H E R O ! V 1.0 Dan Winslow 1988 The program you have just downloaded was written in GFA basic over the period of one and a half years. It represents a lot of effort . It is also shareware. If you play this game, and if you like it, a donation of ten bucks to the Winslow Programming Fund would be appreciated. Contributors will recieve a copy of HERO hints, a booklet that reveals all of the secrets of the dungeon, and will tells you various techniques for doing things. You also get a free copy of the HERO Dungeon Construction Set, in progress and due for release this time next year. Design your own Dungeons to confound your friends. It will not be uploaded. Please send donations, comments, and bug reports to : Dan Winslow 1201 Sunshine Blvd. Omaha, NE 68123 Or leave comments at COMPUSERVE PPN [72637,1044] or GENIE D.Winslow And now for the good stuff! ******************************************************************************* Running the Program : 1. HERO.ARC should de-arc into four files : Hero.prg, Hero.lvl, Hero.spr, and print_me.txt . All files ( except print_me.txt ) must be in the same directory for HERO to execute properly. 2. Double-click on the Hero.prg file and you should see the HERO greet screen. The greeting screen : There are four options on the greeting screen: Play, Make, Load, and Quit. to choose an option, move the mouse cursor to the box desired and press the left button. Play : This option initiates game play. The currently loaded character will be inserted into the dungeon at the starting room and level. If there is no currently loaded character an alert box will appear to remind you to load a character first. Make : This option transfers you the character creation screen. See that section for further info. Load : This option brings up a standard file selector, looking for *.HCR files in the current directory. Choose a file in the normal manner and the character contained in that file will be loaded as the current character. Note : after the first load or save of a character, HERO will remember the file path and will automatically load and save from that directory. So for instance you could run the game from a ram disk but still keep your character on a: drive. Quit : This option exits to the desktop. Character Creation Screen : The idea here is to create a new character to be a Hero. You have sixty five points to distribute among the five attributes. By placing the mouse pointer over the two letter acronym of the attribute you wish to affect, you can add or remove points by pressing the left or right mouse buttons, respectively. An attribute cannot have less than 1 or more than 18 points, except for the Hit Points attribute, which can go as high as you have points for. Here is a brief description of the attributes and thier functions. Attribute Abbreviation Effects Strength ST The stronger you are, the more damage you will do to the monsters that you manage to hit. Intelligence IN The more intelligent you are, the more damage you do when you cast a spell. Intelligence also controls how fast you get spell points back. Constitution CO This attribute controls how well you can take a blow and how fast you recover your Hit Points. Dexterity DE This attribute represents how 'agile' your Hero is. It governs how often he connects when he swings at a monster, and also how fast he moves in general. Hit Points HP This is the most important attribute. It represents your 'life-force'. When a monster hits you, you lose some Hit Points. When you run out of Hit Points, you die. How many you lose at one blow depends on the strength of the monster, on the quality of the armour your're wearing, the level of Dungeon you are on, and certain spells that may be in effect. Choose your distribution of points with care, as it can greatly affect the lifespan of your character. Your first impulse may be to load up on Hit Points at the expense of the other attributes, but this is not the best policy. You can expect to lose many characters at first, anyway, so you will be able to try many combinations. The options for this screen are as follows: O.K. : Click this box to save the character and exit back to the main menu. You will be prompted to enter a name for the character. The character will be saved to disk before you exit. It will also become your current character. REDO : Click this box to throw away the current distribution of points and start afresh. SAVE : This does the same as O.K. except that you stay in this menu. QUIT : This exits you without saving and without disturbing the current character you may have already loaded. ****** NOTE : The file selectors for saving characters are NOT sensitive to the file name you may select or type in. The only thing they pay attention to is what directory you are in when you 'choose' your output file. The file will be created in that directory as your character name plus a three letter extension of '.HCR'. So, a character named 'DAN' would be saved as DAN.HCR . ******************************************************************************* Playing the game: Controls : The Hero is controlled with a joystick in port 1. The options are selected and objects are identified with the mouse. Joystick mode is the normal mode. Whenever you move the mouse, you are switched over to the mouse mode, and the pointer appears. Game action stops completely while in mouse mode. To choose a menu selection, point to the item with the mouse and click the left button. To identify an object on the screen, point to the object and hold down the left button until you are finished reading the description. To return to joystick mode and restart game play, either click the right button, move the joystick, or press the joystick trigger. Attacking : To attack something, face the Hero towards it and press the joystick trigger. The Hero will extend his sword and strike ( maybe ) whatever he is facing. Identifying things : To identify an item or monster, move the mouse. The pointer will appear and game play will stop. Move the pointer to the item that you want to know more about and hold down the left button. The name of the item will appear, and if it is a monster the Attack Damage and Hit Points that the monster possesses will also be shown. Some of the more common items are : Scrolls and Potions : You have to GET these to find out what particular spell they will cast when USED. Armour and Weapons : You have to GET these to fully identify them. To wear them, you must USE them. Armour types are ( in order of protection afforded ) : Leather,Chain mail,Silver Mail,Banded Steel, and Full Plate armour. Swords are rated by their 'Plus' factor, that is, a +1 sword does twice the damage that a regular ( +0 ) sword does. There used to be a rumour about some sort of magical armour and weaponry somewhere inside the dungeon, but it has pretty much been given up on. Remember to DROP your old armour after USEing your new stuff. You can only carry 13 items. Chests : You face a chest and GET the contents. If the chest is locked, you have to OPEN it first, which takes a key, unless you have the OPEN spell. Chests can contain pretty much anything, including traps. Water flasks and Rations : You will need these to keep from dying of thirst or hunger. Remember, everything on the screen can be identified, so when in doubt, identify! Getting around : Doors : Connections between rooms appear as a blank spot in the wall. Sometimes they are closed doors, which disappear when OPENed. To move from room to room, just walk into the blank spot. You will appear in next room. Stairs : Stairs are concave indentations in the walls, with a column at each end. Stairs either go up or down to the next level. Going up the stairs in room 0 of level 1 leads you back 'outside', i.e. the main menu. Secret Doors : Well , this doesn't really apply now, since virtually all of the Secret Doors have been found. But anyway, it used to be that there were perfectly ordinary looking blocks of wall stone, that when 'identified' and carefully examined, were found to be Locked Doors, leading to un-explored parts of the dungeon! Too bad there aren't any left....maybe. Spells : There are lots of good spells. They are accessible through the CAST menu or by USEing Scrolls or Potions. They cost Magic Points (see CAST) and Hit Points. The higher the level of the spell, the higher the cost. The cost to cast a spell also goes up as your Hero gains levels, because his spells will have increased power, and thus use up more stamina and energy. Too bad you left Hero school before you had a chance to learn what all the spells do. Now you'll just have to figure it out on your own. Except one : you do know that casting the lowly PROTECT spell will increase the protection afforded you by your armour ten-fold. Make sure that you cast this spell right away and keep it in effect whenever fighting, especially at lower levels. Object of the Game : The beautiful Princess Pulchra has been taken captive by the really naughty wizard Baldur. The King wants her back, and you, being a real Hero, are determined to rescue her. in order to do this, you must find your way to the lowest section of the dungeon and find the room containing the princess. She is held in a cell in this room. Also in this room is Baldur himself. Good luck. You must kill Baldur somehow, and open the door to the cell. The princess will follow you wherever you go, but when going from room to room or from level to level she must be within a certain distance from you in order to follow. If she gets killed by monsters on the way up, all is not neccesarily lost, providing that you have the spell-power to bring her back to life. If you guide her out the front door of the dungeon, you win! ******************************************************************************* The Command and Status Display : To the right of the Dungeon room display you will find a strip of commands and status information. Status Display items : ( From the top down ) ROOM This item shows the current room number. LEVE This item shows the current dungeon level. (Name) Below the LEVE item the name of the Hero will appear. LE This is the Experience level of the Hero. HP Current Hit Points left IN Intelligence ST Strength DE Dexterity CO Constitution EX Experience points Gained. (See Gaining Levels and Experience) ARMOUR Armour being worn WEAPON Weapon being held GOLD Gold carried SPELL This shows the currently SELECTed spell. (See Menu item CAST) Vertical purple bar : This bar shows the current Magic Points level. Each time a spell is cast, it drains some from this bar. You cannot cast a spell until this bar has regained enough for the drain of the spell you wish to cast . (See menu item CAST) Commands and Menu Items : CAST : This initiates the CAST sub-menu. USE : This initiates the USE sub-menu. INVE : This command displays a list of the items you are carrying. You cannot carry more than 14 items. (not counting your current armour and weapons.) GET : This command attempts to add to your inventory any item you are facing. If you are facing an open chest, you will GET the contents. If what you are facing is not GETable, you will be informed. OPEN : This command attemps to open any item that you are facing. It uses up one key from your inventory. If you do not have a key, or if the item is not a locked chest or door, you will be informed. QUIT : This commands exits you back to the main menu WITHOUT converting gold to Experience points OR saving the character. The way to save a character is to either walk out of the 'front door' of the dungeon, ( The stairs in room 0, level 1 ), or press the 's' key while playing. Pressing this key immediately saves your character and returns to game play ,but it will not convert gold to EP as leaving by the front door will. The Cast Submenu : When you choose Cast from the main menu, the command strip will be dimmed, indicating that they are no longer usable, and a new menu will appear in the lowest portion of the status display. In addition, the current spell and its level and drain will be displayed just above the new command strip. The level of a spell is the Experience Level your character must obtain to use that spell. The drain is the amount of Hit Point damage and Magic Point Drain that casting the spell will cause. If a bell rings and the spell does not take effect, it means that you did not have enough Hit Points or Magic Points to cast the spell. If it says " CANNOT CAST THAT SPELL ", it means that your Experience Level is not high enough to cast that spell. Spells cast will have a varying effect according to Intelligence of the caster. The IN your Hero has, the more damage the spells will do and the faster you will get your Magic Points back. Spells cast from scrolls and potions always operate at the highest strength, and even a lowly First-level Hero can cast any spell he finds. Since four spells have a duration, if one is in effect then a bar will be displayed in one of four positions above the Magic Points indicator bar. Each has a unique color and in addition the first letter of the spell appears above the bar. When the bar dissapears, the spell is over. For instance, casting the PROTECT spell will cause a green bar and a green letter P to appear. PREV : This command will rewind the spell list by one, showing the spell just previous to the spell currently displayed. If the spell does not change, then you are at the first spell. NEXT : This command shows the next spell in the list after the currently displayed spell. If the spell does not change, then you are at the last spell. CAST : This command casts the spell that is being displayed. SELECT : This command selects the currently displayed spell as the battle spell. This spell is shown in the status display under SPELL : and can be cast at any time by pressing the space bar. This eliminates the need for many tedious trips to the CAST sub-menu just to cast the same spell during the heat of battle. CANCEL : This command returns you to game play. The USE Submenu : This Submenu is pretty much the same as above, except that instead of spells being displayed, this displays inventory items and the number that you have. PREV : Same as for CAST. NEXT : Same as for CAST. USE : This command USES the item that is display. If it is Armour or weaponry, it becomes worn or held, and the old one appears in your inventory. If it is a Potion or Scroll, the spell they contain is cast. If it is water or rations, it is eaten or drunk. If it is a key, it disappears. ( use OPEN to open doors and chests ) DROP : This item removes the current displayed item and deposits at your feet. This comes in handy as you can only carry a certain amount of items. CANCEL : Same as for Cast. ***************************************************************************** Gaining Levels and Experience points : Your Hero starts out as a first level. As he accumulates Experience Points, he will eventually make second level. When he does this, his Hit Points will increase, his attributes will increase, the damage he does and the damage he can take all increase. He generally becomes a lot more powerful than he was, and he also now gets to cast all the second level spells. By the time he gets to third level, he can pretty much make mincemeat out of anything he runs into. ( On the first dungeon level, that is ). You gain Experience points by killing monsters. The more powerful the monster, the more Experience Points you get. Experience points are also affected by the ratio between the Hero's level and the Dungeon Level he is on. A Third level Hero isn't going to make much headway by chopping up monsters on the first Dungeon level, for instance. But if he were wandering around on the third Dungeon level..or even lower...well, IF he survives he'll get lots of Experience points. There is no limit to the levels you can reach, but it takes more and more EP's the higher you go. You will make second level at 2000 EP. After that, who knows? The other source of Experience Points is gold. You get gold automatically from dead monsters, and also you can find it in chests. When you exit out of the front door of the dungeon, your gold is automatically converted 10-for-1 to EP's. Your character is then saved. You can also save your character in mid-game by pressing the 's' key. This will save your character but will not convert gold to EP. Remember, these are the ONLY WAYS to save your character. The menu item QUIT _WILL NOT_ save your character. Notes on Monsters : None of them are friendly. You will get to know the commonest types very quickly. They get much stronger and deadlier with each Dungeon Level you go down. Some of them shoot. Kill everything that moves except for the princess. Baldur has strewn 'generators' in strategic locations in the dungeon. These are square, static spells that spew forth monsters of a certain type. Each type has its own color scheme. They can be struck and killed, just like a living object, although they are pretty tough. Go for any of these in a room first, because they can generate monsters faster than you can kill them, and you will quickly be overwhelmed. Some generators can generate any monster, including other generators. These are the most dangerous and should be destroyed first at all costs. Baldur is a wizard, and can cast spells. If strange stuff starts happening while you are in a room with him, thats probably the explanation. You can recognize him by his purple cloak and bright yellow staff. His staff has a tip of bright red. General Notes : The dungeon will remain the same so long as you do not exit the game entirely. Any changes you have made will remain in effect. If you get nervous, go back out the front door or press 's'. This will save your character. Then simply pick up where you left off. If you happen to get killed, just click on 'LOAD' without leaving the game and re-load your character. Any points or items that you collected since your last save will be lost, but you will pick up again in the exact same place that you got killed in, and all other things will be as they were. If you exit the game, the next time you play all levels of the dungeon will have been returned to thier original state. ******************************************************************************* Have Fun ! Dan Winslow