Ascape
------
(C) David Lodge November 2005

Basic player for the Adventurescape games. Including win32 based executable.

The Adventurescape system was given away on a cover disc for A&B Computing in 1985.

There were the following games released using it:
Game				Database	Works
------------------------------------------------------
2002: A Space Oddity		1		yes
The Island			1		yes
Jungle Quest			1.1		yes
The Pobjoy Special		1.1		yes 
The Silicon Jungle		1.1		yes
Live Aid Magical Mystery Tour	1.1		yes
The Snow Queen			1.1		yes
Anthrosin			1.1		yes
Creepy Adventure		1.1		yes
Lost in Xanadu			1.1		yes 
Murder at the Abbey		2		yes
Dungeon Adventure		2 		yes
Amnesia!			1.5		yes 
The Cube of Zoth		?		no
The Ultimate Prize		HATRACK		no
Pirate's Peril			HATRACK		no
Dreamtime			HATRACK		no
The Taroda Scheme		HATRACK		no
Stranded!			HATRACK		no
Stranded!			BEEBRACK	no
Rise in Crime			HATRACK		no

Ascape can be used to dump the dictionary or to play the game. Currently this can
only be specified on the command line.

The command line is:
	ascape <game data> <game init> [dump]

If you specify 'dump' then the database will be dumped to standard out and will
not be interpreted.

The version 2 games use a separate messages and locations file which are referenced
within the main <game data> file, these should be placed in the current directory.

For the curious the only difference between version 1 of the database and version 1.1
is that an integer is used to saved the score for winning, rather than a byte.

Version 1.5 is similar to 1.1 but things are mangled around a bit so that the room
data and messages can be read directly from disc.

As I don't know the licence details on the games; finding them is left as an exercise
to the reader. (hint: Stairway to Hell and The BBC Lives). Once found; the necessary
files can be extracted from the disc images (I used DFS explorer).

The required files are:
Version 1,1.1	Data and Init
Version 1.5	Data, Init, Messages, Locations, Message pointer, Locations pointer
Version 2.0	Data, Init, Messages and Locations

The Messages and Locations files are pointed to in the data file (all you need to do
is remove the $. from the front.) With version 1.5 the pointer files are preceded
with an "I."

Bugs and Stuff to be done
-------------------------
* Saving and Loading games isn't supported yet (should be easy all the work is
already done!)
* Get the other database versions working
  (version 1.1 complete 27/11/05)
  (version 1.5 complete 28/11/05)
* Work out the Heyley software game format
* More debug codes built in
* Replace the output and input with a more abstract way, thus allowing easy
GUIfication
* Do real CLI work instead of guessing - including error checking
* Split the source into separate files:
  * main (initalise the structures and load database)
  * database (load and print database)
  * interact (interact: print and input)
  * engine (the nuts and bolts of the engine)
* Remove local data from the structures
* Dual play through all games to ensure lack of bugs