-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- | | | (Tales of) The Traveling Swordsman | | For the 2006 Interactive Fiction Comp | | | | Version 1.3 | | | -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- (N) "You are the traveling swordsman; the strong and silent // | \\ stranger; the wandering vanquisher of villainy. Damsels (W)--+--(E) swoon for you. Good men respect and envy you. Scoundrels \\ | // learn to fear you. Even so, you are but a rumor (S) throughout the land." GETTING STARTED If you are playing The Traveling Swordsman for the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition, you have probably already installed a Hugo runner. If you have not, a version for multiple platforms can be found at the General Coffee website: http://www.generalcoffee.com/gethugo.html. Hugo for Windows is recommended, but The Traveling Swordsman will work fine in other interpreters and on other platforms. Alternate section headers have been optimized for Gargoyle (a slick GLK implementation of Hugo and other Interactive Fiction runners), assuming a default 60x25 display on a white background. If you use Gargoyle and you have altered these defaults, you may see The Traveling Swordsman a little differently than intended. This should not interfere with actual gameplay. Also see the "WINDOW THEMES" sections for Hugo and for Gargoyle, for some additional information about changing the theme/style settings. STATUS On the status line in the upper right corner of the game window, the percentage completed and number of turns taken are shown. The former is of importance during the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition voting period, because it's an easy way to check your progress. If you progress by 25% every half hour, you should finish in time. This is a good benchmark for deciding whether or not you need the walkthrough, and for how long. The completed percentage is not a score. It will progress frequently as actions lead to results, but it may not always increment after every minor action (especially optional ones, or when the actions are part of alternate solutions to a task). This should not be taken to mean that those actions are wrong or unimportant. When you have completed the game, the status will be 100%. WINDOW THEMES - HUGO In a Hugo runner that supports it, The Traveling Swordsman will appear in a custom style: gray text on a white background, with blue headers and cyan prompts. Although this is intended to be a pleasant and stylistic display, your default Hugo settings can be used by typing THEME DEFAULT at a prompt. Switch back to the white Swordsman theme with THEME CUSTOM. In high resolution displays, and if your Hugo runner supports it, you may want to increase the size of the default proportional and fixed- width fonts. The default font sizes (for instance, in Hugo for Windows) may be too small on larger displays. You may also set the default fore and background colors to match the settings you prefer in other games (for example, gray on black, or white on blue), but your preferred colors will not be used in this game unless you type THEME DEFAULT at a prompt. WINDOW THEMES - GARGOYLE A similar theme is included for Gargoyle, and is defined in the included "tales_ts.ini" file. These settings will be used by default. If you prefer to use your own Gargoyle settings, simply delete this INI file from the TALES_TS directory and re-start Gargoyle. Some players may prefer the look and feel of Gargoyle to that of the native Hugo interpreters, and TALES_TS should work well with the most recent version. Note that some earlier versions of Gargoyle (most notably, from early July 2006) were compiled in a way that may cause exception errors. This appears to be an aspect of those version(s), and running a newer version of Gargoyle will resolve it. WALKTHROUGH In the competition version of The Traveling Swordsman, an in-game walkthrough is available using the WALKTHRU command, at a prompt. Small sections are shown (with a prompt for more), and only for the current area. This may help you avoid unintentional spoilers. This in-game walkthrough is complete, but will often show only the simplest commands and solutions for any given task. Your unassisted solutions may vary. A more comprehensive walkthrough is also available, as a download. Although The Traveling Swordsman is not designed to be difficult, you may want to see alternate commands and solutions, or pointers to the clues and cues that lead to solving the game. Even though the built-in walkthrough is complete, it does not provide that level of detail. To request a copy of the extended walkthrough or to send feedback during the IFComp voting period, you can reach me at tales_ts@hotmail.com. During the IFComp voting period only, the walkthrough will also be available for direct download at http://www.geocities.com/tts_walkthru/. CREDITS This game would not have been possible without the assistance of the volunteer test team. I owe a big thanks to James Boyd, Craig Ross, FatBoy Fonz, Bryan Dalby, William Head, Crystal Shafer, Fabio Bittar, Vladimir V. Korablin, Jason Devlin, Blake Ballard, and Dan Shiovitz. I owe an equally big thanks to my wife, for her support and assistance. Lastly, I want to thank Stephen Granade for running this competition, Kent Tessman for the brilliant programming language that is Hugo, and Tor Andersson for some assistance getting things right with Gargoyle.