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     Space Conflict X v. 1.4 - Survival-Horror Text Adventure
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Table of contents:
I..........Story
II.........Instructions
III........Hints
IV.........Using the X-Text engine
V..........Troubleshooting
VI.........Credits

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I. Story

The Year is 2999.  The earth was de-terraformed by aliens in the early 

24th century and now most humans live in small colonies all across the 

solar system.  Your name is Jack Slade and you live in the main colony 

on Mars.  You are an ex-cop who now works as the night janitor for a 

weapons development firm on Mercury.  On your way home from work one 

night you happen to stumble upon a large derelict spacecraft just 

floating in space not too far from Earth.  Being curios about its origin 

and how it ended up here of all places, you decide to go check it out.  

Your ship docks and you exit to find yourself in a dark hallway.  This 

is where your story begins... 

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II. Instructions

Welcome to SPACE CONFLICT X!!!  In this game you will uncover a devious 
mystery and be able to do several different things in the game, so here 
are the actions you will be able to type in to perform: 

Take: to take an item type in "take item", where item is whatever it is 
that you want to take. 

Use: to use an item you have taken, type in "use item".  The only items 
you will have to use are MedPacs, which restore your health, and 
CommStations (type "use comm"), which give you helpful information.  

Shoot: To shoot an enemy all you need to type is "shoot".  

Move: To move from room to room all you need to type in is the direction 
you want to move, such as "north".  

Help: Display the list of commands.

Inventory:  Displays your inventory.

Type "exit" at any time to quit the game. 

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III. Hints

Finding it a little hard to make your way through the Avalon?  Here are 
some tips:

-There are 2 CommStations aboard the Avalon.  Use these to get some 
  advice.

-Look around in every room.  It helps a lot!

-Pick up medpacs whenever you find them.

-There is one room you encounter early on you might want to come back to 
   later.

-Ever played Doom for the PC?

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IV. Using the X-Text engine

What is the X-Text engine?  It is a very basic engine for making text 
adventures like Space Conflict X.  The X-Text engine allows the user to 
change the Display.txt file that the executable reads, allowing you to 
change the entire story, room setup, weapons, and enemies of the game.  
The following will describe what the lines in the Display.txt file are 
for and how to set them.

The first line of Display.txt is the instructions.  not everyone can 
make their own readme file, so here you can give onstructions to the 
user about what the different commands do.  Please note that none of 
the commands will change at all though.  All the commands that you can 
use in SCX are all the commands you will be able to use in your game.

The second line is for Story.  Here is where you will put in your intro.

Now, the next 360 lines are the setup for all the rooms in the game.  
Each room uses 18 lines to set its variables.  Also, the first room you 
enter is not the first room in the file. The rooms are set in a 2D 
array, so the first room in the display file is at position 0-0, next i
s at 0-1, and so on (see Table 1).  Make sure and remember that the 
player will ALLWAYS start at position 3-2.  keep this in mind when 
designing your adventure.

Table 1 - array - room setup
   
    0  1  2  3  4
   ________________
 0 |__|__|__|__|__|
 1 |__|__|__|__|__|<-secret ending
 2 |__|__|__|__|__|
 3 |__|__|__|__|__|
          ^
          |
     start room (3-2)

The eighteen lines for each room correspond to the following settings:

Line 1: Basic Room Description - here is what the player will read each 
        time thay enter this room.  Note that if there is an enemy in 
        the room (will allways be an alien for now)  the description 
        will be different, but don't worry about that.
Line 2: Look Description - This is what the player will read when they 
	look in the room
Line 3: Look - has the player looked in here before? (true=1 false=0)
Line 4: canShoot - Can the player shoot their weapon in this room?  
	(true=1 false=0) Should only be true in rooms with enemies or 
	in room 1-4, where you cna make a secret ending.
Line 5: ComUse - Can the player use a CommStation here? (true=1 false=0)
Line 6: medpac - Is there a medpac in this room that a player can pick \
	up?(true=1 false=0)
Line 7: gun - can the player pick up a gun here to double their damage? 
	(true=1 false=0)
Line 8: key - Is there a new level key in this room for the player to 
	pick up? (true=1 false=0)
Line 9: north - Can the player move north from here? (true=1 false=0)
Line 10: south - Can the player move south from here? (true=1 false=0)
Line 11: east - Can the player move east from here? (true=1 false=0)
Line 12: west - Can the player move west from here? (true=1 false=0)
Line 13: enemy - Is there an enemy in this room? (any integer number) 
	 This is an integer number representing the enmy(s) in the rooms 
  	 health.
Line 14: northlevel - what level key does the player need to go north? 
	 (any integer number)
Line 15: southlevel - what level key does the player need to go south? 
	 (any integer number)
Line 16: eastlevel - what level key does the player need to go east? 
	 (any integer number)
Line 17: westlevel - what level key does the player need to go west? 
	 (any integer number)
Line 18: CommStation message - This is the message that displays when 
	 the user uses a CommStation in this room.

You must do this for every room in the game (20 rooms).  If there are 
unused rooms you can choose to do what you wish with their settings.  
Above all just have fun =)

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V. Troubleshooting

Q. When I double click Space Conflict x.exe a black screen comes up with 
    no text?

A. Make sure and save Space Conflict x.exe AND Display.txt in the same 
    folder, that is the only way the game will run.

Q. How come I can't take anything?

A. The only things you can take are medpacs and guns.  Type "take medpac"
    to take a medpac and "take rifle" to take a gun.

Q. How do I use things?

A. The only things you can use are medpacs that you have taken and 
    CommStations that are in some rooms.  Type "use medpac" to use a 
    medpac in your inventory and "use comm" to use a CommStation.

Q. If I change the Display file will it affect the game?

A. YES!!!  Do not mess with the main Display.txt file.  If you want to 
    change the Display.txt file to make your own adventure make a copy 
    of the file and then make changes to the copy.  But remember, only 
    one Display.txt should be in the same folder as the executable file.

Q.  For some reason the first few lines of the text are getting cut off
     on larger paragraphs. Why is this?

A. There could be 2 reasons:
	I. On Windows 98 machines the dos shell in which the game is 
           run does not have a scroll bar on the side for you to scroll 
	   up.  While this is a pain I know, at this point there is no
	   easy way to fix this.  I expect this to be fixed in firther 
	   updates.
	II. If you are running from an edited text file you may have 
	    made a line with more text than the 25 line window can hold 
	    without scrolling.  The solution to this is to scroll up
	    using the scroll bar on the right, unless you are on a
	    Windows 98 machine, in which case see thepoint above.

Q.  Why can't I make a fantasy adventure with swords and orcs instead of
     guns and aliens?

A.  At this point the X-Text engine is very limited, mainly because most
     of the nformation about enemies, weapons, keys and the like are 
     hard-coded into the game.  You can expect more versatility to be 
     added in further updates.

Q.  You keep talking about further updates, when can we expect the next 
     update?

A.  As of now there are no hard plans to update the game and, in all 
     honesty, it may never get updated.  But, I would like to update
     the game (possibly to 3D) and fix some of the current bugs and
     limitations.  If I do so, youi can expect version 1.4 or 2.0 to be
     released some time between now and March.

If you have any other questions or issues feel free to contact me by 
e-mail at bjohnson@ptloma.edu

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VI. Credits

Space Conflict X was created by Ben Johnson and is a Licensed product of 
Innovation Theory.  

The X-Text engine was programmed by Ben Johnson and Designed by Ben 
Johnson and Dr. Jeff Mickinstry

If you have any questions, concerns, typographical errors, or ideas of 
how the game could be made better, please e-mail Ben at:
bjohnson@ptloma.edu

Thanks for playing!!! 

idkfa