCABULARY: Movements: NORTH (N) NORTHEAST (NE) SOUTH (S) NORTHWEST (NW) EAST (E) SOUTHEAST (SE) WEST (W) SOUTHWEST (SW) UP (U) DOWN (D) Action Verbs: BREAK FILL SAY CLIMB FOLLOW SHOOT CLOSE GIVE SWIM CROSS GO TAKE DIG KILL THROW DRINK LOCK TIE DROP PICK TURN EAT PUT UNLOCK EMPTY OPEN UNTIE ENTER RUN WEAR Special Commands: EXAMINE LOOK (L) QUIT HELP NOPRINT SAVE INVENTORY (I) PAUSE SCORE LOAD PRINT WAIT Prepositions: ACROSS INTO THROUGH AT OFF TO FROM ON UP IN OUT WITH Adverbs: CAREFULLY QUICKLY SOFTLY VICIOUSLY RULES OF INGLISH Inglish is one of the most sophisticated language-recoginition programs developed for the microcomputer. It allows you to communicate with the program in a language and structure that is familiar to you. The rules of Inglish is simple. The main thing to keep in mind is that each instruction must be in the form of "verb-the-noun," where the noun (or pronoun) can also be implied. Each sentence must have a verb. RUN; CLIMB; WAIT are all valid sentences, with an implied pronoun of "I." The meaning of the verb may be altered by the use of adverbs. RUN QUICKLY VICIOUSLY BREAK THE DOOR English grammar applies, and the order of the different parts of the sentences is usually not critical. WITH THE SWORD CAREFULLY ATTACK THE TROLL ATTACK THE TROLL CAREFULLY WITH THE SWORD Adjectives that describe nouns must come before the noun. If it sounds right in English, it is probably valid in Inglish. OPEN THE GREEN DOOR is correct, but OPEN THE DOOR GREEN is not. Prepositions usually come before the noun in Inglish. ATTACK WITH THE SWORD PICK UP THE GOLD The preposition could go before or after some verbs, or even at the end of the sentence if it sounds more natural. TURN THE LIGHT ON PICK THE GOLD UP USE OF AND: You can use the word AND in all its normal meaning in Inglish. This means, among other things, that you can enter more than one sentence or perform more than one action at a time. TAKE THE LAMP AND THE ROPE OUT OF THE BARREL DROP THE SHORT AND THE LONG SWORD TAKE THE TREASURE AND RUN PUNCTUATION: Sentences can be separated by the use of punctuation. You can use commas, semicolons, and periods as you normally would. Quotation marks are used when you are speaking to another character. (see the section on Conversing.) The only limitation the computer puts on what you can enter is that the command must not be more than 128 characters long. Keep in mind, however, that if you enter a very long instruction, other characters in the adventure could use that time their own advantage. USE OF EVERYTHING, ALL, EXCEPT: It is sometimes not convenient to have to enter a long list of objects when the words EVERYTHING or ALL would suffice. You are able to use these words in Inglish just as you normally would. You may also specify what you want to manipulate by using EXCEPT in conjunction with ALL and EVERYTHING. EAT EVERYTHING BREAK ALL THE BOTTLES OPEN ALL EXCEPT THE GREEN DOOR LIMITATIONS OF INGLISH: To describe an object, you are only able to use the object's name and its associated adjectives (if any apply). For instance, if you see some delicious foamy beer in a bottle, you could say: DRINK BEER or DRINK DELICIOUS BEER or DRINK FOAMING BEER or DRINK DELICIOUS FOAMING BEER all of these would result in quenching your thirst. You cannot, however, use the position of an object as its description. DRINK BEER IN BOTTLE would not be acceptable. You cannot have more than one indirect object object in a sentence. Basically, this means that you cannot do one thing in more than one way in the same sentence. PUT THE ROPE ON THE TABLE and PUT THE REOP ON THE CHAIR are both valid, but PUT THE ROPE ON THE TABLE OND THE CHAIR is not. By the same general rule, you cannot say things like ATTACK THE TROLLS WITH EVERYTHING SPECIAL COMMANDS: There are a number of special commands unique to the Hobbit Adventure: LOOK (L) gives you a graphic depiction of your location. Then, by pressing a key, you will receive a text description of the location, including all exits and objects (other than any you are carrying). INVENTORY (I) describes everything you are carrying. EXAMINE (object) enables you to have a closer look at any object you come across. WAIT passes the time. @ (no return) instructs the program to repeat the last command. (This must always be the first input of a sentence.) NOPRINT disables the PRINT command. (PRINT and NOPRINT may not be be avaliable in all versions. Check your reference card.) SAVE allows you to save your current game on disk. After you have saved the game, play will continue normally. The next time you play, you can pick up where you left off. LOAD loads a previously saved game from the disk. QUIT restarts the game. SCORE tells you what your presentage is so far. Pause suspends the game until another key is pressed.