Category : A Collection of Games for DOS and Windows
Archive   : LARN13.ZIP
Filename : -README-
--------------------------------------------
by Don Kneller
2 Panoramic Way #204
Berkeley, CA 94704
October 20, 1986
Introduction
------------
LARN is a dungeon type adventure game similar in concept to ROGUE or
HACK but with a much different feel. LARN is copyrighted 1986 by Noah
Morgan (USENET: panda!condor!noah) at GenRad Inc. Bolton MA. This version
is a port of his game into the MSDOS environment.
These are the sources for version 12.0. The compiler used was the
MicroSoft C compiler version 4.0, but you should be able to use the version
3.0 compiler with no changes.
I have made one major modification in the MSDOS version of LARN to
get it to work within 256 of memory-- the use of a swapfile for levels
that can't fit into memory. Other changes specific to MSDOS have been
put in the sources between #ifdef MSDOS, #endif compiler directives.
To make the game more playable, I have added graphics characters,
faster IO, use of the numeric keypad, and cursor modification. Also,
unlike the UNIX version, this version use a period (or other
user-defineable symbol) as the floor symbol. The UNIX version uses a
blank which makes it difficult to remember which parts of the dungeon
you've visited. These embellishments have been put between #ifdef DGK,
#endif directives.
Also, most have my changes have been placed in the file MSDOS.C
The complete UNIX sources are here, so you should be able to compile
these sources without #defining DGK or MSDOS if you want to use them on
a UNIX system. However, note that the names of various files (larn.opt,
larn.scr, ...) have been changed for the MSDOS version and you will have
to rename these files back to the UNIX names. The olarn.hlp and oreadme
were supplied by the original author as .larnhlp and README but I have
renamed them.
Compiling
---------
There are three parts to the sources:
1) the larn sources themselves (in LARN.ARC).
2) sources to the Fred Fish termcap library (in TERMCAP.ARC)
3) MAKE.EXE, MAKE.DOC, MAKE.INI, LARN.DOC, NANSI.SYS, NANSI.DOC
The first two should go into separate directories. MAKE.EXE and MAKE.INI
should be put with your executable files somewhere on your PATH. NANSI.SYS
is a better terminal driver than ANSI.SYS. LARN.DOC describes the features
unique to PC LARN.
You will want to compile the files in TERMCAP.ARC to make a termcap
library which will be linked in to the LARN sources. Use the makefile
enclosed in TERMCAP.ARC for compiling the termcap files, then rename
the resulting library as LTERMCAP.LIB.
Compile the files in LARN.ARC to create the LARN executable. The
included makefile calls the executable LARN12.EXE.
Please note that the MSDOS symbol is *automatically* defined for
MicroSoft C v3.0 and v4.0. If you're using a different C compiler you may
have to explicitly specify this symbol.
Make
----
For those unfamiliar with MAKE, it is a program used to maintain
large programming projects such as this one. The "makefile" describes
the dependencies between files. MAKE figures out which files have
changed since being compiled and only recompiles the new ones.
The version of MAKE supplied with this set of sources a version written
by me as user supported software. Please refer to MAKE.DOC for details
on MAKE.
D. G. Kneller
2 Panoramic Way #204
Berkeley, CA 94704
UUCP: ...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!kneller
ARPA: [email protected]
BITNET: [email protected]
Very nice! Thank you for this wonderful archive. I wonder why I found it only now. Long live the BBS file archives!
This is so awesome! 😀 I’d be cool if you could download an entire archive of this at once, though.
But one thing that puzzles me is the “mtswslnkmcjklsdlsbdmMICROSOFT” string. There is an article about it here. It is definitely worth a read: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/mtswslnk/