COLOSSAL ADVENTURE
(Level 9 Computing)

Colossal Cavern is a name of power, whispered in dark corners,
embodying incredible riches and untold danger. Sensible folk hold
this cave to be a myth, the product of fevered imaginations - but every
year a handful of people set out to find it, driven by necessity or by
overwhelming greed.

Most return empty-handed with tales of fruitless wanderings, or lies
about the dangers faced: volcanos, dragons, gigantic snakes and the
like. But some have never returned, and speculation holds that they
are the successful ones who have found the cave and perished - or
maybe used the enormous wealth from it to found great empires in
far-off lands where they live in luxury.

Thus it is a unique event when a travel-stained warrior enters the
tavern where you are sitting one evening, pays the inn-keeper with an
absurdly high value gold coin, and over his drink claims that he has
visited Colossal Cavern - and escaped with his life!

The other drinkers flatly disbelieve him, "thief" and "mercenary" are
two of their more flattering suggestions to explain his wealth, but you
are not so sure - for he has a haunted look and refuses to discuss his
exploits. Thus, when you realise that an ambush is being planned to
deprive the stranger of his money (and life), you lead him out to safety
by a back route.

"A thousand thanks!", he exclaims when the sounds of pursuit finally
die away, "May the Gods smile upon you for your deed tonight! But I
fear that your friends may seek revenge if you return."

"Thus, to reward you for your valour, I will give you the most valuable
treasure that I own ... the location of Colossal Cavern!", and he
presses a crumpled scrap of paper into your palm. Frankly, you were
expecting hard cash - and a lot of it - but he looks like a good man in a
fight, so you accept the meagre reward and even manage to shake his
hand warmly.

Despite your natural suspicions that the map may be a fake, it would
be foolish to stay and face the wrath of your fellows, so you set out to
follow it. And the map turns out to be genuine! It leads you through
uncharted lands: over mountains, through forests and skirting deserts
- always avoiding the inhabited places of the earth - until one day's
journey would bring you to Colossal Cavern itself.

Then disaster strikes. You are leaning on the wall of a building from
which a river emerges and follows the road south. To the north is
open country and all around is dense forest. As you attempt to decipher
the next part of the map, a freak gust of wind lifts it from your
hand - and carries it into the water. Rescue is not possible for the river
sucks it down instantly, and in any case you cannot swim.

The next part is up to you: to find the Cavern, enter it, and return with
its treasure. And, as you stand thinking, you remember a scrawled
note on the margin of the map:

"Warning, Magic works in the Cavern!"



The Game

Colossal Adventure is a complete, full scale version of the original
classic mainframe game "Adventure", possibly the most popular and
addictive computer game ever produced. You will encounter all of the
creatures, treasures and locations that you will have seen hinted at in
readers' letters to computer magazines.

Just to keep you on your toes if you have played another such adventure,
one of the treasures has been moved and a vitally needed object
has been hidden, but it is an entirely faithful implementation apart
from this.

But when you qualify for the end-game by finding all of the treasures,
it is another matter entirely. The standard end-game is rather limited,
with only two locations, so we have added a complete new, unique
end-game to Colossal Adventure: with over 70 locations! Don't feel let
down when you've solved the first part of the game - the play continues!!

To play Colossal Adventure you simply enter English phrases to tell
the computer what you want to do (e.g. MOVE NORTH, FILL THE
BOTTLE, or LOOK AROUND), and it acts as your eyes and ears to
describe your surroundings.

In fact, Colossal Adventure is amazingly easy to play - you don't need
to be able to find the cursor keys blindfold, or hammer the space-bar
for hours. But it may take weeks to solve - and, be warned, you could
get so absorbed in the game that you just do not notice time passing!



How to Load and Start

Colossal Adventure is 32K program, designed for the 48K Spectrum.

It is made up of two parts: a very small BASIC program and a large
machine code program which does all the work.

To load it, enter LOAD "" (press J; SYMBOL-SHIFT + P; SYMBOL-
SHIFT + P; ENTER) and the game will automatically load and run
when you play the tape, using either side.

When you have finished with the game, press BREAK (CAPS SHIFT +
SPACE) or enter QUIT to return to BASIC.

To restart (e.g. if you press BREAK by accident), enter GOTO 100
(press G; 1; 0; 0; ENTER) and the game will continue where you left
off.


Instructions

Unlike our other games, Level 9 adventures contain no instructions
within the program. We felt that this type of game was very easy to
play - and that the space would be better used for more rooms and
treasures.

The program asks you "What next?" whenever it expects you to enter
another command. Simply type an English phrase to tell it what you
want to do and press ENTER. The program will then act on your
request, ask you for the next command, and so on.

Please ignore the keywords etc marked on and around the keys of
your Spectrum. If you want to read a magazine, for example, you
should type READ in full. However you are allowed to abbreviate
words to save typing. See on ...

Now, at this point, we must admit that the program does not really
understand English (no program does, despite claims in press adverts)
but it does have a large vocabulary of English words. Thus it can
behave as if it knows the language by analysing each entered phrase,
picking out the words that it knows, and guessing the meaning of the
phrase from these. Words that it does not understand are ignored.
In practice, this works well and you should find it simple to state what
you want to do: if the computer does not understand, re-phrase your
request.

Colossal Adventure provides great freedom in possible commands,
but to help you get started some of the possible instructions are
summarised below:

Word Example Meaning

EAST MOVE EAST Move east, if possible.
NORTHWEST TRY NORTHWEST Move northwest.
INTO WALK INTO THE CAVE Move into the cave.
TAKE TAKE THE COINS Take something.
DROP DROP PYRAMID Drop something carried.
SCORE WHAT'S MY SCORE How well am I doing?
INVENTORY INVENTORY What am I carrying?


It should be emphasised that these are only a small sample of the
words known by the program and, in general, if you want to do some-
thing just type what it is in simple language and see if the program
lets you do it.

To save typing, words can be abbreviated (e.g. EAST to E and
NORTHEAST to NE).

There are three special commands which are nothing to do with
playing the game, but are commands to the program. These are:

Command Meaning
QUIT Abandon the game, returning to Basic. You have to
answer a YES/NO question to check that you mean
it, first ...
SAVE Save the current state of the game on tape. Enter
SAVE (as S; A; V; E; ENTER) and then place one of
your cassettes in your recorder and press SPACE,
for example, to start the saving of the state-of-play
onto it.
RESTORE Restore a previously saved game, so that you can
carry on playing. After typing restore, you should
play back the cassette holding the saved data.


Scoring

You score points for finding treasures, but only get the full points if
you carry them back to the building. You also score points for entering
Colossal Cavern at all, and lose points if you are killed.

There are a few bonuses as well, including one for not using SAVE/-
RESTORE, and in order to become a Grandmaster you need a maximum
score - including these.

To reach the end-game, and so have the opportunity for high scoring,
you must have found all of the treasures. If you can't get to the end-
game, there must be at least one treasure that you have not seen,
therefore.


Hints

You are entitled to one free clue, and a SAE is enclosed so that you
can send any one question to us at Level 9, and we will try to return
the answer by the next post. Don't use up the clue too soon - you may
waste it on something that you'll work out yourself while the reply is
in the post. Answers will be truthful, but specific questions have the
best chance of resulting in a simply-understood reply; and if you ask
"How do I win?" for example, the reply will be vague in the extreme!

Almost everything in Colossal Adventure has a purpose.

A magic word is needed to get at one of the treasures. To make it
possible to guess this, it is included in a room description.


Implementation

You may be wondering how Colossal Adventure has been crammed
into only 32K, after all there is one version that runs in 120K bytes on
a mainframe computer with disks. And it has fewer rooms! In fact,
including the operating system, this version must need nearly half a
megabyte of store - but it is written in FORTRAN.

Colossal Adventure is not written in ASSEMBLER or BASIC, either of
these would have made it too big - and BASIC would also have been
too slow. Instead it is written in a super-compact language known as
"a-code", which is specially designed for the job.

Similarly, the text messages output by the program have been
compressed by a "data compiler" to a fraction of their original size.

Together, these two means of size reduction - combined with tight
coding - allow Colossal Adventure to run in an extremely small size.


Other Products

Colossal Adventure was produced by, and is Copyright (c) of Level 9
Computing. If you enjoyed this game and want details of other Level 9
products (games AND utilities) then please write to:

Level 9 Computing
229 Hughenden Road,
High Wycombe,
Bucks.